Children’s educational engagement with

nationalism in divided Cyprus

Spyros Spyrou Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, European University Cyprus,

Nicosia, Cyprus

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

Vol. 31 No. 9/10, 2011 pp. 531-542

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

0144-333X DOI 10.1108/01443331111164124

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.em

eraldinsight.com/014 4-333X.htm

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Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a situated, theoretically

informed account of national identity construction by exploring children‟s

engagement with nationalism in the context of the classroom in divided Cyprus.

The paper aims to illustrate how children enter and participate in the cultural

world of nationalism in the classroom by accepting, resisting, and negotiating the

ideological meanings they encounter there.

Design/methodology/approach – The research on which the paper draws

used an ethnographic approach. The paper draws primarily on teacher-student

exchanges during class lessons and, to a lesser extent, on interviews with children.

Findings – The paper suggests that the process of engagement between

children, teachers, and nationalism often produces powerful senses of belonging

which are, however, always limited and unstable both because of ideological

contradictions and ambiguities and because of children‟s access to alternative

knowledge.

Research limitations /implications – Though the ethnographic evidence

suggests that nationalism in educational contexts produces powerful senses of

belonging among children, more research is necessary to document the processes

by which children consume nationalistic ideologies.

Originality/value – The paper is original because it offers a dynamic

explanation of national identity construction through the application of practice

theory to ethnographic data which takes into account both the powerful

institutional constraints imposed on children at school as well as their agency and

ability to impact their worlds.

Keywords Children, Nationalism, Education, Divided societies, Cyprus

Paper type Research paper

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Introduction

In this article, I am attempting to delimit the theoretical parameters of

national identity construction as it takes shape in the microcosm of the school and

of the classroom in particular in a divided society where nationalism is the

fundamental underlying logic of educational efforts to “manufacture citizenship”

among the young (Benei, 2005).

Using theoretical insights from practice theory, I explore both the

reproductive and productive possibilities engendered by the social encounters

which take place in the classroom between teachers and students in the ongoing

process of engaging with nationalism. How do such processes create powerful

senses of belonging to the nation?

And how are such senses accepted, negotiated or even outright resisted

within that same space?

The ethnographic examples I provide come primarily from fieldwork

carried out in 1996-1997 with 10-12-year-old Greek Cypriot elementary school

children residing in two communities – one urban community near the buffer zone

which separates the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, and the island as a whole and a

rural community to the southwest of the capital city (Spyrou, 1999).

The data for the study come from participant-observation in schools and in

the communities where the children resided, from in-depth interviews with

children, parents, and teachers, and a number of other approaches where children

played an active role (e.g. essay writing, drawing, pile and sorting, and ranking).

The data were subsequently thematically organized and coded. For the purposes

of this paper, I draw primarily on teacher-student exchanges during class lessons

and, to a lesser extent, on interviews with children.

Following a turbulent history with an anti-colonial war (1955-1959)

against the British, the granting of political independence to Cyprus in 1960, the

eruption of inter-ethnic violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in the

1960s, a military coup and a Turkish invasion in 1974, Cyprus remains since then

a divided island with Greek Cypriots living in the south and Turkish Cypriots

living in the north. In this highly politicized context, the island‟s ethnic division

and Turkey‟s occupation of more than one-third of its territory, nationalism

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provides a culturally convenient ideological framework for imagining the nation

and constructing a collective sense of identity.

A number of studies have documented the powerful role of nationalism in

Cyprus both historically and in contemporary times (Papadakis, 1998; Bryant,

2004) and linked educational goals and practices to nationalist agendas (Bryant,

2004; Christou, 2006; Spyrou, 2006; Zembylas, 2007).

Much has happened in Cyprus since the fieldwork was completed, not

least of which is the controlled crossing of people from a number of checkpoints

on the buffer zone since 2003, a referendum in 2004 which failed to result in the

island‟s reunification, and Cyprus‟ entry into the EU shortly afterwards. However,

I draw on this specific case study because it is an in-depth and comprehensive

account of the role of education in children‟s national identity constructions which

allows me to provide, in turn, a more nuanced, theoretical account of identity

processes as these unfold in schools.

It is today, widely accepted in academic circles, that nations are

constructed rather than being primordial as their loyal subjects would claim them

to be (Anderson, 1991 [1983]; Calhoun, 1997; Gellner, 1983; Fujitani, 1993;

Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983).

Within this constructivist framework, nations are seen as erected out of

powerful nationalist narratives circulated through state-controlled institutions such

as schools or the military (Gellner, 1983; Green, 1990; Soysal and Schissler,

2005). In that sense, loyalty to the nation, far from being a deep-rooted sense of

belonging, is an outcome of social processes which inculcate individuals with

nationalistic values and ideals. These processes might be systematic and often

quite explicit as is the case with official school curricula which are permeated

with nationalistic narratives underpinned by an exclusionary logic based on

national identity. But such processes might also operate at a less formal and

mundane level or, as argued by Billig (1995), be more implicit and banal.

Repeated exposure to nationalist narratives and symbolism, constructivists

argue, anchors the otherwise abstract concept of the nation in people‟s everyday

worlds and allows for meaningful associations with one‟s everyday life

(Scourfield et al., 2006, p. 11).

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Though still a largely under-researched topic, children‟s engagement with

nationalism has documented the negative role the ideology may have in children‟s

ways of thinking and their emerging relations with others in the world (Byrne,

1997; Burman and Reynolds, 1990). In nationalistic contexts, “self” and “others”

are constructed in oppositional and exclusionary ways which are highly

stereotypical and prejudicial (Hengst, 1997; Povrzanovic, 1997; Stephens, 1997)

while in deeply divided societies which have suffered from conflict these

processes are even more intense and problematic (Elbedour et al. , 1997; Habashi,

2008; Hart, 2002; Spyrou, 2006).

More than a decade ago, Stephens (1997, p. 11) called our attention to the

need for re-conceptualizing nationalism and the nation-state by situating children

and childhood squarely within the larger debates on these phenomena. The

intimate relationship between children and childhood on the one hand and

nationalist projects on the other provides us with an overall framework for

exploring national identity construction. By being made the target of nationalist

visions, children become a symbolic resource for nation-building and for

envisioning a national future (Gullestad, 1997, p. 21; Koester, 1997, p. 125;

Cheney, 2007). Similarly, the very centrality of children as a constitutive element

of the biological family renders them a convenient discursive resource for

establishing an emotionally powerful symbolic connection with the larger,

imagined family of the nation. So, in this sense childhood provides nationalism

with useful resources for legitimizing its claims while, at the same time,

nationalism itself provides an overall framework for the construction of childhood

and for the kind of children the nation wishes to have.

Education is perhaps the most obvious of the state‟s instruments for

pursuing its nationalist visions through children and childhood (see Helleiner,

2001, p. 189 for the Canadian example). School, unlike the home, frames in a

formal and systematic fashion a worldview where “self” and “other” come to be

imagined in a national universe which carves out the world in discreet nations

(Benei, 2005; Soysal and Schissler, 2005); in this sense, schooling is integral to

national identity construction.

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In ethnically divided societies like Cyprus – the ethnographic case study of

this article – schools become the primary symbolic spaces for defending and

upholding the nation in the face of real or imagined threats from those “others”

whose presence in society is deemed a problem. In such contexts, teachers are

called upon to inculcate in the young the ideals of the nation so that they construct

a strong sense of national identity – an identity which is invariably constructed

through prejudice, stereotyping and even hatred for the “other” who, in nationalist

imagination, is and will remain for ever unredeemable (Spyrou, 2006).

Reproductive engagements with nationalism in the classroom.

Thompson (2001) has argued for the need to theorize individual

engagement with discourse for a better understanding of nationalism‟s role in

people‟s everyday lives (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008). Practice theories which

recognize the dynamics of everyday engagement with ideology provide

productive alternatives to mechanistic and reproductive formulations by

considering the role of the active subject who is intimately and reflectively

involved in an ongoing process of identity construction. Here, I draw on a

theoretical model of identity construction developed by Holland et al. (1998) to

illustrate how children accept, resist, and negotiate the cultural forms of

nationalism that they encounter in the classroom through the development and

enactment of particular identities within shifting fields of power and privilege.

The model seeks to account for the importance of culture in shaping identities as

well as the role of social position which situates individuals in relation to one

another and in ways that both enable and constrain their activity (Holland et al. ,

1998, p. 287).

The classroom, though not the only cultural space within the school that is

privileged with the role of producing national citizens, is certainly the most

obvious one. Children spend most of their school time in classrooms where they

are systematically exposed to the socializing lessons of the curriculum, where they

are expected to make sense of their identities and learn how to properly enact

them. In ethnically divided societies like Cyprus, children will gradually enter the

cultural world of nationalism as this is constructed in the context of the classroom

6

and, together with their teachers, work towards sustaining it and, occasionally,

also towards transforming it through their activity. Here, I attempt to illustrate this

unfolding process using the theoretical insights of Holland et al.‟s (1998) model

while situating it within the more specific context of my ethnographic work with

children in Greek Cypriot elementary schools.

The cultural world of nationalism in the classroom is socially organized

with different characters occupying different social positions and expected to

perform different cultural roles. The teacher occupies a central, powerful and

authoritative position in the classroom and is expected to be the primary, if not the

sole, bearer of knowledge and truth which she/he, in turn, is called upon to impart

to children.

Children occupy a radically different social position – they are student-

learners – and what is expected of them is to internalize this knowledge and be

able to bring it forth when necessary. But apart from these obvious two, there are

other characters which might also inhabit this world and they include, among

others, ancestors, national heroes and saints, or friends and enemies of the nation,

all of whom fit into this world through their distinct roles and outlooks.

In their daily engagement with nationalism in the classroom, both teacher

and children will make use of the cultural artifacts available to them. Cultural

artifacts (e.g. school textbooks, flags, poems, stereotypes, behaviors, or phrases

and words) are what comes between them as individuals and the discourse of

nationalism; they are, in this sense, mediating devises which come attached with

particular cultural meanings (Holland et al. , 1998, p. 26). As cultural artifacts

they have a history and an intentionality which stems from their previous use.

They can be made to serve new purposes (individual and collective) but their

history is often a constraining factor (Holland et al., 1998, pp. 36-7). Thus, a word

like “barbarian” or “Turk” in the Greek Cypriot context constitutes a mediating

devise that a teacher or a child may use to act out the discourse of nationalism and

to substantiate its claims.

As a cultural context of social activity, the classroom is a world where

particular acts are possible while others are not. The outcome of activity in the

classroom is regulated by the institutional and contextual parameters of proper

7

behavior, the discursive resources available to the participants and their respective

social positions.

The latter influence how the teacher and the children relate to one another, what

they can and cannot say, what claims they can make successfully, in short, how

much power they hold within the space of the classroom (Holland et al., 1998, pp.

127-8).

Children gradually come to learn how to properly position themselves in the

classroom given their subject positions: they readily offer a “correct” response to

a question such as “why don‟t we like the Turks?” and they express the proper

emotion when the teacher comments on all the barbaric acts that “they” did to

“us” whether that was several centuries ago or in the recent past (Chyn, 2005, p.

62).

Yet, we need to bear in mind that there is always a performative politics of

identity construction that is not readily obvious but might become apparent as one

examines identity construction across the social terrain. A “correct” response

might indicate at times a desire to position oneself as a “good” or

“knowledgeable” student rather than necessarily a strong identification with a

nationalist claim. Herzfeld (2005, pp. 26-8) has argued that essentialisms (e.g. in

the form of stereotypes) might constitute strategies adopted by social actors rather

than the stable forms they claim to be. In this sense, a stereotype of the “other”

(e.g. the stereotype of the Turk as a barbarian) needs to be interpreted in context

and we need to ask who, where, when, and why is doing the stereotyping rather

than simply ask what the stereotype implies about “self” and “other”. I was alerted

to this performative, situated character of essentializing on many occasions when

in my encounters with children outside of school they provided me with

alternative constructions of identity that differed from the nationalistic,

antagonistic identities that they often constructed with the teacher in the

classroom.

When, on occasion, the normative flow of classroom activity is

challenged, the teacher will have to decide whether to use her authoritative social

position to control what is happening in the classroom, whether to grant or deny

the floor to any particular student, whether to accept or reject children‟s responses

8

to her questions, and whether to reward or discipline and reprimand. Thus, when a

student brings into the classroom knowledge that challenges the logic of

nationalism, the teacher more often than not will reject that knowledge as

inappropriate as shown in the following excerpt from a religious instruction class

with the sixth grade (Spyrou, 2000):

Nikiforos: “Sir, what about the children and the women if there is war?”

Teacher: “We said that only those who can fight will fight in a war.”

Marinos: “Adults say that if war takes place they will go and hide.” (Here,

Marinos is referring to cynical statements he heard from some men about

their disillusionment with politics and their unwillingness to fight for their

country.)

Teacher: “Marinos, you should not listen to what they say in the

neighborhood.”

Here, the student‟s access to an alternative discourse becomes an

opportunity for challenging the nationalist ideal of loyalty to the nation, but the

powerful social position of the teacher afforded to him by the school and his

institutional “right” to have the last word in any exchange precludes any critical

discussion on the matter (Baraldi, 2008, p. 248).

It is beyond the aims and scope of this paper to provide a comprehensive

account of how identity is natularized in the classroom; my aim is more modest,

that is, to simply highlight how the development of senses of belonging to the

nation takes shape in the classroom.

A common strategy that is very much integral to the official curriculum

but is also ingrained in the practice of teaching is that of deploying socially

familiar metaphors such as those of blood, mother, and family for nationalistic

purposes because they resonate with the social significance that individuals

attribute to these tropes in their everyday lives. As natural symbols (Douglas,

[1970] 1996), these metaphors constitute convincing bases for exclusion and the

reification of culture, and ultimately for the creation of the imagined community.

9

In fact, it is precisely because they constitute social ties that these tropes can

easily be turned into cultural representations (Herzfeld, 1992, pp. 11, 27, 74, 76).

Thus, when the blood metaphor is deployed in school to essentialize the

nation it is because it is a familiar element of familial ideology which nationalism

can co-opt and use for its own purposes (Herzfeld, 1992, p. 139). Consider, for

instance, the teacher‟s effort in a history class with the fifth and sixth grades to

establish a clear biological affinity between Greece and Greekness on the one

hand and the children as Cypriot on the other:

Teacher: “With Greece we have the same civilization, the same language,

should I say the same history? The first settlers on the island were Greeks.

Greek blood runs through our veins. We have the same descent”.

The teacher here uses, on the one hand, a strategy of narrativization which

seeks to legitimize the existence of the nation by linking the present with the past

while he also uses a strategy of unification which seeks to symbolize the unity of

the nation across time and space (Thompson, 1990, pp. 61, 64). By taking children

back to the distant past and offering historical evidence about the fundamental

cultural unity between Greeks and the island‟s inhabitants, the teacher tries to

establish a strong sense of sameness.

But to do so convincingly he also chooses to draw on the metaphor of

blood – to resort to the full force of nature – in order to establish an undoubted

familial connection (“Greek blood runs through our veins”) which is based on

biogenetic and not simply cultural evidence. Both the explicit use of the blood

metaphor and the implicit use of the family metaphor essentialize otherwise

disparate relations among the two groups.

Similarly, when the metaphor of motherhood as motherland is used as a trope for

naturalizing the nation, it is because it is such a familiar and emotionally powerful

image which resonates with individuals‟ (and children‟s in particular)

experiences.

Thus, when the teacher in a history class with the sixth grade clarifies to

the children that “we are Greeks of Cyprus. Greece is also called the motherland (i

mitera patridha )” he is using the mother metaphor to create an association

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between Greece (as a mother) and Cyprus (as a daughter) which will resonate with

the experience-near associations that children have within their own families and

more specifically their relations to their own mothers. So, in this sense, it is not

surprising that children themselves use this trope in their own understandings of

the homeland. When asked which is the homeland, they often point out that it is

Greece and when further probed to explain what exactly is Greece, they add i

mitera mas (“our mother”) in a straightforward and matter-of-fact way that

naturalizes the otherwise metaphorical relationship to which they have been

repeatedly exposed. In short, the tropes of blood and kinship aim to substantialize

the nation by establishing relations imbued with sentiment and morality (Alonso,

1994, pp. 384-5).

The mediating role of the school as an institution between the home and

the family on the one hand and the nation on the other provides it with a

privileged and powerful role to exercise its ideological role in relation to

nationalism. As Benei (2008, p. 26) argues, what goes on in school in terms of its

nation-building role might be a continuation of what happens at home at least of

the “lived experiences of sensory and emotional bonding” (2008, p. 5) so that

values and feelings like love, loyalty and trust which start from the home are often

expanded and built upon in school through their association with the nation

(Benei, 2008, p. 64). The emphasis placed by schooling on socially significant ties

such as those of the family or community and on their accompanying tropes such

as those of blood and motherhood draws attention to the sensual dimension of

national belonging (often expressed indirectly through language but also more

directly through bodily activity as in national parades or when singing the national

anthem) and its power to inscribe in children an embodied sense of what it means

to be a member of the nation, a sense that is not built out of the obviousness of

nationalism‟s claims but rather on its banality and its phenomenological and

experiential efficacy (Benei, 2008, p. 24).

The emotionally powerful metaphorical associations of blood,

motherhood, and family become embodied in language and children use such

references to naturalize these relationships in their imaginations. As one girl

explained to me in a conversation we had about Greece, “Greece is our mother.

11

She is the one who protects us [.. . ] from the enemies” and “The Greeks are our

siblings” while another girl elaborated further on the significance of this putative

biological connection for the nation: “[... ] if something happens they will help us.

They are our brothers”.

Productive engagements with nationalism in the cla ssroom The children‟s

different backgrounds and history (e.g. in the case of Cyprus, coming from a

refugee family whose members fled their home in 1974 as a result of the Turkish

invasion and occupation of the island), their knowledge, skill and agency are all

likely to impact their participation and identification with the cultural world of

nationalism in the classroom. Though some will identify to a great extent with this

world, others will only partially do so while a few may even find this world

uninteresting, boring, or even problematic and disengage from it or outright resist

it. Their identifications will often reflect their own unique understandings which

stem from their own biographical and social characteristics, the possibilities

afforded to them by the cultural resources they have access to and by their own

social positions in the classroom which are largely defined by their age and status

as students (Holland et al. , 1998, p. 272). Yet, irrespective of the extent to which

they identify with it and despite the constraints imposed on them in the cultural

space of the classroom, both children and teachers will find some space to create

their own understandings of this world by orchestrating the various voices they

encounter, to (following Bakhtin) author the self, even if such understandings are

still largely informed by the cultural resources available to them rather than being

individual and autonomous (Holland et al. , 1998, p. 272; Benei, 2005, p. 8).

Thus, when a 12-year-old girl re-affirmed in a discussion received truths about the

barbarism of the Turks, she did so by drawing on her one experience of living

right on the buffer zone and having seen the Turkish guards throw rocks at her

house and break its windows, an event which marked her identity through an

intense sense of fear and hatred. Though her understanding of the Turks ended up

reproducing official ideology on the matter, hers was the affirming outcome of an

engagement with nationalistic discourse mediated by her own personal

experiences rather than simply the outcome of passive internalization.

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On the other hand, children do occasionally resist nationalist declarations

and are able to penetrate discourse by drawing on their own personal experiences,

their local, cultural knowledge or alternative political ideologies. Critical

comments about the national self (e.g. “we are also to be blamed for what

happened”) which challenge the absolutist orthodoxy of nationalist ideology often

proclaimed in the classroom constitute a certain sense of cultural intimacy – a

“self” critique directed by insiders to insiders (Herzfeld, 2005) – only allowed to

surface temporarily and as a means of letting the pressure out of the cooker.

Though the potential for a radical reformulation of received truths afforded by

such opportunities is limited (at least in the context of the classroom) they

nevertheless suggest the ever-unstable foundations of any ideology, including

nationalism, that characterizes the day-to-day practice of identity construction.

When children encounter circumstances for which they have no culturally

set responses, they might improvise producing new identities which have the

potential of altering the course of activity for the future (Holland et al., 1998, pp.

17-18). Consider, for instance, children‟s re-classification of Rauf Denktash – the

political leader of the Turkish Cypriot community at the time (a much disliked

figure by Greek Cypriots for his role in the Cyprus problem and his extremist

views) – from a Turkish Cypriot to a Turk. Greek Cypriot official educational and

political discourse presents Turkish Cypriots much more favorably than Turks.

Turkish Cypriots, despite their ethnic difference from Greek Cypriots, are seen as

also sharing in the common Cypriot identity. Turks, on the other hand, are clearly

marked as “the other”, associated with the Turkish occupation of Cyprus in 1974

and the accompanying settlement of Anatolians in the occupied territories. Given

these evaluative categorical discourses, it was much easier for children to imagine

and re-classify Denktash as a Turk, a re-classification often accepted by the

teachers despite being inaccurate. In this way, the children with the implicit

consent of their teachers re-defined their own understandings of two categories of

people who are highly relevant to their sense of national belonging in a way that

affected their future understanding and engagement with these categories. Their

re-classification was an improvised response which, however, made cultural sense

given the discourses children were exposed to.

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Though such radical redefinitions might be relatively rare, the reworking

of nationalistic ideology – some explicit, some more implicit – often characterizes

children‟s engagement with nationalism as a result of the ambiguous and

contradictory discourses that children encounter in their everyday lives. Both

within the school and outside of school, children encounter contradictory

discourses, values, and positions which they are called upon to make sense of.

Consider the contradiction that is created in many children‟s minds, when the

teachers, following the official curriculum, emphasize the need for ultimate

loyalty to the Greek nation – “we are above all else Greeks” – but also tell

children about the political independence of Cyprus (and the civic identity which

it entails) and devote time to celebrate this every year on independence day

(October 1). Or, finally, consider how children become ambivalent when the

teachers (reflecting the official curriculum), repeatedly tell them that they “should

fight with all means to liberate their enslaved homeland” but they also remind

them that “we are a peace-loving people and unlike Turkey we do not seek war”.

Children‟s engagement with such contradictory discourses and voices may

give rise to ambivalences (e.g. not being sure whether the way to liberate Cyprus

should be through war or peaceful negotiations) or situationally specific responses

which they strategically offer (e.g. emphasizing their Greekness and the

superiority of the Greek nation in a history class but resorting to a more

universalist, humanist position (“all people are the same” or “all human beings are

God‟s children”) in a religious instruction class. How they negotiate or rework

such contradictions and ambivalences constitutes their authoring of the self, their

own unique response to the cultural world of nationalism (Holland et al. , 1998, p.

178). Ultimately, the multivocality and openness of these contradictions and their

accompanying ambivalences provide nationalism with an ongoing anxiety and

need for affirming and reproducing itself however, imperfectly (Bhabha, 1990);

hence, its limited power to become a fully taken-for-granted ideological common

sense.

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Conclusion

Over time, and to the extent that education serves its intended purpose, it

is hoped that children will submit to a regime of self-regulation (Baraldi, 2008, p.

241) and come to learn how to operate within the cultural world of nationalism in

the classroom in ways that help reproduce the ideology which sustains it. There

are, of course, no guarantees that this world will be reproduced but to the extent

that it is reproduced, it might suggest that children have successfully internalized

the nationalistic worldview and can now effectively participate in that world.

Successful participation in this world might be evidenced, for instance, by

children‟s ability to tell a story about the national heroic past the “right” way or

by their skill in explaining a current event in nationalistic terms. One may readily

notice this kind of reproductive practice during a history lesson where the children

fully affirm the teacher‟s nationalistic logic which divides the world into “us” and

“them” and they, as children, are called upon to respond to the teacher‟s rhetorical

questions (e.g. “what can we say about the way the Turks treated the Greeks

during the Ottoman period?”) with the correct and almost automatic response (e.g.

“the Turks oppressed and tortured the Greeks”). On the other hand, to the extent

that children‟s participation in this world challenges its figured logic (e.g. by

challenging its exclusionary assumptions) or is ambivalent, children are

contributing towards the production of a new cultural world and new

subjectivities. Though such instances might be rare in the regular flow of

classroom life, they do exist and must be acknowledged as part of the active

process of engagement with nationalism which includes both reproductive and

oppositional forces.

The importance of situating identity construction in context is well

illustrated by different studies which look closely at how children construct and

negotiate identity in practice (Connolly, 2006; Morrow and Connolly, 2006).

Through careful ethnographic observation, it is possible to reveal the nuances of

identity construction and to better appreciate both the power of nationalism as an

ideology as well as its internal contradictions and limitations. In divided societies,

processes of identity construction are of particular interest and concern as they

impact upon the current and future trajectories of the groups involved and the

15

relations they are able to build between themselves. In ethnically divided societies

like Cyprus where conflict manifests itself in territorial disputes as well,

nationalism often becomes highly antagonistic and oppositional. Teachers,

parents, and children alike may find in it a well-developed framework for

explaining a complex political situation such as the Cyprus problem which might

otherwise entail contestation, contradiction, and ambiguity.

The role of nationalism in producing powerful senses of belonging among

school children is certainly an under-researched topic especially as it manifests

itself in daily social practice rather than through the analysis of textbooks and

curriculum guides.

Research on the daily practice of nationhood in educational contexts can provide

insights that can inform teacher training (e.g. on how teachers could provide

dialogical opportunities for students to engage critically with naturalized concepts

like nation and identity) and the revision of school curricula (e.g. through the

introduction of more social rather than monumental or grand history which

acknowledges ordinary people‟s lives and struggles for meaning). Given the

increasing cultural and ethnic diversity that exists today in Greek Cypriot public

schools – much greater than was the case in 1996-1997 – the implications of these

findings are pressing and the need to construct alternative, more inclusive,

pedagogies for identity construction much more imminent.

Theoretically, informed accounts of the dynamics of identity construction

help to de-reify reproductive, homogenizing, and universalizing accounts of the

role of nationalism in identity construction while recognizing, at the same time,

the power and potential for nationalism to create strong and enduring senses of

belonging.

Responding to Stephens‟ (1997) call for making children an integral part

of our debates on nationalism, provides a productive conceptual space for

exploring the production and consumption of one of the most powerful ideologies

of modern times. Undoubtedly, more research is necessary on the educational and

extra-educational processes which create emotionally strong, national senses of

belonging among children and children‟s own active participation in such

processes. In divided societies where nationalism is simultaneously naturalized

16

and sacralized and often becomes a guide to collective thinking, feeling, and

acting, understanding how children engage with it can provide us with even more

fertile ground for reconceptualizing the phenomenon from the bottom up.

17

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About the author

Spyros Spyrou is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at

European University Cyprus and the Director of the Center for the Study of

Childhood and Adolescence. His research focuses on the anthropology of children

and childhood and especially on issues of identity, education, and nationalism.

Spyros Spyrou can be contacted at: s.spyrou@euc.ac.cy

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