Teachers' perceptions of national identity and its intersection with gender: a phenomenological study in a conflict society

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate Greek-Cypriot teachers' perceptions regarding the role that national identity and its intersection with gender play in representations of the past. Drawing on data deriving from forty individual interviews and analysed through the lens of intersectionality theory, it is shown that: although all teachers were able to recognise the role of national identity in representations of the past in the Cyprus conflict, the majority of these teachers were not equally aware of the gender politics in representations of the past. The participants seemed to be willing to take responsibility for the ways in which they represented the national identity, but they were not willing to assume responsibility for their gendered representations; instead, these representations were deemed ‘unconscious’ or a ‘product of tradition’ or the ‘natural order’ and, thus, not within their control. The paper ends with a discussion of how this study informs educational research and teacher professional development, concerning the intersection of national identity and gender in relation to issues of collective memory.

Keywords:

• identities
• qualitative interviews
• conflict and post-conflict studies
• primary (elementary) education

Notes

The case of ‘missing persons’ in Cyprus constitutes one of the most tragic aspects of the conflict in Cyprus. Between 1963 and 1974, over 2000 persons from the two conflicting communities (the Greek-Cypriots and the Turkish-Cypriots) disappeared. Some of these individuals, who became known in the Greek-Cypriot community as ‘the missing’ (agnooumenoi), were innocent bystanders of the ethnic violence that erupted in the country; others were soldiers or paramilitaries abducted by the other side and their whereabouts were since lost. For a long time, the relatives of Greek-Cypriot missing persons have lived with the assumption that the disappeared are living, prisoners or at worst as concealed bodies requiring proper burials. Some remains of the missing from both communities have been recovered in mass graves during the last few years, but it is uncertain whether the whereabouts of all the missing will ever be discovered.

This is also the reason that we did not nominate the refugee status when reporting findings later in the paper, as this would complicate the intersectional analysis.

We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this idea.