Margaret Keane

St Mary’s University College

m.keane[at]stmarys-belfast.ac.uk

Introduction

HERODOT is the network of European inter-university cooperation in Geography. Membership has widened so that HERODOT now has over 150 partners with representation in every European country. This includes all 25 EU states, and the applicant countries, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. It has partners, too, in United States, SE Asia, Latin America .The highly involved and interactive community framework for the interaction and exchange of ideas, information and action in the field of Geography and related disciplines have a focus on matters pertinent to European integration and the Bologna process. Among these, intercultural themes are a growing concern, arising from the enlarging European Union and in face of migration, the tendency for ethnic clustering and xenophobic and other reactions. It occupies, therefore, a central position in promoting and supporting the implementation of quality curricula in the period leading up to the establishment of the European Higher Education Area. HERODOT aims to translate these into learning and teaching approaches.

This paper traces HERODOT’s contribution to understanding the implications of population migration which has occasioned intense geographical, social cultural changes over the last half century and which has continued into the new millennium. It looks at the concepts and methods in the field as a context within which to set HERODOT’S activities. These activities are outlined insofar as they contribute to furthering understanding of the migration process or developing education for mutual understanding.

Human mobility has always been a central concern for geography, whether it is mobility concerned with survival, and work, spiritual or educational fulfilment or with pleasure. Geography, then, sheds light on the facts and fiction, the myths and realities of mobility and on the hopes and fears of migrants into, out of and within Europe. With the tools and skills at their disposal, geographers can visualise how the ‘bigger picture’ looks and it offers insights into future possibilities for places so as to help focus actions.

The movement of people from one home location to another has been taking place since the origins of man himself. During recorded history it has not only increased in volume but varied in composition and has involved longer and longer journeys. By the nineteenth century the scale of that mobility changed, associated with improved transportation, the mechanisation of agriculture, industrialisation and improved telecommunications. In the last decades of the twentieth century the cumulative impact of technological innovations transformed long distance trade, financial markets and spheres of information, travelling and migrating. In the contemporary world, then, the poor, the oppressed and underprivileged are as mobile as the rich and privileged. However, they no longer travel only as emigrants but instead make themselves less available for integration in countries where they go to seek work and refuge. They are proud to be different and distinguishable among others who are different. They do not travel with the idea of reaching a fixed destination but rather towards a point which may be followed by another stop or another in their life trajectories.

With this increasing volume and diversity of migration has come a corresponding necessity to identify and explain such movements. Over the years geographers have dedicated themselves to the analysis of the phenomenon in an attempt to distinguish its characteristics, identify its origins and the consequences of the transformations taking place. ( Kosinski and Prothero1975; King, 1993). Measurement and mapping was an early priority. The late nineteenth century migration laws produced by Ravenstein, using 1881 census statistics for England and Wales, provided a framework. This elucidated migration in terms of spatial geometries such as in maps of origins and destinations, distance-decay and forces of "push and pull". However, such perspectives showed little interest in the life of migrants or in the effect on the places from which the migrants had left or to which they had moved. Is mapping and measuring really enough?

So as to shed light on the motivation for migration, one school of geographers explained in it in terms of weighing up advantages and disadvantages that two places hold, according to differences in job opportunities, levels of income and amenities. However, this rational emphasis ignores the fact that decisions are actually based on images that people have of the places to which they migrate. How these images are built and responded to depends on a wide range of considerations according to individual circumstances. Other geographers have focused on migrant groups since migration is a social phenomenon and depends on social networking. So often they end in sharing space with the poor of their destination, yet inhabiting different cultural worlds so that the endpoint is ethnic residential clustering. To understand ‘others’ requires a geographical imagination, and this varies with experiences which are best explained at group level. However, putting the emphasis on the group takes migration out of context. Migration flows transform places and societies: their home places, the places through which the migration process occurs and the places and societies of the host countries. Human mobility then has transformed geographies: the significance of cities has changed, for they are the places, above all, where migrants from everywhere congregate and where cultural interactions, the co-existence of different cultural identities and changing perceptions of difference are at their sharpest.

When the Geography Thematic network began its search for a name that would convey its essence, it recognised, as can be seen from the previous discussion, that Geography is a contested enterprise. According to David Livingstone, geography has a pluralist tradition; it changes as society changes (Livingstone, 1992:347). Yet symbolism is a twenty-first century essential. Since geographers have been motivated by mobility as far back as the foundation of the subject, it was thought that the ‘Father of Geography ‘ might serve as an appropriate defining symbol. Geography, however, has a long debated paternity. If the emphasis was on describing places, Eratosthenes ( 273BC-192BC), who is attributed with the first mention of the term ‘Geography’, would be a good choice. Geography comes from two ancient Greek words, ‘ge’ meaning ‘the earth’ and ‘graphe’ meaning ‘to write’. The practice he referred to was the description of the earth by noting locations in their immediate surroundings and in the world beyond Eratosthenes was in a long line of geographers who concentrated on developing measurement techniques and skills for the accurate description and depiction of location. Ultimately this enabled the steady development of mapmaking which was to become a hall mark of the geographer and which facilitated the steadily lengthening distances over which mobility was possible.

Others held that geography was synonymous with exploration. Was it the Homer, who was accorded the distinction of Father of Geography by the first century geographer, Strabo, who should be selected? Ulysses’s voyages depicted in The Odyssey, whether they refer to real or to mythical places, reflect that universal desire to be on the move, to find out what lies beyond the horizon and which fires mobility right to the present day.

The Thematic Network opted instead for the other great ‘Father of Geography ‘, Herodotus, agreeing that he was most in tune with the twenty-first century world. Born 484 BC in Halicarnassus in today’s Turkey, he travelled extensively for 17 years in the known world. Herodotus described in his 9 volume History the world that was before his eyes and, what is more, he mapped this. His description was no longer confined to the routes of journeys. Instead, his instructive descriptions of the peoples he met open up a whole new world for the people to whom he reported his story. He details their origins, lifestyles and customs, the events that shaped their lives and the places in which they lived. From his writings, for example, we know the nomadic habits of the Scythians.

Herodotus provides the model of the mobile scholar in contact with the ‘other’, reporting what he sees, who he meets, talks to and hears from directly. He diffuses culture and environmental awareness through documentation including maps and reports. Europe’s new geography was discussed at the first HERODOT meeting to uncover the salient themes for the beginning of the new millennium; the influence was evident (Haubrich, 2003).

i) Virtual Communication

It is inevitable that telecommunications advances have led to the virtualisation of communication between members. Communication is kept up-to-date with the Project and its research groups through our electronic newsletters and the Web site on which there is a data base of members of those seeking partners and so on. The website also contains details of conferences and workshops, and has copies of conference papers, and research reports...

ii) Face –to face contact
Gaspar and Glaeser (1998) showed, however, that telecommunication is not a substitute but a complement for face- to- face contact and can even increase the need for it. With the membership of universities in Eastern European states, easier and cheaper travel between all European countries and a desire to widen participation, HERODOT policy was to arrange workshops, presentations and research group meetings right across Europe. Conferences became as much opportunities for conversation and contact with people, cultures and places, often the source and/or destinations of Europe’s mobile population. For example, education issues arising from migration of families from central and eastern European countries to other parts of Europe were discussed at the 2006 HERODOT Conference, Teaching in Europe: Teaching about Europe which was held in Poland.

Another strand of HERODOT activity has been in the updating of subject specific skills, not least in the interests of employability which has been a key concern in a world where geographers are, themselves, on the move and are preparing students for a mobile career paths. The HERODOT logo is a reminder of the centrality of the map to the geographical tradition. Mapmaking for the twenty-first century, however, must be seen in the context of a world of computers and information technology and, more specifically, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Geoinformation (GI) technologies. Geographic information is a major information category which needs a specialized information system to gather process and store the data and support the analysis. Put simply, as was the case at the time of Herodotus five centuries BC, European society today needs information about space and the different phenomena in it and GIS is a very effective tool which will provide it. Geography has been the source of the fundamental approaches for these tasks and Geography is best prepared to interpret and use the information for issues which are of vital importance to our future as a community (Dimitrov and Popov, 2005). Through the skilful use of GIS mapping, for example, Kelly(2005) has been able to able to illustrate for policy makers the transition from monocultural space to the beginnings of ethnic clustering in Dublin and, at the same time, the possibilities still remaining for polycultural spaces and urban regeneration. GIS mapping is being used to map geolinguistic changes, cultural diversities, health patterns, income and so on. HERODOT has expended much effort in offering training sessions to members so that their research and curricula will be socially relevant and also available to policy-makers. The employment prospects are many and the field is expanding. Knowing where things are and why will remain essential to rational decision making

A special theme of the HERODOT’s Europeanisation group is the role of geography in developing an education which respects different lifestyles and ideologies in the increasingly multicultural Europe. Intercultural Education was one of the main foci of the second Thematic Network Conference and papers are published in Changing Horizons in Geographical Education. It brings together the latest research and developments in a number of contexts.

An associated theme concerns language. HERODOT, from its first meeting, asked members to question more deeply the link between language and intercultural encounters. Conference Sections of the both the 2005 and 2006, in particular, and published papers have drawn attention to the implications of the increasing dominance of English as a lingua franca and suggest geographers can contribute in several ways: By mapping geo -linguistic changes in Europe as well as globally; by showing graphically the reality that, under the global veneer of English in Europe, a great diversity of languages remain vibrantly alive and that they dominate the lives of most citizens; by providing bilingual courses in geography; by encouraging all geography students to have a second language.

HERODOT, from its inception, has been in tune with the cultural diversity in most European countries and aware of the increasing contacts between peoples from all over the world. As already noted above, it accepts the need to recognise difference, to deal with the knowledge acquired constructively so as to learn to live and communicate effectively with people from other cultural backgrounds. One way to advance this goal was for a number of members to participate in the American Geographical Association’s Online Centre for Geography Global Education (CGGE) Project (Keane, 2005). This is a truly global collaborative online learning project which uses discussion board technology to develop communication and team-working skill, as well as global citizenship and geographical understanding. From it we are developing greater understanding of the issues involved in working collaboratively and in cross cultural contexts.

HERODOT’s aim of advancing intercultural understanding has led the network to become a participant in the International Geographical Union’s Cultures and Civilizations for Human Development (CCHD) project. This is an initiative, stimulated by the unprecedented global mobility and by post 2001 ideologies, which is designed to encourage intercultural and intercivilizational co-operation with a view to pursuing human development. By its very nature, CCHD is interdisciplinary and is based on multi-perspective concepts and representations of cultures and civilizations. The proposed Action Plan is concerned with four crucial arenas:

A range of publications has also been produced which highlight innovative approaches to learning and teaching that members have been working on. Some focus on specific skills areas which enhance description, analysis, synthesis and make possible more effective interpretation and decision-making. Changing Horizons in Geography Education) is a large collection of internationally peer-reviewed papers with a focus on the European dimension in higher education. It brings together the latest developments in areas, such as Intercultural education, language and geographical education and ways of addressing these.

Donert, K. (ed) (2004) Aspects of Geography in European higher education: Geographical Information Systems

Donert, K. and P. Charzynski (eds) (2005) Changing Horizons in Geography Education

Donert, K. (ed) (2006) Aspects of Geography in European higher education: Information Technology in learning and teaching Geography

Donert, K. (ed) (2007) Aspects of Geography in European higher education: Teach in Europe: Teach about Europe

Donert, K. (ed) Aspects of Geography in European higher education: The State of Geography in Europe ( forthcoming early 2007)

Dimitrov, S. and Popov A. (2005) The place of Geoinformation technologies in the education and professional development of the European geographers, In Donert, K. and P. Charzynski (eds) (2005) Changing Horizons in Geography Education, HERODOT Publications

Donert, K. and P. Charzynski (eds) (2005) Changing Horizons in Geography Education, HERODOT Publications

Gaspar, J and Glaeser, E.L. (1998) Information technology and the failure of Cities, In Journal of Urban Economics 43: 136-156

Keane, M. C. (2005) Geography Forum: Intercultural Learning Online, In Donert, K. and P. Charzynski (eds) (2005) Changing Horizons in Geography Education, HERODOT Publications

Kelly, D. (2005) Dublin’s Spatial Narrative – the transition from essentially monocultural places to polycultural, Irish Geography 38(2):209-224

King, R. (1993) The New Geography of European Migrations, Belhaven

Kosinski, L.A. and Prothero, R. M. (1975) People on the Move: Studies of Internal Migration, Methuen