Raising European citizens: Constructing European identities in French and English textbooks

Schools play a pivotal role in the formation of identities and in the political socialization of youth. This study explores the social representations of European integration in French and English school textbooks and shows how the social representations are discursively used to construct national and European identities. By analysing the history and civics textbooks of major educational publishers, this study aims to demonstrate how European integration is understood, made familiar and concretized in the school textbooks of the two influential but different European countries. The findings suggest some shared and some diverse patterns in the way the two European countries portray and construct the political project of European integration. These representations, constructed around French Europe in French textbooks and ambivalent Europe in English textbooks, share the images of a strong European economy and a French-led political Europe. However, they position themselves differently with respect to the United States, motivation for the European unification process and the significance of common values and heritage. In both countries textbooks draw upon memories that are important for group identity. While the French textbooks make European integration meaningful in reference to a shared post-war collective memory and to a cultural memory based on a more ancient idea of Europe, shared values and heritage, the English textbooks anchor it more strongly to domestic policy.

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Nazistowski mord na Żydach w prasie polskich komunistów (1942–1944).

Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały ◽

10.32927/zzsim.180 ◽

2006 ◽

pp. 54-75

Author(s):

Klaus Peter Friedrich

Keyword(s):

Shared Responsibility ◽

The Political ◽

Right Wing ◽

Social Democrats ◽

The Social ◽

The Government ◽

Post War ◽

Polish Government ◽

The Right ◽

Political Right

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover

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Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780198804116.003.0007 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Aled Davies

Keyword(s):

Industrial Development ◽

The Political ◽

Social Democratic ◽

Financial Centre ◽

Conservative Government ◽

The Social ◽

Post War ◽

City Of London ◽

The Relationship ◽

The City

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....

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The Politics of Banking and Social Democracy

10.1093/oso/9780198804116.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Aled Davies

Keyword(s):

Banking System ◽

Social Democracy ◽

The Political ◽

Social Democratic ◽

Industrial Economy ◽

The Social ◽

1960S And 1970S ◽

Post War ◽

The 1960S ◽

Political Demand

This chapter concerns the politics of managing the domestic banking system in post-war Britain. It examines the pressures brought to bear on the post-war settlement in banking during the 1960s and 1970s—in particular, the growth of new credit creating institutions and the political demand for more competition between banks. This undermined the social democratic model for managing credit established since the war. The chapter focuses in particular on how the Labour Party attempted in the 1970s to produce a banking system that was competitive, efficient, and able to channel credit to the struggling industrial economy.

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Racism and Ethnocentrism: Social Representations of Preservice Teachers in the Context of Multi- and Intercultural Education

International Journal of Qualitative Methods ◽

10.1177/160940690500400301 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 1-19 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Nicole Carignan ◽

Michael Sanders ◽

Roland G. Pourdavood

Keyword(s):

Preservice Teachers ◽

Secondary Teachers ◽

Social Representations ◽

The United States ◽

Intercultural Education ◽

Constructivist Inquiry ◽

The Social ◽

Urban University ◽

Preservice Secondary Teachers ◽

Multicultural Perspective

Using a constructivist inquiry paradigm, the authors attempted in their content analysis to understand the social representations on race and ethnocentrism of preservice secondary teachers studying in an urban university in a Midwest city in the United States. Although social representations can be understood as something in which our participants deeply believe, this study suggests that racial and ethnocentric biases should be examined in the context of multi- and intercultural education. The authors favor a way of revisiting taken-for-granted ideas toward traditional, liberal, and critical or radical multiculturalism. They argue for the recognition not only of the differences and diversity of students (multicultural perspective) but also of the way in which teachers understand, communicate, and interact with them (intercultural perspective).

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Engaging for Puerto Rico: #RickyRenuncia (and #RickySeQueda) during El Verano del 19 and digital identities

10.31235/osf.io/wdk9u ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Danilo T Perez-Rivera ◽

Christopher Torres Lugo ◽

Alexis R Santos-Lozada

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Puerto Rico ◽

Social Activism ◽

The United States ◽

The Political ◽

Digital Revolution ◽

The People ◽

The Social ◽

The World ◽

Puerto Rican Diaspora

Between July 13-24, 2019 the people of Puerto Rico took the streets after a series of corruption scandals shocked the political establishment. The social uprising resulted in the ousting of the Governor of Puerto Rico (Dr. Ricardo Rosselló, Ricky), the resignation of the majority of his staff something unprecedented in the history of Puerto Rico; this period has been called El Verano del 19 (Summer of 19). Social media played a crucial role in both the organization and dissemination of the protests, marches, and other activities that occurred within this period. Puerto Ricans in the island and around the world engaged in this social movement through the digital revolution mainly under the hashtag #RickyRenuncia (Ricky Resign), with a small counter movement under the hashtag #RickySeQueda (Ricky will stay). The purpose of this study is to illustrate the magnitude and grass roots nature of the political movement’s social media presence, as well as their characteristics of the population of both movements and their structures. We found that #RickyRenuncia was used approximately one million times in the period of analysis while #RickySeQueda barely reached 6,000 tweets. Particularly, the pervasiveness of cliques in the #RickySeQueda show concentrations of authority dedicated to its propagation, whilst the #RickyRenuncia propagation was much more distributed and decentralized with little to no interaction between significant nodes of authority. Noteworthy was the role of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States of America and around the world, contributing close to 40% of all geo-located tweets. Finally, we found that the Twitter followers of the former governor had indicators of being composed of two distinct populations: 1) those active in social media and 2) those who follow the account but who are not active participants of the social network. We discuss the implications of these findings on the interpretation of emergence, structure and dissemination of social activism and countermovement to these activities in the context of Puerto Rico.

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Social Investment in an Age of Austerity: A Comparison of Family Policy Reforms in Four European Countries

Revija za socijalnu politiku ◽

10.3935/rsp.v27i3.1563 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 249-267

Author(s):

Sonja Blum ◽

Tatjana Rakar ◽

Karin Wall

Keyword(s):

Social Protection ◽

Family Policy ◽

Parental Leave ◽

European Countries ◽

Crowding Out ◽

Social Investment ◽

Policy Reforms ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Social ◽

Post War

The focus of this article is on family policy reforms in four European countries – Austria, Finland, Portugal, and Slovenia – between 2008 and 2015. These years were marked by the ‘Great Recession’, and by the rise of the social-investment perspective. Social investment is an umbrella concept, though, and it is also somewhat ambiguous. This article distinguishes between different social-investment variants, which emerge from a focus on its interaction with alternative social-policy perspectives, namely social protection and austerity. We identify different variants along the degree of social-investment: from comprehensive, over crowding out, towards lean forms. While the empirical analysis highlights variation, it also shows how there is a specific crisis context, which may lead to ‘crowding out’ of other policy approaches and ‘leaner’ forms of social investment. This has led to strong cutbacks in family cash benefits, while public childcare and parental leaves have proved more resilient in the investigated countries. Those findings are revelatory in the current Covid-19 pandemic, where countries are entering a next, possibly larger economic crisis. Key words: family policy; crisis; social investment; austerity; case studies denoted as the end of the ‘golden age’ of the welfare state, putting a halt to its expansion in post-war prosperity. Faced with low growth rates and rising unemployment, the recipe chosen by many countries was to ‘relieve’ labour markets. Alongside such measures as early retirement schemes, family policy was a key part of the reform programme and recourse to parental leave

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Reclaiming the Political: Women and the Social History of Suffrage in Great Britain, France, and the United States

Journal of Women s History ◽

10.1353/jowh.2000.0023 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 172-181 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Laura E. Nym Mayhall

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Great Britain ◽

Social History ◽

The United States ◽

The Political ◽

The Social ◽

History Of

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FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR: THE WARTIME ALLIANCE AND POST-WAR TRANSITIONS, 1941–1947

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x01002291 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 45 (1) ◽

pp. 211-227 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

DAVID REYNOLDS

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

World War ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

The Social ◽

Post War ◽

The One ◽

The Cold War ◽

Second World

This review examines some of the recent British, American, and Russian scholarship on a series of important international transitions that occurred in the years around 1945. One is the shift of global leadership from Great Britain to the United States, in which, it is argued, the decisive moment was the fall of France in 1940. Another transition is the emergence of a wartime alliance between Britain and America, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on the other, followed by its disintegration into the Cold War. Here the opening of Soviet sources during the 1990s has provided new evidence, though not clear answers. To understand both of these transitions, however, it is necessary to move beyond diplomacy and strategy to look at the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the Second World War. In particular, recent studies of American and Soviet soldiers during and after the conflict re-open the debate about Cold War ideology from the bottom up.

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Law and Politics in Germany

Political Studies ◽

10.1111/j.1467-9248.1978.tb01298.x ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 348-362 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Philip Blair

Keyword(s):

Easy Access ◽

The Political ◽

Constitutional Court ◽

Political Issues ◽

Political Actors ◽

Law And Politics ◽

Basic Rights ◽

The Social ◽

Federal Constitutional ◽

Post War

German politics are still influenced by the tradition of legalism. Constitutional provisions often serve as criteria of political argument, and constitutional principles (e.g. the ‘social state’) and basic rights may be portrayed as programmatic ‘commandments' justifying specific political demands. The corollary is a propensity towards judicial, and thus ‘authoritative’, solutions to political disputes. The post-war establishment of the Federal Constitutional Court with comprehensive constitutional jurisdiction and easy access for the political actors has subjected major political issues to legal adjudication. Increasingly appeal to the Court has become a weapon of opposition, resorted to by the Christian Democrats to challenge such measures as the Basic Treaty with East Germany and the Abortion Reform. Despite general self-restraint vis-à-vis the political authorities, the Court has sometimes construed basic rights expansively as ‘participatory’ rights to positive government action. Recently it has been criticised for ‘conservatism’ and a tendency to restrict future legislative discretion. The ‘politicization of justice’, emerging from the judicialization of politics, could affect respect for the Court as authoritative arbiter. But it may foster a healthier relationship between politics and the law.

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