Bridging political geography, childhood studies, and comparative education, this article
examines how the early literacy textbooks of post-Soviet Armenia, Latvia, Kazakhstan,
Russia, and Ukraine attempt to engender a national ‘sociospatial consciousness' in the
minds of their young readers. The concept of ‘pedagogies of space’ offers a theoretical
lens through which the authors examine how politics and culture shape representations of
the spatial, embedding childhood within particular national landscapes
and inscribing these spaces within the mythology of the homeland.
Textbook analysis reveals that post-Soviet childhood(s) appear to be constructed within
specific contexts and therefore ‘rooted’ in particular memories and myths, always
irrevocably linked to particular (national) geographies. Not only does this ‘rootedness'
attempt to delimit how children think of themselves, but it also shapes the contours of
how ‘childhood’ is, and can be, imagined in these contexts.
References
1.
AilwoodJ.
(2004) Geneaologies of Governmentality: Producing and
managing young children and their education, The Australian
Educational Researcher, 31(3),
19–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03249526
2.
AppaduraiA.
(1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural dimensions of
globalization. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
3.
BhabhaH.
(1999) Nation and Narration.
London:
Routledge.
4.
CastellsM.
(2000) Materials for an Explanatory Theory of the Network
Society, British Journal of Sociology,
51(1), 5–24. Reprinted
from KivistoP.
(Ed.) Social Theory: Roots and branches, pp. 551–562,
New York: Oxford University
Press, 2008.
5.
DeanM.
(2010) Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society,
2nd edn.Los Angeles:
Sage.
6.
DuchachekI.
(1970) Nations and Men. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
7.
GellnerE.
(2006) Nations and Nationalism, 2nd
edn.Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
KnightD.B.
(1982) Identity and Territory: Geographical perspectives on
nationalism and regionalism, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 72(4),
514–531. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1982.tb01842.x
12.
KristoffL.K.D.
(1994) The Image and Vision of the Fatherland: The case of
Poland in comparative perspective, in HoosonD.
(Ed.) Geography and National Identity, pp.
221–232. Oxford:
Blackwell.
13.
LaclauE.
(1980) Populist Rupture and Discourse,
Screen Education, 34,
87–93.
14.
LewisP.
(1979) Axioms for Reading the Landscape: Some guides to the
American scene, in MeinigD.W.
(Ed.) The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, pp.
11–32. New York:
Oxford University Press.
15.
MalkkiL.
(1992) National Geographic: The rooting of peoples and the
territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees,
Cultural Anthropology, 7(1),
24–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00030
16.
MeadM.A.SilovaI.
(2013) Literacies of (Post)socialist Childhood: Alternative
readings of socialist upbringings and neoliberal regimes,
Globalization, Societies, Education,
11(2), 194–222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2013.783314
17.
YaqubM.
Mead (2014) Re(learning)
Ukrainian: Language myths and cultural corrections in literacy primers of post-Soviet
Ukraine, in WilliamsJ.
(Ed.) (Re)constructing Memory: School textbooks, identity, and the pedagogies and
politics of imagining community, pp. 221–246.
Rotterdam: Sense
Publishers.
18.
MichaelsD.L.StevickE.D.
(2009) Europeanization in the ‘Other’ Europe: Writing the
nation into ‘Europe’ education in Slovakia and Estonia, Journal
of Curriculum Studies, 41(2),
225–245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220270802515919
19.
MunO.
(2014) Re-imagining National Identity Through Early Literacy
Textbooks in Kazakhstan. Unpublished MA thesis, Lehigh
University.
20.
NewmanD.PaasiA.
(1998) Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World:
Boundary narratives in political geography, Progress in Human
Geography, 22(2),
186–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/030913298666039113
PaasiA.
(1995) Constructing Territories, Boundaries and Regional
Identities, in ForsbergT.
(Ed.) Contested Territory: Border disputes at the edge of the former Soviet
empire, pp. 42–61.
Aldershot: Edward
Elgar.
23.
PaasiA.
(1996) Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The changing
geographies of the Finnish-Russian border.
Chichester: John Wiley &
Sons.
24.
PalandjianG.
(2014) The ABCs of Being Armenian: (re)turning to the
national identity in post-Soviet textbooks, in WilliamsJ.
(Ed.) (Re)constructing Memory: School textbooks, identity, and the pedagogies and
politics of imagining community, pp. 247–268.
Rotterdam: Sense
Publishers.
25.
PopkewitzT.
(2008) Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: Science,
education, and the making of society by making the child. New
York: Routledge.
SchisslerH.SoysalY.N.
(2005) The Nation, Europe, and the World: Textbooks and curricula
in transition. New York:
Berghahn Books.
28.
SchwartzK.
(2006) Nature and National Identity After Communism: Globalizing
the ethnoscape. Pittsburgh:
Pittsburgh University Press.
29.
SilovaI.YaqubM.A. MeadPalandjianG.
(2014) Pedagogies of Space: (re)mapping territorities,
borders, and identities in post-Soviet textbooks, in WilliamsJ.
(Ed.) (Re)constructing Memory: School textbooks, identity, and the pedagogies and
politics of imagining community, pp. 103–130.
Rotterdam: Sense
Publishers.
30.
SparkeM.
(2005) In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational geographies of the
nation-state. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
31.
TaylorA.
(2013) Reconfiguring the Natures of Childhood.
New York:
Routledge.
32.
WannerC.
(2001) Burden of Dreams: History and identity in post-Soviet
Ukraine. University Park:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
33.
WilsonA.
(1998) National History and Identity in Ukraine and
Belarus, in SmithG.
(Eds) Nation-Building in the Post-Soviet Borderlands. The Politics of National
Identities, pp. 119–138.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
