Studies in the History of Education and Culture / Studien zur Bildungs- und Kulturgeschichte
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Edited by:
Meike Sophia Baader
History of education and cultural history are closely related fields of inquiry and both are inspired by social and cultural anthropology. In the nineteenth century, "culture" was very much linked to the construction of powerful nation states and large empires aiming to achieve cultural supremacy. "Culture" was thus assigned the role of representing the all-encompassing power of the ruling elite and given a value-defining, secular-religious function within a national(istic) framework of reference. Starting in the late nineteenth century, however, the cultural sciences set out to broaden this narrow definition of culture at the international level. Seen in this wider perspective, "culture" encompassed the traditions, ways of life and mentalities of different social strata and social groups, the links between culture and society, material culture and the symbolic coding of everyday objects, production, technology, consumption, taste and lifestyles, popular culture and mass communication, and, finally, the transmission and embodiment of culture by means of education. The focus was on collective interstices beyond the subjective level and on how culture was produced, mediated, embodied, performed, and became socially relevant.
The new cultural history of education posits that culture cannot be determined and defined objectively and unequivocally, but is made and created through the interpretative and mediating activities of individuals and groups acting within their historical context(s). The new cultural history emphasizes the dynamic and partially indeterminate nature of social and cultural life; structures are seen as basically alterable historical contexts and fields of power.
The cultural history of education draws on new or previously ignored or neglected sources, such as demographic records and ego-documents (e.g., family correspondence), as well as literary, promotional, and visual sources (e.g., photograph albums and films) from a variety of backgrounds and origins. This also includes material remains such as clothing, religious artifacts, children’s toys and books, teaching materials, school architecture, furniture, food, medical instruments, testing apparatuses, administrative forms, and everyday tools. Other key characteristics of the cultural history of education are the oral history approach and a focus on the history of the senses, emotions, media, and technology. This implies a broader view of education (including the history of childhood, youth, and family, of gender relations and sexualities, of educational technologies, humanitarian initiatives, social reform, etc.) and cuts across the traditional chronology of events generally based on political history. The cultural history of education thus sets out to challenge established master narratives and to combine local, regional, and transnational perspectives on culture, society, and education by including new sources and all levels of cultural production, spheres of education, and dimensions of society and everyday life. It emphasizes the links between education and culture, and also includes analyses of how the culture-nature dualism is constructed and how ecological relations shape our understanding of education. It looks at how cultural production, knowledge creation and transmission are socially and technologically influenced and biased, and which societal logic and educational rationales result from this.
Studies in the History of Education and Culture | Studien zur Bildungs- und Kulturgeschichte aims to initiate dialog and debate on the complex interconnections of education and culture from a broad perspective that includes yet goes beyond social histories on education and welfare systems. Studies in the History of Education and Culture | Studien zur Bildungs- und Kulturgeschichte is based on inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives and welcomes contributions from international scholars of all disciplines. The book series will be peer reviewed and bilingual.
Editorial Board:
Mette Buchhardt, Aalborg University, Denmark
María del Mar del Pozo Andrés, University of Alcalá, Spain
Michael Geiss, University of Education, Zurich, Switzerland
Svenja Goltermann, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Sylvia Kesper-Biermann, University of Hamburg, Germany
Iveta Kestere, University of Latvia, Latvia
Simonetta Polenghi, Catholic University of Milan, Italy
Siân Roberts, University of Birmingham, UK
Rebecca Rogers, Université de Paris, France
Angelo Van Gorp, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Johannes Westberg, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Topics
This book explores the entangled relationship between marching and political ceremonies in schools for the consolidation of the nation-state in Germany and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through addressing the relationship between the individual marching body, gymnastics classes in schools, and political ceremonies in public spaces, this book aims to crystalize the ways in which the authorities choreographed the ideal gait, transmitted it to students and deployed it in political ceremonies.
By analyzing archived sources written in German and Japanese, Ami Kobayashi investigates the transnational character of the marching ceremony and the knowledge transfers behind it. She explores the process of nation-state building primarily in terms of cultural performance, arguing that the collective upright gait was a form of political choreography orchestrated by political authorities and performed by youth.
Counting on Computers: New Information Technologies and Curricular Change in East Germany, 1960s to 1990 is a compelling exploration of socialist ambitions for a computerised future and how computer technology was imagined to reshape education and socialist society in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It delves into the positive visions of a computerised future embraced by the country's one-party leadership, and examines how these visions influenced educational policy and curricula as computers were introduced into workplaces and schools.
The book provides readers with a comprehensive perspective on the historical development of computer education in the GDR, highlighting the crucial links between the integration of computers in different sectors of the educational system, as well as in society and the socialist economy at large. By uncovering this lesser-known aspect of East German history, the book sheds light on the intricate and multifaceted relationship between technology, ideology, and education.
Connecting scholars across the fields of history and historical sociology of education, church history and historical religion research and political history, and covering the time span from the early modern period and up until the present, this volume explores how education reform has functioned as an arena for the political project of secularization and in which way this contributed to transforming and revitalizing religion.
The twentieth-century process of secularization does not mean that institutional church and Christian ideas were irrelevant for twentieth-century societal projects – such as the introduction of democracy, the improvement of school and education, the framing of national identities – or in the establishment of welfare-states. On the contrary, this publication is built on the presupposition that secularization runs parallell with the sacralization of the state. It can be argued that Christianity has been decisive for how the modern European society evolved in the twentieth century, e.g. concerning how Christian history and Christian values were a part of the new national and social imaginary where re-enchantment and re-sacralization of the state were central elements.
In this publication, the aim is to highlight the role of Christianity in the twentieth- and twentyfirst-century welfare-state modernization process with the focus on schooling and education. A central perspective is the impact of cultural Protestantism during the twentieth century. The publication is comparative and will investigate education in Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands via chapters on curriculums, textbooks, politicians, and political debates.
This book thematizes the tension between education, politics, and religion in Norway after the Second World War, with an emphasis on the years between 1945 and 1970, and throws a new light on Norwegian school and education in the post-war period. The Norwegian educational landscape in the years after the Second World War must be seen against the development of the welfare state, and it appears as a part of the social democracy project typical for Norway at that time. The Labour Party, which held a prominent position in the educational landscape in the post-war decades, is normally regarded to have been an important driving force behind secularization of schools in Norway, not least because the total number of weekly lessons in religious education gradually was reduced. This book problematizes this thesis and enlightens how important politicians and policymakers within the Labour Party defended religious education. A central point is that this defense must be seen within the frames of a liberally oriented protestant theology. Thus, the study highlights the diversity of ideas in Norwegian politics in the post-war period and demonstrates how important impulses in Norwegian politics can be viewed against a wider international background.
Children and youth belong to one of the most vulnerable groups in societies. This was the case even before the current humanitarian crises around the world which led millions of people and families to flee from wars, terror, poverty and exploitation. Minors have been denied human rights such as access to education, food and health services. They have been kidnapped, sold, manipulated, mutilated, killed, and injured. This has been and continues to be the case in both developed and developing countries, and it does not look as if the situation will improve in the near future. Rather, current geopolitical developments, political and economic uncertainties and instabilities seem to be increasing the vulnerability of minors, especially in the wars and armed conflicts currently being waged not only in Europe, but on almost every continent. How can risks children and youth are exposed to in times of transition be reduced? Which role do state agencies, non-governmental organisations, as well as children’s coping strategies play in mitigating the vulnerabilities of minors?
This volume addresses risks to which children and young people are exposed, especially in times of transition. The focus is on different groups of children in the European wartime and post-war societies of the Second World War, ‘occupation children’ in Germany, teenage National Socialist collaborators in Norway, and more recent cases such as child soldiers, refugee children, and children of European “Islamic State” fighters. The contributions come from international scholars and different academic disciplines (educational and social sciences, humanities, law, and international peace and conflict studies) and are based on historical, quantitative, and/or qualitative analyses.
In the history of education, the question of how computers were introduced into European classrooms has so far been largely neglected. This edited volume strives to address this gap. The contributions shed light on the computerization of education from a historical perspective, by attending closely to the different actors involved – such as politicians, computer manufacturers, teachers, and students –, political rationales and ideologies, as well as financial, political, or organizational structures and relations.
The case studies highlight differences in political and economic power, as well as in ideological reasoning and the priorities set by different stakeholders in the process of introducing computers into education. However, the contributions also demonstrate that simple cold war narratives fail to capture the complex dynamics and entanglements in the history of computers as an educational technology and a subject taught in schools.
The edited volume thus provides a comprehensive historical understanding of the role of education in an emerging digital society.
The history of travel has long been constructed and described almost exclusively as a history of "European", male mobility, without, however, explicitly making the gender and whiteness of the travellers a topic. The anthology takes this as an occasion to focus on journeys to Europe that gave "non-Europeans" the opportunity to glance at "Europe" and to draw a picture of it by themselves.
So far, little attention has been paid to the questions with which attributes these travellers endowed "Europe" and its people, which similarities and differences they observed and which idea(s) of "Europe" they produced. The focus is once again on "Europe", but not as the starting point for conquests or journeys. From a postcolonial and gender historical view, the anthology’s contributions rather juxtapose (self-)representations of "Europe" with perspectives that move in a field of tension between agreement, contradiction and oscillation.
