Geography Matters to all of us'

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Workshop on Poverty Maps May 21, 2003 Brussels,
Belgium
Maps of Poverty and the Poverty of Maps Recent
academic discourses on maps and their
implications for policy makers
Daniel Z. Sui Department of Geography Texas AM
University
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Evolution of the Definition of Poverty and the
Changes in Poverty-reduction Policies
Definition
Income
Policy Focus
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Major Disagreements on Poverty
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Areas for Further Study
New Modes of Redistribution
Country Case Studies
Intra-household Allocation
Increasing Inequality
Different Levels of Aggregation
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The Local vs. the Global
Think Locally
Act Globally

• Environment
• Culture
• Politics

• Capital
• Technology/Human Resources
• Trade

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Basic Ideas of Semiotics The location of meaning
Platonic World (Analytical domain)
Signs
Physical World (Object Domain)
The Referent
Interpretant
Mental World (cognitive domain)
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Has GIS Killed Cartography?
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Arthur Robinson, 1976 The Nature of Maps
J. Brian Harley, 2001 The New Nature of Maps
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Whats new?
Maps are no longer mirrors, but are socially
constructed.
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The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP)
Ecological Fallacy
Domains of scale
Increase extent only
Temporal Scale
Increase grain only
Varying grain or extent or both
Increase both grain and extent
Spatial Scale
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Visual Thinking
Visual Communication
Visual Thinking
Visual Communication
Exploration
Exploration
Confirmation
Confirmation
Synthesis
Synthesis
Presentation
Presentation
Public
Private
Public
Private
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Spatial Analysis of Nutritional Status
Spatial Analysis of Nutritional Status
in the Province of
Rajasthan
, India
in the Province of
Rajasthan
, India
300 km
300 km
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Procedures to calculate lacunarity using Arc/View
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Lacunarity Results
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Spatial Distribution of Three Income Groups in
the City of Houston, 1980-1990
1980
1990
High
Middle
Low
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Measuring and Integrating the Parts...
Social Factors
Biodiversity
Engineering
Land Use
Environmental Considerations
Means Seeing the Whole
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Four Types of Data in GIS
Continuous
Discrete
Nominal
Interval
Ratio
Ordinal
Source Stevens, S.S. 1946. On the theory of
scales of measurement. Science 103 677-680
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Poverty/Food Insecurity Mapping as a
Multi-criteria Evaluation Problem
Indicators
Composite Index
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Classification of Mutli-criteria Decision Problems
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A different kind of map (value-by-area mapping)
Cartogram
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Types of Cartograms
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The Blind Men and the Elephant Something better
than nothing??