GeoCurrents
About GeoCurrents
GeoCurrents is dedicated to exploring the geographical and historical patterns that underlie the world’s current events and that structure global and regional relationships. Maps are used in most posts not merely to show where events occur, but also to illustrate the processes involved.
Regular GeoCurrents articles try to avoid taking sides on contentious issues, seeking rather to foster an exchange of information and ideas. As its scope is both fully global and deeply historical, I am often operating outside my own fields of expertise. As a result, mistakes and simplifications can be expected. Corrections and elaborations are more than welcome in the comments section. Comments with insulting or abusive language, however, will be deleted.
Some GeoCurrents postings, however, do take strong positions on controversial issues. Articles of this nature are clearly marked as such. Some of these longer opinion-based writings are posted in a serial manner and are subsequently reorganized and re-posted under the “featured essays” drop-down menu at the top of the site.
About The Author
Martin W. Lewis is senior lecturer emeritus at Stanford University, where he taught world history and world geography from 2002 to 2022. He earned a PhD in geography from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, and previously taught at George Washington University and Duke University.
GeoCurrents’ Conceptual Concerns
GeoCurrents is concerned with almost anything that has a geographical expression and hence can be explored and elucidated through maps. Geographical topics of interest range from the deadly serious to the quirky and whimsical. Political and philosophical issues are also occasionally explored, sometimes in considerable depth. Environmental thought and policy are of particular interest.
Many GeoCurrents posts take on issues of political geography, ranging from wars and ethnic conflicts to electoral returns. Behind these writings is a conviction that the basic world political map is unduly simplistic, making the world seem much more orderly than it really is. An elaboration of this thesis – entitled Seduced by the Map – is also available here in the “featured essays” drop-down menu at the top of the site.
Recent Posts
- Alcohol & Religiosity in the United States, and the West Virginia Exception
- Mapping the Historical Distribution of Alcohol Consumption Circa 1500
- Comments Disabled; Reply to Pete Morris
- Middle Path Environmentalism
- GeoCurrents Reorientation
- Mapping the Current State of Cannabis Legality in the U.S.
- Does High-Rise Housing Cont