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Culture, Transnational Education
and Thinking

The notion of thinking skills as a key component of a twenty-first-century school edu-


cation is now firmly entrenched in educational policy and curriculum frameworks in
many parts of the world. However, there has been relatively little questioning of the
manner in which educational globalisation has facilitated this diffusion of thinking skills,
curriculum and pedagogy in a cultural context. This book will help to redress such an
imbalance in its critical assessment of the cross-cultural validity of transplanting thinking
skills programmes from one educational system to another on an international scale.
Culture, Transnational Education and Thinking provides an international comparative
study of the intersection of three educational concepts: culture, education and thinking.
Drawing on case studies from Malaysia, South Africa and Australia / United States for
the purposes of comparative analysis, the book employs the context of an international
school programme in the teaching of thinking skills, Future Problem Solving Program
International. The book explores the associations between Future Problem Solving
educators, their cultural background and their approaches to thinking, evaluating the
relevance of transferring thinking skills programmes derived in one cultural framework
into another. The book also discusses the wider implications of these cross-cultural
comparisons for curriculum and pedagogy within schools and higher education, with
a particular emphasis on the teaching of multicultural school-based classes and cross-
cultural understandings in teacher education and professional development.
This book will be of relevance to academics and higher education students who have
an interest in the fields of cross-cultural and intercultural understanding, comparative
studies in education, and theories and practices of cognition, as well as the development
of tertiary and secondary curricula and associated pedagogies that specifically acknowl-
edge the cultural diversities of both teacher and learner.

Niranjan Casinader is a lecturer in curriculum and assessment in the Faculty of Edu-


cation at Monash University, Australia, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate units
across primary and secondary teacher education. His research interests focus on the
impact of the historical and contemporary globalisation of education on curriculum,
pedagogy and leadership, with particular reference to culture, problem-solving capacity,
humanities education and postcolonialism. He has been concerned with thinking edu-
cation for over twenty years, and is currently involved in the leadership of a nonprofit
organisation concerned with the teaching of thinking and problem-solving skills at
both the Australian and global levels. In 2013, Niranjan was presented with the AARE
Early Career Researcher Award.
Routledge Research in International and Comparative Education

This is a series that offers a global platform to engage scholars in continuous aca-
demic debate on key challenges and the latest thinking on issues in the fast growing
field of International and Comparative Education.

Books in the series include:

Teaching in Primary Schools in China and India


Contexts of learning
Nirmala Rao, Emma Pearson and Kai-ming Cheng with Margaret Taplin

A History of Higher Education Exchange


China and America
Teresa Brawner Bevis

National Identity and Educational Reform


Contested Classrooms
Elizabeth Anderson Worden

Citizenship Education around the World


Local Contexts and Global Possibilities
Edited by John E. Petrovic and Aaron M. Kuntz

Children’s Voices
Studies of interethnic conflict and violence in European schools
Edited by Mateja Sedmak, Zorana Medaric̀ and Sarah Walker

Culture, Transnational Education and Thinking


Case studies in global schooling
Niranjan Casinader
Culture, Transnational Education
and Thinking

Case studies in global schooling

Niranjan Casinader
First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 N. Casinader
The right of N. Casinader to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Casinader, Niranjan.
Culture, transnational education and thinking : case studies in global
schooling / Niranjan Casinader.
pages cm—(Routledge research in international
and comparative education)
1. Multicultural education. 2. Critical thinking—Study
and teaching. 3. Transnational education. I. Title.
LC1099.C37 2014
370.116—dc23 2013048892
ISBN: 978-0-415-72350-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-85772-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For my sons, Simon and Justin, who are of the transcultural; and
Lee, who has been with me on the journey to transcend it.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

List of figures ix
List of tables xi
Foreword xiii
Preface xvii
Abbreviations xxi

1 Exploring the ‘other’ in thinking 1

2 Culture, education, thinking and transnationalism 19

3 The new globalisers of thinking education 51

4 A question of balance: The researching of


cross-culturalism 74

5 Ways of the world: Nests of thinking cultures 98

6 Cultural dispositions of thinking 147

7 The trinity of culture-thinking-education: Implications


for global schooling 160

8 Cultural metaphors of thinking: Can you tell me


where my country lies? 178

Appendix A: Codings and explanations 187


Appendix B: Australia / United States: Conceptions and
enactions of thinking 189
viii Contents

Appendix C: South Africa: Conceptions and enactions of thinking 195


Appendix D: Malaysia: Conceptions and enactions of thinking 206
Appendix E: Research project questions 218
Appendix F: Interview questions 219

Index 225
Figures

2.1 Globalisation: Nests of Thinking Cultures 21


3.1 Administrative Structure of the FPSPI 60
3.2 The FPSPI Thinking Model: Conceptual Framework 66
3.3 The FPSPI Thinking Model: Step by Step 67
4.1 Grounded Theory: Guidelines for Data Interpretation 84
6.1 Cultural Dispositions of Thinking: A Converging Spectrum 148
6.2 The Derivation of Cultural Dispositions of Thinking 149
8.1 Cultural Metaphors of Thinking 181
This page intentionally left blank
Tables

3.1 FPSPI Affiliates by Global Region: 2013 61


3.2 FPSPI Affiliates and Mentored Regions: 2013 62
3.3 Comparison of Learning Programs: FPSP International
and FPSP Australia 64
4.1 Cultural and Professional Experience: Variables for Analysis 77
5.1 Cultural and Professional Background: Educators in the
United States and Australia 103
5.2 Cultural and Professional Background: Educators in South Africa 116
5.3 Cultural and Professional Background: Educators in Malaysia 134
6.1 Cultural Dispositions of Thinking: Essential Characteristics 149
6.2 Classification of Educators by Region and Cultural Disposition
of Thinking: Australia / United States 153
6.3 Classification of Educators by Region and Cultural Disposition
of Thinking: South Africa 154
6.4 Classification of Educators by Region and Cultural
Disposition of Thinking: Malaysia 155
6.5 Cultural Dispositions of Educators by Type and Place of Origin 157
8.1 Cultural Metaphors of Thinking: Characteristics 182
A-1 Template for Structure of Findings: Cultural and
Professional Background 187
A-2 Template for Structure of Thinking Skill Analysis 188
A-3 Codings for Interview Citations and Analyses 188
A-4 Sample of Interview Analysis Coding 188
B-1 Conceptions and Enactions of Critical Thinking: Educators
in the United States and Australia 189
B-2 Conceptions and Enactions of Creative Thinking: Educators
in the United States and Australia 190
B-3 Conceptions and Enactions of Problem Solving:
Educators in the United States and Australia 191
B-4 Conceptions and Enactions of Individual Problem
Solving: Educators in the United States and Australia 192
xii Tables

B-5 Conceptions and Enactions of Community Problem Solving:


Educators in the United States and Australia 193
B-6 Conceptions and Enactions of Thinking Skills:
Educators in the United States and Australia 194
C-1 Conceptions and Enactions of Critical Thinking:
Educators in South Africa 195
C-2 Conceptions and Enactions of Creative Thinking:
Educators in South Africa 197
C-3 Conceptions and Enactions of Problem Solving:
Educators in South Africa 199
C-4 Conceptions and Enactions of Individual Problem Solving:
Educators in South Africa 200
C-5 Conceptions and Enactions of Community Problem
Solving: Educators in South Africa 202
C-6 Conceptions and Enactions of Thinking Skills:
Educators in South Africa 203
D-1 Conceptions and Enactions of Critical Thinking:
Educators in Malaysia 206
D-2 Conceptions and Enactions of Creative Thinking:
Educators in Malaysia 208
D-3 Conceptions and Enactions of Problem Solving:
Educators in Malaysia 210
D-4 Conceptions and Enactions of Individual Problem Solving:
Educators in Malaysia 212
D-5 Conceptions and Enactions of Community Problem
Solving: Educators in Malaysia 214
D-6 Conceptions and Enactions of Thinking Skills:
Educators in Malaysia 216
Foreword

We live in an era in which cultures cannot exist apart from each other; they are
constantly rubbing up against each other. In a world that is becoming increas-
ingly mobile and complex, cultural exchange has become a norm. The pro-
cesses of globalisation are changing the ways in which we now forge and enact
our identities; our sense of belonging is now shaped by a wider set of cultural
inputs than ever before. It is no longer possible to define cultures solely in
national terms, but through an analytic that is increasingly influenced by the
intensity and scope of circular flows of persons, goods, money, information and
symbols. These flows, resulting largely from developments in communication
technology, have enabled people to maintain communal links and develop new
relations across national and cultural borders. For the first time in human his-
tory, the idea of cosmopolitanism has become a realistic moral ambition, even
if it remains difficult to define, and even if it is surrounded by major dilemmas
of politics and practice.
One of these dilemmas relates to the fact that while we have become increas-
ingly aware of the emerging realities of global interconnectivity and interde-
pendence, we find it difficult to imagine a world beyond the politics of national
and cultural differences. We often exploit such differences in order to preserve
traditional conceptions of identities against the encroaching forces of globalisa-
tion. And although we desire global markets and economic exchange, we none-
theless feel that our cultural distinctiveness is under attack by a homogenised
global culture. And while we are often ready to acknowledge that our problems
transcend national boundaries, we continue to insist upon the prominence of
national interests. What is abundantly clear is that we have yet to develop a
moral vocabulary that recognises the significance of the global flows of people,
finance and ideas but is able to address, at the same time, our anxieties about
these flows.
These moral and political challenges are of course not entirely new. For
many decades, immigrant societies like Australia, the United Kingdom and the
United States have struggled with the question of how best to celebrate cul-
tural diversity and simultaneously construct a moral universe in which policies
and practices operate against a relatively stable understanding of society. In the
xiv Foreword

context of extensive global mobility, however, these challenges have become


ever more complicated, and politically urgent. At the same time, our social
institutions, such as schools, appear unable to cope with the new modalities of
cultural difference and social complexity. This is hardly surprisingly because as
we have moved rapidly from imagining nation-states as constituted by unitary
cultures to spaces that are characterised by significant levels of transnational
mobility and exchange, schools are asked to perform contradictory tasks: to
both celebrate these new conditions, but also keep them in check, and work
towards a nationally-based sense of social solidarity.
The traditional policy discourses, such as multiculturalism, find it difficult
to work through such contradictions, not least because systems of education
were originally designed to serve a range of nation-centric purposes. Multicul-
turalism, for example, continues to address issues of cultural diversity within a
national framework, largely divorced from the processes of cultural globalisation
that are increasingly affecting the ways in which many people think about their
identity, their sense of belonging and their life options. It is unable to deal with
the diasporic spaces that enable many mobile people to now belong simultane-
ously to more than one country, and to forge their identity within the context
of economic, social and political relations that cut across national boundaries –
within the transnational and transcultural spaces that have become the defining
features of globalisation. Globalisation has thus encouraged new ways of think-
ing about identities, within the shifting contexts of cultural exchange.
It is no longer useful to think about identities in terms of a set of closed
cultural boundaries expressed in language, arts and traditions, bracketed as
homogenised entities frozen outside history and contemporary interactive
social relations, located within particular national spaces. Indeed, even within a
nation-state, the relationship between ethnic communities and their originating
cultures can no longer be treated as a clear-cut one. This relationship is much
more complex than is captured by notions of nostalgia, of collective memory
and of desire for singular attachment, conceptualised in ways that are inherently
naturalistic and anthropological – as a ‘way of life’ reduced to cultural forms
made most visible in language, habits, customs and iconic objects. The main
problem with this reduction is that it is based on a cultural essentialism that
both ignores and obscures the historical and political construction of cultures,
running the risk of reifying them.
This essentialism also assumes that society is fundamentally constituted by an
uninterrupted accord between diverse cultural traditions and that, as a consen-
sual social site, it can accommodate differences in an impartial manner.This plu-
ralism, however, ignores not only the workings of power and privilege but also
the contemporary transnational spaces in which rights and responsibilities are
negotiated. It presupposes harmony and agreement to be natural states within
which differences can coexist without disturbing the prevailing norms. It inter-
prets intercultural relations as involving negotiations among culturally diverse
groups against a backdrop of presumed homogeneity. It fails to recognise that
Foreword xv

identities are negotiated in histories forged out of unequal relations of power;


that knowledges, subjectivities and social practices, including practices of cul-
tural negotiation, are established within asymmetrical and often incommen-
surate cultural spaces, even more so in transnational spaces. Identity is thus
better viewed in relational terms. It is constructed, maintained and developed
in response to changing social and material conditions. It does not therefore so
much as frame intercultural relations as is framed by them.
Cultural identity thus needs to be understood in terms of a politics of loca-
tion, positionality and enunciation – as an always ‘emergent’ understanding of
ourselves, linked to both contemporary social relations and prevailing relations
of power; as necessarily complex, dynamic and ‘hybrid’. The idea of hybridity,
with its connotations of mixture and fusion, applies unequivocally to such con-
texts. If hybridity is a basic outcome of global mobility, then it is impossible to
know cultures in their pristine and authentic form. Instead, our focus must shift
to the ways in which cultural forms become separated from existing practices
and recombine into new forms, into new practices in their local conditions set
against global forces. In a world in which flows of information, media symbols
and images and political and cultural ideas are constant – in which hybridisa-
tion has become a normal default condition of social existence, and is no longer
something that can be regarded as exceptional – the question of how we might
understand and negotiate the always-emerging cultural formations becomes a
major educational challenge.
In this book, Niranjan Casinader embraces this challenge enthusiastically.
With a highly nuanced understanding of the shifting global conditions in
which education now takes place, he presents a new approach to transnational
education which readily accepts the need to focus on the shifting cultural econ-
omies of globalisation, and the problem-solving skills that would be required
to negotiate these economies. He argues that the established ways of working
across cultures in education are no longer adequate, and that fresh approaches
to thinking about cultural differences are needed, based on the principles of
fluidity, indeterminacy and openness to others. Central to Casinader’s thesis is
an exploration of the notion of thinking as a cultural practice that defines the
cognitive maps of people, their loyalties and their frames of social reference. He
insists that these frames are constantly evolving as people re-imagine the link
between their territorial location and everyday lived culture. He suggests that
the contemporary global forces have the effect of reshaping both the mate-
rial conditions of people’s existence and their perspectives on the world – and
indeed their mode of thinking, as well as their approach to problem-solving.
What is truly remarkable about this book is that it weaves Casinader’s own
personal narratives with theoretical arguments from academic fields as wide-
ranging as social psychology to postcolonialism, pedagogic insights from dec-
ades of classroom experience, and political imagination located in a conviction
that new ways of thinking about education are necessary to meet the challenges
that young people face in an era of globalisation. Casinader insists that this
xvi Foreword

requires them to possess a new set of thinking skills to better engage in com-
munities whose borders are not easily delineated and are constantly changing.
Yet what is likely to be common to all of these communities are the realities
of dynamism, diversity and displacement. The success that young people might
enjoy will depend on how well they are equipped to negotiate these realities. In
a way that is both distinctive and accessible, Casinader’s book is a major contri-
bution to the debates about how education might enhance their global futures.

Fazal Rizvi
Professor in Global Studies in Education
University of Melbourne
Preface

At a prima facie level, the origins of this book lie primarily in doctoral research
that was undertaken at the University of Melbourne at the end of the 2000s.
However, in reality, much of the intercultural dissonance and conundrum that
guided that investigation was generated much earlier, accumulating during my
childhood and education within a diverse, globalised environment that would
inevitably be now referred to as being ‘transnational’. These foundations, fur-
ther moulded by a career in school education that frequently diverged into
international considerations, often in the context of development studies, led to
an ongoing interest with the impact of historical and contemporary globalisation
on education, particularly in the context of cultural difference. Being involved
with the national and international teaching and research of thinking skills gave
a focus to those contemplations, the ultimate result of which is this book.
Globalisation in its modern phase has inevitably included a strong educa-
tional element, in which learning programs that originate in one part of the
world have been transported to another. In concordance with economic trends
in the contemporary era, this export trade has been primarily one-way. Curric-
ula that were devised in the industrialised societies of more ‘developed’ States –
the so-called West – have been introduced into regions that have very different
cultural, socio-economic and educational characteristics and traditions. Con-
temporary models of teaching higher-order thinking as a discrete curriculum
focus have been part of this movement, particularly since the notion of thinking
skills came to be perceived as central to a school education since the 1970s. As
a result, as a number of thinking skills programs have been developed in edu-
cational systems within economically advanced countries, some have adopted
a deliberate line of internationalism, moving into regions beyond their typi-
cal bases in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom with vary-
ing degrees of success. Consequently, the discussion within this book seeks to
explore the wider issues involved in the cultural dimensions of this educational
transplantation in the name of global schooling. It does so through the incor-
poration of a research project into the validity of transplanting thinking skills
programs from one system to another on an international scale, focusing on a
trinity of concepts that delineates the centre of this enigma: culture, thinking
and education.
xviii Preface

The writing and production of this book would not have been possible with-
out the expertise, advice and assistance of a number of people, and to them, I owe
my sincere thanks. In the first instance, I wish to acknowledge the scholarship
and expertise provided by Peter Ferguson and Fazal Rizvi in their co-supervision
of my doctoral research at the University of Melbourne, which provided the
foundation for this book. I am also indebted to Fazal, not only for kindly agree-
ing to write the foreword, but also for his encouragement, advice and support
throughout my late career transition into tertiary research and teaching.
The wider support of colleagues at Monash University, Australia, particularly
Graham Parr, Terri Seddon, Cynthia Joseph and Lucas Walsh, was also impor-
tant in its provision of a challenging and thoughtful intellectual environment
in which I could both extend and develop my thoughts on the considerations
at the heart of the book. I am also grateful to my editor at Routledge, Jane
Madeley, and my editorial assistant, Clare Ashworth, for their eternal patience,
advice and insight during the development of the initial book proposal, and the
production of the final volume. The diligence and expertise of the production
team at Apex CoVantage, particularly Renata Corbani and Marianne Fox, was
invaluable. Also appreciated was the expertise of David Panaho, who was able to
turn my illustrations into professionally designed diagrams with ease and clarity.
I am also thankful for the support of Marianne Solomon, Executive Director
of Future Problem Solving Program International, for permission to include
discussion of the FPSPI thinking process.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge my family and friends for their constant
encouragement throughout the genesis and writing of the book. In particular, I
am indebted to my partner, Lee Godden, for her support in all manner of ways
throughout the whole project, including her insightful readings of the manu-
script in the course of its formation.

An explanatory note
There has been, and still is, substantial discourse and concern surrounding the
use of the terms such as ‘West’ and ‘Western’ to describe civilisations and tradi-
tions perceived as belonging to the ‘developed’ world. The concern regarding
the connotations of homogeneity in the face of a more varied reality has valid-
ity, and this is why terms such as ‘Anglo-American’ (Bhabha, 1994) and ‘Euro-
American’ (Brun & Jazeel, 2009) are often used in their place. However, it is not
within the purview of this particular book to explore the philosophical accu-
racy of such terminology. In the context of this project, the terms remain useful
general summations of a particular set of values and approach to life. Hence, the
terms ‘West’ and ‘Western’, in conjunction with the term ‘Euro-American’, will
be used in this book to represent that collective set of related cultures, with the
employment of quotation marks to acknowledge their contestability.

Niranjan Casinader
Melbourne, December 2013
Preface xix

References
Bhabha, Homi. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Brun, Catherine, & Jazeel, Tariq (Eds.). (2009). Spatialising Politics: Culture and geography
in postcolonial Sri Lanka. London: Sage Publications.
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Abbreviations

AbPS Action-based Problem Solving


CmPS Community Problem Solving
FPS Future Problem Solving
FPSP Future Problem Solving Program
FPSPI Future Problem Solving Program International
GIPS Global Issues Problem Solving
IB International Baccalaureate
ScW Scenario Writing
ScP Scenario Performance
VCE Victorian Certificate of Education
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Chapter 1

Exploring the ‘other’


in thinking

Thinking: the hidden form of cultural capital


The initial power, or form of dominance, on which Western civilisation has
been built was fundamentally one of commercialism, supported in the not-so-
distant background by the more conventional iteration of force, in the form of
military and technological superiority. In the modern age, however, this pattern
of dominance has been transformed by the drivers of contemporary globalisa-
tion, leading to the geographical, ideological and psychological diffusion of a
society founded on the principles of Euro-American capitalism and a sense of
inherent ‘rightness’.
The acquisition and sublimation of more localised cultures, some of which
have been indigenous to a region, within and by what many have perceived to
be a universalisation of so-called ‘Western’ culture, have long been a subject of
various discourses. The ongoing intellectual trail on the relationship between
culture and education has been part of that considered debate. What has rarely
been discussed, however, until recently, has been the place of thinking within
the discussion of educational globalisation and its impacts. For the most part,
this has been because of the hidden intrinsic assumptions that have underlain
the growing global spread and acceptance of Euro-American societal principles
(Said, 1978). The ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 2006) accumulated within those
sovereign States that have catalysed and promoted modern globalisation has
also generated enough cultural power (Griswold, 2008) to disseminate the idea
that thinking has no position, or, at least, no value, as a separate entity within
this capital. Instead, thinking in its ‘Western’ construct was perceived to be cul-
turally neutral, paradoxically both endemic to Euro-American society and yet
common to all cultures in both concept and practice; it was not in the scope of
critical contestation.
The capacity of ‘Western’ culture to negate the intellectual possibility of a
multivariate notion of thinking is representative of the global authority gener-
ated by Euro-American culture to highlight ‘Western’ discourses in the area of
thinking. Economic and political power has also produced the capacity, and,
in the eyes of many, the moral right, to determine the intellectual and ethical
2 Exploring the ‘other’ in thinking

validity embedded in a notion of culture. Local cultures were judged by the


standards of ‘Western’ thoughts on what constituted the concept, and were
found often wanting (Appadurai, 1996; Pritchard, 2008). In short, the forces of
globalisation have engendered a form of cultural ascendancy in which ‘Western’
principles and interpretations have been privileged at the expense of the ‘Other’
(Said, 1978). The outcome has been that, in terms of the possible connectivi-
ties between culture and thinking in an educational context, globalisation has
steered international education into the low road. This has culminated in the
promulgation of perceived universalities that do not concur with the reality of
human difference, and which need to be addressed if educational programmes
aimed at developing the capacity to think are to be globally effective.
The research upon which this book is based was a direct challenge to these
presumptions, contending ultimately that thinking is, in fact, a distinct entity
that is far from universal. It is a discrete, endlessly morphing element within
the forms of cultural capital, one that the forces of ‘Western’ societies have
been able to capture and confine in the promulgation and maintenance of its
global acceptance. More significantly, a recognition that thinking does have its
own cultural reality provides an opportunity for education, and therefore global
society, to be more effective in promoting diverse, culturally inclusive socio-
economic manifestations that are truly democratic, challenging and exposing
‘. . . the practices that reproduce privilege and dominance for some while pun-
ishing and disadvantaging others . . .’ (Dei & Shahjahan, 2008, p. 49). A fully
democratic system of education accepts the existence of diversity, not only in
culture, but also in the forms of thinking that might be embedded within that
culture.
The focus of this book has an element of the personal imperative that goes
beyond the analytical. The notion of cultural nebulousness, or the ‘interstitial
space’ (Bhabha, 1994) has been at the heart of my private and professional lives.
Born in England of Sri Lankan parents, with a childhood and education formed
by living in various vestiges of the British colonial empire – England, Scotland,
Ghana, Malaysia and Australia – I grew up defining myself as ‘British’, ignoring
Bhabha’s notion of ‘cultural hybridisation’ (1994) without realising that it has and
continues to confine (or expand) the knowledge spaces of my life. It was ironic,
therefore, that I became intrigued by the impression – or was it realisation? –
that the very elements that I had perceived as acting as a springboard to my life
might have, instead, moulded or guided it in a very different fashion to what I
might have anticipated.
The array of definitions that are situated around globalisation invariably
treat the phenomenon as a process, but such theoretical rumblings ignore its
fundamental aspect; whatever its nature or impact, globalisation is ultimately
about linkages between people from different parts of the planet, and therefore
demands to be considered in terms of the lives of individuals. The education
that I experienced during this cross-cultural dynamic upbringing typified the
way in which schooling was perceived at the global scale in the late 1950s and
Exploring the ‘other’ in thinking 3

early 1960s, as a force that was actively promoting internationalism and global
connections in an era when the desire to avoid global conflict was very much
to the fore. Mine was an experience typical of the post–World War Two gen-
eration who grew up around the Commonwealth, still seeing themselves as
inevitably and inexorably part of the British sphere of influence.
Some refer to this generational group as ‘global nomads’, whose multi-spatial
upbringing has created a set of individuals with a distinct set of outward-
looking perspectives. My primary education, initiated in London, was contin-
ued seamlessly in Africa and Malaysia within local independent schools that
taught British curriculum to children of expatriates and the local elite. At the
age of nine, my contemporaries and I sat official British entrance examina-
tions to enter schools back in our ‘homeland’. As such, we were exemplifying
the assertions of those who hold that, in essence, the character of educational
systems in former colonies was derived from that found in the relevant former
colonial power (Lutzeler, 1995; Quist, 2001). This legacy was a clear demon-
stration that political independence had not led to social, and therefore, cultural
sovereignty, and also posed the central question that was, and may still be, at the
heart of that educational dependence: ‘. . . what are the chances of success and
the implications of a divergence from the universal standard that is Western?’
(Quist, 2001, p. 114).
One salient consequence of this internalised self-doubt was a reflection on
the degree to which my approach as an educator and researcher has been
influenced more by my environmental culture than my genetic one, and a
heightened perception that my own concepts of critical and creative thinking
have been founded very much in the Euro-American tradition (Dahl, 2010).
Such impressions were attenuated, and even coagulated, as my professional
life took me into global thinking education. The extent to which my fam-
ily culture has seeped into this mélange, and the ways in which it might have
modified it, or have been modified by it, therefore became a powerful drive in
the formulation of the research central to this book: where was the ‘Other’ in
terms of education, culture and thinking? Was it externally divided from my
true self, or is it – and perhaps even has always been – part of my being, albeit
unseen, unacknowledged and, as a consequence, unresolved? In any case, in the
language of Appadurai, who also confronted some of the same demons, my ‘. . .
epistemological anxieties are decidedly local, even if locality is no longer what
it used to be . . .’(1996, p. 11), even though my own dilemmas were born out of
Empire within the British milieu, rather than the American.

Globalisation: the new territories of thinking


Moving boundaries
Inherently, globalisation is a catalyst for the disassembly of boundaries bet-
ween places, collapsing the barriers to an exchange of all forms of physical
4 Exploring the ‘other’ in thinking

and incorporeal phenomena. It has been, and continues to be, a facilitator and
generator of mobilities across all aspects of human society, ‘. . . a multi-faceted
process, or set of processes, that are increasing global interconnectedness across
all domains of human activity and breaking down the significance of borders’
(Eckersley, 2007, p. 10). It primarily refers to the increasing spatial integration of
different places located around the world through interactions of varying forms.
Inevitably, this increase in spatial transference has led to the coalescence of phe-
nomena that are different to varying extents, sometimes to the extreme of being
opposites, but the signifier of modern globalisation is the rapidity and frequency
of these flows, ‘. . . not only of capital and finance, images, information and ide-
ologies, but also of people . . .’, leading to a situation where ‘. . . the movement
of people is transforming our social institutions, cultural practices and even our
sense of identity and belongingness’ (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 161).
Education in all its iterations and modes of substantiation has been part of
this interaction, as has that of culture, a term that itself raises multifarious and
often tangential interpretations. The connection between education and cul-
ture has been a long acknowledged one, most clearly established in the early
twentieth century by Michael Sadler, seen by many as the ‘parent’ of compara-
tive education (Alexander, 2001a; Apple, 2001; Broadfoot, 2000; Crossley, 2000;
Crossley & Broadfoot, 1992). Given its original focus on the study of different
educational systems in various regions, it is in comparative education where the
study of education can be seen to first engage with the processes of what is now
known as globalisation. It was Sadler (1900 / 1979) who consistently reiterated
that the study of education could not be divorced from the cultural sphere in
which it operated:

the things outside the schools matter even more than the things inside . . .
and govern and interpret the things inside. (p. 49)

The paradox of globalisation, however, is that, in generating higher degrees


of human connection, it has also led to a predominance of generalisation and
reductionism. In understanding the nature and development of human society
globally, there is a clear place for meta-conceptualisation, in which the ‘big
picture’ of events can be used as a background against which more localised
phenomena can be better understood. In that context, the utilisation of ‘glo-
balisation’ as a means of describing and explaining the ways in which world
societies have changed has been fundamental to our evolving understandings.
The difficulty with metacognitive interpretations is that they inevitably lead
to objectification and generalisation, in which the details of larger-scale phe-
nomena become subordinated to the wider theme. In terms of globalisation,
and particularly in respect of educational globalisation, that subordination has
often been acute, through which the place of people and their individual lives
within globalisation has been often lost. Globalisation, the process, it appears,
has become the dominant force that requires all to come into its homogenising
ambit, the unifier and integrator of all forms of human endeavour.
Exploring the ‘other’ in thinking 5

It is in this conflicting space between homogeneity and human variation


wrought by globalisation that the disjuncture between culture, thinking and
education arises. The notion of the culture-education dynamic has been
squeezed into the globalisation tube as a matter of inevitable circumstance, and
this, in turn, has led to the notions of thinking in educational contexts being
constricted in the same manner, blended into a ‘Western’ perspective. The ten-
sions between this predominant perspective and education are acute, for they
embody the essential dichotomy between two contrasting goals of education.
Is education primarily utilitarian, concerned only with the transmission of the
‘merely useful knowledge’ ( Johnson, 1981) that is required to keep the goals
of industrialised development in the mould of the ‘West’? Or is it more trans-
formational, a means of enlightenment that is, ultimately, about the empow-
erment of the individual? (Freire, 1970 / 1996). For this to occur, however,
education requires an acknowledgement of cultural difference, together with
a determination to reflect that variance in substantive educational initiatives,
instead of hiding or ignoring it in reductionist attitudes. Cultural differences
must be acknowledged in educational structures, curriculum and pedagogies,
and assumptions that thinking is a universal skill, and not culturally variable,
deserve to be challenged.

The evolving sense of globalisation


As a piece of terminology, globalisation is a comparatively recent addition to
the lexicon, but its capacity to subsume the possibility of educational variation
is a reflection and outcome of its evolution. The word first began to be used in
the early 1970s at the time of the first global oil crisis (Burbules & Torres, 2000),
and may even be traced back to the Club of Rome in the 1960s (Gopinath,
2008), but globalisation as a descriptor did not feature highly in the literature
until the 1990s, when writers such as Giddens (2003) popularised its use.
In either case, the concept is not new to the twenty-first century, merely
rediscovered by fresh eyes that, in the manner of true ‘Euro-American’ colonial-
ism, failed to acknowledge that there was a long ancestry to the discourse. On
the basis that it is a process, and not an entity, globalisation has a long ancestral
line, dating back to the period of colonisation by European powers from the
fifteenth century onwards. This was a phase when disparate parts of the world
became increasingly connected by the forces of colonialism and imperialism,
driven by mercantile interests and the belief in trade as the means to national
growth and security.
The international diffusion of ‘Western’ educational systems, therefore, began
well before the modern phase of globalisation, particularly in the British colo-
nial sphere. This progression was intensified by the Industrial Revolution in
nineteenth-century Europe, a phenomenon itself dependent upon trade and
markets to fuel its growth. Colonialism brought together new ways of eco-
nomic production, political organisation and social structures within the newly
created context of the sovereign State and its accompanying nationalist ideology,
6 Exploring the ‘other’ in thinking

leading to an opening of new vistas of ideas that could be experienced from


afar, and then duplicated (Knight, 2004).
As early as the 1970s, fully two decades before Giddens, the elements of glo-
balisation, if not the name, were already present in the minds of many research-
ers, particularly from the geographical perspective, and especially from those
who were working in the field of what was then referred to as ‘development
geography’. For instance, East and Prescott (1975) reflected on the potential of
geographers to contribute to ‘. . . a better understanding of a world which has,
most evidently in age of jet transport and telecommunications, become a single
system’ (p. 233). Harold Brookfield, in one of the seminal works in the analysis
of development discourse, predated Appadurai (2006) by arguing that globalisa-
tion was composed of flows, itself an idea constructed around the geographical
concepts of movement and spatial interaction:

The essential fact of development has been the creation of a worldwide


interconnected system, which has facilitated much higher levels of adapta-
tion and far more complex systems of allocation and redistribution. Any
redistributive system must have nodes, which can be viewed in social, eco-
nomic or geographical space. The holders of these nodes have become
dependent on the network and its flows, but have compensated this
dependence by acquiring control over the allocation of scarce resources
and production – that is, power.
(Brookfield, 1975, p. 206)

In this incarnation, globalisation is more of a continuous sequence of con-


nected changes than a definable event, and thus it can be conceptualised and
envisioned as a process, rather than a discrete entity.
Above all, however, globalisation has disseminated a ‘Western’ conceptualisa-
tion of the socio-economic order. It has become symbiotic with neo-liberalism
in its structural and philosophical dependence on the intellectual and practical
dominance, and inherent value, of a globalised, market economy, thereby rein-
forcing the view that, at its heart, globalisation has a fundamental economic
component (Alexander, 2001b; Arnold, 2005; Luke & Luke, 2000; Tikly, 2001).
The adoption of ‘modernisation’ strategic plans based on the Euro-American
model by sovereign States such as China, India and the Republic of Korea is
both an illustration and a concretisation of that intellectual dominance.

Education and development


The acknowledged link between culture and education is a long-standing
one, and remains a major field of educational discourse (for example, see Lo
Bianco, 2006; Mungazi, 2001; Starratt, 2008; Stoer & Cortesão, 2000; Suárez-
Orozco & Baolian Qin-Hilliard, 2004b). The linkages between the two have
been cemented by the use of educational systems, whatever and whenever
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CHAPTER XVII.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF FRESHWATER FISHES.

Having shown above that numerous marine fishes enter fresh


waters, and that some of them have permanently established
themselves therein, we have to eliminate from the category of
freshwater fishes all such adventitious elements. They are derived
from forms, the distribution of which is regulated by other agencies,
and which, therefore, would obscure the relations of the faunæ of
terrestrial regions if they were included in them. They will be
mentioned with greater propriety along with the fishes constituting
the fauna of the brackish water.
True freshwater fishes are the following families and groups only:

Dipnoi with 4 species.
Acipenseridæ and „ 26 „
Polyodontidæ
Amiidæ „ 1 „
Polypteridæ. „ 2 „
Lepidosteidæ. „ 3 „
Percina „ 46 „
Grystina „ 11 „
Aphredoderidæ „ 1 „
Centrarchina „ 26 „
Dules „ 10 „
Nandidæ „ 7 „
Polycentridæ „ 3 „
Labyrinthici „ 30 „
Luciocephalidæ „ 1 „
Gastrosteus „ 10 „
Ophiocephalidæ „ 31 „
Mastacembelidaæ „ 13 „
Chromides „ 105 „
Comephoridæ „ 1 „
Gadopsidæ „ 1 „
Siluridæ „ 572 „
Characinidæ „ 261 „
Haplochitonidæ „ 3 „
Salmonidæ (3 genera excepted) „ 135 „
Percopsidæ „ 1 „
Galaxiidæ „ 15 „
Mormyridæ (and Gymnarchidæ) „ 52 „
Esocidæ „ 8 „
Umbridæ „ 2 „
Cyprinodontidæ „ 112 „
Heteropygii „ 2 „
Cyprinidæ „ 724 „
Kneriidæ „ 2 „
Hyodontidæ „ 1 „
Osteoglossidæ „ 5 „
Notopteridæ „ 5 „
Gymnotidæ „ 20 „
Symbranchidæ „ 5 „
Petromyzontidæ „ 12 „
Total 2269 species.

As in every other class of animals, these freshwater genera and


families vary greatly with regard to the extent of their geographical
range; some extend over the greater half of the continental areas,
whilst others are limited to one continent only, or even to a very small
portion of it. As a general rule, a genus or family of freshwater fishes
is regularly dispersed and most developed within a certain district,
the species and individuals becoming scarcer towards the periphery
as the type recedes more from its central home, some outposts
being frequently pushed far beyond the outskirts of the area
occupied by it. But there are not wanting those remarkable instances
of closely allied forms occurring, almost isolated, at most distant
points, without being connected by allied species in the intervening
space; or of members of the same family, genus, or species
inhabiting the opposite shores of an ocean, and separated by many
degrees of abyssal depths. We mention of a multitude of such
instances the following only:—

A. Species identical in distant continents—


1. A number of species inhabiting Europe and the temperate
parts of eastern North America, as Perca fluviatilis, Gastrosteus
pungitius, Lota vulgaris, Salmo solar, Esox lucius, Acipenser sturio,
Acipenser maculosus, and several Petromyzonts.
2. Lates calcarifer is common in India as well as in Queensland.
3. Galaxias attenuatus inhabits Tasmania, New Zealand, the
Falkland Islands, and the southernmost part of the South American
continent.
4. Several Petromyzonts enter the fresh waters of Tasmania,
South Australia, New Zealand, and Chili.

B. Genera identical in distant continents—


1. The genus Umbra, so peculiar a form as to be the type of a
distinct family consisting of two most closely allied species only, one
of which is found in the Atlantic States of North America, the other in
the system of the Danube.
2. A very distinct genus of Sturgeons, Scaphirhynchus, consisting
of two species only, one inhabiting fresh waters of Central Asia, the
other the system of the Mississippi.
3. A second most peculiar genus of Sturgeons, Polyodon,
consists likewise of two species only, one inhabiting the Mississippi,
the other the Yang-tse-kiang.
4. Amiurus, a Siluroid, and Catostomus, a Cyprinoid genus, both
well represented in North America, occur in a single species in
temperate China.
5. Lepidosiren is represented by one species in tropical America,
and by the second in tropical Africa (Protopterus).
6. Notopterus consists of three Indian and two West African
species.
7. Mastacembelus and Ophiocephalus, genera characteristic of
the Indian region, emerge severally by a single species in West and
Central Africa.
8. Symbranchus has two Indian and one South American
species.
9. Prototroctes, the singular antarctic analogue of Coregonus,
consists of two species, one in the south of Australia the other in
New Zealand.
10. Galaxias is equally represented in Southern Australia, New
Zealand, and the southern parts of South America.

C. Families identical in distant continents—


1. The Labyrinthici, represented in Africa by 5, and in India by 25
species.
2. The Chromides, represented in Africa by 25, and in South
America by 80 species.
3. The Characinidæ, represented in Africa by 35, and in South
America by 226 species.
4. The Haplochitonidæ, represented in Southern Australia by
one, in New Zealand by one, and in Patagonia by a third species.
This list could be much increased from the families of Siluridæ
and Cyprinidæ, but as these have a greater range than the other
Freshwater fishes, they do not illustrate with equal force the object
for which the list has been composed.

The ways in which the dispersal of Freshwater fishes has been


effected were various; they are probably all still in operation, but
most work so slowly and imperceptibly as to escape direct
observation; perhaps, they will be more conspicuous, after science
and scientific inquiry shall have reached to a somewhat greater age.
From the great number of freshwater forms which we see at this
present day acclimatised in, gradually acclimatising themselves in, or
periodically or sporadically migrating into, the sea, we must conclude
that, under certain circumstances, salt water may cease to be an
impassable barrier at some period of the existence of freshwater
species, and that many of them have passed from one river through
salt water into another. Secondly, the headwaters of some of the
grandest rivers, the mouths of which are at opposite ends of the
continents which they drain, are sometimes distant from each other a
few miles only; the intervening space may have been easily bridged
over for the passage of fishes by a slight geological change affecting
the level of the watershed, or even by temporary floods; and a
communication of this kind, if existing for a limited period only, would
afford the ready means of an exchange of a number of species
previously peculiar to one or the other of those river or lake systems.
Some fishes, provided with gill-openings so narrow that the water
moistening the gills cannot readily evaporate; and endowed,
besides, with an extraordinary degree of vitality, like many Siluroids
(Clarias, Callichthys), Eels, etc., are enabled to wander for some
distance over land, and may thus reach a water-course leading them
thousands of miles from their original home. Finally, fishes or their
ova may be accidentally carried by waterspouts, by aquatic birds or
insects, to considerable distances.
Freshwater fishes of the present fauna were already in existence
when the great changes of the distribution of land and water took
place in the tertiary epoch; and having stated that salt water is not an
absolute barrier to the spreading of Freshwater fishes, we can now
more easily account for those instances of singular disconnection of
certain families or genera. It is not necessary to assume that there
was a continuity of land stretching from the present coast of Africa to
South America, or from South America to New Zealand and
Australia, to explain the presence of identical forms at so distant
localities; it suffices to assume that the distances were lessened by
intervening archipelagoes, or that an oscillation has taken place in
the level of the land area.
Dispersal of a type over several distant continental areas may be
evidence of its great antiquity, but it does not prove that it is of
greater antiquity than another limited to one region only. Geological
evidence is the only proof of the antiquity of a type. Thus, although
the Dipnoi occur on the continents of Africa, South America, and
Australia, and their present distribution is evidently the consequence
of their wide range in palæozoic and secondary epochs; the proof of
their high antiquity can be found in their fossil remains only. For,
though the Siluroids have a still greater range, their wide distribution
is of comparatively recent date, as the few fossil remains that have
been found belong to the tertiary epoch. The rapidity of dispersal of a
type depends entirely on its facility to accommodate itself to a variety
of physical conditions, and on the degree of vitality by which it is
enabled to survive more or less sudden changes under unfavourable
conditions; proof of this is afforded by the family of Siluroids, many of
which can suspend for some time the energy of their respiratory
functions, and readily survive a change of water.

To trace the geological sequence of the distribution of an ichthyic


type, and to recognise the various laws which have governed, and
are still governing its dispersal, is one of the ultimate tasks of
Ichthyology. But the endeavour to establish by means of our present
fragmentary geological knowledge the divisions of the fauna of the
globe, leads us into a maze of conflicting evidence; or, as Mr.
Wallace truly observes, “any attempt to exhibit the regions of former
geological ages in combination with those of our own period must
lead to confusion.” Nevertheless, as the different types of animals
found at the present day within a particular area have made their
appearance therein at distant periods, we should endeavour to
decide as far as we can, in an account of the several zoo-
geographical divisions, the following questions:—
1. Which of the fishes of an area should be considered to be the
remnants of ancient types, probably spread over much larger areas
in preceding epochs?
2. Which of them are to be considered to be autochthont species,
that is, forms which came in the tertiary epoch or later into existence
within the area to which they are still limited, or from which they have
since spread?
3. Which are the forms which must be considered to be
immigrants from some other region?
The mode of division of the earth’s surface into zoological regions
or areas now generally adopted, is that proposed by Mr. Sclater,
which recommends itself as most nearly agreeing with the
geographical divisions. These regions are as follows:—
I. Palæogæa.
1. The Palæarctic region; including Europe, temperate Asia,
and North Africa.
2. The Ethiopian region; including Africa, south of the
Sahara, Madagascar, and the Mascarene Islands; also
Southern Arabia.
3. The Indian region; including India south of the
Himalayas, to Southern China, Borneo, and Java.
4. The Australian region; including Australia, the Pacific
Islands, Celebes, and Lombock.
II. Neogæa.
5. The Nearctic region; including North America to Northern
Mexico.
6. The Neotropical region; including South America, the
West Indies, and Southern Mexico.
Comparatively few classes and orders of animals have been
carefully studied with regard to their geographical distribution, but the
majority of those which have been examined show that the
difference of latitude is accompanied by a greater dissimilarity of
indigenous species than that of longitude, and that a main division
into an old world and new world fauna is untenable. More especially
the Freshwater fishes, with which we are here solely concerned,
have been spread in circumpolar zones, and in a but limited degree
from north to south. No family, much less a genus, ranges from the
north to the south, whilst a number of families and genera make the
entire circuit, and some species more than half of the circuit round
the globe within the zone to which they belong. Not even the
Cyprinoids and Siluroids, which are most characteristic of the
freshwater fauna of our period, are an exception to this. Temperature
and climate, indeed, are the principal factors by which the character
of the freshwater fauna is determined; they form the barriers which
interfere with the unlimited dispersal of an ichthyic type, much more
than mountain ranges, deserts, or oceans. Hence the tropical zone is
an impassable barrier to the northern Freshwater fish in its progress
towards the south; where a similarly temperate climate obtains in the
southern hemisphere, fish-forms appear analogous to those of the
north, but genetically and structurally distinct.
The similarity which obtains in fishes at somewhat distant points
of the same degree of longitude, rarely extends far, and is due to the
natural tendency of every animal to spread as far as physical
conditions will permit. Between two regions situated north and south
of each other there is always a debateable border ground, in parts of
which sometimes the fishes of the one, sometimes those of the
other, predominate, and which is, in fact, a band of demarcation.
Within this band the regions overlap each other; therefore, their
border lines are rarely identical, and should be determined by the
northern and southernmost extent of the most characteristic types of
each region. Thus, for instance, in China, a broad band intervenes
between temperate and tropical Asia, in which these two faunæ mix,
and the actual northern border line of the tropical fauna is north of
the southern border line of temperate Asia.
It is the aim of every philosophical classification to indicate the
degree of affinity which obtains between the various divisions; but
the mode of division into six equivalent regions, as given above,
does not fulfil this aim with regard to Freshwater fishes, the
distribution of which allows of further generalisation and subdivision.
The two families, Cyprinidæ and Siluridæ, of which the former yields
a contingent of one-third, and the latter of one-fourth of all the
freshwater species known of our period, afford most valuable
guidance for the valuation of the degrees of affinity between the
various divisions. The Cyprinoids may be assumed to have taken
their origin in the Alpine region, dividing the temperate and tropical
parts of Asia; endowed with a greater capability of acclimatising
themselves in a temperate as well as tropical climate than any other
family of freshwater fishes, they spread north and south as well as
east and west; in the preglacial epoch they reached North America,
but they have not had time to penetrate into South America,
Australia, or the islands of the Pacific. The Siluroids, principally
fishes of the sluggish waters of the plains, and well adapted for
surviving changes of the water in which they live, for living in mud or
sea-water, flourish most in the tropical climate, in which this type
evidently had its origin. They came into existence after the
Cyprinoids, fossil remains being known only from tertiary deposits in
India, none from Europe. They rapidly spread over the areas of land
within the tropical zone, reaching northern Australia from India, and
one species even immigrated into the Sandwich Islands, probably
from South America. The Coral Islands of the Pacific still remain
untenanted by them. Their progress into temperate regions was
evidently slow, only very few species penetrating into the temperate
parts of Asia and Europe; and the North American species, although
more numerous, showing no great variety of structure, all belonging
to the same group (Amiurina). Towards the south their progress was
still slower, Tasmania, New Zealand, and Patagonia being without
representatives, whilst the streams of the Andes of Chili are
inhabited by a few dwarfed forms identical with such as are
characteristic of similar localities in the more northern and warmer
parts of the South American continent.
After these preliminary remarks we propose the following division
of the fauna of Freshwater fishes:—
I. The Northern Zone.—Characterised by Acipenseridæ. Few
Siluridæ. Numerous Cyprinidæ. Salmonidæ, Esocidæ.
1. Europo-Asiatic or Palæarctic Region.—Characterised by
absence of osseous Ganoidei; Cobitidæ and Barbus
numerous.
2. North American Region.—Characterised by osseous Ganoidei,
Amiurina, and Catostomina; but no Cobitidæ or Barbus.
II. The Equatorial Zone.—Characterised by the development of
Siluridæ.
A. Cyprinoid Division.—Characterised by presence of Cyprinidæ
and Labyrinthici.
1. Indian Region.—Characterised by [absence of Dipnoi[18]]
Ophiocephalidæ, Mastacembelidæ. Cobitidæ numerous.
2. African Region.—Characterised by presence of Dipnoi and
Polypteridæ. Chromides and Characinidæ numerous.
Mormyridæ. Cobitidæ absent.
B. Acyprinoid Division.—Characterised by absence of Cyprinidæ
and Labyrinthici.
1. Tropical American Region.—Characterised by presence of
Dipnoi. Chromides and Characinidæ numerous.
Gymnotidæ.
2. Tropical Pacific Region.—Characterised by presence of
Dipnoi. Chromides and Characinidæ absent.
III. The Southern Zone.—Characterised by absence of Cyprinidæ,
and scarcity of Siluridæ. Haplochitonidæ and Galaxiidæ
represent the Salmonoids and Esoces of the Northern zone.
One region only.
1. Antarctic Region.—Characterised by the small number of
species; the fishes of—
a. The Tasmanian sub-region; b. The New Zealand sub-region;
c. The Patagonian sub-region;
being almost identical.[19]
In the following detailed account we begin with a description of
the equatorial zone, this being the one from which the two principal
families of freshwater fishes seem to have spread.

I. Equatorial Zone.
Roughly speaking, the borders of this zoological zone coincide
with the geographical limits of the tropical zone, the tropics of the
Cancer and Capricorn; its characteristic forms, however, extend in
undulating lines several degrees north and southwards.
Commencing from the west coast of Africa the desert of the Sahara
forms a well-marked boundary between the equatorial and northern
zones; as the boundary approaches the Nile it makes a sudden
sweep towards the north as far as Northern Syria (Mastacembelus,
near Aleppo, and in the Tigris; Clarias and Chromides, in the lake of
Galilee); crosses through Persia and Afghanistan (Ophiocephalus),
to the southern ranges of the Himalayas, and follows the course of
the Yang-tse-Kiang, which receives its contingent of equatorial fishes
through its southern tributaries. Its continuation through the North
Pacific may be considered to be indicated by the tropic which strikes
the coast of Mexico at the southern end of the Gulf of California.
Equatorial types of South America are known to extend so far
northwards; and by following the same line the West India Islands
are naturally included in this zone.
Towards the south the equatorial zone embraces the whole of
Africa and Madagascar, and seems to extend still farther south in
Australia, its boundary probably following the southern coast of that
continent; the detailed distribution of the freshwater fishes of South-
Western Australia has been but little studied, but the few facts which
we know show that the tropical fishes of Queensland follow the
principal water-course of that country, the Murray River, far towards
the south and probably to its mouth. The boundary-line then
stretches northwards of Tasmania and New Zealand, coinciding with
the tropic until it strikes the western slope of the Andes, on the South
American Continent, where it again bends southwards to embrace
the system of the Rio de la Plata.
The equatorial zone is divided into four regions:—
A. The Indian region.
B. The African region.
C. The Tropical American region.
D. The Tropical Pacific region.

These four regions diverge into two well-marked divisions, one of


which is characterised by the presence of Cyprinoid fishes,
combined with the development of Labyrinthici; whilst in the other
both these types are absent. The boundary between the Cyprinoid
and Acyprinoid division seems to follow Wallace’s line, a line drawn
from the south of the Philippines between Borneo and Celebes, and
farther south between Bali and Lombock. Borneo abounds in
Cyprinoids; from the Philippine Islands a few only are known at
present, and in Bali two species have been found; but none are
known from Celebes or Lombock, or from islands situated farther
east of them.[20]
Taking into consideration the manner in which Cyprinoids and
Siluroids have been dispersed, we are obliged to place the Indian
region as the first in the order of our treatment; and indeed the
number of its freshwater fishes, which appear to have spread from it
into the neighbouring regions, far exceeds that of the species which
it has received from them.

A. The Indian Region comprises the whole continent of Asia


south of the Himalayas and the Yang-tse-kiang; it includes the
islands to the west of Wallace’s line. Towards the north-east the
island of Formosa, which also by other parts of its fauna leans more
towards the equatorial zone, has received some characteristic
Japanese Freshwater fishes, for instance, the singular Salmonoid
Plecoglossus. Within the geographical boundaries of China the
Freshwater fishes of the tropics pass gradually into those of the
northern zone, both being separated by a broad debateable ground.
The affluents of the great river traversing this district are more
numerous from the south than from the north, and carry the southern
fishes far into the temperate zone. The boundary of this region
towards the north-west is scarcely better defined. Before Persia
passed through the geological changes by which its waters were
converted into brine and finally dried up, it seems to have been
inhabited by many characteristic Indian forms, of which a few still
survive in the tract intervening between Afghanistan and Syria;
Ophiocephalus and Discognathus have each at least one
representative, Macrones has survived in the Tigris, and
Mastacembelus has penetrated as far as Aleppo. Thus, Freshwater
fishes belonging to India, Africa, and Europe, are intermingled in a
district which forms the connecting link between the three continents.
Of the freshwater fishes of Arabia we are perfectly ignorant; so much
only being known that the Indian Discognathus lamta occurs in the
reservoirs of Aden, having, moreover, found its way to the opposite
African coast; and that the ubiquitous Cyprinodonts flourish in
brackish pools of Northern Arabia.
The following is the list of the forms of freshwater fishes
inhabiting this region:[21]—
Percina—
Lates[22] [Africa, Australia] 1 species.
Nandina 7 „
Labyrinthici [Africa] 25 „
Luciocephalidæ 1 „
Ophiocephalidæ [1 species in Africa] 30 „
Mastacembelidæ [3 species in Africa] 10 „
Chromides [Africa, South America]
Etroplus 2 „

Siluridæ—
Clariina [Africa] 12 „
Chacina 3 „
Silurina [Africa, Palæarct.] 72 „
Bagrina [Africa] 50 „
Ariina [Africa, Australia, South America] 40 „
Bagariina 20 „
Rhinoglanina [Africa] 1 „
Hypostomatina [South America] 5 „

Cyprinodontidæ—
Carnivoræ [Palæarct., North America, Africa, South America]
Haplochilus [Africa, South America, North America, Japan] 4 „

Cyprinidæ [Palæarct., N. America, Africa]—


Cyprinina [Palæarct., N. America, Africa] 190 „
Rasborina [Africa, 1 species] 20 „
Semiplotina 4 „
Danionina [Africa] 30 „
Abramidina [Palæarct., N. Amer., Africa] 30 „
Homalopterina 10 „
Cobitidina [Palæarct.] 50 „
Osteoglossidæ [Africa, Australia, S. America] 1 „
Notopteridæ [Africa] 3 „
Symbranchidæ—
Amphipnous 1 „
Monopterus 1 „
Symbranchus [1 species in S. America] 2 „
625 species.

In analysing this list we find that out of 39 families or groups of


freshwater fishes 12 are represented in this region, and that 625
species are known to occur in it; a number equal to two-sevenths of
the entire number of freshwater fishes known. This large proportion
is principally due to the development of numerous local forms of
Siluroids and Cyprinoids, of which the former show a contingent of
about 200, and the latter of about 330 species. The combined
development of those two families, and their undue preponderance
over the other freshwater types, is therefore the principal
characteristic of the Indian region. The second important character of
its fauna is the apparently total absence of Ganoid and
Cyclostomous fishes. Every other region has representatives of
either Ganoids or Cyclostomes, some of both. However, attention
has been directed to the remarkable coincidence of the geographical
distribution of the Sirenidæ and Osteoglossidæ, and as the latter
family is represented in Sumatra and Borneo, it may be reasonably
expected that a Dipnoous form will be found to accompany it. The
distribution of the Sirenidæ and Osteoglossidæ is as follows:—
Tropical America.
Lepidosiren paradoxa. Osteoglossum bicirrhosum.
Arapaima gigas.

Tropical Australia.
Ceratodus forsteri. Osteoglossum leichardti.
Ceratodus miolepis.

East Indian Archipelago.


? Osteoglossum formosum.

Tropical Africa.
Protopterus annectens. Heterotis niloticus.
Not only are the corresponding species found within the same
region, but also in the same river systems; and although such a
connection may and must be partly due to a similarity of habit, yet
the identity of this singular distribution is so striking that it can only
be accounted for by assuming that the Osteoglossidæ are one of the
earliest Teleosteous types which have been contemporaries of and
have accompanied the present Dipnoi since or even before the
beginning of the tertiary epoch.
Of the autochthont freshwater fishes of the Indian region, some
are still limited to it, viz., the Nandina, the Luciocephalidæ (of which
one species only exists in the Archipelago), of Siluroids the Chacina
and Bagariina, of Cyprinoids the Semiplotina and Homalopterina;
others very nearly so, like the Labyrinthici, Ophiocephalidæ,
Mastacembelidæ, of Siluroids the Silurina, of Cyprinoids the
Rasborina and Danionina, and Symbranchidæ.
The regions with which the Indian has least similarity are the
North American and Antarctic, as they are the most distant. Its
affinity to the other regions is of a very different degree:—
1. Its affinity to the Europo-Asiatic region is indicated almost
solely by three groups of Cyprinoids, viz., the Cyprinina, Abramidina,
and Cobitidina. The development of these groups north and south of
the Himalayas is due to their common origin in the highlands of Asia;
but the forms which descended into the tropical climate of the south
are now so distinct from their northern brethren that most of them are
referred to distinct genera. The genera which are still common to
both regions are only the true Barbels (Barbus), a genus which, of all
Cyprinoids, has the largest range over the old world, and of which
some 160 species have been described; and, secondly, the
Mountain Barbels (Schizothorax, etc.), which, peculiar to the Alpine
waters of Central Asia, descend a short distance only towards the
tropical plains, but extend farther into rivers within the northern
temperate districts. The origin and the laws of the distribution of the
Cobitidina appear to have been identical with those of Barbus, but
they have not spread into Africa.
If, in determining the degree of affinity between two regions, we
take into consideration the extent in which an exchange has taken
place of the faunæ originally peculiar to each, we must estimate that
obtaining between the freshwater fishes of the Europo-Asiatic and
Indian regions as very slight indeed.
2. There exists a great affinity between the Indian and African
regions; seventeen out of the twenty-six families or groups found in
the former are represented by one or more species in Africa, and
many of the African species are not even generically different from
the Indian. As the majority of these groups have many more
representatives in India than in Africa, we may reasonably assume
that the African species have been derived from the Indian stock; but
this is probably not the case with the Siluroid group of Clariina, which
with regard to species is nearly equally distributed between the two
regions, the African species being referable to three genera (Clarias,
Heterobranchus, Gymnallabes, with the subgenus Channallabes),
whilst the Indian species belong to two genera only, viz. Clarias and
Heterobranchus. On the other hand, the Indian region has derived
from Africa one freshwater form only, viz. Etroplus, a member of the
family of Chromides, so well represented in tropical Africa and South
America. Etroplus inhabits Southern and Western India and Ceylon,
and has its nearest ally in a Madegasse Freshwater fish,
Paretroplus. Considering that other African Chromides have
acclimatised themselves at the present day in saline water, we think
it more probable that Etroplus should have found its way to India
through the ocean than over the connecting land area; where,
besides, it does not occur.
3. A closer affinity between the Indian and Tropical American
regions than is indicated by the character of the equatorial zone
generally, does not exist. No genus of Freshwater fishes occurs in
India and South America without being found in the intermediate
African region, with two exceptions. Four small Indian Siluroids
(Sisor, Erethistes, Pseudecheneis, and Exostoma) have been
referred to the South American Hypostomatina; but it remains to be
seen whether this combination is based upon a sufficient agreement
of their internal structure, or whether it is not rather artificial. On the
other hand, the occurrence and wide distribution in tropical America
of a fish of the Indian family Symbranchidæ (Symbranchus
marmoratus), which is not only congeneric with, but also most
closely allied to, the Indian Symbranchus bengalensis, offers one of
those extraordinary anomalies in the distribution of animals of which
no satisfactory explanation can be given at present.
4. The relation of the Indian region to the Tropical Pacific region
consists only in its having contributed a few species to the poor
fauna of the latter. This immigration must have taken place within a
recent period, because some species now inhabit fresh waters of
tropical Australia and the South Sea Islands without having in any
way changed their specific characters, as Lates calcarifer, species of
Dules, Plotosus anguillaris; others (species of Arius) are but little
different from Indian congeners. All these fishes must have migrated
by the sea; a supposition which is supported by what we know of
their habits. We need not add that India has not received a single
addition to its freshwater fish-fauna from the Pacific region.
Before concluding these remarks on the Indian region, we must
mention that peculiar genera of Cyprinoids and Siluroids inhabit the
streams and lakes of its alpine ranges in the north. Some of them,
like the Siluroid genera Glyptosternum, Euglyptosternum,
Pseudecheneis, have a folded disk on the thorax between their
horizontally spread pectoral fins; by means of this they adhere to
stones at the bottom of the mountain torrents, and without it they
would be swept away into the lower courses of the rivers. The
Cyprinoid genera inhabiting similar localities, and the lakes into
which the alpine rivers pass, such as Oreinus, Schizothorax,
Ptychobarbus, Schizopygopsis, Diptychus, Gymnocypris, are
distinguished by peculiarly enlarged scales near the vent, the
physiological use of which has not yet been ascertained. These
alpine genera extend far into the Europo-Asiatic region, where the
climate is similar to that of their southern home. No observations
have been made by which the altitudinal limits of fish life in the
Himalayas can be fixed, but it is probable that it reaches the line of
perpetual snow, as in the European Alps which are inhabited by
Salmonoids. Griffith found an Oreinus and a Loach, the former in
abundance, in the Helmund at Gridun Dewar, altitude 10,500 feet;
and another Loach at Kaloo at 11,000 feet.
B. The African Region comprises the whole of the African
continent south of the Atlas and the Sahara. It might have been
conjectured that the more temperate climate of its southern extremity
would have been accompanied by a conspicuous difference of the
fish-fauna. But this is not the case; the difference between the
tropical and southern parts of Africa consists simply in the gradual
disappearance of specifically tropical forms, whilst Siluroids,
Cyprinoids, and even Labyrinthici penetrate to its southern coast; no
new form has entered to impart to South Africa a character distinct
from the central portion of the continent. In the north-east the African
fauna passes the Isthmus of Suez and penetrates into Syria; the
system of the Jordan presenting so many African types that it has to
be included in a description of the African region as well as of the
Europo-Asiatic. This river is inhabited by three species of Chromis,
one of Hemichromis, and Clarias macracanthus, a common fish of
the Upper Nile. This infusion of African forms cannot be accounted
for by any one of those accidental means of dispersal, as
Hemichromis is not represented in the north-eastern parts of Africa
proper, but chiefly on the west coast and in the Central African lakes.
Madagascar clearly belongs to this region. Besides some Gobies
and Dules, which are not true freshwater fishes, four Chromides are
known. To judge from general accounts, its Freshwater fauna is
poorer than might be expected; but, singular as it may appear,
collectors have hitherto paid but little attention to the Freshwater
fishes of this island. The fishes found in the freshwaters of the
Seychelles and Mascarenes are brackish-water fishes, such as
Fundulus, Haplochilus, Elops, Mugil, etc.
The following is the list of the forms of Freshwater fishes
inhabiting this region:—
Dipnoi [Australia, Neotrop.]—
Lepidosiren annectens 1 species.
Polypteridæ 2 „

Percina (Cosmopol.)—
Lates [India, Australia] 1 „
Labyrinthici [India] 5 „
Ophiocephalidæ [India] 1 „
Mastacembelidæ [India] 3 „

Chromides [South America]—


Chromis 23 „
Hemichromis 5 „
Paretroplus 1 „

Siluridæ—
Clariina [India] 14 „
Silurina [India, Palæarct.] 11 „
Bagrina [India] 10 „
Pimelodina [South America] 2 „
Ariina[23] [India, Australia, S. Amer., Patagonia] 4 „
Doradina [South America]—
Synodontis 15 „
Rhinoglanina [India] 2 „
Malapterurina 3 „

Characinidæ [South America]—


Citharinina 2 „
Nannocharacina 2 „
Tetragonopterina—
Alestes 14 „
Crenuchina—
Xenocharax 1 „
Hydrocyonina—
Hydrocyon 4 „
Distichodontina 10 „
Ichthyborina 2 „
Mormyridæ (Gymnarchidæ) 51 „

Cyprinodontidæ—
Carnivoræ [Palæarct., India, S. America—
Haplochilus [India, South America] 7 „
Fundulus [Palæarct., Nearct.] 1 „

Cyprinidæ [Palæarct., India, North America]—


Cyprinina [Palæarct., India, N. America—
Labeo [India] 6 „
Barynotus [India] 2 „
Abrostomus 2 „
Discognathus lamta[24] [India] 1 „
Barbus [Palæarct., India] 35 „

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