For my first post of 2013 I share a post from “Aid on the edge of Chaos” that I found challenged my thinking. The title and all the content relates directly to the site.
We humans are supposedly very good at recognizing patterns, with some evolutionary theorists even crediting our survival and evolution with this trait. However, we also tend to struggle to see beyond patterns that we have classified, almost like a needle on a old record. Some examples are the way we divide the world into developed and underdeveloped, industrial and emerging. Although we all know that these classifications are in conflict with our own experience of the world (think of the sophistication of the Indian Pharmaceutical sector) we still are trapped in our labels that we use.
Below is a link to a post on Aid on the Edge of Chaos, featuring the work of Andy Sumner and Sergio Tezanos Vázquez where they explore new approaches to classify developing countries.
The image below is from the original post on the Aid on the edge of chaos blog site. Take a look at their post and then think again how you label the countries that you work in.
- What happens if you classify the countries differently?
- What are the implications of just changing the classification?
- How does their classification scheme challenge your own way of classifying regions?
Hey Shawn, interesting article. I have yet to read the piece but fully agree that classification affects our ability to communicate cause and effect. It would be interesting to compare this map, overlaying it against other information e.g. extractive industries, aid, industrial development models etc.