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- Convenors:
-
Laura Gilliam
(Aarhus University)
Christa Markom (University of Vienna)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- G3
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 26 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Presenting the new anthology "Difference and Sameness in Schools. Perspectives from the European Anthropology of Education", this panel explores how anthropological studies of schools and their construction and handling of difference and sameness provide a window to larger society.
Long Abstract:
The anthropology of education has long been associated with and dominated by American anthropology and studies of the American context. Yet, like in other areas of the world (Levitt-Anderson 2012), individual or groups of anthropologists in Europe have been engaged in the field, very often studying the schools in their respective countries.
In this panel, contributors to the new EASA anthology "Difference and Sameness in Schools. Perspectives from the European Anthropology of Education" (Berghahn Books, 2024) illuminate the contribution of European anthropologists to the study of schools and to the broader field of anthropology of education. Presenting European anthropology of education through eleven studies of European schools in Greece, England, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Austria, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, the anthology explores the constructing and handling of difference and sameness in the central institutions of schools. Akin to the volume, the panel will look at the cultural lessons taught to children through policies, institutional structures, and everyday interactions, and how studying the construction and handling of difference and sameness in schools offers insights into schools’ entanglement in state projects, cultural processes, societal histories and conflicts, and thus into larger society. We also invite papers from other anthropologists who have conducted research on similar themes in European schools, hoping to broaden the conversation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 26 June, 2024, -Laura Gilliam (Aarhus University)
Paper short abstract:
Illuminating the pedagogical work in Danish schools to make children 'social', teach Muslim pupils to be 'relaxed Muslims' and invite privileged young people into a civilized 'we', this paper discusses the toning down of differences in a school that present diversity as essential to social cohesion.
Paper long abstract:
Schools and the cultural lessons they teach children through policies, institutional structures, and everyday interactions, offer anthropologists unique insight into state projects, cultural processes, societal histories and conflicts, and thus into larger society. They also reveal the everyday molding of subjectivies and morality, as schools not only inculcate knowledge and skills but introduce children to a social and moral landscape of social categories and subjectivities that they may negotiate or resist, but which have significant consequences for their perceptions of self, others, and society.
This paper, drawing on ethnographic fieldworks in three diverse Danish schools, examines the moral lessons taught to children about difference and sameness in Danish society. The Danish public school - attended by 78% of 6-15 year-olds - plays a central role in Denmark's welfare society. The Danish 'unity school' originally aimed to unite children across differences in social backgrounds and abilities, providing a common basic education. This remains a strong narrative, presenting the school as pivotal for the fostering equality, social cohesion, and cultural continuity in Danish society. Looking at the pedagogical work to make young school children “social”, how Muslim pupils learn to be “relaxed Muslims”, and how teachers include privileged young people into a civilized 'we', I discuss how differences between children, despite this ideal, are generally toned down, while similarities are celebrated, and teachers employ differences between social categories in the local and broader world to teach children important moral lessons.
Patrick Alexander (Oxford Brookes University)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I explore how sameness and difference are reproduced through age-based categories of identification and belonging in an English secondary school.
Paper long abstract:
I explore how sameness and difference are reproduced through age-based categories of identification and belonging in an English school. I begin by outlining age and generation as structuring and disciplining taxonomies in schooling. I track the emergence of an age-based approach to organising schooling, and by demonstrating, via theoretical traditions in anthropology, youth studies, and the sociology of education, the wider implications for social organization of this particularly rigid, gerontological approach to structuring school experiences. This leads me to the concept of age imaginaries - a term that I use to further complicate the tension between structural and ideological framings of age, on one hand, and on the other, age as it is experienced as a more complex and fluid organising concept in the everyday lives of pupils and teachers. In the second half of the chapter, I deploy the concept of age imaginaries to show how sameness and difference are reproduced in familiar and unexpected ways in the context of Lakefield School, a secondary school (ages 11-18) in England . In turn, I consider age imaginaries in relation to school discourse, embodiment, resistance, and in the convergence of sameness and difference. I suggest that in spite of significant societal change since the ethnography took place in 2007-8, the enduring age-based structures of schooling in England demonstrate the continued importance of reproducing age taxonomies in schooling in order to maintain modernist economic, political and social systems of predicated on sameness and difference, on inclusion and exclusion, in wider English society.
Christa Markom (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
The presentation focuses at children's perspectives on schooling and the moral strategies of the school system and the acteurs within on silencing in/equality. The ethnographic approach in two Austrian schools allows a glimpse on the childs perspective on difference and sameness within classrooms.
Paper long abstract:
The presentation focuses at children's perspectives on schooling and the moral strategies of the school system and the acteurs within on silencing in/equality. This approach allows a glimpse on how children’s funds of identity could be used as informants regarding intersectional power relations. The Funds of Identity approach allows moreover a counter-narrative of minoritised groups, by providing a nuanced understanding of lives, skills, knowledge and practices that challenges the Austrian discourse on “problems and deficit” when it comes to minoritised groups.
Based on observations, informal conversations, interviews and group discussions with children in two different Austrian schools (Primary School and Secondary Level 1), it will be elaborated on the childs perspective on difference and sameness within classrooms. For this purpose, significant and participatory cases from the fieldwork will be presented. The examples will be contextualised with the alleged knowledge about diversity and inclusion by teaching staff, and a simultaneous decreasing willingness to address inequality or even further recognise one's own privileges in the everyday school practice. The research thus follows the question of how an intersectional approach in the context of ethnographic work in Austrian schools can illustrate the correlation between the public discourse on problems and deficits with regard to minoritised groups and the mindset of acteurs in school.
Ursina Jaeger (Thurgau University of Teacher Education)
Paper short abstract:
The contribution summarizes the findings of a child-centred long-term ethnographic research in a Swiss kindergarten in a diversified neighbourhood. In doing so, it works out how social practices of differentiation and social imaginaries of a perspective society are mutually dependent.
Paper long abstract:
The proposed contribution aims at discussing two intertwined ideas using data of a long-term ethnographic research project on children’s social belonging in a Swiss kindergarten (Jaeger 2024): on the one hand, it addresses the question of the "double relation of symbiosis and opposition" (Wacquant 2004, 17) of school and out-of-school practices of social differentiation. On the other hand, it seeks to tease out local modes of "social imaginaries" (Taylor 2004; Vertovec 2012), which are negotiated in school practices of "civil enculturation" (Schiffauer et al. 2004). Analytically, a child in the kindergarten class is placed at the center and it is elaborated how teachers simultaneously invoke and neutralize references to the extracurricular that are assumed to be problematic. It will hence be worked out how local assessments of social imaginaries inform school culture, and how teachers arrive at their perceptions of what children would and could need from kindergarten. These empirical findings are to be used in the contribution to reflect somewhat more distantly on school differentiation practices in diversified societies and which topoi of threat cause and drive them.
bibliography
Jaeger, Ursina. forthcoming 2024. Children as Social Butterflies: Navigating Belonging in a Diverse Swiss Kindergarten. Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Schiffauer, Werner, Gerd Baumann, Riva Kastoryano, and Steven Vertovec, eds. 2004. Civil Enculturation: Nation-State, Schools and Ethnic Difference in Four European Countries. New York: Berghahn Books.
Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Duke University Press.
Vertovec, Steven. 2012. ‘"Diversity” and the Social Imaginary’.
Jamie Glisson (The University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I explore virtual interactions between Norwegian students and their contacts in Nairobi, Kenya. I ask whether Norway’s international partnerships in education achieve equality more broadly or reinforce differences between Norwegians and their “partners” outside of Norway's borders.
Paper long abstract:
While Scandinavian societies have been broadly characterized as egalitarian, Marianne Gullestad suggested that Norwegians are more concerned with making each other the same than achieving equality. In this paper, I explore how Norwegian conceptions of sameness, difference, and (in)equality emerged during a virtual live-stream video I observed between Norwegian folk high school students and their contacts in a slum community in Nairobi, Kenya. Folk high schools, funded in part by the state, offer young adult students “gap years” where they can develop social skills and explore their interests before pursuing higher education or entering the workforce. In addition to coursework relating to sports, service projects, and travel, contemporary folk high schools are designed to promote values relating to democracy, equality, and cooperation both in Norway and abroad. Through fifteen months of ethnographic work at a folk high school in south-eastern Norway, I argue that these values were possible to achieve among Norwegian students on campus but disintegrated in the relationships students had with contacts outside of Norway’s borders. I suggest that this problem reflects broader tensions between Norway’s state-sanctioned programs that promote global solidarity, and the social inequality perpetuated by Norway’s lucrative oil industry and subsequent “green” initiatives in the Global South. By taking egalitarianism as an analytic, I ask whether Norway’s international development projects, like those found in folk high school education, achieve equality on a broader scale or serve to reinforce the sameness Norwegians share and the differences that exist between them and their “partners” outside of Norway.
Danica Bojić (University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy) Miloš Milenković (University of Belgrade - Faculty of Philosophy)
Paper short abstract:
This examination of the Serbian education system, grounded in anthropology of policy and critical heritage studies, reveals a growing emphasis on strict national identity imposition, and explores the resulting heritage stakeholders’ exclusion in the context of nationalist populism.
Paper long abstract:
Despite a decade of efforts to guide Serbian education towards heightened tolerance, diminished nationalism, and reduced religious fundamentalism, while aligning with EU practices, the Serbian education system still serves as a platform that fosters national identity building and cultivates awareness of the historical specificity and uniqueness of the nation. We analyse on-going policy changes in Serbian education and outline the emergence of a framework that facilitates the imposition of a singular national identity within schools. It aims to instil a strong sense of belonging in pupils and students. In recent years, educational policies have become even more rigorous, delineating which identities and whose heritage do not belong to the proper Serbian heritage. This framework employs distinctive mechanisms and tools, including the establishment of novel public bodies, the formulation of official handbooks for educators, and the introduction of an innovative meta-textbook that surpasses conventional teaching plans and subject delineations. By integrating perspectives from the anthropology of policy, anthropology of education, and critical heritage studies, this research aims to address issues such as heritage appropriation, national identity imposition, and the position of minorities in post-conflict societies. The study places particular emphasis on delving into the examination of the integration of the dominant heritage discourse and national homogenization into the curriculum through heritage stakeholders’ exclusion.