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- Convenors:
-
Dorle Dracklé
(University of Bremen)
Ana Isabel Afonso (FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa CRIA-NOVA)
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- Discussant:
-
László Kürti
(University of Miskolc)
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 0.30
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
Even anthropology students have strong perceptions and misperceptions about diversity. How to deal with cut and dried opinions? In this workshop we will discuss different approaches, experiences and practices.
Long Abstract:
Teaching anthropology always involves the challenge to design courses that develop an understanding of diversity. Anthropological theories and methods serve as a lens for learning processes aimed at examining the implications of diversity - not only in foreign but in the home cultures as well. Social Anthropology offers a variety of tools for experiencing and interpreting diversity while being trained in the discipline. Facilitating seminar discussions on texts as well as practicing ethnography on a student level creates situations open for experiencing the deeper layers of cultural identity, gender relations, racism and other forms of discrimination. By assuming the research perspective of the ethnographer during their training, students might be empowered to question their own cultural biases and open themselves for broader questions of sociocultural inequalities.
Most of the students we are educating today will be working in applied contexts after finishing university. It is only since some years, the Bologna process with its implications towards educating BA students for practical fields well on its way, that academic anthropologists tend to reflect especially about diversity related teaching. Are we capable of defining necessary skills and aims of a genuine anthropological education? What are the aims and tools we can provide for teaching the complexities of diversity and culture and thereby turning young anthropologists into attractive and much needed employees in a variety of professional fields? Should we aim at becoming so deeply applied anyway?
In this workshop we will be able to discuss the whole issue of teaching anthropology under "new" conditions - whereby we are still aiming at facilitating experiences of difference and opening up possibilities for analysing the complexities of pluralistic contexts. The workshop offers room for presenting different teaching projects on the topic but also for generally relating diversity as a topic to teaching and learning.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
Present day discourses on cultural diversity and identity also generate xenophobia and racism. Teaching anthropologists should reframe diversity within human sameness.
Paper long abstract:
The idea I would like to develop concerns my experience in teaching an undergraduate course entitled "Ethnology et ecology" and the discovery of a surprising persistance of "racial" (not necessary racist...) thinking among European students today. Faced with this, I found it very useful to start this course by (re)affirming very strongly human "sameness" and to list common features of humanity etc. as the prerequisite of any anthropological approach to cultural/social /ethnic diversity. But teaching human sameness today also implies a renewed approach of anthropology's disciplinary divides.
Paper short abstract:
Title: Cultural Diversity: Content, Context and Possibilities. Abstract This paper will discuss the reasons behind the urgent need for a mentality that promotes "cosmopolitan education" in the content of the curriculums that are dominated by "monoculturalist" approaches in the context of teaching "cultural diversity" and will provide case studies from Turkey.
Paper long abstract:
Title: Cultural Diversity: Content, Context and Possibilities.
Abstract
Is it possible to teach "cultural diversity"? This paper will discuss and share experiences related with the teaching of differences and cultural variety through an anthropological perspective within the context of formal university education. The argument is that, there is an urge for a more "cosmopolitan education" which promotes a mentality that is in favor of developing an awareness and openness towards experiencing and learning about other ways of living and being. The call for "cosmopolitan education" is also a critique of "monoculturalist education" projects that are intentionally or unintentially dominate curriculums in different parts of the world. This study will provide cases from Turkey.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore diversity through peace education and the need of diversity with respect to ethnicity and conflict resolution in a fragmented society.
Paper long abstract:
As part of the on-going effort to explore the conference theme, this paper will look at the essential imperative of diversity in fragmented and intolerant societies and with respect to ethnicity and conflict resolution. Within this framework, I shall consider how diversity can be instrumental to solving human problems and maintaining progress. Solving human problems in multiethnic, multiracial, and multicultural societies can be very difficult and the relevance of diversity for achieving the ultimate goals of mutual recognition. Unity, harmony and peaceful coexistence become imperative when we understand the practices and ascertain the workability of diversity in such societies. The discourse of diversity in recent times would not be complete without peace education and consideration of observable cultural and experiential differences. Thus in reconstructing diversity so as to realize its objectives and in view of its multifarious implications, peace education has become a key practical concept, especially in education and raising awareness by closing the gap between fragmented and intolerant societies and the globalisation process.
My paper will develop and discuss these subjects.
Paper short abstract:
A new Masters programme in social anthropology jointly run by six different European universities is presented in which diversity is taught respectively conveyed on three levels: as theoretical topic, as academic context and as research experience.
Paper long abstract:
The Joint MA programme CREOLE: Cultural Differences and Transnational Processes (www.univie.ac.at/creole) is a four-semester Masters programme in anthropology run jointly since the winter term of 2007/08 by the departments of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the universities of Ljubljana, Lyon II, Maynooth, Stockholm and Vienna.
Students are encouraged to deal with diversity on two, sometimes three levels: 1) As a core topic of the curriculum, dealing with anthropological theories of diversity. 2) By experiencing different academic cultures. Students are required to study in at least two, possibly three different universities, thus experiencing diversity also through different teaching approaches, different engagements with theories and literature, different approaches to field research. Furthermore their MA theses will be jointly supervised by two lecturers of two different departments. In July 2008 CREOLE students and staff come together for 10 days of lectures and debates in which these differences in academic culture are pivotal for fruitful academic exchange. 3) By carrying out fieldwork in the city/cities they visit. Although not a prerequisite, some students are planning fieldwork during their stay abroad, many of them on different aspects of migration. So they will be studying cultural diversity, often of groups considered culturally different from the receiving society in settings where they themselves are visitors.
The presentation will give an overview of the programme and then focus on students' experiences of diversity, drawing on reflexive papers which the students are asked to write after finishing the first two semesters of their studies.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will discuss how "diversity" is practiced and theorized in the context of a minority school, in its school programs, everyday life and school texts.
Paper long abstract:
Even if Slovene minority schools in Italy are intended for the autochthonous Slovene minority, in recent times the minority school had to adapt itself to the changing social environment (the enlargement of the European Union and the immigration phenomenon) of which it is part. Therefore a school which was designed only for the Slovenian minority group is now attended also by Italian and foreigner (mostly from the ex Yugoslav republics) pupils.
In the school where I did my ethnographic work (in the Trieste district ) teachers have to cope with diversity, defined both as the status of being a minority school, and as the ethnic, religious, national and linguistic different belongings of pupils in the school. Teachers have to adjust their classes (the used language and some of the taught items) to the new situation.
Moreover not every teacher identifies him/herself with the Slovenian ethnic belonging and this fact complicates the situation. A constant, shifting and never definitive definition of the self and the other takes place during the lessons; but it can also be inferred leafing through the school texts used in the school, where terms like diversity, ethnicity, nationality, identity are used without any problematization.
In this context my presence as anthropologist inside the classroom was anything but neutral and I had to face dilemmas about the eventuality of reacting or not to the requests of the school itself.
This paper investigates both the practical situation inside this specific school and the theoretical problem of a lack of an anthropological training and awareness among the people concerned in the educational endeavour.
Furthermore, what kind of tools would these teachers need to deal with a diversity of which they are often part?
Paper short abstract:
This contribution will highlight how ‘diversity’ in terms of ethnicity, gender and class is articulated in some teacher education programmes in Sweden.
Paper long abstract:
This contribution is based on a project called <i>Teacher Education in ‘multicultural’ Sweden, class, gender and ethnicity</i> where five researcher have studied a number of colleges with a variety of methods and utilising different kinds of material.
Sweden is officially proclaimed to be a multicultural society where diversity is said to be an important and a ‘natural’ aspect of contemporary Swedish life. Teacher education constitutes the largest college/university programme in Sweden with around ten thousand new students every year. Teacher education is routinely described as the most important in the country and ‘diversity’ is high on the official agenda. But what is meant by ’diversity’ in teacher education and how is it perceived, articulated and reproduced by different kinds of actors? In teacher education ‘diversity’ is a vague and ambiguous concept which is used and perceived of in many different and often contradictory ways. There has also been a shift from an articulation of ‘diversity’ as a collective ethnic identity to more individual one, mirroring a more general shift in society. In most of the programmes we studied teacher education students with a ‘non-Swedish’ background came to be seen as representatives of diversity, However, in one programme with a strong multicultural profile, this was not the case. But even here there was not deeper analysis of diversity in Sweden or in education. Instead the students – often with diverse ethnic backgrounds – were encouraged to cultivate their own individuals identity. There is quite a lot of attention on gender in Swedish teacher education, but class is seldom brought out.
As an anthropologist it has been very interesting to study and analyse teacher education and ‘diversity’. But it has also been discouraging to realise how little impact anthropological theory has had on this important programme and how marginalised our discipline is when it comes to debate ‘differences’/’similarities’. What lessons can be learned from this project?