Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 25 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 26 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14.15
    16.30

Sat 27 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

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Wednesday 24 March 2004 10:45
K-2 NAT01 Education, Citizenship and National Identity
Room K
Network: Chair: Isabela Cabral Félix De Sousa
Organizers: - Discussant: Ton Zwaan
Rauf Garagozov : Collective Memory Identity and Historical Narratives.
Collective memory belongs to those phenomena that receive a different interpretation depending on the discipline within which they are examined. In my report I will employ ideas and concepts developed within the framework of a sociocultural approach (Wertsch,2002; Cole,1996). In particular, I will proceed from the definition of collective memory ... (Show more)
Collective memory belongs to those phenomena that receive a different interpretation depending on the discipline within which they are examined. In my report I will employ ideas and concepts developed within the framework of a sociocultural approach (Wertsch,2002; Cole,1996). In particular, I will proceed from the definition of collective memory developed by James Wertsch (2002), who treats collective memory as a textually mediated memory, conditioned by various –mainly historical –narratives. Historical narratives (annals, chronicles, history textbooks, etc.) are considered to be cultural instruments promoting collective remembrance.
I will show how the certain properties of historical narratives along with the types of historical socialization impact on the “construction” of collective memory and national identity formation. There are two main categories that are important for my discussion. First is the notion of narration/narrativization presented in works of H.White ( 1987). Second is a concept of the “schematic narrative template”, which I borrow from Wertsch’ s work (2002).
In his book Voices of Collective Remembering Wertsch distinguishes an abstract, generalized form underlying diverse narratives that he calls the “ schematic narrative template”. In his view, “ a certain set of these narrative templates forms what Lowenthal (1994) terms as a “textual heritage” with its “uniquely national modes of explanation” (Wertsch 2002,p.62).
Both of these concepts I will apply as a analytic tool in my investigation of the phenomenon of collective memory. I will illustrate this method of analysis through the comparative analysis of medieval historical narratives belonging to different national textual resources (Azeri, Russian, Albanian (Caucasian), Armenian, Georgian). I will demonstrate that there are different types of historical representations reflecting different “national modes of explanation”. In particular, I will demonstrate that the Russian schematic narrative template is not only and not so much a passive trace of historical events but a composite of many mediating factors: ideological, political, sociocultural, economic, psychological and so forth. I will argue that the Russian Orthodox Church played a special role in formation of the Russian schematic template through setting ideological frames for narratives and supplying the first explanatory historiographic schemes. I will attempt to show precisely which ideological schemes played decisive roles. (Show less)

Kati Mikkola : The Folk School System in the Construction of the Finnish Nation 1866-1917
HOW CITIZENS WERE MADE:
The Folk School System in the Construction of the Finnish Nation 1866-1917.


How did villagers become citizens? How did regional groups become Finns? How did children who identified with their homes become schoolchildren with Finnish identity? Or did they? Were nationalistic ideas resisted? Did people even overturn dominant ... (Show more)
HOW CITIZENS WERE MADE:
The Folk School System in the Construction of the Finnish Nation 1866-1917.


How did villagers become citizens? How did regional groups become Finns? How did children who identified with their homes become schoolchildren with Finnish identity? Or did they? Were nationalistic ideas resisted? Did people even overturn dominant ideas through parody and humour? In this presentation I will study the early primary school system in the construction of the Finnish nation in 1866-1917 - from the year when the first public schools were established, to the year when Finland became an independent state. In other words I will study the period during which the idea of Finland as a coherent entity, a nation of its own, was constructed. The construction of the ideas of a nation can be seen as a dialectical process between the elite and the ordinary people. In schools, the ideas of the elite received their ritual and performative forms, but at the same time they were also shaped by the local conditions. In my paper I shall briefly analyze the tension between the ideological and philosophical nationalism of the elite and the ideas adopted by the ordinary people, taking into account how Finnish nationalism includes features commonly thought typical of religious systems and how Lutheran Christianity and Finnish nationalism intertwine in nationalistic rhetoric. In an integrating Europe and globalizing world the reproduction of Finnishness is highly complex. This is why I think it is the right time to look back - in other words to study the nature of Finnishness and Finnish nationalistic education and how people experienced them at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, just as the story of the Finnish nationalism was about to begin. (Show less)

Yvonne Schütze : Russian Jews in Berlin - Migrants with Unusal Educational Carreers
My paper refers to a longitudinal study on 35 young Russian Jews, who came to Germany after the fall of iron curtain in 1989/90 (Interviews; 1995/96; 1998/99; 2002/03).

Russian Jewish migrants - and this includes the parents of the interviewees - have a higher level of education than both, other migrant ... (Show more)
My paper refers to a longitudinal study on 35 young Russian Jews, who came to Germany after the fall of iron curtain in 1989/90 (Interviews; 1995/96; 1998/99; 2002/03).

Russian Jewish migrants - and this includes the parents of the interviewees - have a higher level of education than both, other migrant groups and the German population as well (Schoeps/Jasper/Vogt 1999).
Their certificates as physians, engineers, or scientists, for example, are however as a rule not accepted in Germany. There fore, the majority of the parent generation were unable to transfer, in Bourdieu's terms, their cultural capital to Germany and occupy respecitive positions.

If we consider the children's generation, however, it is apparent that the cultural capital of the parents has by no means become obsolete. Rather it has been transferred to the children in form of educational aspirations and career ambitions. The emphasis on education within Jewish families is not only rooted in cultural traditions it is also connected with the Diaspora situation. Beeing confronted with more or less manifest antisemitism in the Diaspora, Jewish families had always follewed the principle that they have to be better than others if they were to achieve their goals.

In line with this principle it was no question for the parents of my study that they would send their children (adolescents and young adults) to institutions of higher education, even though the children did not know any German. The children were not only aware of the aspirations of their parents, they adopted them as their own. Although the Jewish children entered the German educational system from the side, so to speak, at a quite advanced age they acquired university degrees - with few exceptions - and got according positions.

Three case studies are presented demonstrating two successful and one failed educational carreer. (Show less)



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