On January 29th 2014 ASEN will be holding a special seminar on ‘Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Education’ at the London School of Economics and Political Science, linked to SEN AND SEN Online’s ongoing special focus on this theme.
Watch this space for updates as they become available, including the special seminar poster.
SEN Journal: Online Exclusives is proud to announce the forthcoming special issue of SEN’s print version. The special issue is entitled “Ethnicity, Nationalism and Education” and will be published as SEN volume 13 number 3. Themes that are covered in the special issue include education and identity politics; education and minority policies; schools and nationalist education; education and interethnic accommodation; and education and peacebuilding. To announce the publication of this special issue, SEN Journal: Online Exclusives will post abstracts of some of its articles in the next few weeks.
First up we have Verena Wisthaler’s ‘Identity politics in the educational system in South Tyrol: balancing between minority protection and the need to manage diversity’ (Volume 13, Issue 3, December 2013, 358-372).
The article ‘focuses on the educational system in South Tyrol as one of the pillars of language and identity politics used for minority protection and elaborates on future possible developments triggered by immigration. After a historical overview on the coexistence of the three linguistic groups in South Tyrol the article explores from the point of view of the education system the institutional framework guaranteeing the protection of the German speaking and Ladin minority. Secondly the article shows how the education system in South Tyrol deals with increasing immigration assessing how this relates to the aim of minority protection.’
Read on for some SEN articles that reflect on some news items reported on the blog over the past several weeks, on nationalism-related current events:
(Re)inventing the Past: The Politics of ‘National’ History in the Ukrainian Classroom, Peter W. Rodgers, Volume 6, Issue 2, September 2006, pp. 40-55.
This article examines how the Ukrainian state has used, and continues to use, history to forge collective identities in Ukraine. It assesses how history textbooks are utilised by the state as ‘tools’ to introduce schoolchildren to key historical episodes around which a modern Ukrainian national identity can be shaped. Attempts to ‘historicise’ Ukrainian national identity must answer fundamental questions such as: Who are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going? Who are we not? The final question is vital in understanding ‘who we are’ in comparison to the ‘other’. Thus, emphasis is placed on how the Ukrainian state is attempting to form an all-encompassing Ukrainian identity by distancing itself from Russia. The article argues that while a ‘national’ history is being espoused, a ‘regional politics of the textbook’ is subtly being allowed by the state to develop. This stands at odds with state attempts to create one universal, all-encompassing Ukrainian history.
Cultural Identifications, Political Representations and National Project(s) on the Symbolic Arena of the Orange Revolution, Eleonora Narvselius, Volume 7, Issue 2, September 2007, pp. 29-55.
The article is a study of the interplay of several important generators of meanings of the Orange Revolution, namely, background representations, cultural scripts, actors and audiences. The events of the Orange Revolution are interpreted as a symbolically charged socio-cultural performance. The analysis is focused on the cultural identity component of the political representations of the main stage characters (two presidential candidates) which were constructed in such a way that they explicated visions of national development and vectors of identity work that currently coexist and compete in Ukrainian society. The author suggests that the symbolic arena of the Orange Revolution revealed that a culturally informed project of nation building, well in line with aspirations of wider circles of nationally conscious Ukrainian intelligentsia, might become one of the crucial factors of political mobilisation in present-day Ukraine.
‘Moving On’: The Politics of Shared Society in Northern Ireland, Cillian McGrattan, Volume 12, Issue 1, April 2012, pp. 172-189.
Debates over the direction of the Northern Irish peace process have moved from decommissioning and all-party inclusion to community relations and whether society is becoming more or less integrated and shared. This article contends that what is missing from this debate is consideration of the fact that a process of de-politicisation is occurring – specifically, inspired by a progressivist imperative, political discourse and engagement are increasingly moving from the public sphere to more privatised concerns. I argue that that vision does not speak to the trauma of the past and that the silencings, limitations, and dilemmas it leads to are most lucidly seen in recent Northern Irish drama productions. I conclude by sketching an alternative ethical vision based on an attachment to remembering historical injustices and a repudiation of the social pressure to draw a line under the past.
Maintaining a Chinese Nationalism: Patriotic Education, Second-hand Rose and the Politics of ‘National Conditions’, Jonathan Doughty, Volume 9, Issue 2, September 2009, pp. 198-212.
This article considers the development of China’s system of ‘patriotic education’ (aiguozhuyi jiaoyu). It examines Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents on patriotic education’s establishment, along with high-school (gaozhong) texts used as ‘national conditions’ (guoqing) curricula, in order to demonstrate how subsequent considerations of the development of Chinese nationalist identity must consider various modes of the party-state’s educational apparatus in the ‘teaching’ of nationalism. We may then view from a better vantage how the Chinese party-state maintains discursive hegemony over the Chinese cultural past – inherited, imagined or otherwise – in its ideological seizure of nationalism, and how this ‘official’ nationalism interacts with and engages other nationalisms of the Chinese nation, such as that found within the vibrant Chinese subculture of yaogun yue (rock and roll).
Read on for some SEN articles that reflect on some news items reported on the blog over the past several weeks:
Landscapes of ‘Othering’ in Postwar and Contemporary Germany: The Limits of the ‘Culture of Contrition’ and the Poverty of the Mainstream, Aristotle Kallis, Volume 12, Issue 2, October 2012, pp. 387-407.
In the 1930s the National Socialist regime embarked on a chillingly ambitious and fanatical project to ‘remake’ German society and ‘race’ by deploying a peerless – in both kind and intensity – repertoire of ‘othering’ strategies and measures directed at the Jews, the Sinti/Roma, and non-conformist groups within the Third Reich. At the heart of this campaign was the notion of a ‘zero-sum’ confrontation between the nation/race and its perceived ‘enemies’: namely, that the existence of these ‘enemies’ within German society threatened the very foundations of the German ‘race’ and posed the gravest threat to its mere survival. To what extent can the experience of the 1930s aggressive, violent, and eventually murderous ‘zero-sum’ mindset provide crucial insights into contemporary discourses of ‘othering’, linked with the European radical-populist right but increasingly ‘infecting’ the social and political mainstream? The contemporary ‘ethno-pluralist’ framing of the discussion divulges the persistence of a similar ‘zero-sum’ mentality that is nurtured by socio-economic and cultural insecurity, on the one hand, and powerful long-standing prejudices against particular groups, on the other. The article explores this ‘zero-sum’ insecurity mindset in the anti-immigration ‘mainstream’ discourses in the Federal Republic of Germany, both before and after re-unification. It demonstrates how – in contrast to the postwar ‘culture of contrition’ with regard to the memory of the Holocaust – this mindset continues to be a powerful political and psychological refuge for societal insecurities that has an enduring appeal to significant audiences well beyond the narrow political constituencies of the radical right.
Post-communist extremism in Eastern Europe: The nature of the phenomenon, Othon Anastakis, Volume 1, Issue 2, September 2001, pp. 15-26.
The recent electoral gains of extreme right parties in many countries of Europe have made European citizens realise that the extreme right is not to be regarded exclusively as a fringe phenomenon but as a force that can penetrate mainstream democratic politics. The resilience and occasional rise of the radical right poses a serious challenge for social scientists and policy makers. Social scientists are called upon to examine the nature of the phenomenon, the factors conducive to the existence and resilience of the forces of extremism and the impact of far right political mobilisation within national societies and Europe, at large. Governments and policy makers for their part explore ways to marginalise these forces in order to sustain, in Western Europe- and consolidate, in Eastern Europe, democracy in the continent. But while there is ample analysis of the West European experience, there is an inadequate understanding of the conditions and circumstances that breed extreme right forces in Eastern Europe. In what follows, the paper will attempt to address the academic debate on the causes and nature of the contemporary East European extreme right. It will assess the relevance of a western oriented approach in the East European context. The article mostly refers to extremism in countries like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These countries are, by and large, functioning democracies, where extreme right parties compete in elections and in some of them are quite influential. All of these countries are applying to become members of the European Union, and this membership is subject to strict political criteria, requiring democratic principles, the rule of law and respect for human rights.
Intercultural Citizenship, Civic Nationalism, and Nation Building in Québec: From Common Public Language to Laïcité, Jean-François Dupré, Volume 12, Issue 2, October 2012, pp. 227-248.
This article analyses the current citizenship-nation building nexus in Québec in light of government publications and recent public discourses on ethnocultural pluralism and immigrant integration. First, the article surveys the changing relationship between Québécois nationalism and citizenship according to political circumstances in Québec, suggesting that debates over immigrant integration have played a central role in the creation of a civic Québécois identity, initially based on French as the public language and interculturalism. The article then analyses recent public debates surrounding ‘reasonable accommodation’ in Québec, and identifies a growing emphasis on laïcité – the secularisation of the public space – as identity marker. This article attributes this growing focus on secularism to dissatisfied nationalists seeking to reclaim the cultural prominence of the French Canadian majority in provincial institutions and press for measures aimed at enhancing Québec’s distinctiveness and autonomy within the Canadian institutional framework. On a more normative note, the article argues that while language nationalism is reconcilable with ethnocultural pluralism, recent discourses on the secularisation of the public space constrain the emergence of an openly pluralistic stance on national belonging in the province, and undermines the legitimacy of Québec interculturalism.
Reinterpreting the Past or Asserting the Future? National History and Nations in Peril – The Case of the Tibetan Nation, Anne-Sophie Bentz, Volume 6, Issue 2, September 2006, pp. 56-70.
This paper explores the idea that the importance of the past tends to become overwhelming when the nation is in peril. The Tibetan nation is one of those nations which is, or thinks it is, in peril; hence, Bentz contends, its constant need to assert its existence. I intend to examine how the history of Tibet has been transformed into a national history by discussing key historical events and relating them to the Tibetan interpretation as it developed in exile, particularly in India. With this Bentz aims to shed a new light on how national history, or, more precisely the (re)construction of a national history, can become instrumental in asserting a threatened nation’s existence and how this can affect the very content of the nation’s history.