Suchergebnisse

This paper identifies the main flaws, dilemmas and challenges concerning the concept of civic education and teaching democracy in the Czech schooling system after 1989. Special focus is placed on the urgent need for the application of more pluralist, constructivist and procedural approaches that would enhance the traditional concepts of social science education based on facts and typologies. In this regard, methods and trends promoting the principle of civic education as a multidimensional and everyday phenomenon are applied, since such understanding of civic identity has become even more urgent in recent two years with the reflection of issues concerning the SARS‑CoV‑2 situation. To suggest and analyse possible means to this end, the study outlines two dominant causes of the low prestige and effectivity of civic education in the Czech Republic: first, the implicitly ideological and universalist character of the current national curriculum, which is not able to accept social values as a permanently flowing and contextually based discourse; second, the prevalence of ethnic attributes in the process of national identification which impede any relevant efforts to treat collective identity and citizenship in an open pluralist way. Nonetheless, the main focus of the paper lies in its empirical part where the fundamental pillars and particular activities from the current EU project—realised at several Czech universities and grammar schools in recent three years—are both presented and analysed. On the basis of this project analysis, the paper aims to demonstrate that together with the implementation of procedural, interpretative and constructivist understanding of social reality, even more radical questions—linked to postmodern democratic theory—such as the notion of agonist democracy, the impact of social networks, the reflection of instrumental manipulative behaviour as well as more unbiased interpretations of human liberty should be addressed in the Czech current educational discourse as well.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) can be considered the contemporary, dominant approach to the study of national identity, which presupposes that a nation is an imagined community which is produced and reproduced discursively. Moreover, CDA denies the traditional dichotomy between political and cultural nations, which is viewed solely as a purpose-built consequence of power. With regard to the fact that most researchers who use CDA limit their approaches to the modern context of the 20th century, it is desirable to ask to what extent one can apply methods of CDA to pre-modern national identities. The clarification of this issue should be deemed the main aim of this study, which holds that the Polish aristocratic nation is a convenient case for this kind of research, because its elites had to reflect not only the loss of statehood, and thus the programme of future desired development, but also the causes of previous failure. The analysis of the conflicts between conservative national attitudes during the 19th century should therefore define who was considered a Pole and to what extent national identity was based on ideological and discursive assumptions. ; Na przełomie XX i XXI wieku za dominujące podejście w badaniach tożsamości narodowej można uznać krytyczną analizę dyskursu (critical discourse analysis – CDA), zakładającą, że naród jest wyobrażalnym społeczeństwem utrzymywanym w sposób dyskursywny. Trzeba ponadto dodać, iż CDA łamie dotychczasowe wyobrażenie o dychotomii między narodami politycznymi a kulturalnymi, ponieważ uważa, że jest ona konstruktem zbudowanym przez rywalizujące partie narodowe. Jeżeli większość badaczy wykorzystujących CDA ogranicza swoje podejścia do nowoczesnego kontekstu XX wieku, należy postawić pytanie, czy i w jakim stopniu można stosować owe metody w badaniach przednowoczesnych tożsamości narodowych. Wyjaśnienie tej kwestii należy uznać za główny cel niniejszej pracy. Jako odpowiedni przykład wybrano polski naród szlachecki, gdyż jego elity zmuszone były do refleksji nie tylko nad utratą własnej państwowości i z nią związanej kwestii przyszłego rozwoju, lecz także nad przyczynami własnego niepowodzenia. Analiza starć pomiędzy konserwatywnymi interpretacjami narodu w XIX wieku powinna bowiem rozstrzygnąć, kto był przez ich pryzmat uważany za Polaka oraz w jakim stopniu owa tożsamość narodowa wywodziła się ze wzorców ideologicznych i dyskursywnych.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- 1 The Threatening Other or Very Own? EU Drawbacks and the Politics of Self-Undoing -- Between Past and Present -- 2 The Polish Early Modern Republic as the Other Europe: The Sarmatian Moment of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Polish Political Discourse -- 3 The Pursuit of France's Milieu Goals (1871–1925): The French Mental Mapping of East-Central Europe -- 4 Mirroring Europeanization: Balkanization and Auto-Colonial Narrative in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- 5 Turkey and Europe: The Eternal Suspense -- 6 Heart of Europe, Heart of Darkness: Ukraine's Euromaidan and Its Enemies -- Between Present and Future -- 7 Managing Ambivalence: An Interplay Between the Wanted and Unwanted Aspects of European Integration in Georgia -- 8 Guiding Macedonia to the EU: Walking Over European Values -- 9 Kosovo's EU Perspective: Pushing it Forward or Pulling it Away? -- 10 Can Albania Europeanize? Actors and Factors -- 11 Studying Trajectory of Turkey's EU Membership: Criticisms and Contributions of Critical Political Economy -- 12 In Lieu of a Conclusion: Regaining Dignity in Europe -- Notes on Contributors -- Index