Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Ana Lúcia dos Reis
(Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa)
Send message to Convenor
- Location:
- B1 0.03
- Sessions:
- Thursday 18 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
How is national identity and cultural identity formed? What evolving role has education been playing in nation building? This panel proposes a pluralistic discussion on the construction of national and cultural identities and how education can be instrumental to that effect.
Long Abstract:
Duing the European colonization in Africa, education played an important role as a means of subjugation of the colonized. It promoted a sense of superiority and valorisation of the white, European and predominantly Catholic culture and identity that would find resistance within the local communities.
In some cases, the imbalance of power between the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized led to the deprecation (and in some cases disappearance) of languages, cultures and traditions.
Even after these countries' independence, this effect persisted, occasionally in the form of a sort of fascination, not always conscious, with the culture of the colonizer and consequent depreciation of local cultures.
The process of forging a cultural and national identity is not linear or consensual, and the way education interferes - and whether or not it should interfere in this process - is highly debatable, raising a series of relevant questions.
This panel suggests an analysis of the progressive africanization of the Portuguese-speaking African countries' identities, linked to the role education had in the building of these nations.
Furthermore, the panel proposes a reflection on cultural and national identity:
What defines national identity and cultural identity?
Can they be forged? And if so how do they evolve?
Should we rethink the concepts of cultural identity and national identity?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2019, -Ana Lúcia dos Reis (Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
Amilcar Cabral uses for te first time the term “Homem Novo” in Cassacá, at the first Congress of PAIGC, in 1964. This term is the cornerstone of the educational policy in escolas-piloto, which will have as an objective the reconstruction, appropriation and restitution of an African identity. We will comment on such educational model through the analysis of teaching materials created by PAIGC for this context.
Paper long abstract:
The project of escolas-piloto was the result of the planning of a man, Amilcar Cabral, put in place by himself and several PAIGC militants and leaders.
These schools were created as an internship for educating the children displaced to Cassacá, during the 1st Congress of PAIGC, and ended up expanding to different liberated areas. It welcomed many children going through different learning stages and it achieved, in times of armed conflict, the production of educational materials in various learning fields. The training of teachers and instructors was a major concern as well as the allocation of students in various locations (mostly close to the party’s familiar grounds), with the aim of training the poplations in all spheres of knowledge and hence constituting an extremely relevant educational and social reference, which hasn’t been thoroughly studied so far.
According to Lilica Boal, a PAIGC militant and the director of these schools as of 1969, according to an interview in 2014:
«One of the great decisions of this congress [was] the creation of a school that might welcome the war orphans and the children of militants with the objective of providing training focused on the creation of the “homem novo” that Cabral talked about».
Jorge Maia (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)
Paper short abstract:
This is a study about the circulation of references between Mozambique and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s and their effects on the development of public policies for the teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African history in Brazil.
Paper long abstract:
The effervescence of the liberation movements of the former European colonies on the African continent in the second half of the twentieth century, as well as the exchanges between revolutionary movements of different colonies that have been articulated against ethnocentrism, colonialism and European racism are central elements that have led to the shake-up of Western European hegemony over Africa and the world.
The African diaspora also relates to these revolutionary processes, establishing exchanges of ideas and people between Africa and countries with black populations in other parts of the world, reinforcing a "global communications system constituted by flows" (GILROY, 2001, p.170) .
This system is not born with the African revolutions, but in this period it gains a particular political character.
Thinking from this perspective, from the circulation of references, in analyzing the relations between an African revolutionary movement (Liberation Front of Mozambique - FRELIMO) and the Brazilian Black Movement, I intend to think of the struggle against the colonialism and construction of the Mozambican nation not only from the point of view of its particularities, but how this process relates to the black militancy in Brazil, which was restructured between the 1970s and 1980s.
I intend, therefore, to understand how new ideas and Mozambican references circulate in Brazil, as well as the effects that this circulation generates in Brazilian society, especially in what concerns the policies for the teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African history and culture in the country.
Dorothee Kuckhoff (TU Dortmund)
Paper short abstract:
Memorial Museums as the nation's lieux de mémoire with the responsibility to educate, commemorate and unite according to an elite's agreement on what is to be remembered - and how.
Paper long abstract:
Opened in 2010 and located right beside the historic Meskal Square, the Red Terror' Martyrs' Memorial Museum in Addis Abeba is a destination for citizens as well as international tourists, whose purposes of visit and reception depends on the individuals' relation to the presented issue. Unlike history museums, which claim objectivity, memorial museums are subjects to the imperative of commemoration, of emotional involvement and identification with the exhibited.
In the multiethnic state of Ethiopia, the presence of the Derg's socialist regime, which found its violent peak in the Red Terror in 1977/78, is significant in the townscape of the major cities.
In an empirical research conducted in 2017, the effect of three significant 'lieux de mémoire' on different groups of recipients was compared cross-sectionally, taking into account domestic politics and Ethiopia's role in the Horn of Africa.
This contribution aims to highlight the museum's double role as an institution, which follows an educational function, but also reproduces the country's liberation narrative. This appears to have have the goal to create a national memory which seeks to enhance the identification of the heterogeneous population with the state of Ethiopia as well as the legitimation of the political elite, which rose to power after it had overthrown the Mengistu-Regime in 1991.
Isabel Macedo (University of Minho)
Paper short abstract:
This research analysed the representations conveyed by Portuguese films produced between 2008 and 2018 about intercultural relations. This data was crossed with the results of interviews with teachers from Portuguese secondary schools, involved in the coordination of the National Cinema Plan (PNC).
Paper long abstract:
History is a central ingredient in the construction and maintenance of the 'imagined community' of a nation. The past, not only the colonial past - but intimately connected to it - collective events considered significant (eg. the 'Discoveries') were selectively incorporated into the imagery of Portuguese society, helping to shape identities and visions of the world.
These 'historical charters' were used in an instrumental way, determining identity strategies, visions about migrants and, consequently, how the population relate to the 'Other'. Each culture elaborates a repertoire of interrelated symbols and representations that not only constrain the emergence of new representations but also contain agreed facts that can be explored politically. Manifestations of historical deeds can be found in the media, monuments, textbooks, films, and stories that people tell their children and grandchildren, shaping self and hetero-representations.
Current and past migratory flows, racial representations disseminated in the colonial period, and the manifestations of racism we observe today are closely related phenomena and require in-depth and interdisciplinary analysis.
This research analysed the representations conveyed by Portuguese films produced between 2008 and 2018 about intercultural relations. These data were crossed with the results of interviews with teachers from Portuguese secondary schools, involved in the coordination of the National Cinema Plan (PNC), listening to their opinions about the role of cinema in the educational process. Which approaches are advocated and implemented by teachers to teach or educate for citizenship, otherness and identity through cinema? How are teachers trained to cope with these issues using films?
Maria da Graça Gomes de Pina (Università degli studi di Napoli "l'Orientale")
Paper short abstract:
A group of designers decided to give use to ALUPEC by intertwining tradition with information, conveying the first Capeverdian comic book in creole. The animus of this contribution is to discern the visual strategies used to expedite both the learning and structural processes of the written creole.
Paper long abstract:
Even though Portuguese remains as the only official language in the archipelago of Cape Verde, the creole spreads out through all the territory as the people's common language and expression. The advocacy and subsequent attempts to introduce the UNACAW (Unified Alphabet for the Capeverdian Writing) / ALUPEC (Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita do Cabo-verdiano) as an alphabet that could render creole writing as standard and as such become ex cathedra, have been in the past few years, causing some friction by means of debate amongst the archipelago scholars. A group of young people decided to give good use to the UNACAW /ALUPEC by intertwining tradition with information, conveying thus the first Capeverdian comic book in creole. The animus of this contribution is to discern the visual strategies used to expedite both the learning and structural processes of the written creole within the younger (and older) layer of the Capeverdian community.
Ana Josefa Cardoso (Universidade Nova de Lisboa )
Paper short abstract:
The Bilingual Education Project is founded on the need to counter the disadvantages faced by children in Cape Verde whose mother tongue is officially excluded from formal education. This project shows how formal education can contribute to the construction of cultural identity.
Paper long abstract:
Despite academic and scientific recommendations, Cape Verde does not yet include mother tongue teaching across the board in its education policy.
In the academic year 2013/2014 the Ministry of Education of Cape Verde gave an official approval to implement a Bilingual Education Project to run for 6 years. This project fostered public discussion on issues of bilingualism and motivated scientific events on bilingualism in Cape Verde.
At the level of linguistic diversity, it gives a new value to a Creole language, which has never been the target of favourable linguistic policy in Cape Verde. It also facilitates the process of preserving one's own language. This project brought far reaching cultural benefits. It respects and implements what is stipulated in the Constitution of Cape Verde, this is the language that the Cape Verdeans use in their daily life and to communicate with those who are in the diaspora. It is not by chance that all Cape Verdeans share the opinion that the Creole language is the greatest cultural identity reference point of the Cape Verdean nation. The mother tongue of Cape Verde is an Intangible Cultural Heritage that plays a fundamental role in the preservation of oral traditions (a history of traditional oral literature, songs of work, traditional medicine and other popular knowledge), it is the chosen language by which the people express themselves at all Cape Verdean cultural events.
Fátima Candé (University of Southampton)
Paper short abstract:
The objective of this study is to analyse the training process of teacher’s trainers of the Regional Technical Team, regarding the promotion and development of Portuguese language teaching in their activities of training and accompaniment of school teachers in the region of Bafatá, Guinea- Bissau.
Paper long abstract:
After the independence of Guinea-Bissau in 1974, there was a great concern of the new government to train teachers at national level in order to respond to the school explosion, as a result of the implementation of the principle of an education system that is free and compulsory. However, it was found that there were great difficulties that arose not only from material and human resources but also from the lack of both teaching and language skills which represents great challenges in terms of teaching in general, but especially for Portuguese language teaching and learning, since this is not the first language of teachers and students.
This paper explores the process of teacher training and Portuguese language teaching in Guinea-Bissau, involving a group of teacher trainers from one of the regions of the country, Bafatá Regional Technical Team (ETR). In this study, the main aim is to understand how the intervention of ETR team contributes to the promotion and development of Portuguese language teaching through training and accompaniment activities with school teachers of Bafatá region in this educational, linguistic and socio-cultural context.