Cholera in the Caribbean

Turnball’s contention asserts that maps are both perspectival and subjective. When defining maps as perspectival, he claims that maps are like pictures in that they have “functions and purposes” that suit the perspective of the person who is viewing them, which differ depending on the viewer. In this way, Turnball thinks that maps necessarily must be “intersubjective” because they are capable of transmitting information to numerous people, but unlike pictures, should be translating a unified message that can be shared between them.

The mapping project I selected to dive deeper into is the “Caribbean Cholera Map”. This digital humanities project has accumulated data about documented cholera outbreaks in the Caribbean. The two facets to the visualization on the project’s home page is the map that pinpoints where the recorded Cholera outbreaks were recorded as well as a timeline that marks when the outbreak happened and what the source was the reported it.

My first observation of the perspectival assumptions through the point of view represented is the use of Google Maps to point out where the Cholera outbreaks were occurring in the Caribbean. Google Maps represents the world map with the Western perspective which has is known to misrepresent the geographic spatiality of certain countries. For example, the traditional Westernized map shrinks the true scale of Africa and enlarges the size of Canada. This Westernized map is one that we are accustomed to seeing in all representations of the globe – but because it is widely circulated, many people are unaware of the inherent biases that it holds. Despite this being a digital humanities project to represent an occurrence in the Caribbean, the Western biases present make it obvious that the people who put this project together at Duke University, were Western scholars.

Another assumption made by the people who created this database to indicate their Western biases is the sources used to document the outbreaks of Cholera. Many of the sources cited are Western publications. The sources listed include the New York Spectator, the Salem Gazette, the Daily Atlas, the Daily National Intelligencer, the Daily Alabama Journal, and the New York Herald. Western mass media is known to sensationalize certain aspects of the news, so the fact that this database represents so many of these sources makes me question how much this map is truly obscuring. What about the outbreaks of Cholera that were not reported by Western media that affected smaller, more marginalized regions of the Caribbean? I am not convinced that this database would be the most reliable source of an unbiased recordings of Cholera outbreaks, especially since their navigation toolbar says “Navigate to the significant cholera outbreaks” indicating there has been some filter applied to select which outbreaks were significant and which were insignificant. On what criteria can a cholera outbreak be deemed insignificant?

An alternative map would not be a world map, but instead a map of just the Caribbean. I think a heat map showing where Cholera was most devastating to certain communities, their population, and economic standings would be more effective in showing where Cholera was most significant. As for the goal to track Cholera’s outbreak over time, this heat map could dynamically changed on a user’s command to show the shift in intensity of Cholera’s outbreaks over time using a timeline similar to the one used in this project.