Nationalism and education – reflecting on ongoing research and our matters of concern

Nationalism is habitually perceived as aggressive and extreme – and thus exceptional – phenomenon in modern societies. It is something despicable and usually happens “out there” rather than dwells in our everyday lives “in here”. However, nationalism on “steroids” as a passionate focus of purposeful manipulation (Fox, 2016) is only but one variant of nationalism. In this seminar we seek to discuss the other side of nationalism, that is, as an endemic condition reproduced across public and private domains. Understanding the everyday reproduction, manifestations and impact of nationalism is crucial for grasping its continual operation and changing appearances, and its taken-for-grantedness.

Nation-states are products of historical and contemporary nation-building policies and practices that create, diffuse and strengthen a sense of nationhood. State funded and regulated education from early childhood to higher and adult education has played a great role in the daily preservation and reproduction of the bond between the people and the nation-state itself. Education roots traditions and norms from a young age, standardises and elevates national languages and offers platforms that socialise future generations into “us” and “them”. At the same time everyday practices such as mundane routines can be valorised by teachers, parents or children themselves as forms of nationalism that recreate national bonds and the national community tacitly.

In this seminar, we seek to bring together scholars of education and nationalism from a broad spectrum of research traditions from education sciences and beyond, and interested in both everyday nationalism and top-down nationalism across levels and contexts of education. We aim to get to know each other’s ongoing work, and to build a ground for further discussions and elaborations in the upcoming months. The event will be structured so that we will first hear short presentations from three speakers with ongoing research on nationalism in education. The presenters will specifically address what matters of concern energise and motivate their research on the topic, how they understand nationalism and its link to education in their domains of research, and where research on nationalism could possibly go in the future. The purpose of these presentations is to open-up avenues for rich discussion in the second part of the event.

Speakers in the event will be

Research professor Taina Saarinen, Nationalism a nd language

Professor Zsuzsa Millei Nationalism and childhood

Associate professor Nelli Piattoeva Nationalism an d digitalization

Please, register by 3 June here to receive information on the venue and final programme. The event is hybrid.

Image: Patrick Tomass, Unsplash

Organiser

TRANSIT (Research Centre on Transnationalism and Transformation) at Tampere University, Faculty of Education and Culture.

Further information

Nelli Piattoeva, nelli.piattoeva@tuni.fi