The project explored consistency and change in knowledge about Africa as it is represented in textbooks, as well as the processes of political and societal consensus-building related to this knowledge, in the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR and England from 1945 to 1995. In the wake of decolonisation and against the backdrop of the Cold War, all three countries saw existing structures of knowledge on Africa called into question and new ones emerge and undergo negotiation and debate.
Procedure
The project’s analysis comprised three levels:
- ‘Official knowledge’ as reflected in textbooks – media that carry the aura of particular objectivity, impact and political relevance and that have for these reasons repeatedly been at the centre of public debate. History and geography textbooks, the focus of this project, are especially illuminating in this respect, providing us with access to the interpretive patterns and structures of knowledge that predominate in a society.
- Research on practices of textbook production primarily takes place through archival sources in the collections of significant textbook publishers. The material held in such archives, which includes correspondence with authors as well as textbook concepts, manuscripts, and assessments, enables us to draw important conclusions on the conditions of production for knowledge transmitted to students in schools.
- Societal debates on knowledge relating to Africa in textbooks. In all three of the countries in this study, there have been continual discussions around what knowledge about Africa is deemed relevant for students to learn and how it should be presented in textbooks. These debates are reflected in textbook recommendations, petitions, and decrees issued by institutions such as the Standing Conference of the Education Ministers of the German Länder and UNESCO.
The project demonstrated the interconnections and reciprocal influences between these three areas of analysis. In doing so, it hopes to retraced the processes in which structures of knowledge around Africa are and have been produced, circulated and changed. By this case study it identified the stakeholders, processes and events that have generated the impetus for significant instances of recoding, effacing and subsequent rewriting and restructuring of textbook knowledge, and to uncover the ways in which knowledge about Africa has been the subject of debate and negotiation processes after 1945.
Results
The project was successfully completed in 2019 with a doctoral thesis.
The project organised the workshop ‘Key Characters in the History of Knowledge: Production, Circulation and Transformation of African Knowledge since 1945’ from 18–19 June 2015 in Braunschweig. The conference programme can be found here.
In addition, the project co-organised the conference ‘Knowledge Production in a Hybrid Age. Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Producing Textbooks and Digital Educational Media’, 3–4 December 2015 in Braunschweig. Further information is available here:
This project will also produce an archive guide, which will systematically outline the archive contents of textbook publishers in Germany and Great Britain. The guide will be completed in late 2016. More information here.
PUBLICATIONS
Lars Müller:
- Diskurse und Praktiken der Schulbuchproduktion in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und England am Beispiel von Afrikawissen. Göttingen, 2021: V&R unipress.
- Starving Hereros. Zur Geschichte einer Ikone der Vernichtung, in: Visual History. Online reference resource for historical visual research, November 2018, on: https://www.visual-history.de/2018/11/19/starving-hereros/.
- (Ed.) Wissen in Bewegung. Migration und globale Verflechtungen seit 1945. Berlin 2018 (together with Stephanie Zloch, Simone Lässig).
- Wissen in Bewegung. Migration und globale Verflechtung seit 1945. Einleitung, in: S. Zloch, L. Müller, S. Lässig (eds): Wissen in Bewegung. Migration und globale Verflechtungen seit 1945, Berlin 2018, 1–34 (together with Stephanie Zloch, Simone Lässig).
- Entwicklungspolitik als Bildungsinhalt. Schule und die Produktion von Wissen über globale Ungleichheit, in: S. Zloch, L. Müller, S. Lässig (eds): Wissen in Bewegung. Migration und globale Verflechtungen seit 1945, Berlin 2018, 247–281.
- Concepts of the Past: Colonialism, in: E. Fuchs, A. Bock (eds): Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies, London 2018, 281–292.
- British and German Textbook Publishers. Guide to Archival Collections, in: Eckert.Dossiers 12 (2017), 127 pages.
- Working Paper: Textbook Production in a Hybrid Age: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Producing Textbooks and Digital Educational Media, in: Eckert.Dossiers 6 (2016), 31 pages (together with Felicitas Macgilchrist, Marcus Otto und Steffen Sammler).
- Schulbücher zwischen Verlagsarchiv und Erinnerungsort. Potentiale der Archivarbeit für die Schulbuchforschung, in: S. Trültzsch-Wijnen; A. Barberi; T. Ballhausen (eds): Geschichte(n), Repräsentationen, Fiktionen. Medienarchive als Gedächtnis- und Erinnerungsort. Jahrbuch Medien und Geschichte 2016, Cologne 2016, 176–188.
- Die Geschichte sichtbar machen. Kontrastive Schulbuchanalyse und die Grenzen von Narration, in: K. Berner, F. Faß (eds): Sichtbares und Unsichtbares, Frankfurt am Main 2014, 135–156 (together with Lucas F. Garske).
- Schule und Empire. Das neue englische Geschichtscurriculum, in: Eckert. Das Bulletin 13(2013), 26–29. (together with Susanne Grindel).
- „We Need to Get away from a Culture of Denial”? The German-Herero War in Politics and Textbooks, in: Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society (JEMMS), 5(2013)1, 50–71.
- Kolonialismus und Modernisierung. Das diskursive Ringen um Afrika bei der Schulbuchentwicklung, in: M. Aßner, J. Breidbach, A. A. Mohammed, D. Schommer und K. Voss (eds), AfrikaBilder im Wandel?, Frankfurt am Main 2012, 195–208 (together with Felicitas Macgilchrist).
