Literacies of Childhood and Nation in the Anthropocene: Insights from (Post)Soviet Early Literacy Textbooks

• In Event: Childhood and Youth in Sustainability, Environment, and Climate Change Education

Proposal

Although the concept of Anthropocene has recently gained the attention of scholars across many disciplines, it has remained “virtually untouched” in nationalism studies (Conversi, 2020, p. 625). Likewise, it is largely missing in the discussions about the role of education in the process of nation-building. Aiming to fill this gap, our research explores ways in which the narratives of childhood and nation-building have been implicated in the crisis of the Anthropocene and discusses how the relationship between the two could be mobilized – and perhaps reconfigured – to make sense of and respond to the life-changing dynamics of the Anthropocene. In particular, we examine the changing relationship between childhood and nation in the context of post-Soviet transformations where nation-building – and rebuilding – has been in flux since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The post-Soviet transformations have not only interrupted the modernity’s narratives of Soviet future-building, but have also complicated Western versions of the modernist future, creating the space for reconfiguring the relationship between childhood and nation in new and sometimes unexpected ways. Our goal is to explore what these newly emerging (re)configurations entail for the futures of childhood and nation(-state) – as well as for human existence and re-existence more broadly – in the Anthropocene.
Using a decolonial, interdisciplinary approach, this research bridges nationalism studies, political geography, childhood studies, and comparative education to examine shifts in visual and text narratives in early literacy textbooks to explore how children are socialized into becoming ‘national’ subjects through mundane, ordinary practices of learning their ABCs. Early literacy textbooks can be easily overlooked as apolitical and therefore inconsequential; yet, we argue that they are critical in constructing particular discourses about childhood and nation – what we call literacies of childhood (Mead & Silova, 2013) – delineating who the child is and should be, and positing how childhood is conceptualized in relation to nation, their homeland. More specifically, we examine how certain ‘literacies’ of childhood represented in the Soviet textbooks rupture, flowing with relative stability in the post-Soviet period and becoming re-articulated in the post-Soviet texts.
This research examines the changing ‘literacies of childhood’ through the visual and discourse analysis of 41 early literacy textbooks published in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Latvia since the 1940s. These texts provide unique material for studying the changing conceptions of childhood, including wide-ranging and illustrative compositions of a child’s life and world. For this study, we specifically selected texts that were granted approval by respective ministries of education in each country, representing the so-called “official knowledge” (Apple, 2001). Methodologically, we draw on deeply contextualized qualitative analysis of the themes articulated in texts and illustrations, making inferences into what particular texts and images intend to communicate to their readers and how the readers are intended to experience the text (Mead & Silova, 2013). The goal is to examine how multiple, interrelated discourses about childhood contribute to the spatial and temporal socialization of children throughout different historical periods, focusing on four closely interdependent dimensions of the ‘literacies of childhood’: (i) the national/natural landscapes, or the interior, natural/geologic character of the national space; (ii) boundaries/borders, the established, contested, or desired cartographic/political limits of the national space; (iii) cultural symbols; and (iv) the mythology of the homeland. While these dimensions of national literacies may not be exhaustive, they constitute key conceptual anchors that form the relationship between childhood and nation through which possible futures may be envisioned, projected and enacted.
Focusing on the continuities and ruptures in the Soviet and post-Soviet constructions of childhood and nation, our analysis has identified important shifts in how the teaching of national literacies has been approached in the early literacy textbooks in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Latvia. For example, post-Soviet textbooks lose the association with the Soviet empire, reorienting the child within the newly defined borders and landscapes of the independent nation-states. They emphasize the narratives of rootedness, transforming the land into a (national) homeland “through the bodies and blood of the ancestors” (Schwartz, 2006, p. 18). In this process, the post-Soviet textbooks clearly contribute to (re)producing the idealized sociopolitical alchemy of our time – the nation-state (Sparke, 2005; Silova et al., 2014). Not only do children learn about the sovereignty of their nation-states, but they also learn that nation-states are defined by their borders, which need to be defended at all costs to ensure the future continuity and prosperity of nations.
While departing from the Soviet constructions of nationhood in many ways, the post-Soviet textbooks nevertheless borrow more from their Soviet predecessors’ future visions than one would have guessed. From the Soviet to the post-Soviet, the emphasis on “resource nationalism” remains strong, claiming natural resources as national and justifying resource extraction (and destruction) for the benefit of national development. In this process, nation-building projects have placed childhood on a trajectory toward patriotic citizenship in terms of protecting the national resources and ultimately contributing to economic development and growth in the name of the homeland. Childhood and nation thus remain deeply anchored in modernity’s rhetoric – the only difference being a shift from the socialist version of modernity to a capitalist, (neo)liberal one – positioning childhood (and nation) on a linear trajectory toward infinite national growth and development in the context of global competition.
Concerned for the survival of future worlds, our research suggests that we must delink our thinking from the dominant politics of knowledge, being, and perception in order to (re)configure the relationship between childhood and nation in ways that would ensure collective re-existence in the context of the Anthropocene. From the perspective of decolonial scholars, re-existence is “a praxis of the otherwise” (Walsh & Mignolo, 2018, p. 18). We suggest that re-existence entails an urgency for the (re)configuring of the relationship between childhood and nation not only in terms of academic knowledge production, but also as “a praxis of otherwise” that must begin as early as learning to read, learning to think, and learning to be.

Authors

• Keti Tsotniashvili, Arizona State University

• Iveta Silova, Arizona State University

• Garine Palandjian, Arizona State University

• Ketevan Chachkhiani, Arizona State University

• Dilraba Anayatova, Arizona State University

• Setrag Hovsepian, Arizona State University