Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Networking and social diffusion of Critical Geographyin Galicia (Spain): The “Abalar” ProjectXosé Constenla-Vega, Miguel Pazos-Otón,Xosé Manuel Santos-Solla, Luis M a Ulloa-GuitiánUniversity of Santiago de Compostela. IDEGA.Avenida das Ciencias, s/n. E-15782 – Santiago de Compostela, GALICIA, SPAINe-mail: abalargaliza@yahoo.es xosec@hotmail.comluismaulloa@yahoo.es xexss@usc.es mipaot@usc.esAbstractThe Abalar (to shake, in Galician language) Project is an attempt to create new platformsof debate and new spaces of discussion and networking for geographers in Galicia.This is a Spanish Authonomous Region, a nation located in the Northwest the IberianPeninsula.Galicia with its own language, very close to Portuguese, and a very remarkedgeographic specificity.Traditionally, official geography was developed around the Faculty of Geography andHistory, in the University of Santiago de Compostela. But in the last years, Galician Geographyhas been reorganized; geographers not belonging to academic world have tried tocreate their own organs of expression, like the Galician Society of Geography or the GalicianProffesional Association of Geographers.The last of these projects is Abalar. It is constituted by group of geographers (from theUniversity and not), which meet regularly to talk and debate about Geography, from a socialand critical point of view. Abalar organizes meetings, conferences, discussions, “geographical-cafés”,lectures, commented-films and also publishes its own journal, called Abalar(3 numbers per year). The whole of the Abalar Project and the journal are based on horizontalrelationships, and open to everybody who wants to improve the diffusion and knowledge ofGeography and Geographers in Galicia, networking from a social and critical approach.Key words: Abalar, Critical Geography, Galicia, NetworkingIntroduction“Geography must show a critical face, or it won´t be called Geography”. In 1950Carl Sauer was very clear about it: the Geographic Sciences -in front of social andpolitical conflicts arising as an oposition (or as a consequence) to the unequities inthe distribution and use of a territory- should be an instrument and a tool.In 2002, among the university refugees and the professional left-overs, was bornin Santiago de Compostela (capital of Galicia, a historical nation placed in the NWof Spain), the ABALAR Project, a “shaking-group” in our subject (Figure 1). Asits own Galician denomination implies (“to shake something without breaking itcompletely”), this organization aims to question the evolution of all spatial studies.Its aim is to move, dislocate, swagger and shake their structures. In order to do it,ABALAR is created as an inter-generational group, in which all the tendences since122