1st Edition

History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation Reconsidering Joint Textbook Projects

Edited By Karina Korostelina, Simone Lässig Copyright 2013
    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book analyses the role of history education in conflict and post-conflict societies, describing common history textbook projects in Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Far East and the Middle East.

    Ever since the emergence of the modern school system and the implementation of compulsory education, textbooks have been seen as privileged media. The knowledge they convey is relatively persistent and moreover highly selective: every textbook author must choose and omit, condense, structure, reduce, and generalize information. Within this context, history textbooks are often at the centre of interest. There are unquestionably significant differences regarding homogeneity or plurality of interpretations when concepts of history education are compared internationally.

    This volume conducts a comparative analysis of common history projects in different countries and provides conceptual frameworks and methodological tools for enhancing the roles of these projects in the processes of conflict prevention and resolution. This book is timely, as issues of history education in conflict and post-conflict societies are becoming more popular with the increased realisation that unresolved disagreements about historical narratives can, and often do, lead to renewed conflict or even violence.

    This book will be of interest to students of peace studies and conflict resolution, political science, history, sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and international relations in general.

    Introduction: Post-conflict reconciliation and joint history textbook projects, Simone Lässig; Peace education and joint history textbook projects, Karina V. Korostelina  1. From textbook comparison to common textbooks? Changing patterns in international textbook revision, Georg Stöber  2. Symbol or Reality? The background, implementation and development of the Franco-German history textbook, Corine Defrance and Ulrich Pfeil  3. Overcoming the national framework of teaching media – Binational teacher’s books and multinational teaching materials, Robert Maier  4. Towards a joint German-Polish history textbook – Historical roots, structures and challenges, Simone Lässig and Thomas Strobel  5. Forging a common narrative in Former Yugoslavia – The design, implementation and impact of the Scholars’ Initiative, Charles Ingrao  6. Reconnecting history – The Joint History Project in the Balkans, Lubov Fajfer  7. History as a project of the future – The European history textbook debate, Falk Pingel  8. Learning each other’s historical narrative – A road map to peace in Israel/Palestine?, Achim Rohde  9. The Tbilisi Initiative – The story of an unpublished textbook, Karina Korostelina  10. Striving for common history textbooks in Northeast Asia (China, South Korea and Japan) – Between ideal and reality, Daqing Yang and Ju-Back Sin  11. Best Practice Models and Scholarly Concepts: Theoretical and Methodological Framework for Joint History Projects, Karina Korostelina

    Biography

    Karina V. Korostelina is Associate Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and Director of the Program on History, Memory, and Conflict at George Mason University, USA. 

    Simone Lässig is Director of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research and Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Braunschweig, Germany.