Pedagogies of Space: (Re)Imagining Nation and Childhood in Post-Soviet States

Abstract

Bridging political geography, childhood studies, and comparative education, this article examines how the early literacy textbooks of post-Soviet Armenia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine attempt to engender a national 'sociospatial consciousness' in the minds of their young readers. The concept of 'pedagogies of space' offers a theoretical lens through which the authors examine how politics and culture shape representations of the spatial, embedding childhood within particular national landscapes and inscribing these spaces within the mythology of the homeland. Textbook analysis reveals that post-Soviet childhood(s) appear to be constructed within specific contexts and therefore 'rooted' in particular memories and myths, always irrevocably linked to particular (national) geographies. Not only does this 'rootedness' attempt to delimit how children think of themselves, but it also shapes the contours of how 'childhood' is, and can be, imagined in these contexts.In the post-Soviet states, nation-building processes have gone beyond the remapping of the physical space in mere political terms, involving the redrawing of political borders and territories. Rather, they have also involved a symbolic (re)imagination of spatial units (states) in an attempt to reflect social, cultural, and ethnic units (nations), thereby producing the idealized sociopolitical alchemy of our time -the nation state (Sparke, 2005;Silova et al, 2014). In this context, the shape and nature of the geographic landscapes and state boundaries have been constituted through a complex and continuously tenuous network of cultural discourses (Bhabha, 1999), forming a collective

Lakes, presidents and shopping on mental maps: children’s perceptions of the Finnish–Russian border and the borderland

“…The participants of the study used natural elements (sometimes with specific symbolic meanings) to highlight the specificities of their national territory. Among other things, the Finnish participants talked about 'a land of a thousand lakes', which is fundamental to the Finnish national narrative (Paasi 1996), and the Russian participants referred to Russia's vastness and the richness of nature, which have endured in the Russian national narrative (Silova et al 2014). In doing this and in referring to other important collective narratives, such as achievements in the fields of sports and culture, they drew from shared cultural resources that are essential for feeling like part of a nation (Scourfield et al 2006;Habashi & Worley 2009).…”

Affective practices of everyday nationalism in an Australian preschool

“…Classic books entitled Snugglepot and Cuddlepie or Blinky Bill, and newer ones like Diary of a Wombat, refer to settler and Indigenous relations represented by animals. These books mirror outdated and more currently prevailing ideologies of nation playing a crucial part in constituting a national space, narratives and identities while they are read (Paasi 1999;Silova et al 2014).…”

“…Nation becomes part of everyday routine and experience as it is mediated through various symbolic, institutional and social practices and discourses allowing for nation to assume different forms (Paasi 1999). In preschools and schools, a fictional nation is created by state sanctioned national ideology prevalent in school policies, curriculum, textbooks, celebrations, mandated rituals and so on seeking to shape children's self-understanding (Paasi 1999;Mavroudi and Holt 2015;Silova et al 2014). Exploring nationalism in children's institutional settings can be focused on the practices these state machineries are engaged with; where they "are themselves shot through with the social, cultural, and political agency of a range of actors, from educational officials and inspectors to, as crucially, teachers, parents, and pupils" (Beneï 2011, 878).…”

Anticipating Other Worlds, Animating Our Selves: An Invitation to Comparative Education

“…The focus is on “the hybrid naturalcultural real life worlds that children inherit and inhabit, along with all other life forms” (Taylor, 2017, p. 1455). “Common world” pedagogies include forms of collective learning that are generated by children’s more-than-human everyday encounters, including relations between children and place (Duhn, 2012; Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2013; Silova et al, 2014; Somerville & Green 2015; Taylor, 2013), relations between children and materials (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al, 2016; Rautio, 2013a, 2013b; Rautio & Jokinen, 2016), and relations between children and other species (Gannon 2015; Taylor et al, 2013; Taylor & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2015, 2018).…”