Interview with Philippe Rekacewicz
Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann Paris, 25 June 2003

Le Monde Diplomatique's Atlas on Globalisation was published in January 2003. Within four months, it was out of stock. At the same time, "Mapping" has also become fashionable in the art world. Both indicate a need for orientation in a world in which the old geographical categories: North/South, Central/ Peripheral, East/West have become disarranged through capitalist globalisation, and its new wars, forms of exploitation, and enforced mobility. How did the idea of the atlas arise?

P.R.: It was a coincidence between how the editors of the magazine were working, and an interest. Before we published the atlas, Le Monde Diplomatique had had a special quarterly thematic collection, meaning every three months, articles on a certain topic from the last four years were collected, for example about South America. Some maps would also be included. In every year, in January, we usually published a kind of atlas of political conflicts, which contained all the major topics from the previous year. This atlas was always very popular. At that time, we had the idea of producing a document that was far more systematic, and also that didn't recycle existing materials. There were lots of areas that we'd never dealt with but that we were all interested in, for example trade unions, or homosexuality. This idea arose in 1996/97. At first, we were all really excited, but we didn't know how much work that would be. We started with the idea of expanding the atlas of conflicts, of making it more precise, to include all the conflicts in the world, even those which had been forgotten. We had developed a few concepts, which were boring, and then rejected the idea. It took 2 or 3 years before we found an approach which we all approved of. It was an approach which was both thematic and geographical. It seemed like a theatre piece where we described the scene and the decorations, and then the actors. We had to find out who these actors were, and to describe how powerful their international relationships were, their roles in the process of globalisation, their dependence on resources, e.g. the United States' increasing dependence on foreign oil explains a lot about its aggression. I'm not saying that this dependency explains its aggression completely, but to some extent.

You mentioned a coincidence, and the desire to make the atlas…

P.R.: The coincidence was people's desire for a tool for orientation in a changed world. That's why it wasn't to be just an atlas of conflicts, but also an atlas of the most important problems globally. But we made major mistakes, which we didn't realise at that time. A large part of the atlas is taken up with the USA, while Africa only appears right at the end of the atlas. There are only three double page spreads for the entire continent, which is revealing, and embarrassing for the Le Monde Diplomatique, which represents itself as a defender of the rights of the poor against rich and cynical capitalists. We only realised this inequality in the geograhical representation when the atlas had been published.

Isn't it always the case that at first, power and what it influences is visible, and only later what it hides becomes visible?

P.R.: That is extremely characteristic for what the atlas illustrates. It's when you work with data and statistics that the inequality of geographical visibility becomes evident. Africa's disappearance is also due to the fact that it has disappeared from international consciousness. In all the maps that can be found on the Internet, of airports or commercial enterprises, Africa simply doesn't appear. Africa doesn't exist in the logic of globalisation, the logic of capitalist economics and in the global movement of exchange, business and the transfer of money. (…) For example, you have to compare the tools through which the poorer and marginalised social groups in west European societies still remain visible. The conservative government here in France tries to use these tools for repressive purposes of control. Nonetheless, I think these tools can also be used for the poor to make their concerns known. For example, I think in Africa, many legal and institutional tools should be developed and installed, which could assist the people there far more than using their resources and exploiting them and driving them into debt.

Were there arguments over the procurement of information and over the visual format?

P.R.: Before I started working for Le Monde diplomatique, at the University, i was specialising myself in demography, migration and refugees, and west Africa. I've been working for fifteen years in that area. But now, We must consider to work on a huge range of different subjects with who I am not necessarily very familiar. Before I developed a cartographic plan, I had to read a lot, and carry out research and talk to people. The discussions were particularly important for me. I would invite one or two specialists, and we would talk together for two or three hours. I asked questions and they answered. At the end of such meetings, I Knew much better about the subjects - Asia or FDI for example - and can start to mentally create a cartographic document with the contributions the experts or author gives to me. Then I began to think about what kind of presentation would be fitting for the topic, and the methodical approach. The second step is to arrange a meeting with a team of trainees who were to research for statistics and data about the topics in international organisations: the OECD, the World Bank and the UN system for exemple. Of course we had doubts about this information - we're fighting the politics which implement these, for example the word bank and the debts. But these organisations support all these statistics, for example, in the American government departments of agriculture, there are statistics about the world which are extremely relevant. That's a real paradox: institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the UN and US Ministries, whose policies are criticised by critics of globalisation, on the other hand have the best statistics, which are important to develop a critique of them. When the statistics are used in a certain manner, it's possble to reveal exactly what these organisations don't want to see, and what they are trying to hide. It's THEIR data, we don't manipulate it. They don't realise what analyses the data that they collect can deliver. So it's not particularly necessary to develop alternative databanks, for example, universities in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and France have large databanks which can be used. It takes years to find out about where all this data can be found. You also have to get to know the people who look after these databanks. You can't just access the data, you have to be trustworthy. You have to develop a relationship with these data providers. You build up a network, and a relationship is created, including the World Bank and the IMF. I travelled a lot, at my own expense, for example to central Asia, to Africa, Northern Ireland, to SEE the conditions there, to meet people and to try and understand from outside how things work. Coming back to the mental approach. If you don't know what it is that you want to do, then you can get lost in the huge amounts of information. But when your approach is too strict and narrow, then you prevent yourself from discovering interesting information. You have to be both: methodical but also extremely open and curious.

Would you say something about the question of modes of presentaion?

P.R.: The classical form of representation is extremely USA- and Eurocentric. I could have chosen radically different ways to project the information but I didn't, because I didn't want to use up too much time and energy making the projection into the focal point. I wanted to concentrate more on the individual topics, and I also wanted to use similar forms of presentation, to make it easier to make comparisons between the different maps.

But the disadvantage of this traditional form of representation is that automatically, certain social and economic situations are included although now they are no longer valid. For example, in Argentina, there's exactly the same level of private wealth as in Europe. So the idea of the wealthy north and the impoverished south is not valid. But we gain the impression that in every country or area, the structures of economic enrichment and exploitation are illustrated again separately. In countries such as Argentina, the social groups who managed to profit most from the crisis often use criticism of the IMF to deflect attention away from their own machinations. The atlas reproduces this form of argumentation. We had the impression that the form of presentation using national territories is unable to illustrate the way different groups have become wealthy, and the networks between them.

P.R.: It was a real disappointment that we forgot to present the industrial de-localisation separately, which is evident with transnational businesses. In the atlas we show that there are transnational companies but we don't show where they manufacture goods, in sweatshops or export-production-zones, as Naomi Klein calls them. (…)
Unfortunately we couldn't include all the important phenomena in the atlas. One of these is certainly the network of industrial globalisation, particularly its processes. My approach was to show a status in the form of double page spreads: here the debts and there, the link to the individual countries, eg in Latin America. The first part of the maps doesn't go beyond the description of the status of various economic processes. The second part goes more into an analysis of the links among individual states.

We have a further question about the presentation as a way of transmitting the contents. Was there a form of didactic argument during the work?

When you work with thematic cartography and try to present particular circumstances in the present, what is occurring across thousands of kilometres, it's necessary to reduce the information. The main problem is to filter so the relevant information remains, and to lie as little as possible.