Wednesday, September 22, 2010

European Stereotypes

I had seen one of these maps before. A colleague last year had one of Hungary. They are interesting because they hit home at the simplistic ways people think of countries. The American one is pretty classic:


Hits our Cold War way of thinking about the world, how racial stereotypes of other places get projected upon the wrong nations, and how consumerism fundamentally defines our popular relationships with nations. It's not too different with the Germans either:



That Russia is basically Gazprom for most of Europe is pretty right on and all the more so after they cut off gas supplies a couple of winters ago, letting Europe freeze.

Obviously this kind of thing has limitations, but there's real value here too.