The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography

The authors argue that conventional geographical taxonomies that divide the world into continents, nation-states, and even cultural-political spaces like the First World and Third World are overly simple-minded and reinforce a hierarchical, Eurocentric view of the world. While cartographic ethnocentrism is surely an established historical fact, this book tilts at windmills: most sensible people recognize that terms like "Asia," "Africa," or the "South" represent complex, heterogeneous categories, and yet continue to use them because they are a shorthand for what remain meaningful political, economic, and cultural distinctions.