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Through an ethnographic study of schooling in the Republic of Tatarstan, this book explores how competing notions of nationhood and belonging are constructed, articulated and negotiated within educational spaces. Amidst major political and ideological moves toward centralization in Russia under the Putin presidency, this small provincial town in Tatarstan provides a unique case of local attempts to promote and preserve minority languages and cultures through education and schooling. Ultimately, the study reveals that while schooling can be an effective instrument of the state to transform individuals as well as society as a whole, school also encompasses various spaces where the agency of local actors unfolds and official messages are contested. Looking at what happens inside schools and beyond-in classrooms, hallways and playgrounds to private households or local Islamic schools-Dilyara Suleymanova here offers a detailed ethnographic account of the way centrally devised educationalpolicies are being received, negotiated and contested on the ground.
List of contents
Chapter 1:Introduction: Education and the Politics of Belonging in Russia.- Chapter 2: Producing the Citizen: Political Dynamics of Education in Post-Soviet Russia.- Chapter 3: Language, (multi-)ethnicity and Local Responses to Educational Policies in a Small Tartar Town.- Chapter 4: Pedagogies of Culture Learning to Perform, to Belong, and to Remember.- Chapter 5: Pedagogy of Islam: Madrasa Education and Moral Upbringing.- Chapter 6: "I'm Only Half!": Negotiating Identities at School.- Chapter 7: Conclusion.
About the author
Dilyara Suleymanova is a research fellow at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland. She has published on issues of education, politics of identity, language revitalization, online social networks, Islamic education, extremism and conflict.
