Cultures of Memory in the Sign of Globalization

Against the background of these considerations on the connection between memory cultures and globalization, the projects assigned to this topic area will combine a broad spectrum of questions in the future:

The translation of memory-cultural narratives transported via educational media into school practice

• Educational media claim to define what is to be considered relevant memory in a society. In order to become effective, however, these cultural narratives of memory must first be translated into school practice. This translation process always leaves both teachers and students some room for creative ways of appropriation. The question of how this leeway is used in the course of appropriating memory narratives conveyed via textbooks in different social contexts thus becomes an interesting object of research. The research area wants to investigate this with the methodological tools of empirical social research from the perspective of teachers as well as from the perspective of students.  Currently, a research project on cultural interpretation patterns in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Lithuania compares history teachers' biographical memory narratives of socialism with representations of socialism in the textbooks of these countries. Another project, which is currently in the application phase, is conducting an empirical study to investigate, among other things, how schoolchildren perceive representations of the cultural turning points 1945, 1989 and "Nine-Eleven" in textbooks and on the Internet and classify them in their own life worlds. With a view to the personal and social contexts of the students, different types of media users will first be constructed from the empirical material on the basis of the main sources of differences in media reception, in order to then experimentally investigate how these types deal with the forms of processing knowledge that are specific to the textbook and the Internet, respectively. The main goal is to examine whether differential interaction effects between types of reception and educational media can be detected in the acquisition of competencies and whether certain types benefit more from learning with one of the two media.

The analysis of interdiscursive linkages between textbook discourses and discourses in other educational media

• The rapid multiplication of the discursive and media arenas in which interpretive sovereignty and power of definition are fought over today inevitably changes the social place and function of textbook knowledge. Textbooks are one educational medium among many others. The representations of reality that textbooks provide have to assert themselves in the confrontation with possibly rival interpretations. The research area responds to this challenge by designing projects that embed the analysis of textbooks in the examination of processes of knowledge production in other social and discursive arenas, such as the Internet, museums, literature, film, and television. Currently, a project is applied for that compares representations of the socialist past in textbooks in literary discourses with a view to the Balkans and the Baltic States. The starting point here is the consideration that textbook narratives clearly bear the signature of the memory cultural preferences articulated by state elites, while the diversity of civil society positions is reflected in the medium of literature. The regional focus on the Baltics and the Balkans results from several observations. In both regions, memory-cultural negotiation processes were and are particularly intense. At the same time, both regions differ in terms of the circumstances that led to the establishment of socialism and the demise of statehood. In addition, the socialist legitimation discourse in both regions was characterized by differently accentuated strategies of recourse to set pieces of nationalist argumentation patterns.

When Concepts travel - Educational Media as a Resonating Body of Transnational Discourses

• In the field of educational policy, too, a creeping process of erosion of nation-state sovereignty and a conscious withdrawal of the state can be observed. Future research projects will therefore also address the question of whether what is taught in state schools and how is also (co-)decided at the supra- and transnational levels. There are at least two mechanisms that can take effect here in the sense of relativizing nation-state decision-making competence. At the formal level, supranational institutions such as the EU and the OSCE are claiming more and more say in deciding education policy issues. At the informal level, decision-makers legitimized by the nation-state are increasingly subject to the constraints and effects of discourses conducted in the transnational sphere. The debates about the universalization of the memory of the Holocaust are only one particularly striking example. Future projects of the research area want to take into account both mechanisms of the increasing interconnection and interdependence of national and transnational discourses. Two types of projects are planned here. One project is to investigate, by examining selected Western and Eastern European societies, whether and how the activities of the International Taskforce for Holocaust Education affect the content of educational media and their translation into school practice. Another project will examine the educational activities of UNESCO and the Agha Khan Network in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The focus will be on the local appropriation and translation of the civic education concepts advocated by both transnational actors. In both cases, it is a matter of looking at concrete institutional pillars of global relevance spaces in order to then ask how and with what consequences the concepts transported by these institutions are appropriated in differently structured local arenas. Another type of project, on the other hand, will turn to global selection horizons as potential vehicles and promoters in the emergence of global selection spaces. Specifically, the project will examine how educational media in Eastern and Western European as well as non-European societies represent the turn of 1989 as a global event. Specifically, we will ask whether and, if so, which narratives migrate between different local communication spaces.

• First, under the conditions of globalization, we also observe an increase in processes of fragmentation. It is not by chance that globalization has accelerated the collapse of multiethnic states. Especially in the post-Soviet space and in the post-socialist Balkans, these processes have led to the constitution or reconstitution of nation-states. In Africa and in some regions of Asia, globalization has contributed to an intensification of fragmentation processes and conflicts. Today, these states are also faced with the task of establishing a sustainable social consensus in their societies about the interpretation of their past and communicating this consensus to younger generations, for example through educational media. At the same time, the associated memory-cultural negotiation processes take place from the very beginning against the background of already existing global relevance spaces. The construction of national master narratives in post-Soviet and post-socialist countries is not only observed by a multitude of transnational actors and assessed for its fit with regard to projects of inventing supranational identities. Rather, these new national master narratives must also be measured by whether and how they enable the national collectives they constitute to face the challenges of a globalized present.
• Second, the problems faced by projects of constructing collective identity through the imprinting of cultural memory in all places of the world have intensified enormously under the sign of globalization. State elites have always privileged certain memory narratives. At the same time, however, they have never succeeded in securing unchallenged hegemony for the memory-cultural narratives they have institutionalized through educational media, museums, and monuments. State interpretations of the past have always had to coexist or compete with the alternative memory narratives of different social groups. The concept of memory cultures addresses precisely this coexistence of sometimes very contradictory and often fractured representations of the past. It draws attention to the multiplicity of polyphonic voices that enter into the processes of negotiating what is to be considered a relevant memory in each case and what meaning is ascribed to these memories in each case. Under the conditions of globalization, such negotiation processes have gained additional dynamics. On the one hand, this has to do with the expansion of interdependence networks in which individuals are integrated. On the other hand, it is a consequence of the multiplication of mutually observable centers of knowledge production. Both forces have an impact on memory cultures. If today, even in the remote regions of this world, many families have a relative who has become a migrant to one of the global metropolises, then this inevitably changes the family's view of the world and thus also influences its identity designs. The same applies to the accessibility of knowledge produced in many places around the world through the media. Both lead to the fact that diverse perspectives enter into the negotiation processes about memory and identity, also and especially within the framework of the nation-state.

Assoziertes Projekt mit ähnlichen Forschungsansätzen:

Barbara Christophe: Die Institutionalisierung von kulturellen Deutungsmustern des Sozialismus: Geschichts­lehrer als Schnittstelle zwischen kollektivem und individuellem Gedächtnis in Georgien, Kyrgyzstan und Litauen (finanziert von der Stiftung Volkswagenwerk)