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ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on the impact of current nationalism studies on national narratives disseminated through secondary education. The paper draws on interviews and focus group discussions with 31 teachers in Slovakia as a case study and asks to what extent these teachers’ understandings of national identity reflect primordialism, constructivism or ethno-symbolism. It also explores the teachers’ awareness of these mainstream paradigms. The findings defy the straightforward categorisation of the teachers’ views into these paradigms and suggest that nationalism studies have a limited impact, as the teachers’ understandings remain unchallenged. The paper concludes with the implications for educational research and practice.
Acknowledgements
My genuine gratitude goes to all of the teachers who found the time and patience to answer my questions. I also wish to thank Proofreading London for smoothing out all the stylistic and lexical imperfections in my writing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributor
Jana Šulíková completed her PhD titled ‘National Identity and European Integration in Secondary Education: The Case of Slovakia’ at the London Metropolitan University in 2014. Her dissertation examined the potential of using lower secondary education in Slovakia to promote the idea of a post-national Europe.
Notes
1 I wish to acknowledge that an anonymous reviewer made me aware that the statement ‘We are all constructivists now’ also appears in Bader (Citation2001, p. 251).
2 I am aware that the application of the term ‘nationalism’ within academia and in public use is inconsistent and associated with a variety of meanings, for example, political ideology and/or movement; the process of building a national (collective) consciousness; belonging to a culturally distinctive group (nation); and affiliation and loyalty to a state (Connor, Citation1978/1994; Smith, Citation2010). The term ‘nation’ is also frequently (and misleadingly) used as a synonym for ‘state’, particularly in the Anglo-American literature and public sphere (Connor, Citation1978/1994). I am aware that a direct link between violence and nationalism, and its constraining impact on European integration, is not accepted unanimously in the literature (e.g. Laitin, Citation2007; Malešević, Citation2013; Serricchio, Tsakatika, & Quaglia, Citation2013). I also recognise the positive aspects of nationalism, such as the establishment of democracy and the broader socio-political and cultural progress of communities such as Slovakia in interwar Czechoslovakia (Krajčovičová, Citation2011). Nevertheless, in line with the views of Backer and Huth (Citation2014) and Connor (Citation1978/Citation1994), for example, I would argue that the conflict potential of nationalism and the primordialist conceptualisation of national identity (Geertz, Citation1973/2000) should not be underestimated. Rather, the tragic evidence of the conflict potential of nationalism should, in my view, primarily stimulate the design of viable solutions that could curb and prevent it from recurring.
3 Herder’s idealised descriptions of Slavs drew heavily on views presented in the German and Czech historiography of his time, which in turn relied on older Byzantine and German sources instead of his own empirical research (Drews, Citation1990).
4 In Slovakia, as a rule, secondary-school teachers gain professional qualifications in two elective subjects (e.g. History and Mathematics or History and Geography) upon the completion of two cycles of academic education: undergraduate and postgraduate, which comprise three and two years of study respectively. When citing the teachers interviewed, I only refer to their qualification that is relevant to my study (History, Geography or Civics).
5 The sample does not include teachers from the Magyar minority because I was unable to recruit them, even with the support of my personal networks. Schools with Magyar as a language of instruction that I approached directly (via phone and email) did not respond to my research requests.
6 I was conducting part of my fieldwork during the World Cup of Ice Hockey.
7 Čaplovič et al. (Citation2000) estimate that the population size of contemporary Slovakia was between 200,000 and 250,000 at the end of the twelfth century.
8 The catchphrase refers to verses from a romantic poem written in 1864 by Samo Chalupka (1812–1883). Strongly reflecting the idealised Slavic picture of Herder, Chalupka composed a romantic portrayal of the Slovak ancestors. He presented them as peace- and freedom-loving people uninterested in military conquests who prefer to ‘sow and harvest’ only their own acres and would rather die than live in slavery.
9 Historiography dates the arrival of the (old) Magyars in the Carpathian Basin to the ninth to tenth centuries. The German-speaking population migrated to the current territory of Slovakia in three main periods: (1) twelfth to fourteenth centuries, (2) sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, and (3) eighteenth century. The Vlach/Valach migration occurred mainly between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Migrants from the current Czech Republic began to settle in today’s Slovakia between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries’ – in the Counter-Reformation era. The migration of Croats and Serbs is mainly associated with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Čaplovič et al., Citation2000; Marek, Citation2011).