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How Do Remote Southern HemisphereResidents Perceive the World? MentalMaps Drawn by East Timorese andMozambican IslandersIsabel Maria Madaleno aa Portuguese Tropical Research Institute, Natural Sciences ,Lisbon, PortugalPublished online: 12 Apr 2010.
To cite this article: Isabel Maria Madaleno (2010) How Do Remote Southern Hemisphere ResidentsPerceive the World? Mental Maps Drawn by East Timorese and Mozambican Islanders, ScottishGeographical Journal, 126:2, 112-136, DOI: 10.1080/14702541003712895
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How Do Remote Southern HemisphereResidents Perceive the World? MentalMaps Drawn by East Timorese andMozambican Islanders
ISABEL MARIA MADALENOPortuguese Tropical Research Institute, Natural Sciences, Lisbon, Portugal
ABSTRACT This paper uses mental maps to explore how residents of remote islands perceive theworld. Hand drawn mental maps produced by young people in East Timor and Mozambique, bothformer Portuguese colonies. Three episodes of globalisation – the colonial Portuguese era(fifteenth to eighteenth century), the period of Northern Atlantic supremacy (nineteenthcentury) and the current North-American economic hegemony (1950’s onwards) – have had animpact throughout the southern hemisphere and in Portuguese speaking countries throughmilitary presence, political dominance, commercial and cultural influence. Evidence of the impactof these episodes was sought in the mental maps but it was found that the mental maps wereinfluenced by remote islanders’ geographical education and by their personal and familyexperiences with the lack of globalisation influences most likely due to the limited exposure ofremote islanders to global media and modern technologies.
KEY WORDS: Mental maps, globalisation, East Timor, Mozambique
Introduction
Traditional maps with symbols and legends permit a broad interpretation of theEarth’s surface. Modern technologies permit a better visualization of real spacesthan ever before and enhance the accuracy of maps but they do not replace them(Blaut, 1997a; Golledge & Stimson, 1997; Campbell, 2001; Pelayo & Monteagudo,2001). Individual perceptions of the world known as ‘mental maps’ will be examinedin this paper (Lloyd, 1982; Gould & White, 2002). The act of developing a mentalrepresentation of both places and geographic spaces and the ability to comprehendone’s position in relation to allia and within the Planet is defined as geographicvisualization (Johnston, 1983, 1994; Berg, 1994; Berry, 1994; Morril, 1994; Golledge,Dougherty & Bell, 1995; Lobben, 2004). Inner environmental representations are theresult of processes in which personal experiences and values are used to filter external
Correspondence Address: Isabel Maria Madaleno, Portuguese Tropical Research Institute, Natural
Sciences, Rua Andrade, 8.2-E, Lisbon, 1170-015, Portugal. Email: [email protected]
Scottish Geographical JournalVol. 126, No. 2, 112–136, June 2010
ISSN 1470-2541 Print/1751-665X Online � 2010 Royal Scottish Geographical Society
DOI: 10.1080/14702541003712895
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stimuli to which the brain is exposed, evoking different responses from eachindividual. There are however common geographic, cultural and socioeconomicbackgrounds that produce similar images within certain subject groups (Knox,1995). The experience of island living, of remoteness, life in the southern hemisphere,colonialism and/or other influences associated with globalisation may shape theworld perceptions of selected respondents.
Driven by memory and imagination, mental maps were first documented in 1913,when Trowbridge published ‘On FundamentalMethods of Orientation and ImaginaryMaps’ in Science magazine. During the 1960s, behavioural geographers developedextensive work on people’s awareness, impressions, information, images and beliefsabout their own environment, suggesting that they formed internalized representationsin some maplike form (Gregory, 1994; Golledge & Stimson, 1997). These pioneers ofthe humanist approach brought into focus subjective components such as people’sbeliefs, emotions, activities, interactions and their cultural background (Matei et al.,2001; Capella and Gonzalez, 2002; Gould & White, 2002; Ruchelman, 2007). Furtherand more recent work refers to ‘cognitive’ mapping, which is the process of coding,storing, decoding, recalling and using spatial information (Lloyd, 2000; Lobben,2007). Spatial behaviour is now widely recognized as the end result of combined storedinformation and ongoing experiences, reflecting the importance of the internalizedworld and environmental perceptions.
This paper argues that mental maps drawn by remote island residents are shapedby respondents’ geographical education and by their personal and familyexperiences. Similarly, the acts of viewing and experiencing colonial architectureand of witnessing military actions, guerrilla raids, and participation in actions of civilunrest, can generate peculiar perceptions of their islands or of the world. In order toconsider mental maps from a comparative perspective this paper provides a briefhistorical overview of two cities – Island of Mozambique and Dili – and thegeography of their respective countries, namely Mozambique and East Timor. Thetrinity of society, politics and economy in each country/location is described tocontextualise the visions of the world shared by students aged 9–25 years, who havedrawn mental maps at our request. The main aim is to address the critical questionof how three episodes of globalisation – the colonial Portuguese era (fifteenth toeighteenth century), the period of Northern Atlantic supremacy (nineteenth century)and the current North-American economic hegemony (1950’s onwards) – impactedon both southern hemisphere and Portuguese speaking countries through militarypresence, political dominance, commercial and cultural influence (Macedo & Pereira,2007; Pereira, 2009).
Historical Overview of Mozambique and East Timor Islands
Mozambique Island was first visited by Europeans when the Portuguese navigatorVasco da Gama (1498) looked for a peaceful port to rest and find expert pilotguidance to help him discover the Indian sea route (Lobato, 1954; Brasseur,1959; Poulsen & Exner, 1998). Today the one square kilometre island has anunusual, triple urban personality. It is oriental and Muslim in the shape of itsmosques, European in the brightness of its small churches, and very much African inthe colours of women’s clothes and the clusters of small and crowded houses.
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Archival research suggests that peaceful coexistence of Catholic missionaries andMuslim groups has been the norm (SCCIM, 1965), even during the guerrilla war forindependence, in the 1960s and early 1970s, because incursions mainly targetedborder Mozambican areas (Southern Africa, 1969). However, on the eve ofindependence from Portugal, political incidents were registered at Carapira Catholicmission, located in the island district, resulting in the expulsion of 11 Verona Fathersfrom the colony because they advocated self-determination for the territory(SCCIM, 1973–1974). Following independence in 1975 and during the civil war of1975–1992 life in Mozambique was seriously threatened, and the number of residentson Mozambique Island doubled, reaching about 15,000 islanders. Most inhabitantswere refugees from dispersed rural settlements who sought shelter from governmenttroops, Frente Nacional de Libertacao de Mocambique (FRELIMO), and theopposition guerrillas, Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana (RENAMO)
Today Mozambique Island is densely populated, with 2007 projections estimating19,244 residents per square kilometre (INE, 1999, p. 206). However the population isunevenly distributed. For example the ‘City of Stone’ (located in the North-East) hasseveral open spaces and many abandoned former private European white paintedhouses, a legacy of the Portuguese retreat in 1975. Seventeen years of civil war havetaken their toll on the buildings. Those stone houses which remain standing aremostly inhabited by the small number of public functionaries. The South-westernpart of the Island of Mozambique, an area a little more than 1km long and 500mwide, is very densely populated. The so-called ‘City of Straw’ (Schwalbach, 1988) is apoor neighbourhood comprising small tented commercial areas as well as communaldrinking water fountains serving the labyrinth of shacks that do not possess runningwater (see May, 2007, and Figure 1). Cisterns are confined to the most affluentNorthern areas, and are open to communal use during times of water scarcity as wasthe case in the late 1980s when the island was under siege.
Located in Southern Africa, Mozambique is one of the poorest African nations.Approximately 36.2% Mozambicans live on less than US$1 a day, the ratio of boys
Figure 1. Public fountain, the ‘City of Straw’, Island of Mozambique. Photo by author
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to girls in primary and secondary school is 82%, access to improved water sources is43%, adequate sanitation facilities only cover 32% of the population and just 7 outof 1000 people had access to the internet in 2005. Mozambique relies upondevelopmental assistance from donor countries, the per capita value of which wasUS$64.97 in 2005. In contrast, East Timor had an even higher external assistanceratio that amounted to US$189.37 per capita in the same year.
East Timor gained independence in the twenty-first century following a long historyof calls for self-determination and after 24 years (1975–1999) of violent and predatoryIndonesian occupation. Although news of civil unrest in East Timor before 1974 (thePortuguese Carnage Revolution) was very rare, border disputes with west-TimoreseIndonesians had a long history. Archival documentation recently released by thePortuguese Defence Ministry contains local administration reports of borderincidents, mostly described as being a result of the aggressive mood of Indonesianmilitary forces stationed in West Timor (e.g. letters dated 31 October 1963; 30November 1963; 28 February 1964. See DAPCT, 1963–1964). The governor of thecolony did not request troop reinforcements from Portugal because he considered thatthe native Timorese possessed ‘remarkable characteristics to fight back, namely:suicidal courage; total absence of sentimentality; child-like love for ferociouscompetition’ (Correia, 1963, p. 2). In fact, to this day cultural tradition dictates thatif a friend dies you respectfully bury him, but if he is an enemy you behead him.
The abandonment of Timor Island by the Portuguese following Indonesianoccupation in 1975 led to a repressive Asian colonial period. In 1999 a UnitedNations (UN) organised referendum of the people of East Timor led to a self-determination process. Before their retreat, Indonesian occupiers looted anddestroyed public buildings and the existing infrastructure. International agencies,operating under UNTAET (United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor)have made efforts to help build a new country. They have attempted to createproductive formal institutions that could be prepared not only to take over theadministration of East Timor and its promising on- and off-shore energy resources,but also to engage in sound economic management, and thus help minimise thelikelihood of a recurrence of episodes of violence, civil unrest, corruption andnepotism.
Independence was declared on 20 May 2002. Economic production and revenuepatterns were concentrated on promising oil and natural gas reserves in the TimorSea. The first elected government controlled revenues from resource extraction,allegedly without proper scrutiny from tax payers. This paved the way for politicalrivalry, and new political forces, often under the leadership of military heroes whoresisted Indonesian occupation and oppression, have emerged who are eager toobtain their share. Following the June 2007 elections, an alliance of smaller partiesformed a new cabinet, leaving the majority party (Fretilin) in opposition. Gangclashes and military revolts exploded, under the plea that the democratic process wasunclear and non-inclusive. Only a small share of the energy resources revenue hasentered the local economy, and poverty is visible in the capital city, Dili (175,730residents). Today more than 50,000 people, who have been evicted from burnthouses and violent neighbourhoods, live in tents in 53 refugee camps (see January2008 photo, Figure 2). Destroyed buildings cover approximately a third of the urbanlandscape (DNE, 2006; Drysdale, 2007; Madaleno, 2008).
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Despite the many challenges facing East Timor it has better socioeconomicindicators than Mozambique. For example, oil and gas production supports a percapita income of US$840 in East Timor compared with US$310 in Mozambique.The average per capita income of Portugal was US$16,170 in 2005 (World Bank,2007a).
Methodology
Most literature on map conception and reading focuses on cognition, mainly becausemainstream research in this field has been conducted by psychologists (Kulhavy &Stock, 1996; Tergan, Graber & Neumann, 2006; Hommel & Klippel, 2007). Thiscomparative study of mental maps, which involved drawing sessions and interviews,was led by a geographer. The research required intensive fieldwork, interviewing andextensive archive documentation and it is hoped that the findings contribute to anintegrated and global geography using alter perceptions to challenge dominantwestern perceptions.
During 2007 the Portuguese Tropical Research Institute (IICT) surveyed twogroups of students on the Island of Mozambique. There were two drawingsessions per student group, one targeting the elementary school and covering arange of students aged 9 to 14, and one targeting the secondary school withstudents from 15 to 25 years of age. The activities conducted by the students areas follows. The respondents were asked to draw sketch maps showing planetearth. ‘Accuracy’ was not required as the objective of the assignment was toproduce a representation of the world as understood by the students. Once thesketch maps were completed the students were interviewed about their reasons forincluding or excluding features or positioning features in a particular location ontheir map. In the second session students were requested to draw a sketch map oftheir home Indian Ocean island. This exercise proved to be more appealing eventhough it took longer to complete. The maps produced were quite detailed. Both
Figure 2. Dili, the ‘City of Tents’, capital of East Timor. Photo by author
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student groups relied on their memory for the intent was not to direct their workwith published maps.
In January 2008 an East Timorese group of students aged 15 to 20 was asked tohand draw world maps. No session was conducted in an elementary school becauseproficiency in the Portuguese language was limited amongst younger students. Nolocal environment maps were produced in East Timor.
In total 225 drawings were collected from 165 student participants. Whilst thesurvey targeted a rather heterogeneous group of students, they were givenstandardised instructions for the production of world maps. Students were given asheet of paper and a pen and pencil, and the exercise lasted 30 minutes. A similaramount of time was allocated for the production of local environment maps on theIsland of Mozambique. However, some students practised drawing maps and someasked for extra time to complete the task. Students were requested to locate theschool and their house on their maps. The age, gender, place of birth and the religionof the students who drew the map was noted on each drawing.
Why did we include respondents from such a large spectrum of age groups? Ithas been widely reported that children from a very young age are able to draw andeven re-orientate maps (Blaut, 1997a, 1997b; Schmeinck & Thurston, 2007). Manypsychologists agree however with the Piagetian Theory that children aged 7–11 arein the concrete-operational phase and therefore better able to master a variety ofmap comprehension and map production tasks (Piaget, 1977; Downs & Liben,1997). According to Downs, Liben and Daggs (1988) the advantage of thePiagetian Theory for geographic education lies in its emphasis on representation,space and logic. With more capacity for abstraction, generalizationand symbolization, however, older students (15–20) constituted the bulk ofparticipants.
In order to attempt to understand how a Portuguese colonial past may haveinfluenced the ways in which Island of Mozambique and East Timorese studentsrepresented the world archival research was conducted. Historical records about thesocial, economic and cultural evolution of the populations concerned were collected,in particular records dating from the eve of independence from Portugal(Mozambique) or before the Indonesian occupation (East Timor). Archival recordsof imperial cartography and geographical education in the colonial domains underinvestigation further illuminated the research results (Fig. 3).
Results
Six overarching issues emerged from an analysis of the maps, and these are discussedin turn below.
1. The first result was that the majority of Mozambique Island and East Timorrespondents drew similar mental maps: their visions of the world were similar.Prior to independence, local geographical imaginations and political aspirationswere dominated by the Portuguese colonial system and bounded by its imperialcartography, similar to as the influence observed by Charles Travis in theexample of the Irish Free State and the British Empire (Travis, 2008). Suchcolonial dominance has continued post-independence because the majority of
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text books used by student participants are Portuguese. However, the EastTimorese maps displayed evidence of a distinctive dual influence. The half islandcountry has been dominated by two empires, each with its own colonial systemand established cartographical norms. Strangely, perceptions of Timor Islandand wider world perceptions reflect an acceptance of the European presence(the longest rule) and a rejection of Indonesian rule (the shortest and mostviolent rule). Despite this influence East Timorese visions of the world were quitesimilar to those reflected in the Mozambican Islanders maps.
2. Figure 4 displays the world visualization of a seventeen year old East-Timoresestudent. The first striking observation is that his home country occupies about1/3 of his unique global vision. The student was born at Manatuto and nowresides in Dili. He has never been abroad. Asia is misrepresented. Europe issomewhere up-north and oversized, Africa is to the west of East Timor, which iscartographically correct, however again northwards. America is positionedeastward, which again is its relative proper location but incorrectly locatednorthward of East Timor and south of Europe. Australia is gigantic andsouthwards of Timor Island, and is clearly overrepresented. East Timor and itsdistricts were correctly reproduced. This mental map exemplifies classic handdrawn mental maps. They cannot be understood as the equivalent to printedmaps for they are the subject’s ‘model of reality’, a mere metaphor (afterGolledge & Stimson, 1997).
Using Figure 4 as an illustration, the second noticeable result was that sketch mapsof the world contained the following elements and properties:
Figure 3. East Timor and Mozambican Island Settings, by Ana Morgado
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(1) Continents and sometimes also countries were presented as inter-relatedentities but in some instances countries were drawn as discrete entities, asif they were reference points (or landmarks) separate to the continent inwhich they located.
(2) Seas and oceans were represented as a series of unknown discontinuities.The Mediterranean was the most represented sea by Mozambicans,probably reflecting local acquired knowledge that the Mediterranean Seaseparates Africa from Europe.
(3) The Mozambican maps display hierarchies with regard to the inclusion ofspecific countries within representations of individual continents.
(4) Cardinal orientation of continental masses was the norm.(5) The absolute and relative locations of landmarks respected encoding
limitations and peculiar decoding processes, which will be discussed below.(6) The shape and size of continents reflected cultural backgrounds, beliefs
and geographical learning, exemplified in, for example, sketch maps ofAfrica being oversized in drawings from Mozambique and undersizedEast Timorese maps.
(7) The distances and differentiation between continents was similar,although at times continents were presented both as a Pangaea with
Figure 4. Seventeen year old East Timorese male student’s representation. Source: East TimorDrawing Session, by Madaleno (2008)
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several boundaries and labels yet also surrounded by an ocean whichcovers more than half of the earth.
3. The local environment maps produced by Island of Mozambique students weremore detailed than the world mental maps drawn by both study-groups(Figure 5). Many local environment maps of Mozambique Island follow similarpatterns and trends as those reported by Lynch (1960). When asking 30 peoplefrom Boston, 15 from New Jersey and another 15 from Los Angeles – regardlessof their age group and sex – to draw the core of their respective urban settings,he noticed that they produced miniature and distorted models of reality, a sortof individual rearrangement of their city centres, possessing altered scales andprojections, however right in the sequence of nodes, paths and landmarks,making them similar and recognisable.To illustrate this similarity, the case of a13 year old Muslim boy from City of Straw will now be considered. The cardinalorientation of the island depiction depends on the drawer’s school location (theelementary or the secondary school) or house location, various choices for both
Figure 5. Environment map of the Island of Mozambique by a 13 year old boy. Source:Mozambique Island Drawing Session, by Madaleno (2007, 2008)
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reference points were advised and considered. It was not mandatory butfrequently the preference is either for up or leftward, as in the written discoursesof Western languages, generating distortions in orientation, distance and theshape of the island. In reality the Mozambique insular mass is NE-SW oriented.The ‘City of Straw’ (‘Nos Pairo’, or ‘our neighbourhood’) where the Figure 5drawer resides, is actually located to the south-west of the island, not in thenorth as depicted. There is a detailed depiction of the path from the school tohome, together with familiar landmarks such as the mosque, the fortress, thefootball field, the market, the hospital, and the main square. The hierarchy oflandmarks is based upon their relative size, and is centred upon theneighbourhood of school and home. Interestingly, main hotels are included,perhaps because occasional tourists are rare glimpses of the ‘outside world’.Roads are rarely labelled, yet they are recognizable in between houses and otherlandmarks. Finally, emblematic buildings are given a careful design and shape,as in the example of the San Sebastian fortress, a UNESCO world heritage site(to the south in Figure 5), even when it is not labelled, because ‘everybodyknows it’.
4. Some regional differences were revealed in the mental maps drawn by studentsfrom each location. These differences are likely to be due to the fact that, despiteboth being located in the Southern Hemisphere, the islands are very far apart,and their size and political status are notably different. One cannot ignore theconfined nature of life on a one square kilometre space such as the Island ofMozambique. However, a sense of isolation and littleness results in a tendencyto forget the island environment and to identify instead with ones country first,ones continent second, and only after that does one consider the remainder ofthe world. By contrast, when one perceives the world from Dili the determinedcharacter of the East-Timorese is reflected. Recent independence after a longhistory of riots and freedom fights explains why students were keen to draw thehalf-island they inhabit together with the Occussi-Ambeno enclave (as if thatwas an islet) in accurate detail, placing them in an unidentified oceanenvironment (in reality it should be labelled as the Timor Sea), instead ofintegrating their country with Timor Island (see Figure 3). The difference here isthat the East-Timorese are as happy to emphasise their singularity andindependent position vis a vis the rest of the world as Mozambican Islandersare unhappy to stand alone and eager to belong. The hand drawn mental mapsfrom both remote island settings represented continents and individualisedcountries in a clear hierarchical sequence. Europe and Africa were predominantin the world perceptions of Mozambican islanders (Figure 6) and Europe,Australia and Asia were dominant in the global mental maps designed by theEast Timorese students. Space expands in or near to the home location becausepeople relate better and store more information about nearby locations thanfaraway locations (Saarinen, Parton & Billberg, 1996; Golledge & Stimson,1997; Lloyd, 2000). Almost half of the respondents drew their island map (EastTimor) or a country map (Mozambique), on the ‘I’m here’ basis (48%), andconsidered that an acceptable vision of their world.
5. All students represented Europe in their world maps, and two thirds included arepresentation of Portugal. Benevolent feelings towards certain countries, and a
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lack of fondness towards others, explains this interesting difference. Previousresearch has suggested that liking a place seems to shorten its cognitive distance(Golledge, Dougherty & Bell, 1995; Lloyd, 1989, 2000; Gould & White, 2002). Iwould argue that this is less a flaw of geographical knowledge than a deliberatepersonal choice (Table 1). The inclusion of Europe most likely reflects thecolonial legacy and the influence of Europe over many centuries.
6. Both respondent groups produced simplified versions of the planet and rotatedthem in order to be aligned with a cardinal direction, either North or South.Even though this simplified representation is in accordance with findings fromprevious research (Tversky, 1981; Lobben, 2007), of particular interest here is
Figure 6. World visualisation of a 21 year old male student from Mozambique. Source:Drawing session by Madaleno, from the Island of Mozambique (2007)
Table 1. Mental Maps World Visualization
N8 of Respondents
Island of Mozambique East Timor Total
World ProjectionWorld North up 18 16 34
World South up 13 14 27
Respondent’s island or country only 39 40 79
Mental maps eliminated 15 10 25
Total 85 80 165
Source: Drawing Sessions by Madaleno, from Mozambique (2007) and East Timor (2008)
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that 27 out of 61 respondents represented the world upside-down (south up).This peculiarity will be discussed below.
Discussion
The First Result
A number of cartographic experiments have been conducted during the last decadeincluding the task of drawing maps (Golledge, Dougherty & Bell, 1995; Matei, Ball-Rokeach & Qiu, 2001; Lawrence, 2005; Olson, Lobben & Huang, 2005). Theliterature suggests that the successful completion of this cognitive task is partly basedon ability (Lobben, 2007). According to Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences,spatial ability is one of seven human aptitudes. The manipulation of two and three-dimensional objects and the generation of structured visual images are equallyimportant to spatial ability understood here as the capacity to recognize spatialfeatures, their orientation, relative location and distance, and their inter-relationship.The mental and perceptual maps presented in this paper are both personal andcommunity constructs, accounting for the images remote islander students have ofthe world they inhabit. They are mental abstractions based on geographical learning,and personal and family experiences.
The East Timorese and Mozambican islanders’ colonial history, their shared dailystruggle for survival, and the use of Portuguese books for geographical learning,explain their similar world perceptions. In fact mental maps integrate images andinformation but also beliefs, preferences, attitudes and values, as well as learned andimagined features. World perceptions express the social and cultural identities of therespondents. They are identifiable visions of space, of distances, and of relationshipsbetween peoples (Cosgrove, 2002).
The Second Result
The design strategy of the mental maps did not vary between the two island case-study groups. The majority of maps contained features labelled with text (Figures 4and 6), as prompted by the researcher, but their overall design accorded with previousreports of the strategies people use to remember map information (Kulhavy et al.,1983; Kulhavy & Stock, 1996). Lloyd (2000) studied the learning errors of 15American geography teachers, subjects who should be familiar with maps.Participants were seated in front of computer monitors that displayed a Mercatormap projection of the world, which was blank except for the latitude and longitudelines and labels, and they were asked to mark the location of 12 cities from fourcontinents (Asia was excluded) on the map with their mouse. The teachers expandedthe space around North America, identifying the location of cities to the East andSouth, exactly as if they were moving along a page and writing text (from the top tothe bottom and from the left to the right). They were much more consistent inmarking the location of cities close of home and least consistent marking cities inAfrica.
It is curious to report that in our case-study Asia has been underrepresented byboth groups that were studied, despite the proximity of East Timor to the
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Asian continental land mass. This finding could be related to the perceived lack ofcontinental uniformity in the case of Mozambican informants and because of acertain estrangement from Asia in the case of East-Timorese islanders.
Golledge et al (1995) following Lynch (1960), suggested in a previous study thatsubjects deconstruct the environment into several parts (landmarks, nodes, districts,paths and boundaries) that they then encode as geographical information. Later onthey have difficulty in decoding and re-assembling those parts (or environmentalcomponents), leading to distortions and errors in sketch map design. I would arguethat apart from nature (our brain processes and learning limitations) there is nurture(our upbringing and personal choices) influencing how we represent information onhand drawn maps.
The Third Result
Places are important not just because they are ‘mappable’ but because they aremeaningful for the people who live there. As Ryden (1993) outlined, our ownenvironment is a mosaic of boundaries, symbolic buildings and hidden meaningsnever found on any ordinary map (Wyckoff, 1994). As Kulhavy and Stock (1996)concluded, uniform and direct correspondence between printed cartography andmental maps is a false expectation, because the image informants have of theirenvironment or of the maps they study is determined by the individual characteristicsof the participant. In our research we compared Mozambican students’ global scalemapping with their much more local environmental maps.
Figure 5 displays the sketch of the city of Mozambique Island drawn by a 13 yearold boy. He singled out 13 elements, 11 of which are labelled and two of which areunlabelled yet recognizable. His sketch was drawn based on ‘our neighbourhood’(‘Nos Pairo’ – ‘nosso bairro’ in good Portuguese), meaning ‘The City of Straw’, thedistrict where the respondent resides. There is evidence for Lynch’s five-elementclassification of mental maps in this local environment map example. The sketch inquestion shows the following:
. Paths – the bridge connecting the island to the African continent, and the circularroad connecting the boy’s neighbourhood to his elementary school (Escola 25 deJunho), his ‘action space’ drawn much shorter than it actually is.
. Edges – the barriers he draws to mark off differentiated segments of space, as wellas the city island boundary line.
. Districts – his own, quite undersized but clearly separated from the others by aphysical edge (which does not exist) and, next to it, the market (‘MercadoMunicipal’), the city’s shopping area.
. Landmarks – such as schools, hotels and the museum (Museu).
. Nodes – the ancient pier (‘No Ancora do ouro’, or in ‘good’ Portuguese,‘ancoradouro’), the public garden (‘Jard’ short for ‘jardim’), the oversized sportsground and football field (Campo 11), and the poet’s square (‘No Luıs de Camos’,a misspelling of ‘Camoes’).
Luıs de Camoes is a renowned sixteenth century Portuguese poet, who lived in thecity for about two years. His statue marks an important island node because the
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square houses the Association of the Island’s Friends, the location of the publiclibrary, the Xerox shop and the only place where one might see, but barely use, acomputer (see Figure 7). In contrast, in between the Hotel Escondidinho and thepoet’s square there are several stone houses, mostly in ruins.
One unlabelled landmark is the cemetery, represented by a series of two linedcrosses located close to the market, en route from his school to his home, andunmentionable because his beloved ancestors are buried there. The second is theirregular shaped building situated southwards of the football field in his inaccurateorientation. This is a UNESCO heritage site, the sixteenth century San SebastianFortress. Easily identifiable, this is a place with historical significance everyone inthis ‘small world’ knows (see Figure 8). Cartographic reality would be to place thefortress north-eastwards and the drawer’s home south-westwards (see Figure 3).
It is quite interesting to follow this boy’s sketch lines. He started the mapvertically, drew his neighbourhood and the market and then rotated the sheet ofpaper leaving his school location now upward. In this process he followed thepattern used by Lloyd’s geography teachers, meaning the student drew the islandfrom the top of the page to the bottom (Lloyd, 2000). The boy drew his mental mapusing cardinal directions, first vertically and then horizontally. His representation issimplified and results from navigation through the island throughout his young life,but also stems from his personal experiences and to a lesser extent on his religiousbeliefs. Being a Muslim he surprisingly did not draw a Mosque (or a Catholicchurch), yet relatively insignificant cultural and communal spaces are all there.Overall his city is quite legible and there is clearly an affective bond between him andthis place, in short there is ‘topophilia’ (Knox, 1995).
Figure 7. The Poet’s Square, ‘City of Stone’, Island of Mozambique. Photo by author
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The city is a built environment that should give visual pleasure. The imageabilityof the tiny Island of Mozambique, with its remnants of colonial architecture, is feltby all Mozambican respondents for there is no restriction of the individual’scirculation within the city. By way of contrast is the restriction on poor and blackindividual’s use of the ‘City of Stone’ as a residential neighbourhood. TheMozambican Island maps show that the knowledge respondents possess aboutand represent of their city varies both by social class and ethnicity. Images thatstudents have of the island are usually centred upon the location of their homes, (the‘City of Stone’ or the ‘City of Straw’), and thus linked to their social status (living ina rich or poor area) and this is mostly driven by their ethnicity.
The Mozambique islanders have lived all their lives in a small urban world(1 km2), but their representations of their island’s social and physical spaces hassmall gaps of information in between several common landmarks – home first, thenthe school, the sports ground, the mosque, one or two churches, the museum, thecemetery and the bridge that connects the Island of Mozambique to the remainder ofthe African continent, the gateway to the world, or exit from their confined littlespace.
Evans and Pezdek (1980) observed that representations of the subject’senvironment tend to be more flexible and rich than the knowledge that may beacquired from a cartographic map, an observation that generated controversyamong cognitive map scientists. Lloyd and Heivly (1987) using an urban map ofColumbia reported that subjects who encoded maps through navigation made moremistakes in map-reading and design than those who encoded their cognitive mapsfrom a cartographic means of information such as those studied by Lloyd (1989)using a map of Fargo, North Dakota. Lloyd (1989) also concluded that typicalindividual cognitive (or mental) maps are more likely to present more absolute thanrelative errors. Other research by Golledge et al (1995) agreed with some of thesefindings regarding the relative effectiveness of map-based versus route-basedenvironmental learning.
Figure 8. Sixteenth Century San Sebastian Fortress, a UNESCO heritage site. Photo by author
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Most of the published research on mental maps targets familiar areas such as thisone, on the assumption that navigation through our own environment is a commonlife task and therefore it is easier to ask informants to conceive route planning or wayfinding on a local map, and even request them to design ‘real landmarks’ on a sheetof paper. The perception an informant has of his or her own environment is an‘internal perspective’, for the object and the subject of the research are part of thesame place.
Comparing the local environment maps and the world maps drawn byMozambican students has shown that navigational learning gives more detailedinformation, even though orientation is inaccurate, reflecting Evans and Pezdek’sfindings. Interestingly cardinal orientation of maps is sought in both case-studies forit is a ‘natural’ process (Lobben, 2007) but of course it has been proved thatgeographic learning upgrades representation and orientation, a ‘nurture’ process.
The Fourth Result
Sketch maps such as those of the Island of Mozambique are usually known as‘environment maps’. The process of designing sketch maps of the planet, known as‘survey mapping’ is complex because it may only be completed providing one hasstudied and comprehended printed cartography before (Lobben, 2004). In thisresearch it was found that environmental maps took longer to draw but were morecomprehensive than the survey maps. Perceptions of the world were simplified andquickly drawn, but as already noted close to half of the respondent groups wereunable to reproduce the continents on a sheet of paper.
The issue here is the analysis of differences between the two sets of informants:Mozambican islanders were very eager to include their country and continent. Iargue this is because Africans, and particularly Sub-Saharan Africans, still recognisetheir continental identity even when they migrate from their place of origin. Bycontrast, the identity of an Asian is sometimes difficult to establish due to thecultural and ethnic diversity of the inhabitants of the wide continental mass. Asiansare more often attached to ethnicity, religion and to their country than to theircontinent. There were gaps in geographic information of the world as far as EastTimorese students were concerned, except for their own country. As with othercognitive processes mental mapping is not static because any individual periodicallyupdates information about his or her close environment or on their perception of theworld. The learning process is in itself unique. It develops throughout ones life-span,even though there are common age-learning stages that for instance enable adults tohave better three-dimensional visualisations than teenagers, and teenagers to makefewer mistakes in mental map design than younger children (Downs & Liben, 1997;Lloyd, 2000).
East Timorese respondents were not only a good example of self-absorbedmappers, but also an interesting case of world observers who are affected by mattersof the heart. Their topophilia, their love for their place of origin, was based uponreligion (Catholicism) and the land (East-Timor), and their perception of the worldwas based both on their geographical education and on their political convictions.Having lived and shared the historical turmoil over Dili and their half-island (mostly through family memories) and more recent disruption following
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independence (by close experience), their visions were passionate; deliberatelyemphasizing continents and countries they liked (Europe, Portugal, and Australia),and ignoring the ones they disliked. The East Timorese are a stoic and enduring folkand see former Indonesian occupiers as iconoclasts. Those sentiments of topophobiawere demonstrated by the nationalist ideals the youngsters were proud to embrace(see Figure 9).
The mental maps of the world (survey mapping) designed in both MozambiqueIsland and East Timor show a number of continents that acted as reference pointsaround which other locations or landmarks were organised. Mental and perceptualmaps have been drawn based on the ‘I’m here situation’. Table 2 shows thatAustralia has a good share of representations on the East-Timorese sketch maps,and is far more important than America, the least remembered and represented(although when it was represented it was located to the right (E) of East Timor, witha shrunken Pacific Ocean in between, an orientation that is cartographically correct).
Interviews revealed that the East Timorese students saw Australia, and not theUnited States, as more influential politically and economically in regard to theirhome country. Similarly Portugal, the European nation that had the longest colonialrule and cultural influence over Timor, is in second place following Australia interms of countries identified. It is also the only European country represented, inspite of the presence of locally established NGO’s and bilateral cooperation officesfrom other European nations.
The Mozambican islanders’ mental maps well illustrate continental distortionsbased on individual points of view and preferences: Africa is oversized andfrequently rather detailed (with inaccuracies, of course, see Figure 6). Europe isrepresented together with the Americas (North and South), in direct contrast to theEast Timorese sketches, where North and South America were not labelled. Asia isas well represented as Australia, the latter often being placed in the Northern
Figure 9. The beautiful island of Timor and its oil rich sea. Photo by author
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Hemisphere because, in their perception of the world economy, Australia belongs tothe group of rich developed countries. Knowledge of neighbouring African countrieswas quite good amongst the Mozambique students. South Africa was foremost,Malawi second, and Zimbabwe was also noted. Other Portuguese-speaking countriessuch as Angola and Cape Verde are identified by a good share of respondents. Thesedepictions of Africa conform with Lloyd and Gilmartin’s (1991) findings aboutreference points and further suggest that world visualisations tend to be as egocentricas environment maps.
The Fifth Result
According to globalisation literature, global cities and their respective countries(and continents, as previously examined) are supposed to influence the rest of theglobe (Friedmann, 1986; Clark, 2003; Jacobs, 2008; Abeles, 2008; Knox & Taylor,1995; Taylor et al., 2007; World Bank, 2007b). This research found no evidence tosupport that thesis. Important global economic centres (e.g. New York, Frankfurt,London or Tokyo) were widely ignored by East Timorese and Mozambicanrespondents. This finding may be due to limited exposure to the media and moderntechnology. Most of the students did not read newspapers, their schools lackedbooks and atlases, paper and pencils were scarce, they tended to share second handmanuals during the learning process, most of which were sent from distantPortuguese donors, at home they only listened to music on the radio, and said theyspent on average a couple of hours in front of a TV annually. Their socioeconomic
Table 2. Global Mental Map Characterization
% of Respondents
Island of Mozambique East Timor Average or total
Continents and CountriesEurope 84 100 92
Africa 100 83 92
Asia 65 93 79
America (s) 29 43 36
North America 36 0 18
South America 39 0 20
Australia 65 93 79
Antarctica 7 3 5
Portugal 3 67 35
Mozambique 71 3 37
South Africa 32 0 16
Malawi 29 0 15
Zimbabwe 23 0 12
Congo 19 0 10
Angola 29 0 15
Cape Verde 26 0 13
Other African 16 0 8
East Timor 0 37 18
Japan 10 13 12
Indonesia 0 10 5
Total number of respondents 31 30 61
Source: Drawing Sessions by Madaleno, from Mozambique (2007) and East Timor (2008)
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status was low, and the vast majority had never used a computer or accessed theinternet. The situation enjoyed by European and North-American students today,where computer displays replace cartographic maps and access to the media isuniversal, is a far distant possibility for these remote islanders (Montebello et al.,1999).
Regarding this comparative research I found that the influence of school isstronger than that of the media. There is fair reception of Arab radio and TVstations, for tourists that are prepared to make the trip, but Mozambican islandersusually don’t even have electricity and so they under-represented Asia on their sketchmaps for example, yet they drew a vast European continent in 84% of cases. Europeis the continent that provides their school material whilst others don’t. Likewisealthough any middle class Dili resident had good reception of Indonesian TVstations, it was not the case with the public school respondents, who had poor livingconditions. People’s likes and dislikes for places can therefore be (re)read based onthe current case-study.
Figure 10 represents graphically the relative proportion of the continental masses.The first series of data gives the geographic units’ true measure in conventionalprofessional world maps and the second series is the Mozambican islanders’ averageestimate of the relative continental proportions in their sketch maps. Finally thethird series of data accounts for the East Timorese respondents’ average calculationof continental mass size.
The relative proportions of the surface area representing continental masses, asestimated by Mozambican and East-Timorese islanders, suggests that using recenteconomic globalisation processes have had a limited influence over these groups.For example, image representation of the Americas (sometimes not even
Figure 10. Proportions of surface area representing continents. Source: Drawing Sessions byMadaleno, from Mozambique (2007) and East Timor (2008)
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separated) is largely underestimated and contemporary global cities and financialmarkets are disregarded together with their respective countries. Asia is the mostdowngraded of all continents, even for the East-Timorese informants, who areaware of their Asian status. By contrast, Australia is the most oversized of allcontinental masses, considered both exotic and rich. Mozambique and EastTimor’s first experience of globalisation, the period of European presence andcultural influence, is influential in the drawings. This is a very important researchfinding, demonstrating the influence of a common Portuguese colonial history inboth remote island settings.
For all the reasons that have been referred to above, the conclusion for both thePortuguese speaking countries studied is that the spatial ability and knowledgerepresented in the world maps stems from the students geographical education,together with their family stories and their communal legacy, and that is reflected inboth Portuguese-speaking countries that have been case-studied.
The Sixth Result
Another outcome of the drawing sessions was the fact that world visualizations werefrequently upside-down. In the case of Dili students, southern hemisphere settingssuch as East Timor and Australia were drawn at the top of the maps whilst Portugal,Europe, America were shown at the bottom. In the case of the Island ofMozambique groups, Africa and Europe were drawn at the top of the maps,followed by the Americas. For example, the student who drew the map reproducedin Figure 11 has drawn the planet on a polar spherical projection, with the southernhemisphere clearly positioned upwards.
This finding that a north-down design characteristic is common contradicts thefindings of some earlier research which examined people’s map-reading abilities. Forexample, Steinke and Lloyd (1983) used an outline of Michigan State, an imageunfamiliar to their research participants, to study ‘object rotation’. Their findingsindicated that the degree of rotation influences the time it takes a person to recognisewhat the map represents. The assumption was that people memorise maps in a
Figure 11. Sixteen year old Mozambican Islander World Map
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north-up orientation. The study of ‘map rotation’ may help explain the north-downmap designs. ‘Map rotation’ was defined by Lobben (2007) as one of the mostcommon map-related abilities. The act of rotating a map is quite common in themap-reading process. For example, you probably physically rotate a map whenworking out how to get from A to B, re-orientating the picture in order to follow theroad on the map as one would physically walk through the space the map represents.Under this conceptual framework it becomes understandable that a total number of27 informants from the southern hemisphere drew world maps south up (Table 1),reflecting an ‘I’m here’ assumption. Most previous research focuses on how localenvironmental information is encoded and stored in memory and most respondentshave been from the northern hemisphere (Aretz & Wickens, 1992; Saarinen, Parton& Billberg, 1996; Lloyd, 2000; Aizawa, 2007). I claim that a map drawer who hasbeen born or been resident for a long-time in the south has the natural tendency toorientate the world sketch south upwards. It is nothing other than a very goodexample of self-centred ‘map rotation’.
Conclusions
It is important for geography as a science and for geographers as map creators andusers to understand how map-information is selected, and then encoded and storedin memory, and later on how it is decoded and reconstructed (how cartographicfeatures and their properties are used and reproduced). It is even more vital tounderstand how students learn and use geographical information, to understandhow formal education, familiar transfer of knowledge and other sources ofinformation, such as the media, influence, update and increase their spatialawareness. In this research media input was negligible, both sets of remote islandershave limited access to printed periodicals, to library books and atlases, never orrarely use the Internet, and have little exposure to television and radio. Most contactwith the outside world stems from personal contacts with foreigners living in Dili, inthe case of East Timor (about 5500 according to 2004 Census data), and occasionaltourists travelling to the UNESCO Heritage Site on the Island of Mozambique.
The research found that the two sets of world visualisations from the southernhemisphere were rather simplified and distorted. Hand drawn sketches are oftenincomplete and schematised, with geographical features being mostly continents withblank spaces in between. It was also found that hierarchical encoding of geographicdata was present in both case-studied groups. Geographical hierarchy is based uponthe spatial relationship between places, together with their structural, physical andpolitical arrangements, integrating the notion of scale. Geographical hierarchieswere more pronounced in the case of the Mozambican islanders, who easilyidentified their island, their country, the African continent and numerous otherAfrican countries. Composite maps from Mozambican islanders would be moreinformative than those of the East-Timorese respondents, an even more isolatedsetting. Comparative research suggests that map simplifications are proportional tothe isolation and remoteness of the subjects ‘home’.
It has been widely recognized that from a very young age people’s self-locationtakes precedence over object and this has important implications for the relationship
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between person, map and space. The innovation of this research stems from the factthat it allows comparisons between representations of small-scale and large-scaleenvironments. The key issue in the comparative element of this study was not theconstruction of images as an exercise, but the interpretation of the behaviour andchoices demonstrated by the images drawn by the two sets of respondents. Thesurprising outcome was that the European cultural influence of Portuguese colonialhad endured and had a profound influence upon the perceptions of the remoteislanders.
About two-thirds of the maps drawn by East Timorese and Island of Mozambiquestudents displayed an egocentric view of their environment and of the worldaltogether, presenting a dominance of self-centred relative spaces in their globalvisualisations. The spatial knowledge of the respondents who drew south-up mapswas adequate and was influenced by their location. Twenty seven of the sixty oneworld sketches examined not only displayed three-dimensioned visualisations of theplanet, sometimes on a spherical polar projection and often with coordinate datarepresented, but the map creators also located themselves quite accurately in theirmental maps.
Scientific literature has to provide a better understanding on how peopleperceive, process and use map information. Most research has found that ourspatial concepts are mere abstractions from experience and learning. Real worldinfluences are never purely spatial but spatiotemporal. Cultural mapping abilitysimilarities and differences have already been addressed, but variations in map-reading and map-design abilities between locations are yet to be tested. Moreresearch is required in other southern hemisphere locations to investigate workingmemory and the cognitive processes related to coding and decoding cartographicinformation. The cultural environment frequently conditions geographical learningof islanders in remote locations but the universal acceptance of standard western(northern hemisphere) geographical education overlooks the long-establisheddiversity of reference systems reported in older anthropological and geographicalliterature.
The world visualisations from two remote island settings in the southernhemisphere reported here are peculiar forms of internalized reconstruction of space,bounded by strong European cultural influences. Mozambican and East-Timoreseislanders integrated geographical knowledge with their own beliefs, experiences andtraditions. The result was a distinctive vision, looking for a place of its own as if theywere a European sixteenth century navigator that has lost eye contact with the PolarStar and now seeks for a southern star as reference, suddenly travelling through anew upside-down world.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Aaron Gribble for helping refine the paper. Thank you also toAna Morgado for providing me the world and island maps. Thanks are due toAntonio Castro Henriques for the support for this project. Last but not least, I thankthe anonymous reviewers for helping improve the paper. I remain responsible forany errors and omissions.
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