the Power of Place by Harm J. De Blij

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Synopsis

In recent years a spate of books and articles have argued that the world today is so mobile, so interconnected and so integrated that it is, in one prominent assessment, flat. But as Harm de Blij contends in The Power of Place, geography continues to hold billions of people in an unrelenting grip. We are all born into natural and cultural environments that shape what we become, individually and collectively. From our "mother tongue" to our father's faith, from medical risks to natural hazards, where we start our journey has much to do with our destiny, and thus with our chances of overcoming the obstacles in our way.
Incorporating a series of revealing maps, de Blij focuses on the rough terrain of the world's human and environmental geography. The world's continuing partition into core and periphery, and apartheid-like obstructions to migration from the former to the latter, help explain why, in this age of globalization, less than 3 percent of "mobals" live in countries other than where they were born. Maps of language distribution suggest why English, the Latin of the latter day, may become as hybridized as its forerunner. The fateful map of religion casts a shadow of what he calls "endarkenment" over the future of the planet in a time of increasingly destructive weaponry.
De Blij also looks at the ways we are redefining place so as to make its power even more potent than it has been, with troubling implications for the future. Optimistic demographic projections based on declining national populations in the global core are tempered by the prospect that the vast majority of the 3 billion additions to the world's population will burden the periphery. Megacities such asLagos and Jakarta with their corridors and nodes of globalization foreshadow a future of potentially explosive social contrasts. Subnational entities from southern Sudan to northern Sri Lanka seek independence at a time when the planet's limited living space is already fragmented into 200 states.
Looking down from the business-class compartment of a transcontinental airliner, the world looks a lot flatter than it does from the doorway of a dwelling in a local village. Harm de Blij brings us back to earth to reveal the all-too-rugged contours of place.

Publishers Weekly

De Blij (Why Geography Matters) argues forcefully that "geography and destiny are tightly intertwined" in this book that challenges the increasingly popular assertion that the world is becoming "flat" due to the effects of globalization. The author, greatly influenced by his experiences as a young man in South Africa during apartheid, illustrates that the world is still strewn with the economic, political and cultural versions of mountains and oceans that separate the lucky few in the "core" from those in the "periphery," specifically, those nations that lag behind in economic development and health care and are vulnerable to geography and environment. Using compelling data, de Blij describes how "Cruiseship Earth" is inhabited by three groups that he terms: "globals", migrant "mobals" and "locals," the latter, inhabiting the unprivileged periphery, who will soon outnumber the "fortunate minority" of globals, thereby presenting the world with challenges that mere globalizing economies cannot possibly assuage. This meticulous analysis of the impact of everything from religious fundamentalism to the streamlining of world languages on these three groups will serve as an indispensable primer for serious policy makers. (Aug.)

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Biography

Harm de Blij is the John A. Hannah Professor of Geography at Michigan State University. The author of 30 books including most recently Why Geography Matters, he is an honorary life member of the National Geographic Society and was for seven years the Geography Editor on ABC's Good Morning America.