Pedagogies of Culture

Through an ethnographic study of schooling in the Republic of Tatarstan, this book explores how competing notions of nationhood and belonging are constructed, articulated and negotiated within educational spaces. Amidst major political and ideological moves toward centralization in Russia under the Putin presidency, this small provincial town in Tatarstan provides a unique case of local attempts to promote and preserve minority languages and cultures through education and schooling. Ultimately, the study reveals that while schooling can be an effective instrument of the state to transform individuals as well as society as a whole, school also encompasses various spaces where the agency of local actors unfolds and official messages are contested. Looking at what happens inside schools and beyond-in classrooms, hallways and playgrounds to private households or local Islamic schools-Dilyara Suleymanova here offers a detailed ethnographic account of the way centrally devised educationalpolicies are being received, negotiated and contested on the ground.

Auteur

Dilyara Suleymanova is a research fellow at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland. She has published on issues of education, politics of identity, language revitalization, online social networks, Islamic education, extremism and conflict.

Contenu
Chapter 1/Introduction: Education and the Politics of Belonging in RussiaChapter 2: Producing the Citizen: Political Dynamics of Education in Post-Soviet Russia2.1 De-centralization of post-Soviet education2.2 Constructing post-Soviet nationhood in Tartarstan2.3 Recentralizing education: the politics of unityChapter 3: Language, (multi-)ethnicity and Local Responses to Educational Policies in a Small Tartar Town3.1 Staging and living ethnic diversity3.2 Introducing schools3.3 Sustaining schoolin post-socialist conditions3.4 Schooling in a native language: a dead-end?3.5 A zero-sum game: Russian versus Tartar in classroomsChapter 4: Pedagogies of Culture Learning to Perform, to Belong, and to Remember4.1 Ethnic culture as a pedagogic technique4.2 Learning the value of mother tongue4.3 Learning to be a patriot: concurrent discourses about motherland4.4 Learning to memorize and learning to remember: history teaching at schoolChapter 5: Pedagogy of Islam: Madrasa Education and Moral Upbringing5.1 Madrasa courses and local religious revival5.2 Religious and secular in madrasa education5.3 The pedagogic potential of IslamChapter 6: "I'm Only Half!": Negotiating Identities at School6.1 Practices of ethnic categorization in classroom6.2 Meanings and strategies of ethnic belongingChapter 7: Conclusion.