Historical Consciousness, Historical Media, and History Education Robert Thorp
Umeå/Falun 2014
Licentiatavhandlingar från Forskarskolan Historiska medier nr. 5 ISBN: 978-91-7601-077-8 Omslag: Sandra Olsson Elektronisk version tillgänglig på http://umu.diva-portal.org/ Tryck: Print & media, Umeå universitet Umeå 2014
For Engla and Ingrid
Table of Contents Table of Contents Abstract Acknowledgements Appendices Introduction Outline and Structure of the Introductory Summary Chapter Scope and Limitations of the Study Theoretical Framework Ontological Assumptions The Perceived Object
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Phenomenology
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The Practical Turn or Practice Theory
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Hermeneutics
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Knowledge and Truth
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The Perceiving Subject
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Consciousness
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Narration
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Identity
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History Didactical Assumptions 11 History Didactics 12 History 12 Historical Media 13 Historical Knowledge 13 Historical Thinking 15 Historical Consciousness 15 Summary 17 Previous Research 18 Defining Historical Consciousness 18 The Affirmative Strand 18 The Sceptical Strand 20 Developing Historical Consciousness 21 Applying Historical Consciousness in Media Analysis 22 Methodology 24 Paper I 24 Paper II 26 Paper III 27 Methodological Implications 28 Results – A Summary of the Papers 29 Paper I: ‘The Concept of Historical Consciousness in Swedish History Didactical Research’ 29
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Paper II: ‘Towards an Epistemological Theory of Historical Consciousness’ 31 Paper III: ‘Historical Consciousness and Historical Media: A History Didactical Approach to Educational Media’ 35 Discussion 38 Paper I: Circularity and Categorisation 38 Paper II: Transformation, Contextualisation, Rigidity, Eclecticism, and Eurocentrism 39 Paper III: Uses of History and the Problem of Consciousness 42 Further research 43 Conclusion 44 Short Summary in Swedish 45 Inledning 45 Resultat 45 Artikel I 45 Artikel II 47 Artikel III 50 Diskussion 51 References 52
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Appendices Paper I:
Thorp, R., ‘The Concept of Historical Consciousness in Swedish History Didactical Research’. In Cultural and Religious Diversity and Its Implications for History Education, edited by Joanna Wojdon, 207-24. Yearbook of the International Society for History Didactics 34. Schwalbach: Wochenshau Verlag, 2013. Reprinted with permission.
Paper II:
Thorp, R., ‘Towards an Epistemological Theory of Historical Consciousness’. Historical Encounters 1, no. 1, (June 2014): 17-28. Reprinted with permission.
Paper III:
Thorp, R., ‘Historical Consciousness and Historical Media: A History Didactical Approach to Educational Media’. Manuscript currently under review in Education Inquiry (14th of May 2014). Printed with permission.
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Abstract This thesis by publication contains an introductory summary chapter and three papers. The first paper presents a study of how the concept of historical consciousness has been defined, applied, and justified in Swedish history didactical research. It finds that there is consensus regarding the definition of what a historical consciousness is, but that there is variation in how the concept is applied. It is suggested that this variation makes historical consciousness a complex and vague concept. The second paper uses the results presented in the first paper as a point of departure and from thence argues for a broadened understanding of the concept of historical consciousness that incorporates its definition, application, development, and significance. The study includes research about historical consciousness primarily from Sweden, the UK, the USA and Canada. The paper presents a typology of historical consciousness and argues that level of contextualisation is what distinguishes different types of historical consciousnesses and that an ability to contextualise is also what makes historical consciousness an important concept for identity constitution and morality. The third paper proposes a methodological framework of historical consciousness based on the theory of historical consciosusness presented in the second paper. It presents arguments for why the framework of historical consciousness proposed can be useful for the analysis of historical media and it discusses how aspects of the framework can be applied in analysis. It then presents a textbook analysis that has been performed according to the stipulated framework and discusses its results regarding how textbooks can be used to analyse historical consciousness and its development.
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Acknowledgements The last two and a half years have been very rewarding for me: I have learnt many things and I have come to appreciate many new perspectives on life in general and history didactics in particular. Of course there are many people I have to thank for this. I was given the opportunity to become a member of ForHiM (Historical Media: Postgraduate School of History Education) at Umeå University and Dalarna University and came to know a very inspiring and supportive group of people in my fellow research students: Andreas, Lina, Peter, Maria, Aleksandra, Karin, José, Annie, Ulrika, Cecilia, Carl, Lena, Catharina, and Åsa. Thank you for many interesting discussions and good times. Thomas Nygren gave me very good advice at crucial moments in time and my research project would have looked very different if not for this. Tomas Axelson and Robert Parkes gave me excellent support and made me feel as if I actually knew what I was doing. I want to extend my gratitude to the staff at Dalarna University, Falun, for always making me feel very welcome. I am also thankful to the directors of the research school at Umeå University and Dalarna University for their hard work in making us progress: Daniel Lindmark, Björn Norlin, Anna Larsson, Carina Rönnqvist, Henrik Åström Elmersjö, and Monika Vinterek. The two most significant persons for me during the last two and a half years have been my supervisors Monika Vinterek and Roger Melin. Without your support, patience, and great wisd0m, I doubt that my research project would have come very far at all.
Robert Thorp Gävle, May 2014.
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Introduction This study deals with historical consciousness. The concept has served as a point of departure throughout my research. Having worked as an upper secondary school teacher of history in Sweden for nearly a decade, I thought I had a decent grasp of what a historical consciousness is and how it can be used in history education, and consequently I proposed a plan for my coming research in which I planned to visit classrooms to study and develop methods for developing a historical consciousness in pupils. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than I had expected, and for more reasons than I had initially thought. Instead I found that I had to investigate the notion of historical consciousness itself. Why historical consciousness? From a Swedish perspective, the concept has had a central position in history didactics and history education since 1994 when it was made the centre-piece of Swedish history curricula1: through the study of history, Swedish pupils are supposed to develop their historical consciousnesses.2 There has also been an increase in research internationally (especially from the UK, the USA, and Canada) that makes use of the concept.3 Even though historical consciousness to some extent has 1 Bengt Schüllerqvist, ‘Kanon och historiemedvetande – två centrala ämnesdidaktiska begrepp’, in Kanon och tradition: Ämnesdidaktiska studier om fysik-, historie- och litteraturundervisning, ed. Lars Brink and Roy Nilsson, Lärarutbildningens skriftserie/Högskolan i Gävle, 1652-0955; 2 (Gävle: Lärarutbildningen, Högskolan i Gävle, 2006), 136–140. 2 Läroplan, examensmål och gymnasiegemensamma ämnen för gymnasieskola 2011 (Stockholm: Skolverket, 2011), 66. 3 For some examples, see Frances Blow, ‘How Pupils’ Conception of the Relationship between the Past and Present Impact on the Ways They Make Sense of the History Taught’, in The Processes of History Teaching: An International Symposium Held at Malmö University, Sweden, March 5th-7th 2009, ed. Per Eliasson, Carina Rönnqvist, and Kenneth Nordgren, studier i de samhällsvetenskapliga ämnenas didaktik 15 (Karlstad: Karlstads universitet, 2011), 106–109; Catherine Duquette, Le rapport entre la pensée historique et la conscience historique. Elaboration d’une modèle d’interprétation lors de l’apprentissage de l’histoire chez les élèves de cinquième secondaire des écoles francophone du Québec (Québec: Université de Laval, 2011); Claudio Fogu, ‘Digitalizing Historical Consciousness’, History and Theory 48, no. 2 (2009): 103–121, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00500.x; Daniel Friedrich, ‘Historical Consciousness as a Pedagogical Device in the Production of the Responsible Citizen’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 31, no. 5 (December 2010): 649–663; Peter Lee and Jonathan Howson, ‘“Two out of Five Did Not Know That Henry VIII Had Six Wives:” Historical Literacy, and Historical Consciousness’, in National History Standards: The Problem of the Canon and the Future of Teaching History, ed. Linda Symcox and Arie Wilschut (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub., 2009), 211–264; Jan Löfström, ‘Finländska gymnasieelevers reflektioner över historiska gottgörelser - Vilka implikationer ger det för historieundervisningen i Finland?’, Nordidactica Journal of Humanities and Social Science Education, no. 2 (2011): 64–88; Peter Seixas, ‘Progress, Presence and Historical Consciousness: Confronting Past, Present and Future in Postmodern Time’, Paedagogica Historica 48, no. 6 (2012): 859–872, doi:10.1080/00309230.2012.709524; Denis Shemilt, ‘Drinking an Ocean and Pissing a Cupful: How Adolescents Make Sense of History’, in National History Standards: The Problem of the Canon and the Future of Teaching History, ed. Linda Symcox and Arie Wilschut (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub., 2009), 141–210; Zhan T. Toshchenko, ‘Historical Consciousness and Historical Memory: An Analysis of the Current Situation’, Russian Studies in History 49, no. 1 (1 May 2010): 37–52, doi:10.2753/RSH1061-1983490103; Brenda M. Trofanenko, ‘More than a Single Best Narrative: Collective History and the Transformation of Historical Consciousness’, Curriculum Inquiry 38, no. 5 (December 2008): 579–603; Arie Wilschut, Images of Time: the Role of an Historical Consciousness of Time in Learning History (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub., 2012); Sam Wineburg et al., ‘Common Belief and the
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become an increasingly central concept in history didactics, its use is marred with difficulties and the concept is perceived by researchers as vague and complex.4 This renders theoretical research into the concept of historical consciousness highly relevant. Furthermore, history didactics as an academic discipline is a rather recent phenomenon5 and much of the research in the field is inspired by research in other academic fields, which may result in a richness but also confusion regarding methodologies and concepts.6 This is very much the case concerning the concept of historical consciousness. It has been used not only by historians in research, but also by researchers in psychology7, philosophy8, literature9, sociology10, religious studies11, architecture12, political science13,
Cultural Curriculum: An Intergenerational Study of Historical Consciousness’, American Educational Research Journal 44, no. 1 (3 January 2007): 40–76, doi:10.3102/0002831206298677; and Esther Yogev, ‘Clio Has a Problem: How to Develop Active Historical Consciousness to Counter the Crisis in History Teaching’, Online International Journal of Arts and Humanities vol. 1, 2012, no. 2 (June 2012): 13–22. 4 For some examples see, Fredrik Alvén, Historiemedvetande på prov: En analys av elevers svar på uppgifter som prövar strävansmålen i kursplanen för historia (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2011), 25–26; Lars Andersson Hult, Att finna meningen i ett historieprov: En studie om mer eller mindre utvecklat historiemedvetande (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2012), 10; Duquette, Le rapport, 259; Kenneth Nordgren, Vems Är historien?: Historia som medvetande, kultur och handlingi det mångkulturella Sverige, doktorsavhandlingar inom den Nationella forskarskolan i pedagogiskt arbete, 1653-6894; 3 (Umeå: Fakultetsnämnden för lärarutbildning, Umeå universitet, 2006), 15. 5 Cf. David Ludvigsson, ‘Kritiska perspektiv på historiedidaktiken’, in Kritiska perspektiv på historiedidaktiken, ed. David Ludvigsson, Aktuellt om historia 2013:2 (Eksjö: Historielärarnas förening, 2013), 7; and Bengt Schüllerqvist, Svensk historiedidaktisk forskning, Vetenskapsrådets rapportserie, 16517350; 2005:9 (Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet, 2005), 14–26. 6 Maria Repoussi and Nicole Tutiaux-Guillon, ‘New Trends in History Textbook Research: Issues and Methodologies toward a School Historiography’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2, no. 1 (30 May 2010): 156–157, doi:10.3167/jemms.2010.020109. 7 Jürgen Straub, ‘Telling Stories, Making History: Toward a Narrative Psychology of the Historical Construction of Meaning’, in Narration, Identity and Historical Consciousness, ed. Jürgen Straub (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 44–98. 8 Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘The Problem of Historical Consciousness’, ed. Erick Raphael Jimenez et al., Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 5, no. 1 (1975): 8–52, doi:10.5840/gfpj1975512. 9 Mary Ingemansson, ‘Det kunde lika gärna ha hänt idag’: Maj Bylocks Drakskeppstrilogi och historiemedvetande hos barn i mellanåldrarna (Göteborg: Makadam förlag, 2010). 10 John Torpey, ‘A Pursuit of the Past: A Polemical Perspective’, in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 240–55. 11 Wolfgang Hasberg, ‘The Religious Dimension of Social Diversity and History Education’, in Cultural and Religious Diversity and Its Implications for History Education, ed. Joanna Wojdon, Yearbook of the International Society for History Didactics 34 (Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag, 2013), 147–69. 12 Reinhold Martin, ‘Historical Consciousness’, Journal of Architectural Education 64, no. 2 (2011): 82–82, doi:10.1111/j.1531-314X.2010.01130.x. 13 Elizabeth H. Prodromou, ‘Formation of Historical Consciousness Among Greek Adolescents: Some Insights for Political Science Theory’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 18, no. 2 (2000): 305–19, doi:10.1353/mgs.2000.0040.
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and educational research, spawning a rich but sometimes confusing body of research that uses the concept. In order to gain a firmer grasp of how the concept of historical consciousness can be understood, one aim of this study is to analyse the use of the concept of historical consciousness (and related concepts). Since historical consciousness is a concept that is central for history education, particularly in Sweden, another aim of the present study is to discuss how the concept of historical consciousness can be understood and applied in history didactics and history education. The investigation in this study has been guided by the following questions of research: How is the concept of historical consciousness presented in research? How, according to research, is a historical consciousness developed? If possible, can an understanding of historical consciousness be reached that incorporates the perspectives that exist regarding the concept? To what extent can this understanding of the concept be applied to enhance analyses of historical media regarding their ability to promote historical understanding?
Outline and Structure of the Introductory Summary Chapter This study contains an introductory summary chapter and three papers. In the introductory summary chapter, the ontological and theoretical assumptions that underlie the research presented in the papers are made explicit and defined, the relation of this study to previous research is specified, the methodology of the study is presented and discussed, and, finally, the results of this study are presented and discussed. This outline is especially significant for the second paper since the argument presented there rests on many theoretical assumptions that need to be made explicit in order for the argument to have a chance of succeeding. The first paper presents a study of how the concept of historical consciousness is used in Swedish history didactical research and should be regarded as the starting point for the arguments and theories I develop in the two following papers. The second paper argues for a theory of historical consciousness that incorporates the various perspectives of the concept that exists in research and proposes a theory for the development of historical consciousness in an individual. The third paper discusses the understanding of the concept outlined in the second paper and applies one aspect of it in textbook analysis. Thus it could be argued that the three papers constitute a whole since the first paper presents a descriptive conceptual analysis and the second paper a normative or prescriptive conceptual analysis resulting in a regulative definition of the concept of historical consciousness which is then operationalised in the third paper.
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Scope and Limitations of the Study Since the scope of the study is wide, its results are quite limited. The present study should first and foremost be regarded as an attempt to reach a broadened and deepened theoretical understanding of the concept of historical consciousness and its presumed theoretical underpinnings and a specification as to how the concept could be related to its manifestations, development, and how it can be applied in practice. These matters, as the study will show, are complex and as a result, the theoretical positions outlined are in want of empirical confirmation. The textbook analysis in the third paper is quite limited and is mostly intended to illustrate one of many possible approaches to research using the framework and understanding of historical consciousness that is developed.
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Theoretical Framework This section aims to make explicit various assumptions that I have made implicitly in my research and to specify my understanding of the most central concepts or notions that I deploy in the same research. Hence, the focus here is not to give exhaustive accounts of these matters, but rather to illustrate how I perceive them and why I have chosen to apply them in the manner I have done. The first sub-section presents the ontological assumptions of my research and the second sub-section the history didactical ones.
Ontological Assumptions The ontological approach in this study could best be labelled phenomenological. In the context of this study, I use phenomenology primarily as a theory that illustrates basic ontological categories, not as a methodological approach to doing science. As a methodological approach I instead use what could probably best be called hermeneutics. I believe that these two theoretical perspectives can be used together since I perceive them as dealing with two different ontological aspects: phenomenology deals with questions about the world and hermeneutics deals with questions of the interpretation of the world. I am thus primarily interested in phenomenology as a theory that illustrates how we perceive the world and hermeneutics as a theory that deals with how we interpret this perception. Consequently, in this study phenomenology should only be understood as a theory that describes how we perceive the world, and hermeneutics only as a theory that describes humans as interpreting beings, i.e. as a method of interpretation.14 I have decided to divide this section into two sub-sections. The Perceived Object deals with metaphysical assumptions about the constitution of our perceptions of the world, and The Perceiving Subject deals with how individuals experience the world and what significance that may have. The Perceived Object Phenomenology At the most fundamental level, I have applied what could be called a phenomenological approach in my research. Hence, phenomenology is what could be called the ontological point of departure for the present study. According to phenomenology, we can only study the world or reality as it appears to us. Phenomenology thus states that we can only describe and analyse phenomena as they occur to us and that we should give detailed atten-
14 For a similar view on hermeneutics, see Gunnar Karlsen, Språk, tolkning och argumentation: En samhällsvetenskaplig introduktion (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2012), 11–16.
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tion to aspects of the world that we more or less take for granted.15 Thus, with this view the basic ontological category is our perception of the constitution of reality. Accordingly, phenomenology stresses the importance of using the practical or material world as the starting point when doing research (or trying to understand the world around us) and not theoretical devices or notions of reality. According to the view presented here, the material world is the primary object of knowledge, and not theoretical abstractions as, for instance, the Platonic Ideals. When we want to study the world we should begin with the phenomena, not with theories about them. The reason I have chosen to apply phenomenology in my research is that it is a theoretical approach that harmonises well with educational objectives and practices. If we want to be specific about how knowledge construction and development occur, it is valuable to study the practices that surround these phenomena.16 This has also been the starting point of my research: through a close study of how the concept of historical consciousness is presented and used in research I have categorised the various conceptions of the concept which have then been used as a stepping stone for my further research. The Practical Turn or Practice Theory Closely connected to a phenomenological view of the world is what has become known as practice theory or the practical turn. At the most generic level, it can be said to be an approach to research that treats practice as a fundamental category or as a theoretical point of departure for research. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language-games and Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutical holism have been essential to the development of a practical approach to theory. Wittgenstein claimed that language has to be interpreted in its context of use in order to analyse its meaning, and Heidegger argued that rules or theories have to be assessed in their context, since a theory or rule in theory can be made to apply to anything and explain more or less all phenomena in the world. Taking its practical application into account, on the other hand, enables us to gain a rich understanding of it.17 For instance, the abstract concept of justice can be defined as “the quality of being just” or “fairness.”18 However, if one applies the concept as a principle for legal isonomy, it comes to mean something quite different than if applied as a princi15 Konrad Marc-Wogau, ‘Edmund Husserls kritik av psykologismen’, in 1800-talet, ed. Konrad Marc-Wogau, Filosofin genom tiderna 3 (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers bokförlag, 1965), 293. 16 Cf. Monika Vinterek, Åldersblandning i skolan: Elevers erfarenheter, doktorsavhandlingar i Pedagogiskt arbete, 1650-8858; 1 (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 2001), 82–89. 17 Cf. David G. Stern, ‘The Practical Turn’, in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. Stephen P. Turner and Paul A. Roth (Padstow: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003), 185, 192–200. 18 This is what the entry for ‘justice’ in Randolph Quirk, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2nd ed. (Harlow: Longman, 1992) states.
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ple for Marxist economical re-distribution, and this is because the application of a concept affects its definition, according to this view.19 This is the approach to theory I have applied in the present study since I think it allows us to analyse the importance of practice from a number of perspectives. Two of them are that the way we apply concepts comes to determine what we perceive them to mean (i.e. the use of a concept affects its meaning) and in order to analyse theoretical notions (like historical consciousness) we need something manifest or concrete on which to establish our analyses.20 Hermeneutics The practice theoretical perspective I have adopted is hermeneutics. According to Hans-Georg Gadamer the aim of hermeneutics is to make evident the wonder of understanding not as a secretive communication between souls, but as a co-operation in mutual meaning-making. Every valid interpretation needs to bracket or differentiate itself from the influence of the contemporary world and prejudices of the interpreting subject. The interpreter needs to direct her attention to matters as they are.21 This, I believe, is meant to direct us towards an appreciation of the importance of the practice of interpretation, rather than the interpretation itself. Understanding thus becomes a holistic endeavour: we have to take the full context of the object we study into account. Furthermore, it is in the dialectical engagement with the object that we can reach the fullest interpretation, not by applying a certain method when doing analysis.22 The ideal here is that we should strive towards a kind of hermeneutical openness using the dialectic method in text analysis.23 The interpreter should always try to make explicit her presumptions or prejudices when studying texts, and then strive to engage with these presumptions in order to take the full context of the text into account. An interpreter that does not engage in this kind of dialectic method runs the risk of becoming arbitrary since the point of view of the experiencing subject is not taken into account even though it is essential to the meaning that is derived from a certain account.24 This is an approach to interpretation that I find suitable for the aim of this study: if we want to be able to say anything with any degree of certainty of 19 Cf. Karlsen, Språk, tolkning och argumentation, 38; and Quentin Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1 January 1969): 46, doi:10.2307/2504188. 20 Cf. Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, 46–52.
21 Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Om förståelsens cirkel’, in Filosofiska strömningar efter 1950, ed. Konrad MarcWogau, Filosofin genom tiderna 5 (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers bokförlag, 1981), 327–328. 22 Cf. Dagfinn Föllesdal, Lars Wallöe, and Jon Elster, Argumentasjonsteori, språk og vitenskapsfilosofi, 5th ed. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1992), 97–100. 23 Per-Johan Ödman, Tolkning, förståelse, vetande: Hermeneutik i teori och praktik (Stockholm: Norstedts akademiska förlag, 2007), 25–30. 24 Gadamer, ‘Om förståelsens cirkel’, 330.
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what a historical consciousness can mean, why it can be perceived as essential to individuals, or how it can be developed, it is important to engage with both our understanding of the concept and the meaning-making it is intended to cause in individuals from a practical perspective. A theory of historical consciousness that focuses on individual meaning-making thus needs to take the individual context and practice into account. Knowledge and Truth Considering the hermeneutical approach in this study, I have applied a view of knowledge and truth that could be called inter-subjective verifiability or criticisability; an important aspect of scientific knowledge is that it can be criticised and reproduced by others.25 Hence, it is important for researchers (and people in general) to be able to explain how they went about getting the knowledge they possess. If a scientist (or person) fails to do this in an intelligible or acceptable manner, we are prone to question the value of the knowledge the person possesses. In order to enhance inter-subjective verifiability or criticisability, it is important to strive for clarity regarding the concepts we use and the results we get from using these concepts. If we use concepts that are not specified in detail in our research (or elsewhere), it may be difficult to assess what we mean by what we say, hence the results of our studies (i.e our knowledge) cannot be evaluated.26 For instance, Ludwig Wittgenstein once stated that “Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly,”27 and according to him, the basic problem with philosophy was that it did not make sense due to its lack of conceptual clarity.28 In this sense, knowledge and its production are inherently social in character: what is knowledge is determined by the context in which it is perceived or conceived, and what is acceptable knowledge production (or science) is also contextually contingent. This does not mean that anything goes, but rather that we have to pay close attention to the context in which pieces of knowledge were created to assess the value of them. Furthermore, knowledge and what is perceived to be valuable knowledge are dynamic: few would have guessed that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, when it was published, would have as fundamental an impact on modern science as it has today and many people doubted the veracity of Darwin’s claims. To claim that we are descendants of monkeys was in some circles both ridiculous and blasphemous, and to think so was not perhaps as foolish 25 Cf. Björn Badersten, Normativ metod: Att studera det önskvärda (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2006), 74–79. 26 Cf. Sven Ove Hansson, Verktygslära för filosofer (Stockholm: Thales, 2010), 124–125.
27 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. (Charles Kay) Ogden, 2010, para. 4.116, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5740. 28 Ibid., para. 4–4.01.
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in the 1860’s and 1870’s as we might like to think today if we consider the scientific and social context of Darwin’s work.29 One aim of a hermeneutic approach to knowledge can be to dissolve what is sometimes called the Cartesian distinction: the notion that knowledge is binary and can be either objective or relative, absolute or incomplete in character. Hermeneutics urges us to engage with the inherently dynamic and social aspect of knowledge: our guiding notion in search of knowledge should be to approximate verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) instead of binary truthvalue.30 With this view, knowledge and the holding of truth are always relative to the context in which they exist, and this is an essential aspect of knowledge. Hence, it could be argued that knowledge is not possible without an appreciation of its relative and dynamic character. The Perceiving Subject Consciousness At the most fundamental level, human beings experience the world through their consciousnesses. I regard consciousness primarily to be a function in an individual. This means that a consciousness cannot be reduced to mere sensory loci or parts of the brain. It is by virtue of our consciousness that we become aware of phenomena or objects, and consequently, the sensory loci or the phenomena that appear in our consciousnesses are subordinate to this function of our consciousness: without this function, there would be nothing of which to speak, there would be no experiences.31 Consciousness is thus primarily perceived as a function and not a physiological or mental entity. In phenomenological research on consciousness, it can be useful to differentiate between what may be called applied and basic consciousness. Applied consciousness deals with the objects that appear in our consciousness and that can be studied in research. Basic consciousness, however, is that by virtue of which we come to be aware of the objects of our consciousness. Consequently, what appears in the applied consciousness of individuals is what we can investigate and assess objectively (or inter-subjectively), because we have basic consciousness. With this view we cannot study basic consciousness in the same way since that would require some kind of extra-
29 Cf. Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 3. ed., (rev.). (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989), 222–226; Peter Seixas, ‘Historical Consciousness: The Progress of Knowledge in a Postprogressive Age’, in Narration, Identity and Historical Consciousness, ed. Jürgen Straub (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 149; and Ödman, Tolkning, förståelse, vetande, 32–34. 30 Cf. Richard J. Bernstein, Bortom objektivism och relativism: Vetenskap, hermeneutik och praxis, Filosofi och samhällsteori, 99-0864008-9 (Göteborg: Röda bokförlaget, 1991), 307–309; and Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 233. 31 Ran Lahav, ‘What Neuropsychology Tells Us About Consciousness’, Philosophy of Science 60, no. 1 (1993): 79.
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consciousness (whatever that could be).32 This view harmonises well with the hermeneutic approach: there can be a consciousness outside of consciousness as little as there can be an understanding outside of understanding. In a similar manner, historical consciousness can primarily be understood as the function by which individuals make sense of history. Hence, a historical consciousness can be found in the applied consciousness of individual human beings, in how they make sense of and use history. Narration When we are conscious of something, we use narration to convey it, both to ourselves and others. In order for us to comprehend, or even experience, things, we need to narrate them, to put them in words. By narrating our experiences, they come to make sense to us and we can distinguish between different phenomena because we narrate them. Some think that narration distorts reality since it enforces some kind of order on a reality that is disharmonic and chaotic in character.33 However, in order to make that postulation, one has to assume certain things about reality. It has to be shown what reality is behind narration, which from a phenomenological perspective seems an impossible and, ultimately, meaningless endeavour since we would have to do it without disseminating what we perceive of reality. To speak of matters beyond what we can perceive or convey to others seems, however, not only meaningless but also counter-productive. Since everything we know or experience has to be put into words to become comprehensible, to invoke that we cannot really know what things are like because our words distort them plunges us into a sea of uncertainty without any hope of relief. Indeed, there is very little we know if we cannot put words to it or narrate it.34 Consequently, I use narration in a very broad or loose sense. More or less any structures can be applied to narratives, and the structures that are applied can probably be varied and modified indefinitely.35 The key aspect here is that narration is the foundation of how we can intelligibly experience the world, i.e. it is central to human epistemology. This does not mean that I claim that narratives constitute reality, but rather that they constitute our perception of reality; human reality is essentially a linguistic reality.36 Since
32 Cf. Mark Rowlands, ‘Consciousness’, in Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, ed. Shaun Gallagher and Daniel Schmicking (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 92–95. 33 Cf. Louis O. Mink, ‘Interpretation and Narrative Understanding’, The Journal of Philosophy 69, no. 20 (9 November 1972): 736, doi:10.2307/2024670. 34 Cf. David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy, 0550-0060 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1986), 25–29. 35 Cf. Marya Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007), 95–99. 36 Ödman, Tolkning, förståelse, vetande, 47.
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my approach to research is hermeneutic in character, narration becomes an essential notion. Identity If we claim that narration constitutes our perception of the world, it is also the means by which we perceive ourselves, our identities. The view of identity that I have applied in the present study has been characterised as the narrative self-constitution view. According to this view individuals create and develop their identities by creating narratives about themselves. Furthermore, even though most identity-constitutive narration is unconscious, an awareness of how narration relates to our identities is essential for personhood.37 An individual who is not aware of the fact that her identity is dynamic and subject to how she perceives herself through narratives could thus not be regarded as having gained a profound knowledge of herself.38 Another key aspect of identity formation with the narrative self-constitution view is temporality. It is essential that individuals perceive themselves as temporally persisting subjects: what I did yesterday affects who I am today, and who I am and what I do today will affect who I will be tomorrow. This also seems to be essential to our view of morality: I am morally responsible for acts that I have committed and I evaluate the actions that I commit today from the perspective of what causes they are likely to have in the future. Without this temporal awareness it could be argued that an individual is not fully responsible for her actions, as can be argued to be the case with children for instance.39 It could further be argued that a notion of identity should be historically contextualised in order to avoid becoming essentialist: an awareness of the fact that the categories I perceive to be relevant for my identity formation are historically contingent, enables individuals to become fully aware of the scope of their identity constitution.40 I want to argue that it also makes historical consciousness a central component of identity constitution.
History Didactical Assumptions The ontological and epistemological approach outlined above also bears significance for how I perceive history didactics and history. This section aims at specifying how I regard history didactics, history, historical media,
37 Cf. Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves, 93–94. 38 This is a notion of identity and personhood is closely connected to existentialist views of identity, which in turn should be regarded as a phenomenological approach to identity formation, cf. David E. Cooper, Existentialism: A Reconstruction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 187. 39 Cf. Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves, 2, 94. 40 Cf. Margaret R. Somers, ‘The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach’, Theory and Society 23 (1994), 612.
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historical knowledge, historical thinking, and historical consciousness, i.e. key aspects of how history is perceived, disseminated, and understood. History Didactics On the most general level, history didactics deals with how we convey and understand history in all its shapes (i.e. as science, media phenomena, in the classroom, etc.). From a didactical perspective, history does not necessarily deal primarily with pieces of historical knowledge, but rather with how history is portrayed, interpreted, and used in contemporary society. 41 For these reasons, the way we use history becomes essential in history didactics and it also becomes the point of departure for all research that is history didactical in character.42 History The term history has sometimes been called an unreliable signifier since it has a number of connotations attached to it. We have the academic discipline taught at universities, the subject we teach at schools, the record of past events (i.e. works of historians, historical artefacts, et cetera), and then also the past itself understood as the sum of everything that has ever happened. If we apply a practice theoretical perspective on history, these four different notions seem to collapse into two: the first notion deals with history itself (as having a teleological, some other, or no purpose) which could be called an ontological perspective, and then we have the notion of history as a practice performed by historians and others, which could be called a focus on the uses of history.43 By applying a hermeneutic perspective on history, I argue that these two notions of history also seem to merge: because a prerequisite for understanding something is that we interpret it from a contextual perspective and that we cannot (sensibly) talk about what we cannot experience, talk of history as an ontological notion comes to be influenced by uses of history as well. If we apply a hermeneutic approach to history, history must include an assessment of the uses inherent in history, or the representational practices that go into disseminating something historical. Otherwise we run the risk of becoming arbitrary in our representations of history. This does not mean that historical knowledge becomes impossible as has sometimes been implied by postmodernist thinkers, but rather that historical knowledge re-
41 Nordgren, Vems är historien?, 14. 42 Per Eliasson et al., ‘Inledning’, in Historia på väg mot framtiden: Historiedidaktiska perspektiv på skola och samhälle, ed. Per Eliasson et al. (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2010), 9–10. 43 Cf. Robert J. Parkes, Interrupting History: Rethinking History Curriculum after ‘The End of History’, Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education., Volume 404 (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2011), 3–5.
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quires context to be made specific, both that of the historical agent or source and that of the interpreting subject.44 Historical Media Following the argument presented above, a historical medium is more or less anything that conveys something historical, be it a history textbook, a teacher, or an old guitar amplifier. This means that the use of the medium determines whether it should be perceived to be historical in character or not. If I want to use a certain object to disseminate something historical, that makes it a historical medium. Consequently, media that would not generally be called historical can indeed be so if they are used for that purpose. The same kind of reasoning can be inverted as well: we can use media that have deliberately been made to be historical in ways that are not historical and thus we turn them into regular or other kinds of media. This is the reason why I perceive the usage of media as being so central when it comes to determining its meaning.45 Some historical media have been deliberately produced to be historical, as for instance history textbooks or historical films. Consequently, these media could be regarded as artefacts of a historical culture in the sense that they convey what is perceived as historically significant and how history is portrayed by a certain historical culture. It could be argued that these historical media are full of uses of history and as such can be regarded as part of a larger historical culture. Historical Knowledge There are four aspects of historical knowledge that I want to focus on in the present study: (i) basic historical facts, (ii) 1st and 2nd order concepts of history, (iii) contextualisation, and (iv) inter-subjectivity. The most fundamental aspect is knowledge of basic historical facts (i.e. facts that are tentatively accepted by a scientific (or other) community): that World War I was fought between the years 1914 and 1918, for instance. The second aspect deals with applying 1st and 2nd order concepts on historical pieces of knowledge. We can have knowledge of what in research is generally called 1st order concepts: concepts that relate to history, such as “feudalism,” “the French Revolution,” “or “Witch Processes.” These concepts are used to order and categorise various historical facts in different cohorts (for want of a better word) of knowledge. 2nd order concepts, on the other hand, are concepts that we can use to analyse history synchronously and 44 Cf. Ibid., 6–15. 45 Cf. Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, ed. Todd Samuel Presner, Cultural Memory in the Present, 99-2896218-9 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), 324–326; and James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), xii–xiii.
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diachronously. Examples of 2nd order concepts are causation, change and continuity, significance, et cetera.46 The third aspect of historical knowledge deals with an ability of contextual analysis. When we apply historical thinking to history, we learn to assess historical representations from a contextual perspective. We learn to appreciate how important the historical agent’s temporal and spatial context was for her understanding of the world and, hopefully, we come to realise how important our own temporal and spatial contexts are for our understanding of the world and history.47 Furthermore, the level of contextualisation an individual has of historical pieces of knowledge influences her epistemic attitudes towards knowledge, i.e. her attitudes about the character and nature of historical accounts. Individuals that have no awareness of the representational practices of history (such as interpretation, etc.), have no means of handling contradictory accounts of history except by rejecting or accepting them. With an understanding of the importance of context in history, it becomes possible for an individual to navigate between differing accounts of history and we also have a method for ascertaining the value of the historical piece of information we have at hand. Few historians would use sources that have no provenance regarding their origin, i.e. knowledge about the context of the source.48 The fourth and final aspect of historical knowledge that I want to stress is inter-subjectivity. If we regard historical knowledge from an inter-subjective perspective, it is essential that historical knowledge is contextualised according to how we have come to be certain of the historical knowledge we possess. Since all history can be perceived to be an art of interpretation and representation, a failure to grasp the context of this interpretation results in an inability to make inter-subjectively acceptable truth-claims concerning history. As soon as we apply historical methodology to claims of historical
46 Cf. Stéphane Lévesque, Thinking Historically: Educating Students for the Twenty-First Century (Toronto: Buffalo, 2008), 17; Peter Seixas and Tom Morton, The Big Six: Historical Thinking Concepts (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2013), 2–4; and Peter Seixas and Carla Peck, ‘Teaching Historical Thinking’, in Challenges & Prospects for Canadian Social Studies, ed. Alan Sears and Ian Wright (Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press, 2004), 115–116. 47 Cf. Per Eliasson, ‘Kan ett historiemedvetande fördjupas?’, in Historien är nu: En introduktion till historiedidaktiken, ed. Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2009), 317, 325; and Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 18–24. 48 Cf. Cecilia Axelsson, ‘Att hantera källor - på gymnasienivå.’, in Kritiska perspektiv på historiedidaktiken, ed. David Ludvigsson, Aktuellt om historia 2013:2 (Eksjö: Historielärarnas förening, 2013), 72; Ivar Bråten et al., ‘The Role of Epistemic Beliefs in the Comprehension of Multiple Expository Texts: Toward an Integrated Model’, Educational Psychologist 46, no. 1 (January 2011): 54–55, doi:10.1080/00461520.2011.538647; and Peter Lee and Rosalynn Ashby, ‘Progression in Historical Understanding among Students Ages 7-14’, in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives, ed. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 204–212.
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knowledge that do not incorporate a contextual analysis, they seem to become examples of mythology or fantasy rather than knowledge.49 Historical Thinking A concept that deals with these four aspects of historical knowledge is historical thinking. It can be defined as an ability to appreciate how historical knowledge is constructed and to know what that means.50 By applying 1st and 2nd order concepts to history, individuals come to realise that the value of historical knowledge is dependent on the interpretation and representation of the historian, or writer of history.51 The aim of historical thinking is to enable the individual to make contextual analyses of history and thereby gain a meta-historical understanding that allows her to assess and use historical accounts, frameworks, and facts.52 Historical Consciousness Since historical consciousness is the central concept of this study and it is a concept with many different connotations, I think it is important to specify how I understand the development of the concept from a historiographical perspective. Hans-Georg Gadamer claimed that historical consciousness is the epistemological condition of modern man and that it was the most important development in the last 500 years. He regarded historical consciousness as the ability of being fully conscious of the fact that everything around us is historical and, consequently, that everything is relative to this fact, this historicity.53 When a person realises the historicity of everything around her and of all her opinions, i.e. that everything is contingent on historical factors (even history itself), she comes to understand that she must critically assess everything she experiences, perceives, and believes. The historical consciousness of modern humanity enables us to critically assess the world around us, and in extension becomes the only way we can reach “true” knowledge, according to Gadamer.54 With this view, historical consciousness becomes a hermeneutic concept that deals with the totality of history and historical understanding: it takes a meta-perspective on history and individual’s conceptions of history.
49 Cf. Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, 6–7. 50 Lévesque, Thinking Historically, 27. 51 Seixas and Peck, ‘Teaching Historical Thinking’, 115–116.
52 Peter Lee, ‘Understanding History’, in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 134–135; and Denis Shemilt, ‘The Caliph’s Coin: The Currency of Narrative Frameworks in History Teaching’, in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives, ed. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 97–98. 53 Gadamer, ‘The Problem of Historical Consciousness’, 8. 54 Ibid., 47–48.
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This change in epistemological perception dates back to the late 17 th and early 18th centuries, and can be understood as a new method of reading the classical histories of Thucydides, Herodotus, and others.55 Instead of accepting everything the classics wrote at face value, the French Enlightenment philosopher Bodin claimed that it is essential to take into account the historical realities of the classical authors, i.e. the historical context in which their work was conceived.56 The concept of historical consciousness became essential as a history didactical concept in West Germany in the 1960’s in the debate whether positivist knowledge of history is possible. West German philosophers, historians, and sociologists inspired by the work of Karl Marx criticised the dominant positivist historical tradition.57 History should, according to thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, be used emancipatorically, to make people aware of the shackles that history has put on them. By studying history, people will be able to break free from history’s grip and become truly free individuals. 58 Behind this position lies the assumption that the traditions and culture that are handed down through history have a limiting effect on human beings, a view akin to Karl Marx’s theories of class consciousness and its importance for the individual human being.59 This view of history came to heavily influence history didactics in West Germany during the 1970’s,60 and Karl-Ernst Jeismann in particular became influential in defining and specifying the concept.61 Historical consciousness came to Sweden in the early 1980’s, from West Germany via Denmark, and is hence affected by the German view of historical consciousness as an individual concept that deals with how human beings perceive themselves, the world around them, and the history therein.62 However, recently (primarily in the last decade) it is in the UK, the USA, and Canada that researchers have become interested in historical consciousness, which probably can be explained by the differing influences 55 John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness: The Remembered Past (Transaction Publishers, 1985), 10–16; and Yves Charles Zarka, ‘The Construction of Historical Consciousness’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2004): 416, doi:10.1080/0960878042000253088. 56 Zarka, ‘The Construction of Historical Consciousness’, 416.
57 Georg G. Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan U.P., 1984), 116–118. 58 Carolin Kreber and Patricia A. Cranton, ‘Exploring the Scholarship of Teaching’, The Journal of Higher Education 71, no. 4 (July 2000): 484, doi:10.2307/2649149. 59 Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (MIT Press, 1971), 46–48. 60 Klas-Göran Karlsson, ‘Historiedidaktiken och historievetenskapen - ett spänningsfyllt förhållande’, in
Historiedidaktik, ed. Christer Karlegärd and Klas-Göran Karlsson (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997), 24–25. 61 Halvdan Eikeland, ‘Begrepet historiebevissthet, historiedidaktisk forskning og dannelse Av historiebevissthet’, in Historiedidaktik i Norden 6: Historiemedvetandet - teori og praksis, ed. Sirkka Ahonen et al. (København: Institut for historie og samfundsfag, Danmarks Lærerhøjskole, 1997), 77–79. 62 Klas-Göran Karlsson, ‘Historiedidaktik: begrepp, teori och analys’, in Historien är nu: En introduktion till historiedidaktiken, ed. Ulf Zander and Klas-Göran Karlsson (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2009), 27–34.
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for research in history didactics. Whereas mainly historians argued for the importance of a history didactical perspective on history in West Germany and Sweden, it was psychologists that led the research in history didactics in the UK and the USA.63 For this reason, research focused more on how individuals learn history, i.e. historical cognition, and what are the best methods of teaching history instead of how the history learnt affects the individual and how the individual’s pre-conceptions about history influence the way she studies and learns it. Consequently, historical thinking has been the central concept in this research and is also the concept that has guided researchers towards the concept of historical consciousness. To summarise then it could be asserted that history didactical research on historical consciousness is a comparatively recent phenomenon, and that research about the concept emanates from (at least) two different traditions: one historical and philosophical in origin, and the other psychological and cognitive in character. This is, consequently, how I understand the origins and traditions of the concept of historical consciousness.
Summary To summarise, the theoretical framework I have presented can be regarded as fundamentally phenomenological and practically hermeneutic since the interpretation and understanding of historical phenomena is the core of my research problem. Furthermore, this interpretation and understanding always takes place in a specific context, and this context is crucial for how we come to interpret and understand what we study: the practice of our interpretation affects how we come to understand what we interpret, and this in turn affects what we interpret since we ascribe meanings to it. This should not be regarded as a retreat into relativism or postmodernism, but rather as an attempt to engage with the complexity of interpretation and meaning construction. This complexity is dealt with from the perspective of theory in the first two papers and from the perspective of empirical methodology in the third paper of this study.
63 Sam Wineburg, ‘The Psychological Study of Historical Consciousness’, in Narration, Identity and Historical Consciousness, ed. Jürgen Straub (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 188–198.
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Previous Research Since the focus of my research is threefold in character, the presentation below has been divided into three sections that correspond to my research questions. The first section analyses historical consciousness from a theoretical perspective, the second section focuses on how a historical consciousness is developed from a theoretical perspective, and the third section applies it when analysing historical media.
Defining Historical Consciousness In research that seeks to analyse historical consciousness from a theoretical and/or didactical perspective, there are primarily two strands of research: the affirmative strand which assumes that historical consciousness is a significant and central concept in history didactics, and the sceptical strand that questions this or how the concept is defined. The affirmative strand is the overwhelmingly dominant one in research that uses the concept. The Affirmative Strand The focus of the affirmative strand of research about historical consciousness is primarily descriptive in character: it states what a historical consciousness is and why it is a significant concept. It could be argued that there have been three waves of research in Sweden that make use of the concept. The first wave in the 1980’s and early 1990’s rarely defined what a historical consciousness is; the focus seems to have been to present a new concept.64 In 1997 an anthology called Historiedidaktik65 was published and it contained a chapter by the Danish history didactical researcher Bernard Eric Jensen66 that became seminal in Swedish history didactical research67, and it could be regarded as the starting point of what could be called the second wave of research about the concept. In the first years of the 21st century, a number of historical dissertations were published that used historical consciousness as a theoretical and analytical concept (the history didactical dissertation by
64 Cf. Tomas Englund, ‘Historieämnets selektiva tradition sett ur ett legitimitetsperspektiv’, in Historiedidaktik i Norden 3: Nordisk konferens om historiedidaktik Bergen 1987, ed. Magne Angvik et al. (Malmö: Lärarhögskolan i Malmö, 1988), 48–59; K.G. Jan Gustafson, ‘Barn, föräldrar och historia’, in Historiedidaktik i Norden 2: Nordisk konference om historiedidaktik, ed. Matti Angvik et al. (Frederiksberg: A. Køhlert, 1985), 175–186; K.G. Jan Gustafson, ‘Jag vet en gammal väg att gå...’, in Historiedidaktik i Norden 3: Nordisk konferens om historiedidaktik Bergen 1987, ed. Magne Angvik et al. (Malmö: Lärarhögskolan i Malmö, 1988), 132–145; Sture Långström, ‘Läroböcker och historiemedvetande’, in Historiedidaktik i Norden 6: Historiemedvetandet - teori og praksis, ed. Sirkka Ahonen et al. (København: Institut for historie og samfundsfag, Danmarks Lærerhøjskole, 1997), 287–304. 65 Klas-Göran Karlsson and Christer Karlegärd, eds., Historiedidaktik (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997). 66 Bernard Eric Jensen, ‘Historiemedvetande - begreppsanalys, samhällsteori, didaktik’, in Historiedidaktik, ed. Christer Karlegärd and Klas-Göran Karlsson (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997), 49–81. 67 Cf. Schüllerqvist, Svensk historiedidaktisk forskning, 51.
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Nanny Hartsmar68 in 2001 could be regarded as an exception since it is a history didactical study).69 Another important anthology70 on history didactics was published in 2004. It contained chapters by central Swedish history didactical researchers such as Klas-Göran Karlsson and Per Eliasson, and it could be regarded as the starting point of what I regard to be the third wave of research about historical consciousness in Sweden. This research has a strong history didactical focus and was initiated in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.71 In 2009 the Swedish government initiated two research schools in history didactics that have spawned further research using the concept.72 This research is predominantly empirical in focus, i.e. the concept of historical consciousness is applied to analyse empirical material, and practically all of the researchers have used Bernard Eric Jensen’s theory of historical consciousness as their point of departure. In the UK, the USA, and Canada, research on historical consciousness has been growing in the last decade. Central researchers here are Peter Lee, 68 Nanny Hartsmar, Historiemedvetande: Elevers tidsförståelse i en skolkontext, Studia Psychologica et Paedagogica. Series Altera, 0346-5926; 155 (Malmö: Institutionen för pedagogik, Lärarhögsk., 2001). 69 Cf. Martin Alm, Americanitis: Amerika som sjukdom eller läkemedel: Svenska berättelser om USA åren 1900-1939, Studia Historica Lundensia, 1650-755X; 10 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2002); Roger Johansson, Kampen om historien: Ådalen 1931: Sociala konflikter, historiemedvetande och historiebruk 1931-2000 (Stockholm: Hjalmarson & Högberg, 2001); Åsa Linderborg, Socialdemokraterna skriver historia: Historieskrivning som ideologisk maktresurs 1892-2000, Atlas Akademi, 99-3423719-9 (Stockholm: Atlas, 2001); and Ulf Zander, Fornstora dagar, moderna tider: Bruk av och debatter om svensk historia från sekelskifte till sekelskifte (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2001). 70 Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander, eds., Historien är nu: En introduktion till historiedidaktiken (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2004). 71 Niklas Ammert, Det osamtidigas samtidighet: Historiemedvetande i svenska historieläroböcker under hundra år (Uppsala: Sisyfos, 2008); Ingemansson, Det kunde lika gärna ha hänt idag; Nordgren, Vems Är historien?; Carina Renander, Förförande fiktion eller historieförmedling?: Arn-serien, historiemedvetande och historiedidaktik, Skrifter med historiska perspektiv, 1652-2761; 4 (Malmö: Malmö högskola, 2007); Igor Potapenko, Historiemedvetande och identitet: Om historiens närvaro i några estniska ungdomars liv (Stockholm: Institutionen för didaktik och pedagogiskt arbete, Stockholms universitet, 2010); Ylva Wibaeus, Att undervisa om det ofattbara: En ämnesdidaktisk studie om kunskapsområdet Förintelsen i skolans historieundervisning (Stockholm: Pedagogiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet, 2010). 72 Alvén, Historiemedvetande på prov; Andersson Hult, Att finna meningen i ett historieprov; Cathrin Backman Löfgren, Att digitalisera det förflutna: En studie av gymnasieelevers historiska tänkande (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2012); Kerstin Berntsson, Spelar släkten någon roll?: ‘Den lilla historien’ och elevers historiemedvetande (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2012); Arndt Clavier, ‘Mänsklighetens största problem genom alla tider’: En receptionsstudie av elevers miljöberättelser och historiska meningsskapande 1969 (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2011); Steven Dahl, Folkmord som film: Gymnasieelevers möten med Hotel Rwanda - en receptionsstudie (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2013); Ingmarie Danielsson Malmros, Det var en gång ett land... Berättelser om svenskhet i historieläroböcker och elevers föreställningsvärldar (Höör: Agering, 2012); Magnus Grahn, Möbelrike i tiden: Om historiebrukets betydelse för identifikationsprocessen i en näringslivsregion (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2011); Maria Johansson, Historieundervisning och interkulturell kompetens (Karlstad: Karlstads universitet, 2012); Maria de Laval, Det känns inte längre som det var länge sedan: En undersökning av gymnasieelevers historiska tänkande (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2011); Hans Olofsson, Fatta historia: En explorativ fallstudie om historieundervisning och historiebruk i en högstadieklass (Karlstad: Fakulteten för samhälls- och livsvetenskaper, Historia, Karlstads universitet, 2011); Bo Persson, Mörkrets hjärta i klassrummet: Historieundervisning och elevers uppfatttningar om förintelsen (Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet, 2011).
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Denis Shemilt, Sam Wineburg, and, particularly, Peter Seixas.73 As noted above, this research has been mainly practice oriented and has had a focus on historical cognition and history education. The central concept has been historical thinking and from thence researchers have become interested in the concept of historical consciousness. Generally speaking, historical consciousness is defined as a concept that “[incorporates] the connection between the interpretation of the past, the understanding of the present, and perspectives on the future.”74 This definition is then applied to explain how people understand history, orientate themselves in contemporary society, perceive themselves and their fellow human beings, act morally, make history, analyse and take part in historical culture, and gain insights about themselves, contemporary society and history. The Sceptical Strand The research that applies a sceptical approach to historical consciousness deals with definitional problems or what could be labelled Eurocentrism. It has been claimed that historical consciousness is methodologically difficult to study since it is an abstract immaterial concept that cannot be studied directly but rather through the historical remnants it leaves in culture. For these reasons it is argued that applying historical consciousness in analysis is meaningless since it is not theoretically specified how it relates to historical cultures and is easily confused with either uses of history or historical culture. Hence it is argued that it is more fruitful to focus on uses of history and historical culture (which are observable) and, consequently, historical consciousness does not bring any new dimensions into analysis.75 It has also been argued that historical consciousness is a difficult concept to apply when analysing progression in historical understanding since it does not specify how this progression happens. When we use historical consciousness as an analytical device, we cannot say anything about how individuals acquire more complex historical knowledge; instead it presents us with an argument as to why history may be important in people’s lives.76 Another kind of criticism against historical consciousness claims that the concept is Eurocentric in character since it seems to assume a certain type of 73 Sirkka Ahonen, ‘Historical Consciousness: A Viable Paradigm for History Education?’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 37, no. 6 (2005): 697–699. 74 Karl-Ernst Jeismann, ‘Geschichtsbewusstsein’, in Handbuch Der Geschichtsdidaktik, ed. Klaus Bergmann et al., vol. 1 (Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann, 1979), 42–44. 75 Erik Axelsson, ‘Historia i bruk och medvetande: En kritisk diskussion av två historiografiska begrepp’, in En helt annan historia: Tolv historiografiska uppsatser, ed. Samuel Edquist et al., Opuscula Historica Upsalensia 31 (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2004), 23–24. 76 Cf. Peter Lee, ‘““Walking Backwards into Tomorrow”: Historical Consciousness and Understanding History’, International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research 4, no. 1 (2004): 37–38; and Straub, ‘Telling Stories, Making History: Toward a Narrative Psychology of the Historical Construction of Meaning’, 79.
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rationality and regard of history that stems from the ideals of the European Enlightenment. Some African and Asian cultures have fundamentally different approaches to history and rationality, and it is thus Eurocentric to claim that historical consciousness is a universal notion that all human beings possess; it is an inherently essentialist concept that assumes Western rationality as the highest form of existence.77
Developing Historical Consciousness In research it is claimed that a historical consciousness can be developed by a variety of means. My main focus is on three of these: that a historical consciousness is developed when individuals are exposed to history multichronologically or multi-perspectively, that it is developed by applying genetic-genealogical perspectives on history, or that it is developed by applying historical thinking. The idea that a historical consciousness is developed when pupils are exposed to history multi-chronologically or multi-perspectively claims that historical accounts that incorporate the past, present, and future tenses and/or various perspectives on any given historical topic has a good chance of developing a historical consciousness in an individual.78 It is furthermore claimed that a personal, private encounter with history is essential for developing a historical consciousness,79 and, closely connected to that idea is the notion that being confronted with moral values in history also develops an individual’s historical consciousness.80 Another way of arguing for how a historical consciousness is developed is afforded by research that claims that genetic and genealogical approaches to history are essential for its development. To view history genetically is to regard it as beginning at a certain moment in time and stopping at another. The work of the historian is to explain what has happened in between these two temporal positions. A genealogical approach to history starts with the context of the interpreting subject: why are these aspects or eras of history interesting and significant to us, and why do we choose to interpret history the way we do. It has been argued in research that a genetic understanding of history is developed if pupils work with chronology, and a genealogical un77 Ulrika Holgersson and Cecilia Persson, ‘Rätten att skriva människan. Historiemedvetande och berättelse som problematiska begrepp: svar till Bernard Eric Jensen’, in Historisk tidskrift, vol. 122:4 (Historisk tidskrift Svenska historiska föreningen, 2002), 635–40; and Peter Seixas, ‘Introduction’, in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 9. 78 Cf. Ammert, Det osamtidigas samtidighet, 73, 218; and Halvdan Eikeland, Et laereverks bidrag til historiebevissthet og narrativ kompetanse. Analyse og praktisk bruk av historiedelen av Aschehougs laereverk i samfunnstag for ungdomstrinnet: ‘Innblikk’ (Tönsberg: Högskolen i Vestfold, 2002), 7–8. 79 Cf. Eliasson, ‘Kan ett historiemedvetande fördjupas?’, 322–323; Karlsson, ‘Historiedidaktik: begrepp, teori och analys’, 50; Potapenko, Historiemedvetande och identitet, 137; and Wibaeus, Att undervisa om det ofattbara, 53. 80 Cf. Alvén, Historiemedvetande på prov, 93–94; and Clavier, Mänsklighetens största problem genom alla tider, 176–177.
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derstanding of history is promoted by work with sources and source criticism.81 History teaching that alternates these two perspectives is claimed to have a good chance of developing the historical consciousness of the pupils since it more or less forces them to view history multi-chronologically and thus develops their historical consciousness.82 The final approach to development in research that I want to highlight is that of applying historical thinking to historical consciousness.83 1st and 2nd order concepts of history are regarded as tools with which we can analyse history and historical accounts and which enable the individual to analyse history from a meta-historical perspective. It is then claimed that the critical approach to history and historical accounts that is afforded by historical thinking can enable pupils to engage critically and reflexively with history and develop meta-historical competencies, and thus develop a more complex or advanced historical consciousness.84
Applying Historical Consciousness in Media Analysis The third aim of my research project is to apply historical consciousness to the analysis of historical media. This has already been done in research on films85, textbooks86, historical sources87, and literary fiction88. The methodology of research has varied: some researchers have only studied the historical medium and from thence drawn conclusions on its ability to develop historical consciousness, and others have interviewed respondents after they had been exposed to a historical medium. Some studies have found that certain historical media activate and develop the historical consciousness of individuals. The key issues then are to show why the historical medium in question has developed a historical consciousness and how the historical consciousness of a certain individual has been developed by that medium. Since historical consciousness is an abstract 81 Persson, Mörkrets hjärta i klassrummet, 123–127. 82 Eliasson, ‘Kan ett historiemedvetande fördjupas?’, 317, 325.
83 Cf. de Laval, Det känns inte längre som det var länge sedan, 27; Duquette, Le rapport, 59–60; and Olofsson, Fatta historia, 218. 84 Duquette, Le rapport, 231, 261; and Hans Olofsson, ‘“Hiroshimagrejen, liksom” - Om narrativa förkortningar och historiskt meningsskapande hos högstadieelever’, in Kritiska perspektiv på historiedidaktiken, ed. David Ludvigsson, Aktuellt om historia 2013:2 (Eksjö: Historielärarnas förening, 2013), 39. 85 Dahl, Folkmord som film. 86 Ammert, Det osamtidigas samtidighet; Aleksey Bushuev, ‘Contemporary History for the Modern
Generation: The Specificity of Schoolchildren’s Historical Consciousness Formation in Post-Soviet Russia’, in Cultural and Religious Diversity and Its Implications for History Education, ed. Joanna Wojdon, Yearbook of the International Society for History Didactics 34 (Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag, 2013), 239–52; Eikeland, Et laereverks bidrag til historiebevissthet og narrativ kompetanse; and Nordgren, Vems är historien?. 87 Duquette, Le rapport. 88 Ingemansson, Det kunde lika gärna ha hänt idag; and Renander, Förförande fiktion eller historieförmedling?.
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phenomenon, it could then be argued that the concept needs a rather detailed theoretical framework in order to specify why and how a certain medium has developed a certain historical consciousness. In my opinion most research that has applied historical consciousness in analysis of historical media have either focused most on the media or the respondents, and less on how certain characteristics of a certain medium relate to a historical consciousness or how a respondent’s reply to a certain question can be used as an example to assess her historical consciousness. I believe, as is specified by what I call the sceptical strand of research, that two central problems with using historical consciousness as a theoretical device are to specify how the concept relates to its manifestations and to specify how a historical consciousness can be developed in an individual. For this reason it could be argued that there is a need for more theoretical research on how a historical consciousness and its manifestations are related and how a historical consciousness is developed in an individual. It has been shown that applying various methods can develop skills, but the question is how it can be theoretically asserted that these skills are a symptom of a historical consciousness; i.e. why are meta-historical competencies a symptom of a developed historical consciousness and why is an ability to make multichronological analyses of history similar to having a developed historical consciousness? These are questions that I believe are essential if we want to assert that a historical consciousness can be developed, and they are ultimately related to how we define what a historical consciousness is.
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Methodology The present study includes three papers that each have a different focus and relate to different research questions and for this reason I have used different methodological approaches for each paper. The first paper deals primarily with how a historical consciousness is defined and justified in research, the second paper delves primarily into matters of how a historical consciousness can be developed in an individual (although that has a lot to do with how the concept is defined), and the third paper suggests and discusses a methodological framework of historical consciousness and then applies one aspect of this framework in textbook analysis. The focus of the first paper is descriptive and that of the second paper normative since a regulative definition of historical consciousness is stipulated, and the third paper focuses on how to operationalise the definition presented in Paper II.89
Paper I The first paper corresponds primarily to the first research question in this thesis: “How is the concept of historical consciousness presented in research?” and to be able to answer this question, I posed the following questions to the empirical material in the study: According to researchers, what is an explicitly expressed historical consciousness? How is the concept applied by researchers? Why is it an important concept according to the research studied? Since historical consciousness is perhaps the central concept in Swedish history didactics and there has been quite a lot of research that focuses on historical consciousness, it seemed plausible to start with a study of Swedish history didactical research to get a grasp of how the concept is presented and used. Swedish research about historical consciousness is, as has been noted above, heavily influenced by German history didactics, which could be regarded as a problem: my focus on Swedish research could present a biased or slanted view of the concept. It does however seem as if most research in other parts of the world (and I am primarily referring to the the UK, the USA, and Canada now) that makes use of historical consciousness, does also tend to regard the concept as emanating from German history didactics: Jörn Rüsen (primarily) and Hans-Georg Gadamer are practically always cited as the main theorists.90 This is also the case in Sweden and for this 89 Cf. Karlsen, Språk, tolkning och argumentation, 81. 90 Cf. Duquette, Le rapport; Lee, ‘Walking Backwards Into Tomorrow’; Peter Seixas, Theorizing Historical Consciousness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); and Yogev, ‘Clio Has a Problem: How to Develop Active Historical Consciousness to Counter the Crisis in History Teaching’.
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reason a focus on Swedish research still seemed like a good starting option despite the risk of bias. To find Swedish research on historical consciousness, I used what could be called snowball sampling.91 This means that I started with works that I could track down in the Swedish library database and gathered more relevant research from studying its lists of references. By using this method, there is an obvious risk that some essential or important research will be missed, but on the other hand I will cover the research and researchers that are actually cited and hence could be regarded as central. Accordingly, I started with a search on the Swedish library database (libris.kb.se) for historical consciousness (historiemedvetande in Swedish). The search gave about 130 results and to sort out which of these were relevant to me I decided to use two criteria: it had to be some kind of academic work (dissertation, scientific article, et cetera) and it had to explicitly specify what it meant by the concept of historical consciousness (if the concept was used without explicit specification, it was hard to tell what the author actually meant with the concept and how the use portrayed related to it). Then, the research that was cited in the works that matched these criteria (and which in itself matched the same criteria) was also included in my study.92 Then I studied this material using the research questions specified above. After having studied this quite extensive material I decided to try to categorise it inductively in order to get a grasp of what this body of research had in common and what was different in it. I came up with seven categories that related to how the concept was presented.93 To demonstrate how these categories were formed and what was characteristic of the representations of historical consciousness in these categories, I used quotations to show which view of historical consciousness belonged to each respective category. Hence, I have used the quotations to illustrate variations and similarities in the uses of the concept of historical consciousness. Some texts I studied belong only to one category, some to more, and some to all of them. Consequently, these categories should not be considered as categories of different researchers since that was not the focus of this study; the focus was to show different ways of using the concept of historical consciousness in research. If one assumes that the use of a concept affects our perception of it (i.e. how we apply a concept affects how we understand its definition), then it could be argued that it is analytically difficult to separate a concept’s defini-
91 Cf. Martyn Denscombe, The Good Research Guide for Small-Scale Social Research Projects, 4th ed. (Maidenhead, England: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press, 2010), 37. 92 This is also how I came to find most of the research on historical consciousness from the UK, the USA, and Canada. I also used the method of snowball sampling on this research to get a good picture of what could be considered to be the central research among these researchers. 93 Although the research presented in the first paper only deals with Swedish research, I did not find any interpretations of the concept from other research that did not match these categories. See pages 30-31 below.
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tion from its applications.94 Consequently, it could be argued that the applications of a concept are important to how we perceive it, i.e. they have bearing on the definition of the concept. I argue that these assumptions have relevance to how historical consciousness is presented and used in research. To illustrate, one researcher defines historical consciousness as “the experience of connection between interpretation of the past, understanding of the present, and perspectives on the future,”95 and then applies the concept as one that creates meaning to individuals (because it enables them to make multi-chronological connections)96 and thus affects their identities.97 What this example shows us is that the researcher presents a basic (he calls it “lexical”98) definition of the concept that he applies to show how individuals create meaning and develop their identities. Hence, what we get is a concept that develops identities and meaning-making through multi-chronology, not merely a concept that deals with multi-chronology. Furthermore, it is not evident how meaning-making and identity constitution relate to multi-chronology.
Paper II The second paper corresponds to the second and third research questions of this study: How can a historical consciousness be developed in an individual? How can an understanding of historical consciousness be developed that incorporates various perspectives about historical consciousness? To answer these questions I used a combination of methods: I analysed the results of the first paper regarding the perspectives of the concept, I studied research on the concept regarding how it is seen to be developed in an individual, and to construct a theory of the concept, I used what could be called philosophical argumentative analysis.99 Regarding the perspectives on the concept in research, I supplemented my study of Swedish research on historical consciousness with a study of British and North American research using the same research questions and method as in my study presented in Paper I. All of the presentations and uses of the concept I studied could be placed in the categories that had been developed in the study in Paper I. Concerning the results of Paper I, the categories I had developed seemed to be a bit misleading: some categories seemed to be more fundamental than others and could therefore possibly be regarded as hierar94 See pages 6-7 above. 95 Nordgren, Vems är historien?, 15. 96 Ibid., 20. 97 Ibid., 36. 98 Ibid., 15. 99 Hansson, Verktygslära för filosofer, 79–86.
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chichal. Working along this assumption I analysed which category that seemed to be the most fundamental one and then tried to analyse how the other categories could be seen as emanating from that most fundamental category. This seemed to be a fruitful approach when trying to construct a coherent theory of the concept. The second research problem dealt with how a historical consciousness is developed. Since much research has been done regarding this it seemed appropriate to study this research to get a good picture of what is regarded as essential in developing a historical consciousness. The method for finding the appropriate data was similar to the one used for Paper I (i.e snowball sampling), and the research question was “According to research, how is a historical consciousness developed in an individual?” Regarding the perspectives of historical consciousness, I analysed the categories of the concept in research in order to identify the most dominant hypotheses and arguments regarding the characteristics of a historical consciousness. Then I tried to specify and, if necessary, supplement these hypotheses and arguments according to what their aims were and what premises they made use of. This research method could be called descriptive and normative argumentative analysis.100 When trying to identify and specify how research regards the development of historical consciousness, I identified three issues that I thought had to be dealt with: (i) after extensive and repeated readings of the material, I tried to identify what could be called the most common denominator in research concerning how a historical consciousness is developed, i.e. what did all the research about how a historical consciousness is developed in an individual have in common?, (ii) I tried to specify how this view of development could be harmonised with a definition and application of historical consciousness, and (iii) I tried to specify an approach or method for developing historical consciousness in the studied research. Using this approach, I then tried to construct a theory of the concept that treated these perspectives comprehensively (and comprehensibly).
Paper III The fourth research question dealt with how historical consciousness can be applied in the analysis of historical media, in this case a textbook. To be able to do this, I first constructed a theoretical framework of historical consciousness to be applied in the analysis of historical media that used the theory of the concept specified in Paper II as its point of departure, i.e. it should be regarded as an attempt at operationalising the theory developed and presented in Paper II. I then tried to discuss and specify how this framework could be used as a heuristic device in identifying research problems and 100 Cf. Karlsen, Språk, tolkning och argumentation, 139, 167.
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choosing research methods. To illustrate this, I then applied an aspect of the framework in an analysis of an excerpt from a history textbook. According to the stipulated framework, a historical consciousness can only be studied through uses of history and consequently the textbook analysis focused on finding examples of uses of history in the textbook narrative. For this reason, I began by analysing the narrative structures and strategies employed by the textbook authors. To illustrate the narrative structure, I selected a number of quotations that I perceived to be typical of and central to the narrative. These quotations were then analysed according to how they related to the studied narrative as a whole and what uses of history they portrayed. Regarding the uses of history, I applied two typologies of uses of history to analyse what could be said of historical consciousness from the studied textbook account.
Methodological Implications There are some implications of the chosen methodology that I would like to discuss below. One methodological implication deals with the vastness of research that focuses on historical consciousness. One example of research that is missing is German history didactical research where historical consciousness has been a central concept for the last 30 – 40 years. My contention is, however, that the most central aspects of the concept of historical consciousness have been covered in this study since the German history didactical research on historical consciousness seems firmly established in the studied research. Furthermore, the approach stipulated in my research is merely one of many possible ways of defining and working with historical consciousness. Hence, it does not necessarily have to be a problem that all research on the concept has not been covered. One asset of the methodological approach of this research is that it seeks to theoretically unite research about historical consciousness from Sweden, the UK, the USA, and Canada. Another methodological implication of this study relates to how I have dealt with progression in historical consciousness: it could be argued that the focus on historical thinking is essentialist since it presumes that cognition is a problem for historical consciousness and that historical thinking is the best way of solving this problem of cognition. I do, however, think that my research method should primarily be regarded as a response to the problems I encountered in my research. From my perspective, it indeed seems as if cognition poses a theoretical problem to historical consciousness, and that the definition of the concept that I stipulate seems to harmonise well with the notion of historical thinking. Furthermore, this aspect also seems to be something that all studied research about historical consciousness has in common.
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Results – A Summary of the Papers Paper I: ‘The Concept of Historical Consciousness in Swedish History Didactical Research’ This paper presents a study of how the concept of historical consciousness is presented and used in Swedish history didactical research regarding the definition, application, and justification of the concept. The study finds that Swedish research on historical consciousness is deeply rooted in what is sometimes called the continental history didactical tradition: practically all researchers refer to the German history didactical researchers Karl-Ernst Jeismann and Jörn Rüsen or the Danish researcher Bernard Eric Jensen, who in turn bases his understanding of the concept on the German tradition.101 This is already the common view in Swedish history didactical research and has also been shown by earlier research, but this study is the first one to include research in what was called the third wave of research about the concept in Sweden, i.e. research conceived during the five to ten years preceding 2014. Historical consciousness is commonly defined as a concept that deals with interpretations of the past, understanding of the present, and perspectives or anticipations about the future, an ability that the Swedish history didactical researcher Niklas Ammert has called “multi-chronology,” i.e to handle the past, present, and future coherently. It could thus be claimed that regarding the definition of historical consciousness, the study shows that researchers agree on what could be called a minimal or basic definition of historical consciousness as an ability to make multi-chronological connections in history.102 This definition is then applied to a number of abilities. Firstly, historical consciousness is argued to be an identity-creating concept. It is supposed that individuals come to develop their identities through their historical consciousnesses. Secondly, historical consciousness is perceived to be a meaning-making concept. From having a historical consciousness it is claimed that individuals are able to make sense of both history and contemporary life and society. This furthermore can enable them to gain perspective on the future. Thirdly, historical consciousness is perceived as a history-creating concept that may enable individuals to realise and appreciate that they both are and make history at the same time. Fourthly, historical consciousness is argued to be a concept that enables individuals to gain insight. By allowing individuals to scrutinise history, historical consciousness can be an insight-creating concept. Fifthly, the concept is also regarded as a value-creating concept since it allows us to empathise with historical agents, thus allowing us to develop a more tolerant view of “the Other.” The last, and 101 Paper I, 209-212. 102 Ibid, 212.
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sixth, application in the studied research is that of historical consciousness as a heuristic concept that could not and should not be defined in itself, but rather is valuable since it may enable us to pose new questions to history and generate new perspectives in research.103 Regarding how the concept of historical consciousness is justified in research, the study finds that the concept is justified through its applications. It is presented as a valuable concept because it allows individuals to develop their identities, make sense of history and society, realise that they are products and producers of history, et cetera. No researcher in the studied research claimed that the concept is valuable merely because it can be a multichronological ability individuals have.104 From this finding, it is then argued that how the concept is applied affects how it is understood since it is difficult to analytically separate the definition of the concept from its applications.105 How a concept is used tends to affect how it is perceived.106 This may not be a problem in itself, but it could be a reason why historical consciousness is regarded to be a vague and complex concept. It could also render the concept too imprecise to specify its scope since more or less anything could be argued to qualify as a historical consciousness. Thus the concept becomes difficult to apply practically since its definition cannot be used decisively.107 The paper ends with a discussion of how the concept of historical consciousness relates to its applications. The general argument presented is that these relations need to be further specified theoretically; otherwise there is a risk that the concept of historical consciousness collapses into its applications, thus becoming superfluous, or that it becomes too generic a concept and, hence, difficult to apply in practice. To summarise, the study generates four interesting results: (i) it confirms the general view that Swedish history didactics is continental in origin, (ii) it finds that there is a consensus in research on a minimal definition of historical consciousness, (iii) it suggests why historical consciousness could be regarded as complex and vague; this is because its applications vary and they affect how the concept is understood, and (iv) it suggests how to remedy these problems: by further specifying how historical consciousness relates to its applications, i.e. identity constitution, sense making, et cetera.
103 Paper I, 212-217. 104 Ibid, 218.
105 Ibid, 218-219 106 Cf. Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, 37. 107 Cf. Karlsen, Språk, tolkning och argumentation, 96–104.
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Paper II: ‘Towards an Epistemological Theory of Historical Consciousness’ The second paper attempts to construct a theory of historical consciousness that presents (i) a regulative definition of the concept, (ii) specifies how it relates to its application, (iii) suggests how it is manifested, (iv) suggests how it is developed in an individual, and (v) presents an argument to why historical consciousness is a significant concept in history didactics. The strategy used for accomplishing this rather far-reaching approach is to focus on the epistemological aspects of historical consciousness. Definition Regarding the definition of the concept, the paper states that historical consciousness should be defined as the understanding of the relation between past, present, and future, i.e. as an understanding of multi-chronology. This definition differs from the one generally presented in research in that it focuses not on the multi-chronological relation itself, but rather on our understanding of it. Given the hermeneutical approach to this research project, this could be argued to be a plausible shift in focus. I then argue that this understanding of multi-chronology should be applied to individuals’ sense or meaning making in history. When individuals have an understanding of multi-chronology, they make a different sense of history than without this understanding.108 This is, furthermore, the application that the other applications (specified in Paper I) hinge on, i.e. I perceive meaning-making to be more fundamental than identity constitution, for instance. This is the edifice on which I build the rest of my argumentation in the second paper. Manifestation The next step is to specify how a historical consciousness can be manifested in an individual. I argue that at the most basic level it is manifested through narration: when we narrate what we perceive of history, we manifest our historical consciousness.109 I further argue that narration that deals with history could be labelled as uses of history and that there are (at least) two dimensions to uses of history. The first dimension is what I call the what-dimension. The Swedish historian Klas-Göran Karlsson’s widely accepted typology of uses of history can be a good way to illustrate the what-dimension of uses of history. These uses of history can be existential, political, scientific, commercial, et cetera. This typology illustrates for what specific purpose history is used.110 The second dimension to uses of history is what I call the how-dimension. This dimen108 Paper II, 18-19. 109 Ibid, 19. 110 Ibid, 19-20.
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sion allows us to say something about how an individual uses history for a specific purpose. The German philosopher of history Jörn Rüsen has developed a typology to illustrate how historical narratives can be used to achieve certain things, and I think this typology can be a good way to illustrate what I call the how-uses of history. A traditional use of history is one which uses the historical example to uphold status quo: to show that nothing changes in history. An exemplary use of history uses the historical example to illustrate how history generates rules of conduct, that history teaches us how to lead our lives. The critical use of history uses the historical example to criticise historical, contemporary, and future societies. Finally, the genetic use of history uses the historical example to explain continuity and change in historical and present-day societies. With this model, history is always used according to the two typologies, i.e. you can have political uses of history that are traditional, exemplary, critical, or genetic in kind. I then argue that how an individual uses history depends on the epistemic quality of her historical consciousness. 111 The third level of manifestation of historical consciousness is historical culture and it is argued that this should be perceived as an agglomeration of uses of history. A historical culture thus presents the individual with the uses of history that are inherent in a specific historical culture, but can also be changed by the uses of history of its individual members.112 Epistemic Qualities A key feature in showing the connection between historical consciousness and its manifestations is theoretically specifying this relation. It is argued that a historical consciousness at the most basic level should be regarded as a stance or attitude towards narratives, and that this stance or attitude can be qualitatively different depending on the epistemic beliefs of the individual. Peter Seixas has made an extension to Jörn Rüsen’s widely accepted typology of historical consciousness. This extension is meant to illustrate different epistemic qualities of historical consciousness. These epistemic qualities can be regarded as being more basic than and correspond to an individual’s uses of history. The different types of historical consciousness according to Seixas’ extended typology are: (i) the traditional type which regards history and historical accounts as either true or false and there is no articulated method for determining which is which; (ii) the exemplary type which also regards history and its accounts as either true or false, but specifies that some kind of method is required to determine which is which. Moral values and human rights 111 Ibid, 19-20. 112 Ibid, 20.
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(iii)
(iv)
are also perceived as historically derivative: by studying history we can show what is good and bad, et cetera; the critical type which questions the possibility of truth in history since all accounts are relative to their context and thus equally true (or false). What ensues is a kind of relativism concerning history; the genetic type which engages with the problem of context and argues that the only way of gaining knowledge from history is to accept that history is contextually contingent and that one has to take that into account in order to get historical knowledge. Hence, it takes the context of both the historical account and the interpreting subject into account.113
What distinguishes the different types of historical consciousness in this typology is the individual’s ability to regard historical knowledge as contextually contingent. The traditional historical consciousness has no appreciation of the importance of context in history, whereas the genetic type takes the full context, both that of the historical account and herself as an interpreting individual, into account. She thus displays an ability to appreciate the representational practices that go into disseminating history; that all historical accounts are uses of history and contingent on the individual or group that uses them. With this view of historical consciousness, it can be theoretically possible to assert that a historical consciousness is separated from the notions of narration, uses of history, and historical culture, and that historical consciousness is essential for the uses an individual makes of history. Furthermore, it also seeks to specify why the focus of research into historical consciousness should be on the uses of history that an individual makes.114 Development If there are different epistemic qualities of historical consciousness, it is also interesting to theorise on how there can be a progression of these qualities. As has been noted above, one criticism against the concept of historical consciousness is that it does not allow us to say anything about progression in historical understanding. I argue that if we define historical consciousness as an understanding of multi-chronology that can be of different epistemic qualities, and that the more advanced an individual’s ability to contextualise history and uses of history is, the more advanced or complex is her historical consciousness, it can be possible to theoretically connect historical consciousness with historical thinking.115 113 Ibid, 20-21. 114 Ibid, 21. 115 Ibid, 22-24.
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The aim of historical thinking is, through an increased ability to contextualise historical accounts, to provide the individual with a meta-historical appreciation of history as an art of interpretation and representation, an ability the Australian historian Robert Parkes has dubbed the “historiographic gaze.” In research on historical thinking, it is often argued that it is only through an advanced ability to contextualise that an individual can reach an advanced historical thinking.116 Thus, by stressing contextualisation, a theoretical connection between historical consciousness and historical thinking can be made which allows us to theorise on how individuals develop their historical consciousness. Significance With this approach to historical consciousness, it can also be possible to show why historical consciousness can be a significant concept in history didactics. As noted above, without specifying how a historical consciousness relates to its manifestations and without differentiating between the different types of applications there are of the concept, there is a risk that the concept collapses into its applications, thus becoming superfluous: why talk of identity constitution through historical consciousness, when we can talk of identity constitution instead?117 The model presented here argues that to regard historical consciousness as an understanding of multi-chronology applied to meaning-making that can be more or less advanced regarding to what extent an individual can contextualise historical accounts connected with a narrative view of human epistemology and identity, can be used to show that we create different kinds of identities and world views depending on our epistemic beliefs. A conclusion of such an argumentation can be that an individual that has no ability to contextualise history (and consequently has an undeveloped historical consciousness and historical thinking), will regard herself, her surrounding world, and fellow human beings differently than a person with a developed ability of contextualisation (and historical consciousness and historical thinking).118 Thus, it can be argued that historical consciousness may be a significant concept in history didactics. Results The theory of historical consciousness outlined in this paper is original in the sense that it argues for a focus on the epistemological aspects of the concept. The pointing out of the two dimensions of uses of history is also new in research and the second how-dimension of uses of history as something that 116 Ibid, 23-24. 117 Paper I, 219-220. 118 Paper II, 24-25.
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offers a way of connecting an individual’s use of history to her historical consciousness: she uses history in a certain way because her historical consciousness has a certain epistemic quality. Another original aspect of this paper is that it suggests a possible link between historical consciousness and historical thinking in an individual’s ability to contextualise historical accounts and gain a meta-historical understanding, a historiographic gaze. There has been other research that has tried to connect historical consciousness to historical thinking119 but I want to argue that this attempt differs from previous attempts since it specifies that a historical consciousness is manifested in how a person uses history and that historical thinking develops a historical consciousness since it enables the individual to make metahistorical analyses of uses of history, both those of herself and others, thus affecting her epistemic beliefs and historical consciousness. Finally, it is also suggested how the concept of historical consciousness and identity constitution are related. Presuming a narrative view of identity constitution, it is argued that an ability to regard history as contextually contingent may enable the individual to realise the full scope of her identity constitution and, vice versa, an inability to regard history as contextually contingent could render the individual’s view of herself, and others, static. This also has significance for how we act morally: with an appreciation of the importance of context, the individual may become more prone to take the perspective of the other into consideration. Without this appreciation of contextual contingency, that could be regarded as less likely to happen.
Paper III: ‘Historical Consciousness and Historical Media: A History Didactical Approach to Educational Media’ The theory of historical consciousness outlined in the second paper is then operationalised in a framework for analysing historical media presented in the third paper. It is argued that the understanding of historical consciousness presented in this study pushes us towards studying historical media from a practical perspective; the uses of historical media determine how they are interpreted and, consequently, their propensities for developing historical understanding.120 This view argues for an analysis of historical media that goes beyond the medium itself, and engages with and analyses its practical applications and their significance. The key concept in analysing historical media from the perspective of historical consciousness is use of history since it is through this that an individual’s historical consciousness is manifested. That means historical consciousness can only be studied indirectly or implicitly through the explicit use of history an individual makes. If we want to analyse what historical 119 See page 22 above. 120 Paper III, 7-9.
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consciousness historical media portray and how it affects its consumers, focus should be put on what uses of history historical media and its users convey. Furthermore, since a certain use of history is contingent on the historical consciousness of its proprietor, how the individual perceives history and historical accounts, i.e. her epistemic beliefs or meta-historical competencies, could be argued to bear significance for how the individual uses the historical media in question. A traditional historical consciousness will be expressed in a traditional use of history, and could result in a use of historical media that fails to appreciate it as a result of interpretation and representation. A genetic historical consciousness, on the other hand, could result in a use of historical media that engages with it as a result of interpretation and representation, i.e. a meta-historical approach is taken. Thus, what kind of historical consciousness an individual has will affect how she uses a historical media and, in turn, affect how that historical media is interpreted.121 Through a limited textbook analysis, it is then illustrated how one aspect of the framework of historical consciousness can be used to analyse historical media, both as an analytical frame and as an analytical device. The key concept in analysis is, as stated above, uses of history, and it is argued that the only uses of history we encounter in a textbook are those of the authors. Furthermore, since we can only access historical consciousness through uses of history, it is difficult to say anything about the textbook’s propensity to develop the historical consciousness of the readers with any higher degree of certainty. To do that we would need to analyse their uses of history and from thence draw conclusions about the qualities of their historical consciousnesses. It is furthermore suggested that it is difficult to make any conclusions about the historical consciousness of the authors from the sole example of the textbook account, due to the fact that a certain use of history not necessarily corresponds to a certain type of historical consciousness. Furthermore, textbooks are edited and for this reason aspects of the author’s uses of history may have been excluded.122 The textbook analysis, however, shows how a textbook narrative can be analysed according to the two dimensions of uses of history and that it is thus possible to draw conclusions about the historical consciousness of the proprietor of the narrative through her uses of history, albeit with limited results. Furthermore, the textbook analysis finds that the textbook narrative can be regarded as typical regarding how agency is portrayed and what narrative framework is deployed and that the studied account is stereotypical and manifests what could be regarded as the officially accepted master narrative about Swedish history after the 2nd World War.
121 Ibid, 8-9. 122 Ibid, 18-19.
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The analysis also finds that it is difficult to say anything about how the studied account affects an individual’s historical consciousness, even though the study finds that the uses of history in the textbook narrative are what could be labelled as traditional. This is because the textbook can be used in a number of ways: a traditional textbook account can most certainly be used to confirm a certain historical culture, but it can also be used critically as an example of a traditional use of history. How the text is interpreted will depend on how the text is used. Furthermore, the individual’s historical consciousness as portrayed by her epistemic beliefs also plays a central role when interpreting a textbook: an individual with a traditional historical consciousness will probably not appreciate a textbook account that presents a view that differs too much from her own or that includes multiple perspectives. To be able to judge with a higher degree of certainty how individuals’ historical consciousnesses have been affected, it is suggested that a triangulation of different methods, such as textbook analysis, interviews, and observation could be fruitful.123 In conclusion, the results of the third paper could be argued to be sevenfold. Firstly, the definition and theory of historical consciousness stipulated in the second paper is operationalised. Secondly, it is specified how a historical consciousness can be studied practically, i.e. through uses of history. Thirdly, it suggests a method for analysing how uses of history relate to historical consciousness; through the how-dimension of uses of history, it can be possible to assess the historical consciousness of an individual. Fourthly, it discusses how the concept of historical consciousness can be used as a framework for the analysis of historical media, and, fifthly, it suggests some methodological approaches to analysing individuals’ historical consciousnesses and the development thereof. Sixthly, it argues for the importance of taking individuals’ historical consciousnesses into account: their epistemic beliefs will affect how they interpret historical media. Seventhly, and finally, it shows how the typologies of the two dimensions of uses of history can be applied to textbook analysis.
123 Ibid, 19-20.
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Discussion As has been shown above, this study has generated a number of results. The most important of these results is that a theory of historical consciousness is stipulated that relates to earlier research and extends this research in a focus on the epistemological problems connected to historical consciousness. Historical consciousness is further related to historical thinking to afford a theoretical approach to how a historical consciousness can be developed. Finally, a methodological framework of the concept for analysing historical media and its relation to individuals’ sense making is proposed. The research questions posed in this study have all been answered: it is shown how the concept of historical consciousness is presented in research, it is shown how a historical consciousness is perceived to be developed in research, it proposes an understanding of historical consciousness that incorporates the various perspectives on the concept regarding its definition, application, development, and significance. Finally, it also proposes an understanding of historical consciousness that enhances the analysis of historical media concerning its ability to demonstrate and develop a historical consciousness. Furthermore, this study could be regarded as a whole since there is a clear theme of progression from Paper I to Paper III. The first paper studies research on the concept, the second paper uses the results of this study to construct a theory of historical consciousness, and the third paper applies this theory in developing a methodological framework for analysing historical media using historical consciousness, thus operationalising it. Furthermore, these papers all emanate from the same theoretical approach to research (that was presented in the section called “Theoretical Framework” in this chapter). However, since the article format allows limited space for a more profound discussion of the implications of its results, I want to discuss some questions and implications of the results of the studies below.
Paper I: Circularity and Categorisation Concerning the first paper, there are two questions that I want to address: whether the study could be regarded as circular and whether the categories developed really are categories. About circularity, it could be argued that the study is circular for (at least) two reasons: (i) it assumes that the concept is problematic and (ii) it assumes that applications affect a concept’s definition. Regarding the first claim, it could be countered by the fact that my research is based on the accounts of other research that states that the concept is vague and complex. Furthermore, even if there had not been such references, the study would still not have been circular since its result should not primarily be considered as
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showing that the concept is problematic, but rather that the concept is problematic for a specific reason: that its applications affect how we understand its definition. This leads us to the second argument as to why the study could be regarded as circular: the fact that I assume that an application affects a definition. A response to this criticism could be that my conclusion that the applications affect the definition is not only a result of my inclination to regard matters in that way, but that the results in the study support such a conclusion: no researchers justified the concept by its definition but did so according to its applications, suggesting that the way they applied the concept affected how they regarded it (i.e how they regarded its definition). As has been shown above, this is a rather common theoretical position. The next question deals with the categories presented in the first paper. It could be argued that what I perceive to be categories of the concept of historical consciousness are not categories but rather dimensions of the concept. One criterion regarding categories is that they should be finite and easily discernable, and since the categories that I have presented in the first paper are not of that nature, they should not be regarded to be categories of historical consciousness, but rather dimensions of it. I have two replies to this kind of criticism. The first is to accept that the categories could indeed be considered as dimensions of historical consciousness. The second is to claim that the categories are still categories since they categorise different aspects of how researchers present the concept of historical consciousness. Hence they are not categories of historical consciousness per se but rather categories of how researchers present historical consciousness. Thus it could be argued that there is no conflict between the categories or dimensions of the concept: they are categories of how the dimensions of the concept of historical consciousness are presented in research.
Paper II: Transformation, Contextualisation, Rigidity, Eclecticism, and Eurocentrism Some implications and questions concerning the results of the second paper that I feel are important to discuss are (i) what kind of historical consciousness do we get with the view presented?, (ii) why is contextualisation regarded to be so essential to historical consciousness?, (iii) does the theory present what could be argued to be a rigid view of human cognition?, (iv) to what extent can an eclectical approach (such as this one) to theorising succeed?, and (v) could the view of historical consciousness presented be argued to be normative and Eurocentric? The view of historical consciousness that I present in this study is in some crucial aspects different or transformed from how the concept is generally presented: fundamentally, I hold historical consciousness to be a kind of stance or attitude towards narratives, which is quite different from an experience of temporal unity. However, if we do regard narrativity to be a cen-
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tral aspect of human epistemology, it could be argued that a stance or attitude towards narratives is the most basic feature of a historical consciousness, and I think that this stance or attitude harmonises well with the view of historical consciousness as multi-chronological. Furthermore, it allows us to analyse historical consciousness in accounts that are not multi-chronological in character but still deal with history. Multi-chronology is however still an essential feature of a historical consciousness with this view which in turn affects meaning-making, identity constitution, et cetera. It should also be kept in mind that what is stipulated here is merely one aspect of the concept, and research focusing on other aspects will probably generate different results. This takes us to the next question: why is contextualisation such an important aspect of historical consciousness? My principal argument here focuses on how it is suggested that multi-chronology influences our historical cognition. If an individual regards history mult-chronologically, it can be argued that she will view history as dynamic: it is something that affects how we perceive our contemporary lives and world and our anticipations of what will come. She will appreciate how the present perspective influences how we interpret history: history and historical facts are contingent on how they are approached. It can be argued that this in turn can result in an appreciation of the importance of context in analysing and interpreting history. Ideally, the individual realises that her context is as important as the context of others, resulting in an understanding of the importance of perspective in history. Furthermore, it can be argued that this enables the individual to apply a kind of temporal intersubjectivity: to interpret historical agents from their own context and to connect this with the interpreting individual’s context, i.e. her own context.124 Another aspect of why I hold contextualisation to be essential is that it allows us to focus on historical cognition (how people understand history) and thus presents us with a possibility of connecting historical consciousness with historical thinking. Concerning rigidity, it could be argued that the theory of historical consciousness presented is rigid since it seeks to establish that there can be different types of historical consciousness and that these are connected to basic epistemic beliefs and therefore static. If you have a critical historical consciousness, you are stuck with it, so to speak. Some researchers have argued that individuals can move between different types of historical consciousness and that there is no such thing as a fixed historical consciousness in an individual.125 According to my view, there are possibilites of movement of historical consciousness, but not back and forth between different types of it. 124 Cf. Jörn Rüsen, Berättande och förnuft: Historieteoretiska texter (Göteborg: Daidalos, 2004), 207–211. 125 Cf. Eli Gottlieb och Sam Wineburg, ”Between Veritas and Communitas: Epistemic Switching in the Reading of Academic and Sacred History”, Journal of the Learning Sciences 21, num 1 (2012): 114–115, doi:10.1080/10508406.2011.582376; and Paul Zanazanian, ”Historical Consciousness and the Structuring of
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I would like to argue that there is something peculiar about the view that we can move back and forth between different historical consciousnesses: as an analogy, no one would claim that people can read to varying degrees depending on when you ask them to read: either you read well or you do not. Once a person has mastered the art of reading, there is no turning back (unless, of course, she has some kind of accident). The same applies to historical consciousness: once you have mastered the ability to make metahistorical analyses of the contextual contingency of historical accounts, it is not feasible to think that you would suddenly lapse into total amnesia regarding these aspects. The same could be argued about the opposite condition: it seems unlikely that an individual with a traditional historical consciousness that has no awareness of the contextual contingency of historical accounts would suddenly start to make meta-historical analyses. I think that uses of history could be a way of dealing with inconsistency in how individuals treat history. I have argued above that a use of history is a symptom of a historical consciousness, but from that it does not follow that a use of history is always a symptom of a historical consciousness. Or, rather, I would argue that a person with a traditional historical consciousness would only be able to make traditional uses of history; with more advanced historical consciousnesses, matters are more complex. It can probably be the case that a person with a genetic historical consciousness could make traditional, exemplary, critical, and genetic uses of history depending on the circumstances. This does not mean that her historical consciousness transforms, but rather that she uses history in different ways. Eclecticism is another implication that I want to address: I present theories that could be considered to be quite diverse and I only present aspects of theories that others have developed. My aim has been to analyse what these different theories have in common and as I argue in Paper II, I regard meaning-making in history and contextualisation to be two aspects that these theories have in common and I have accordingly tried to construct a theory focusing on these aspects. This is also why I have focused only on the theoretical aspects that I hold to be relevant for my purposes. For reasons of brevity and scope, it would have been implausible to take the full aspects of all the theories that all the researchers have presented into account.
Group Boundaries: A Look at Two Francophone School History Teachers Regarding Quebec’s Anglophone Minority”, Curriculum Inquiry 42, num 2 (mars 2012): 219–221, doi:10.1111/j.1467-873X.2012.00591.x.
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The final implication that I want to discuss with regard to the second paper is whether it is an example of Eurocentrism.126 The view of the concept presented here argues that a historical consciousness can be developed and that the extent to which an individual can contextualise history and historical accounts determines what kind of historical consciousness she has. Furthermore, regarding identity and morality, I argue that a person with a genetic historical consciousness has a more profound sense of identity and that she could be presumed to be more tolerant towards other people. This could be regarded as highly normative. If one views this study from the perspective of history education, it could be argued that to develop a historical consciousness is an aim (as in Sweden for instance), but that does not mean that it should be regarded as an aim in other contexts. To say that one can develop a historical consciousness and to create a typology of different types of it does not necessarily mean that it is something that needs to be done. In some contexts the answer is affirmative, but that may not be the case elsewhere. It could however still be argued that surely the genetic type of historical consciousness is a normatively better type than a traditional one and in certain contexts (such as the Swedish history classroom) that is probably true. In other contexts it could be different. One could, for instance, imagine some kind of tribal community where it is essential to keep traditions alive in order to maintain the common identity of the community; in such a circumstance, a genetic historical consciousness may even be harmful. As for the argument that this view of the concept is Eurocentric since it emanates from an ideal of rationality that sprang from the European Enlightenment, it could be replied that historical consciousness is contingent on the individual and not on her geographical location. In theory anyone can have a traditional, exemplary, critical, or genetic historical consciousness; it does not matter if you live in Europe or in Sub-Saharan Africa. Finally it should once more be stressed that this is one aspect of historical consciousness: other aspects may show other perspectives of the concept that may be more palatable concerning this.
Paper III: Uses of History and the Problem of Consciousness There are two aspects of the third paper that I would like to discuss below: how do you analyse uses of history and how can we ever come to know what happens inside someone’s consciousness? Regarding the problem of how to analyse uses of history, it seems to me as it is a matter more complex than what is perhaps credited in the third paper. The core of the complexity is that uses of history can be analysed on different levels: you can analyse it through 126 See pages 20-21 above.
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close reading of a text (as I did in Paper III) and investigate what could be called the explicit uses of history. If you analyse uses of history on the level of the textbook or author, you may get very different results in your analysis and there can also be implicit uses of history that may not be visible when studying a text closely and focusing on what is explicitly stated. In the study I performed, I chose to focus on the explicit uses of history in a close reading of the text mostly because this is what pupils encounter in schools when they study history, and because of this (as is implicitly stated in the paper) the results of the analysis were quite ambiguous. I suggested that I would have to get more data from the textbook authors in order to say anything more concrete about their historical consciousnesses and I think that is related to what I have written above. This leads us on to the next aspect of the third paper that I want to discuss: how can we ever possibly know what is happening inside someone’s consciousness? To study what happens in a person’s consciousness can be quite a complex matter, not least because there are many different layers of consciousness and many processes may be taking place at the same time, both consciously and sub-consciously. The framework presented states that we can access and thereby assess someone’s historical consciousness through the how-aspects of their uses of history, but if you are analysing a historical medium, there are probably a number of factors that makes such analysis much less straightforward than it might seem. Textbooks are edited, for instance, and the editor may have modified the author’s text. For instance, the editor may have influenced the content of the textbook to such an extent that we cannot analyse the author’s historical consciousness. Furthermore, parts of the text that may have been indicators of a certain historical consciousness may have been edited out rendering an analysis of the author’s historical consciousness impossible. Another important issue is the commercial considerations made by the publisher that could further have altered the author’s original text. The only way I can think of to dampen the effect of this uncertainty is to use as much data and as many different kinds of data as possible when analysing uses of history: the more aspects you have on someone’s use of history, the more credible your results will be.
Further research I would like to argue that the most obvious result from the present study is the need for further research to specify and verify (or falsify) the theory and framework of historical consciousness proposed here. Furthermore, as the study in Paper III shows, historical consciousness is a complex concept that can be studied from a number of perspectives and for this reason, other and more refined research methods are required to further the results presented here.
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Conclusion My hope is that the studies included in this dissertation can bring new perspectives on history didactical research and a broadened understanding of the concept of historical consciousness. Perhaps it can be regarded as a useful guide to history didactical research and an example of a new and comprehensive approach on research in history didactics. Concerning the focus on the cognitive or epistemological aspects of historical consciousness, this focus may be useful when teaching history, but there are other aspects to the concept that are essential as well, particularly ontological ones which are only dealt with implicitly in the present study. It should be noted that while this is an attempt at constructing a coherent theory of historical consciousness, it is not the only one. I am deeply indebted to the extensive amount of relevant and interesting research about this concept that has already been done. Furthermore, even though the papers in this dissertation are primarily theoretical in focus, my aim and wish has been to make the concept of historical consciousness even more practically versatile. As has been noted above, this study seeks to incorporate many and diverse perspectives on history didactics into the concept of historical consciousness. The main benefit of doing this is that much interesting research in the field of history didactics can be brought together, resulting in new and interesting perspectives on history didactics and history education. The difficulties are that any theory that tries to do so runs the risk of becoming too extensive or too loosely defined. My hope is that a focus on the epistemological problems of historical consciousness can direct us towards the core of historical meaning: construction, interpretation, and dissemination. These are three areas that I hold to be central to history didactics.
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Short Summary in Swedish Inledning Den här licentiatavhandlingen innehåller ett inledande kapitel och tre fristående artiklar. I det inledande kapitlet presenteras de övergripande utgångspunkterna (såväl teoretiska som metodologiska) för studierna som presenteras i artiklarna. Vidare relateras här studierna till tidigare forskning. Det inledande kapitlet redogör också för studiernas syften och frågeställningar samt argumenterar för hur de tre artiklarna kan förstås som utgörande en helhet. Dessutom presenteras studiens resultat som även diskuteras. Det övergripande syftet för studien har varit att nå en breddad och fördjupad förståelse av historiemedvetandebegreppet genom att knyta samman forskning om begreppet i Sverige, Storbritannien och Nordamerika samt att diskutera hur begreppet kan förstås och tillämpas i historiedidaktik och historieundervisning. Forskningsfrågorna har således varit: Hur presenteras historiemedvetandebegreppet i forskningen? Hur utvecklas ett historiemedvetande enligt forskningen? Om möjligt, kan en förståelse av historiemedvetandebegreppet nås som inbegriper de olika perspektiv som finns angående begreppet? I vilken utsträckning kan en sådan förståelse av historiemedvetandebegreppet tillämpas i analyser av historiska medier med avseende på dess potential att utveckla ett historiemedvetande och historisk förståelse? Den första artikeln svarar mot den första frågeställningen. Den andra artikeln svarar mot de andra och tredje frågeställningarna och den tredje artikeln svarar mot den fjärde frågeställningen.
Resultat Artikel I Den första artikeln presenterar en studie av hur historiemedvetandebegreppet definierats, tillämpats och legitimerats i svensk historiedidaktisk forskning. En vanlig uppfattning bland historiedidaktiska forskare är att historiemedvetande är ett vagt och komplext begrepp och studiens resultat pekar på en möjlig förklaring till denna uppfattning. Utifrån studien av historiemedvetandebegreppet så som det framträder i svensk forskning har kategorier induktivt skapats för att illustrera vad som förenar och skiljer begreppsförståelsen så som det används i forskningen. Studien finner att det finns en konsensus om begreppets definition (som skall förstås som en förmåga att tolka det förflutna, förstå det samtida och ha perspektiv på det framtida) men att denna definition tillämpas på åtminstone sex olika sätt.
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Enligt en tillämpning ses historiemedvetande som ett identitetsskapande begrepp: genom vårt historiemedvetande skapar vi våra identiteter. Enligt en annan tillämpning ses historiemedvetande som ett meningsskapande begrepp: det bidrar till människans förståelse av sig själv och sin omvärld. Enligt en tredje tillämpning ses historiemedvetande som ett historieskapande begrepp: genom vårt historiemedvetande skapar vi historia. Enligt en fjärde tillämpning ses historiemedvetande som ett insiktsskapande begrepp: genom vårt historiemedvetande bibringar vi oss insikter om såväl historien som vår omvärld. Enligt en femte tillämpning ses historiemedvetande som ett värdeskapande begrepp: genom vårt historiemedvetande påverkas våra moraliska värderingar. Samt enligt en sjätte tillämpning ses historiemedvetandebegreppet som ett heuristiskt begrepp: begreppet och dess betydelse i sig är underordnat det faktum att det leder till nya och intressanta perspektiv i forskningen. Artikeln avslutas med ett diskuterande avsnitt vars syfte är att belysa varför historiemedvetandebegreppets olika tillämpningar kan bidra till att skapa begreppslig vaghet och komplexitet gällande historiemedvetandebegreppet. Jag argumenterar för att det är svårt att analytiskt skilja ett begrepps definition från dess tillämpningar eftersom tillämpningarna tenderar att påverka hur ett begrepp förstås. Detta blir tydligt då historiemedvetandebegreppet legitimeras i forskningen: det är genomgående dess tillämpningar som rättfärdigar dess existens och framskjutna position i svensk historiedidaktik. Av den här anledningen argumenterar jag sedan att det är viktigt att precisera hur begreppets definition och tillämpningar hör samman, då man annars riskerar två saker: antingen får man ett monolitiskt begrepp som innefattar allt men förklarar desto mindre, eller så får man svårt att motivera begreppets existens jämte dess tillämpningar. Det kan då hävdas att man i så fall borde fokusera på begreppets tillämpningar istället för begreppet i sig. Alltså ser man historiemedvetande som ett identitetsskapande begrepp borde man då istället prata om ”identitet” istället för ”historiemedvetande” för att undvika vaghet eftersom det kan förstås som otydligt hur de två begreppen hänger samman. Sammanfattningsvis kan man säga att studien genererar tre viktiga resultat: för det första kartläggs hur historiemedvetandebegreppet används i svensk historiedidaktisk forskning, för det andra preciseras användingen av begreppet genom kategoriseringarna, och för det tredje anges en förklaring till vari begreppets vaghet och komplexitet består. Med hjälp av resultaten från studien skulle man alltså kunna gå från att säga att historiemedvetande är ett vagt och komplext begrepp till att diskutera på vilket sätt det kan vara så och varför det kan vara fallet.
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Artikel II Den andra artikeln svarar huvudsakligen mot studiens andra och tredje frågeställningar: avsikten är här att presentera en teori för historiemedvetandebegreppet som påvisar hur begreppets definition och tillämpningar hänger samman samt hur ett historiemedvetande kan utvecklas hos en individ samt varför och hur ett historiemedvetande kan påverka en individs identitet och moraluppfattning. Argumentet som presenteras utgår från de kunskapsteoretiska aspekterna av historiemedvetandebegreppet och fokuserar således på begreppet som centralt för hur människor förstår historia. Historiemedvetande definieras som ”förståelsen av relationen mellan det förflutna, samtida och framtida” och tillämpas på hur individer skapar historisk förståelse, eller som ett meningsskapande begrepp för att använda den första artikelns kategorier av tillämpningar. Därefter presenteras ett argument för hur man kan betrakta historiemedvetnadets manifestationer. Den mest basala manifestationen av historiemedvetandet ser vi genom berättandet: när en individ uttrycker något om historien gör hen det genom berättande eller narrativ. När en individ skapar narrativ om historia ger hen uttryck för ett historiebruk. Det finns två aspekter av historiebruk som är centrala för artikelns argumentation. den första aspekten kan kallas vad-aspekten och beskriver vad historiebruket syftar till och det illustreras väl av Klas-Göran Karlssons typologi över historiebruk: är det politiskt, existentiellt, kommersiellt, och så vidare.127 Den andra aspekten kallar jag för hur-aspekten och här åsyftas hur historien brukas, vilket kan illustreras genom Jörn Rüsens typologi över historiska narrativ: ett historiebruk (till exempel politiskt) kan brukas på en rad sätt: det kan vara traditionellt (för att söka upprätthålla traditioner i historien), det kan vara exemplariskt (för att söka motivera regler för mänskligt agerande), det kan vara kritiskt (för att söka kritisera samtida eller historiska samhällen eller sedvänjor), eller så kan det vara genetiskt (för att påvisa förändring och kontinuitet i historien).128 Till sist berör jag begreppet historiekultur på så sätt att jag uppfattar det som ett konglomerat av individers historiebruk. Genom att vi brukar historien upprätthåller vi olika historiekulturer. Vidare uppfattar jag historiekultur som grundläggande för individers historiebruk och historiemedvetanden på så sätt att en historiekultur alltid föregår individen i ett visst samhälle eller sammanhang. Samtidigt hävdar jag att individen kan förändra historiekulturen i sin omgivning genom sitt historiebruk.
127 Karlsson, ‘Historiedidaktik: begrepp, teori och analys’, 59. 128 Jörn Rüsen, ‘Tradition: A Principle of Historical Sense-Generation and Its Logic and Effect in Historical Culture’, History and Theory 51, no. 4 (2012): 52, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00646.x.
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Mitt nästa argument går ut på att en individs historiebruk skall uppfattas som ett uttryck för hens historiemedvetande: det är genom att studera hens historiebruk som vi kan komma i kontakt med hens historiemedvetande. Därför är det viktigt att teoretiskt precisera hur begreppet och dess manifestationer hör samman. Eftersom jag argumenterar för att ett historiemedvetande på den mest grundläggande nivån kan förstås som en attityd eller hållning gentemot historien och att denna attityd eller hållning kan vara kvalitativt olika beroende på individens epistemiska uppfattningar kan det vara möjligt att visa hur ett historiemedvetande hänger samman med sina uttryck (såsom historiebruk). Då jag fokuserar på historiemedvetande som ett kunskapsteoretiskt begrepp, är det hur-aspekten av historiebruket som skall analyseras för att komma åt en individs historiemedvetande. Av den anledningen är det viktigt med en typologi över olika typer av historiemedvetande. Här används Peter Seixas utökning av Jörn Rüsens129 typologi över historiemedvetanden. I Seixas utökade typologi diskuteras fyra epistemiska typer av historiemedvetanden som jag anser passar mycket väl för att illustrera historiemedvetandets kunskapsteoretiska aspekter: Med ett traditionellt historiemedvetande betraktas historia och historiska utsagor som något objektivt givet: vi kan historia därför att vi lärt oss det av föräldrar, lärare och vänner. Historiska påståenden kan antingen vara sanna eller falska, men en person med ett traditionellt historiemedvetande har ingen metod för att avgöra vilket av motsägande historiska påståenden som är sant. Med ett exemplariskt historiemedvetande betraktas även historia och historiska utsagor som något objektivt givet, men det preciseras att det behövs någon form av metod för att avgöra vad som är historiskt sant. Tillämpar man bara rätt metod kan man upptäcka det historiskt sanna. Vidare betraktas värden såsom mänskliga rättigheter som historiskt betingade: genom att studera historien kan vi bevisa (eller upptäcka) vilka rättigheter individen har. Med ett kritiskt historiemedvetande ifrågasätts sanningsvärdet i historien eller historiska utsagor. Eftersom den historiska sanningen betraktas som relativ till den historiska kontexten eller personen kan alla historiska utsagor betraktas som lika sanna eller falska. Vad som följer är en kunskapsteoretisk relativism angånde historia, och i förlängningen ifrågasätts därför huruvida vi kan veta något om historien. Med ett genetiskt historiemedvetande tas varken ett positivistiskt eller relativistiskt ställningstagande angående historien eller historiska utsagors riktighet. Här förflyttas fokuset från det enskilda historiska påstå-
129 Jörn Rüsen, ‘Historical Consciousness: Narrative, Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development’, in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 72.
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endet till den kontext inom vilken det skapats. En person med ett genetiskt historiemedvetande betraktar alla historiska påståenden, kategorier och fakta som historiskt kontingenta och att det är helt normalt att det förhåller sig på det sättet samt att det är en förutsättning för att vi ska kunna nå kunskap i historia. Vad som hos den med ett kritiskt historiemedvetande betraktades som ett bevis för att historisk kunskap knappast är möjlig, uppfattas hos den med ett genetiskt historiemedvetande som en förutsättning för att vi överhuvudtaget ska nå kunskap om det som skett. Genom att ta kontexten i beaktande (både den historiska och den meningsskapande individens kontext) kan vi komma att veta något om historien.130 Genom att relatera den här typologin av historiemedvetande till typologin över historiebrukets hur-aspekter kan man visa hur ett visst historiebruk beror på ett visst historiemedvetande. En person som inte besitter någon som helst förståelse för historiens kontingenta karaktär, kan inte bruka historien på ett genetiskt sätt. Hen kan dessutom inte heller förhandla mellan eller analysera de historiekulturer hen tillhör. Med ett genetiskt historiemedvetande kan istället individen analysera olika historiebruk från ett kontextuellt perspektiv och hen kan på så sätt förhålla sig till historiekulturen på ett förhandlande och analytiskt sätt. Nästa steg i analysen var att redogöra för hur och varför ett historiemedvetande kan utvecklas hos en individ. Eftersom jag ansåg att förmågan till kontextualisering är vad som skiljer de olika typerna av historiemedvetande åt, är det centralt att redogöra för hur progression sker angående individers förmåga till kontextualisering. Ett begrepp som fokuserar på progression i kontextualisering är historiskt tänkande såsom det skrivs fram i de brittiska och nordamerikanska forskningstraditionerna. Genom att tillämpa vad som kallas första och andra ordningens begrepp på historia hävdas det att individer når en förmåga att tolka historien och dess utsagor på ett alltmer kontextualiserat sätt: individen når en förståelse för historievetenskapens tolkande och framställningsmässiga karaktär. Tanken är att denna insikt ska leda till en förståelse för hur metod, urval, tolkning och framställning påverkar historikers arbete, dvs. historikerns kontext. Detta leder sedan vidare till en förståelse av perspektivens betydelse för historiskt meningsskapande: den historiska agentens perspektiv måste tas på lika stort allvar som den tolkande historikerns perspektiv. Ett fullt utvecklat historiskt tänkande leder till vad den australiensiske historikern Robert Parkes kallar en historiografisk blick, det vill säga en förmåga att ta hänsyn till hela den historiska framställningsprocessen, inklusive det tolkande subjektet. Jag hävdar sedan att en person med ett genetiskt 130 Seixas, ‘Historical Consciousness: The Progress of Knowledge in a Postprogressive Age’, 145–149.
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historiemedvetande är en person som har en sådan historiografisk blick, och att det således är genom kontextualiseringsgraden som begreppen historiemedvetande och historiskt tänkande kan sammankopplas. Genom historiskt tänkande kan en person utveckla sin förmåga till kontextualisering och därmed även utveckla sitt historiemedvetande.131 Denna kontextualiseringsförmåga är även central för individers identietsoch moralbildning. Genom att tillämpa narrativ identitetsteori såsom den beskrivs av den amerikanska filosofen Marya Schechtman kan ett samband mellan historiemedvetande och identitetsbildning påvisas genom att en individs attityd till narrativer är avgörande för hens identitetsbildning.132 En person som inte har någon medvetenhet om hur narrativer påverkar sin identitet har inte en likadan identitetsuppfattning som en person som har denna medvetenhet. Vidare hävdar jag att en person med ett traditionellt historiemedvetande troligen har en identitetsuppfattning som är statisk, medan en person med ett genetiskt historiemedvetande förmodligen har en mer dynamisk identitetsuppfattning eftersom den är beroende av både rumsliga och temporala kontexter och kan således förändras i tid och rum. Tätt sammankopplad med en individs identitet är hennes moraluppfattning. Om man betraktar identitet som en källa till moral på så sätt att vi sympatiserar moraliskt med dem som vi känner tillhörighet med och vice versa, kan man med samma typ av argument som ovan hävda att vilken typ av historiemedvetande som en person har är avgörande för vilken moralsyn hen har. Ett traditionellt historiemedvetande kan leda till en moralsyn som är statisk och därmed finns det en risk att det inte tas någon hänsyn till den moraliska kontexten. En person med ett genetiskt historiemedvetande kan enligt resonemanget ovan ha lättare att se den andres perspektiv i moraliska frågor och får därmed möjligen en mer tolerant moralsyn. Resultatet av den andra studien är således att en regelgivande definition av historiemedvetandebegreppet stipulerats samt att en heltäckande teori över historiemedvetandets manifesteringar, utveckling och rättfärdigande skisserats. Artikel III Den sista artikeln utgår från den teoretiska modell av historiemedvetandebegreppet som utarbetades i artikel II och diskuterar en modell för operationalisering av begreppet i analys av historiska medier. En modell skisseras för hur historiemedvetandbegreppet kan förstås som tolkningsram och metodologiskt angreppssätt vid analys av historiska medier. Den mest grundläggande tanken är att man genom att analysera individers historiebruk kan analysera deras historiemedvetande. Därför är det centralt att man utgår 131 Parkes, Interrupting History, 119–120. 132 Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves, 93–94, 143–144.
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från historiebruk när man analyserar historiemedvetanden. Hur en person brukar historien visar vilken kontextualiseringsförmåga hen har, och på så vis även vilken typ av historiemedvetande hen har. Delar av tolkningsramen tillämpas sedan i analys av ett avsnitt ur en lärobok i historia utifrån frågorna vilket historiemedvetande vi kan möta i avsnittet samt hur avsnittet kan sägas påverka individers historiemedvetanden. Om historiebruket är det sätt på vilket man kan komma i kontakt med en persons historiemedvetande dras slutsatsen att man genom att göra läroboksanalys endast möjligen kan dra slutsatser om läroboksförfattarens historiemedvetande eftersom det är det enda historiebruk vi kan antas möta i en lärobok. Om man vill kunna uttala sig om hur läromedel påverkar individers historiemedvetanden måste man rimligen gå bortom historieboken för att undersöka läroboksanvändarens historiebruk (och därigenom hens historiemedvetande). Vidare hävdas det att vilken typ av historiemedvetande en person har är avgörande för hur hen tolkar ett visst läromedel: om en person har ett traditionellt historiemedvetande antas det att hen har en liten förmåga att ta till sig läromedel som skulle kunna betraktas som multi-perspektivistiska och multikronologiska. En person som har ett genetiskt historiemedvetande antas även kunna använda i princip vilket läromedel som helst för att kunna utveckla ett historiemedvetande då hen besitter den historiografiska blicken som nämndes ovan.
Diskussion Eftersom angreppsättet i denna licentiatavhandling är teoretiskt till sin karaktär och utgår från breda frågeställningar, är dess resultat närmast att betrakta som tentativa. Det krävs ytterligare empiriska och teoretiska undersökningar för att, om möjligt, bekräfta de teoretiska positioner som skrivits fram och för att precisera tankegångar som förs. Det som jag hoppas att undersökningen kan tillföra är en breddad syn på historiemedvetandebegreppet på så sätt att det inkorporerar forskning kring historiskt tänkande för att påvisa progression i historiemedvetande, samt att det försök till att skissera en koherent men även mer precis teoretisk modell av historiemedvetandebegreppet som införlivar begreppets centrala element och söker göra det ytterligare praktiskt tillämpbart i forskning kan ge näring åt fortsatta teoretiska undersökningar eller empirisk forskning utifrån historiemedvetandebegreppet.
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THE CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN SWEDISH HISTORY DIDACTICAL RESEARCH Robert Thorp This article presents a study of how the concept of historical consciousness is defined, applied and justified in Swedish history didactical research. The study finds that there is a common ground for understanding what a historical consciousness can mean, but that the concept is applied in a variety of ways. It is suggested that this variation is one reason why the concept is generally believed to be difficult to define and apply, since the application of the concept influences how a historical consciousness can be interpreted. It is also suggested that the concept could be rendered more versatile by further theoretical investigation into how the concept’s definition and applications are connected. The Swedish history didactician Igor Potapenko finds in a recent study that pupils’ ethnic and religious backgrounds influence the way they interpret the history they are taught in school. This is because the pupils’ historical consciousnesses determine how they perceive themselves, the world around them and, consequently, the history they are taught in school. For this reason, Potapenko urges Swedish (and other) history teachers to pay attention to the historical consciousnesses of their pupils: it is by tapping in to them that history teachers really can influence their pupils’ historical knowledge and identities (Potapenko 2010:227–9, 233–6). The problem, however, is that there seems to be no consensus in Swedish history didactics on how to understand the concept of historical consciousness, with the result that history teachers more or less are left to their own devices with a notoriously vague and complex concept. In addition, historical consciousness is a central, or perhaps the central, concept in Swedish history didactics, further stressing the importance of finding a common ground for understanding what a historical consciousness is and why it is an important element in history didactics. (Cf. Alvén 2011:25–6; Schüllerqvist 2005:136–40). This article presents an investigation of the concept of historical consciousness when used in Swedish history didactical research. Since the concept is both described as central and problematic in Swedish research, a survey of how the concept is in fact used seems
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highly relevant. The study has focused on how the concept is explicitly defined, applied and justified in Swedish history didactical research that somehow uses the concept as a theoretical device. Accordingly, the research questions have been What is according to the researchers an explicitly expressed historical consciousness?, How is the concept applied by the researchers?, and Why is it an important concept according to the research studied? The presentation of the results will be followed by a brief section where problems and possibilities with the concept are discussed. Hopefully, the Swedish example could shed some light on the problems that confront history didacticians and teachers worldwide when trying to use the concept in research and teaching. The disposition of the article will be guided by the research questions, but is preceded by a short historical background on how the concept was introduced in Swedish history didactics. Before that, however, there will be a brief presentation of the study’s methods of selection and investigation. 1. Methodological considerations Since the concept of historical consciousness is a central concept in Swedish history didactics, the literature that makes use of it is vast. Hence, it is difficult to find all the works that use historical consciousness as a theoretical point of departure, and, furthermore, it is also difficult to completely cover how the concept is used in the Swedish history didactical research that does use the concept. The method I have used to find the literature that uses the concept is as follows: I started by making a simple search for ‘historical consciousness’ (in Swedish ‘historiemedvetande’) in the Swedish library database (libris.kb.se). The search returned about 130 results. To sort out the relevant literature I decided to use two criteria for selection: firstly, it had to be a scientific work of some kind, such as a chapter in a scientific anthology, an article in a scientific journal, a scientific dissertation or something akin; secondly, the work had to be authored by a researcher working at a Swedish university. All the literature that matched these two criteria was then studied and then all the works that were therein cited and matched these same criteria were also included in the study. After having read the texts, I decided only to use the works that somehow try to theoretically describe and use (or purport to use) the historical consciousness concept. A work that only refers to
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‘historical consciousness’ without further describing or making use of it has not been included, since it is hard to tell what the author has actually meant with the concept (Cf. Krohn Andersson 2012; Ludvigsson 2003; Långström 2001; Selling 2004). Given that the purpose of the study is to make a survey of how the concept of historical consciousness is explicitly defined, applied and justified in Swedish history didactical research, the focus of the study has been to find the different ways in which the concept is interpreted and understood, and not to investigate how every single researcher has used it. For this reason, I have decided not to differentiate between different kinds of works in this study: if the work has used and presented the concept of historical consciousness, it has been relevant, be it a dissertation, anthology or article. The central aspect is to cover the theoretical use of the concept, and in order to cover the whole ground, so to speak, I have deemed it relevant to include all the works that use the concept and match the criteria for selection that I have presented above. The overwhelming majority of the texts I have studied are texts that deal with how history is taught in schools, which might not be surprising considering that historical consciousness is primarily a history didactical concept. The study has been made by asking the following questions to the empirical data: Is there any definition of historical consciousness explicitly expressed by Swedish history didactical researchers?, How is historical consciousness applied by these same researchers?, and How is the concept justified by the researchers? After studying the empirical data, I have tried to sort the different treatments of the concepts according to what unites them and what they have in common. Thereafter, I have inductively created categories that illustrate these different treatments of the concept. These categories will be presented in section 3 of this article. Unless otherwise noted, all persons presented in the article are Swedish history didactical researchers. 2. Historical Background The concept of historical consciousness was introduced to Sweden from West Germany and Denmark in the early 1980’s, thus the use of the concept in Sweden is heavily influenced by the so-called Germanic or Continental history didactical tradition and its
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understanding of what a historical consciousness is (Eliasson 2012; Karlsson 1997:24–5). There are mainly three history didacticians that have been the most influential in how the concept of historical consciousness has come to be understood in Sweden: Karl-Ernst Jeismann, Bernard Eric Jensen, and Jörn Rüsen (Schüllerqvist 2006:7–8). Below I briefly present them in the same order. The German history didactician Karl-Ernst Jeismann is generally held to be the first to offer a definition of the concept of historical consciousness (Karlsson 2009b:5). Jeismann presented four aspects of a definition of historical consciousness: 1. Historical consciousness is the ever present awareness that all human beings and all forms of social integration they have created exist in time, meaning that they have a history and a future and are dynamic. 2. Historical consciousness incorporates the connection between interpretation of the past, understanding of the present and perspective on the future. 3. Historical consciousness is how the past is present in representations and conceptions. 4. Historical consciousness rests on a common understanding based on emotional experiences. This common understanding is an essential part of the construction and enforcement of human societies. (Jeismann 1979:42–4) These are four different aspects, but they are interconnected. The first one focuses on what is generally called ‘historicity,’ the notion that everything has a history. Using this aspect you can say that a person displays a historical consciousness when she is aware that everything around her has a history. The second aspect, interprets historical consciousness as an ability to create connections between the three tenses past, present, and future. The third aspect is similar to the first one, but it only focuses on the historical dimension in an individual’s understanding. Finally, the fourth aspect stresses a common understanding based on emotional experiences. This is held to be a prerequisite for all human societies. This aspect differs from the others in that it focuses not on the individual understanding, but rather the public or societal one. The Danish history didactical researcher Bernard Eric Jensen is the didactician that has had the strongest impact on Swedish research using the concept (Schüllerqvist 2005:21). He uses Jeismann’s aspects of the definition of the concept, but focuses on the second one (Jensen 1997:53). Hence it is the ability to make connections between
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past, present, and future, that is central to a historical consciousness, according to Jensen. He argues that historical consciousness should be perceived as an ‘integrated element in human beings’ identities, knowledge, and actions.’ Furthermore, the concept is considered to be crucial for us to be able to ‘understand or explain other people’s actions.’ Human beings are thus both created by history and creators of history through their historical consciousnesses (Jensen 1997:57, 60). This is a quite general or inclusive way to define the concept. Jensen chooses to interpret historical consciousness not only as a concept for History, but also for Psychology, Social Anthropology, and Social Science. Using the concept of historical consciousness we can understand how human beings construct meaning and identities, and how they function both as individuals and as members of society. The third history didactician of importance in a Swedish context is the German philosopher of history Jörn Rüsen. He focuses on how narratives are connected to the concept of historical consciousness. According to Rüsen, it is through the narrative that all human beings create meaning in general, and historical meaning in particular. Rüsen claims that a historical consciousness should be interpreted as a narrative competency in an individual (Rüsen 2006:69). Historical consciousness in Rüsen’s version becomes a qualitative concept: people can have historical consciousnesses of a higher or lower quality and Rüsen has presented what he calls a typology of historical consciousness consisting of (i) the ‘traditional’ historical consciousness where a person sees history as an everlasting status quo where nothing ever changes, (ii) the ‘exemplary’ historical consciousness where a person believes history to be static, but also a basis for normative principles that regulate human life and actions, (iii) the ‘critical’ historical consciousness with which a person uses history as a way to criticise contemporary society and culture, and (iv) the ‘genetic’ one, where a person has the ability to historicise contemporary society and culture by explaining continuity and change with the help of history. (Rüsen 2006:72). Finally, Rüsen regards historical consciousness as fundamental to an individual’s identity and morality: the historical narratives we create determine what kind of persons we are (i.e. our identities) and what moral values we possess since we cannot have an identity or morality unless we create historical narratives to describe our personal and moral qualities. In other words, a person who does not have an understanding of herself as a person surrounded by a past
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cannot be regarded as an individual with moral values since she would not have an ability to understand herself or the morality of the situations she finds herself in, according to Rüsen. This understanding is created through the narratives we construct about ourselves and the world around us (Rüsen 2006:67). Hence, also Rüsen defines historical consciousness as a quite general and inclusive concept. 3. Explicit Definitions and Applications of the Concept in Swedish History Didactical Research Below follows a presentation of how the concept of historical consciousness is defined and applied in the Swedish history didactical research that has been studied. The presentation is guided by the categorisations I have made of the researchers’ treatment of the concept. I will begin with how the concept is explicitly defined in the studied research (i.e. category 3.1), followed by how it is then applied (i.e. categories 3.2 to 3.7). In section 4 the researchers’ justifications of the concept is presented. Finally, section 5 offers a brief analysis and general discussion of the results of the study. 3.1 A multichronological concept All the works that I have studied uses a definition of historical consciousness that is either literally or essentially similar to the one that Mary Ingemansson presents in her doctoral dissertation Det kunde lika gärna ha hänt idag: Maj Bylocks Drakskeppstrilogi och historiemedvetande hos barn i mellanåldrarna, ‘historical consciousness deals with interpretation of the past, understanding of the present and thoughts about the future’ (Ingemansson 2010:10). To possess a historical consciousness is to be able to make connections between past, present, and future, such as Karl-Ernst Jeismann’s second aspect of a definition of historical consciousness states. This is also the aspect used by Bernard Eric Jensen when he defines the concept. Niklas Ammert dubs this ability ‘multichronology’ and that is the term I will use henceforth in this text when I refer to the ability in question (Ammert 2008:56). To be able to incorporate the past with the present and future is to be able to apply the genetic and genealogical perspectives on history, to have the ability to understand history prospectively and retrospectively (Eliasson 2009:309). To understand history genetically
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means being able to perceive historical change and development in a prospective manner, to be able to show how history changes using one historical example as a starting point and then discussing historical change emanating from that example. Genealogical history is history retrospectively: a person approaches history from a contemporary or personal perspective (Persson 2011:27–30). To be able to connect these two perspectives on history is held to be an expression of a historical consciousness: the individual understands how history has affected the world she lives in, and that her own world and contemporary society influence the way history is perceived. Roger Johansson argues that the understanding a person reaches by making multichronological connections is greater than the understanding she would get from isolated historical facts. This ability thus creates a more profound understanding of history (Johansson 2001:34). Klas-Göran Karlsson gives an example of what he perceives to be a typical example of how a historical consciousness works in practice: The grandchild is sitting in the kitchen talking to her grandmother about the past, but lives intensively in the present and struggles to understand her grandmother’s stories of a childhood without television and computers. Suddenly the grandchild becomes aware of her grandmother’s wrinkled hand and realises the historical character of life: firstly that her grandmother once had a hand as smooth as hers, then that she too probably will have a hand as wrinkled as her grandmother’s. (Karlsson 2009b:50) What happens in the example quoted above, according to Karlsson, is that the child’s knowledge of the past is connected to the present she is living in and the future she can imagine in a sudden insight. Karlsson argues that this happens when the child’s historical consciousness is activated and it understands its existence from that which has been (her grandmother’s stories), that which is (the story telling in the kitchen and the sight of her grandmother’s wrinkled hand), and the future (the insight that the child herself will grow old in time). 3.2 An identity-creating concept When Kenneth Nordgren claims that our ‘[h]istorical consciousness influences our perception of reality and our identities [...]’ (Nordgren 2006:36), he expresses a common belief among Swedish history
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didacticians: how we perceive history determines who we are. KlasGöran Karlsson takes the argument a step further when stating that ‘every form of identity requires a historical consciousness’ (Karlsson 2009b:52). Without a historical consciousness, no identity, it seems. When it comes to explaining how a historical consciousness affects our identities, there are differing opinions. Magnus Grahn writes, for instance, that our historical consciousness together with our memory develops and influences our identity through their common ‘activities’ (Grahn 2011:16). What these activities are is not specified by Grahn, however. A more popular way of explaining the connection between our historical consciousness and our identities is expressed by Kerstin Berntsson when she writes that ‘people construct their identities through locating themselves in relation to different narratives’ (Berntsson 2012:24–5). Hence, narratives are what bridge the gap between our historical consciousness and our identities. Igor Potapenko claims that pupils ‘perform their identities’ by creating narratives (Potapenko 2006:38). This line of reasoning conforms well with what is called the narrative self-constitution theory. According to this theory a person’s identity is determined by the narratives she constructs about herself (Schechtman 2007:92–6). Jörn Rüsen’s theories about the connection between historical consciousness and identity could also be classified as belonging to the same theory. 3.3 A meaning-creating concept Another way of viewing the historical consciousness concept, is to regard it as essential to a human being’s understanding of herself and her surrounding world. Nanny Hartsmar writes that ‘every human being needs to understand the underlying conditions for “her place” in time and space and that our lives are not determined by chance or coincidence’ (Hartsmar 2001:79). Historical consciousness is the means for creating meaning in an individual’s life: the way that contemporary society is constituted is explained by adding the historical dimension. It is also argued that our historical consciousness is made visible when we use history to create meaning and orientation in our lives (Berntsson 2012:19). Similarly, Peter Aronsson and Lars Andersson Hult claim that it is within an individual’s historical consciousness that the individual’s experiences are connected to her expectations for the future, thence creating meaning for her regarding her way to comprehend history, her
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contemporary world, and the future that awaits her (Andersson Hult 2012:26; Aronsson 2002:189–90; Aronsson 2004:67). Furthermore, a historical consciousness directed towards comprehension and creation of meaning helps us understand historical persons. Ylva Wibaeus writes that we come to appreciate the ‘horizon [...] against which the people of the past [...] comprehended their presence and future’ (Wibaeus 2010:213). A historical consciousness creates meaning by contextualising historical persons: we get an insight and an understanding for the meaning historical people created in their lives. Thus, a meaning-creating historical consciousness can make us more empathetic, we improve our ‘historical empathy’ when we come to appreciate the conditions under which historical persons led their lives (Backman Löfgren 2012:37). Finally, it is also claimed that a historical consciousness enables us to create meaning in history. By using our historical consciousness history becomes meaningful and makes sense. Our historical consciousness helps us see patterns in history, instead of just an infinite number of historical events, dates, and people heaped upon each other. That the historical event b followed the historical event a, makes sense to an individual because she possesses a historical consciousness (Alm 2002:21–2; Linderborg 2001:33). 3.4 A history-creating concept Martin Alm writes that ‘central to our historical consciousness is that we are both created by history, and creators of history’ (Alm 2009:261). Human beings both are and make history at the same time. Our lives and the conditions under which we live are historically determined and beyond our control, but the insight that there is a history and that we as individuals are part of it, changes our way of perceiving history. Accordingly, Klas-Göran Karlsson considers that a historical consciousness has to be directed towards action: when we realise that we are a part of history, we also realise that our actions affect the way history will be portrayed in the future (Karlsson 2009a:216). An individual that realises that she is both created by history and a creator of history, carries out what is called a ‘double operation of thought’ and it is through this ability that a historical consciousness is activated with this way of applying the concept (Karlsson 2009b:55). Using the same kind of logic, this insight leads the individual to an improved self-understanding and ability to orientate in life.
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3.5 An insight-creating concept Igor Potapenko states that a historical consciousness primarily is a multichronological ability, but that it also has to include an ability to scrutinise history critically (Potapenko 2006:36). An individual must be able to assess both her own and others’ perceptions of history critically, otherwise there can be no development of a person’s historical knowledge or historical consciousness. Futhermore, Potapenko claims that an uncritical stance towards history can be harmful to the individual since she will never have to justify her own or others’ historical convictions, thus rendering her less tolerant towards differing perceptions of life in general and history in particular (Potapenko 2010:227–9). By studying how Estonian youth with Russian and non-Russian backgrounds experience history, he comes to the conclusion that the youths’ experiences of history are never challenged to any greater extent, resulting in the fact the Estonian and Estonian-Russian youngsters will have two diverging ways of understanding history. A similar example from Sweden is how so called traditional nationalistic history education alienates youth with a non-Swedish background (Nordgren 2006:217–9). An application of historical consciousness that can also be labelled insight-creating, is presented by Fredrik Alvén when he writes that the ability to use and convey a critical and analytical historical consciousness that orientates pupils in time, where the society and culture of both past and present realities is interpreted by experience of the past and expectations on the future, enables a pupil to communicate her own conscious and reflected stories. (Alvén 2011:57) A historical consciousness that is both analytical and critical helps the individual to create an awareness and reflection about her own perception of history. In other words, a more profound insight into how to create narratives that are multichronological, at the same time as they include a critical reflection concerning past and present societies and cultures. Finally, Carina Renander has constructed categories for historical consciousness that she calls ‘passive,’ ‘active,’ ‘developed,’ and ‘advanced.’ Passive and active historical consciousnesses are both non-critical in character, whereas a developed historical consciousness is characterised as reflective. An advanced historical
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consciousness enables a person to make historiographical insights into how people past and present have used their historical consciousness to obtain various goals (Renander 2007:25–6). Hence, Renander regards a historical consciousness as something that should include an ability to make critical reflections and analyses in order to enable an individual to gain deeper insights about herself and others. 3.6 A value-creating concept As I have shown above a historical consciousness is regarded to influence an individual’s identity and perception of the world. Closely connected to this is the view that history education and an individual’s historical consciousness influence her moral values and opinions. It is argued that history education should acknowledge what values that have affected conceptions and prejudices about ‘the Other’ in history (Wibaeus 2010:61). Through this, pupils will be trained in understanding how moral values are created and change, and how they influence people’s actions. A deepened understanding of this is presumed to help the individual to become prepared to act correctly in morally demanding situations; history teaches us about life. Niklas Ammert claims historical consciousness should be understood as an interpretive frame that helps us understand what values and principles that motivate people’s actions (Ammert 2008:65–6). By studying history we learn to interpret and understand other people’s actions. In that way, we become more tolerant towards other people’s opinions and actions, according to Ammert. 3.7 A heuristic concept The last categorisation of historical consciousness that I have created differs somewhat from the others presented above in that it does not try to define what a historical consciousness is or apply it to a certain ability, but rather sees its value in the fact that it generates new and interesting insights and perspectives on history (Ammert 2010:27; Karlsson 2011:39–40; Nordgren 2011:142). A heuristic concept is a concept that in itself evades definition, but rather should be treated as a concept that enables new theoretical perspectives on the study of something (Marc-Wogau 1984:125). With this view it is not crucial to find a definition of what a historical consciousness is, as long as it generates new and interesting research. Therein lies the value of the
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concept. To more precisely define what the concept means or how it is applied is if not meaningless, then at least unimportant. 4. Justifications of the Historical Consciousness Concept The last part of this study investigates how the concept of historical consciousness is justified in Swedish history didactical research. I have already presented the ways in which the concept is considered to be an important one, but it can be of value to further stress which components of a historical consciousness that make the concept an indispensible one according to the research studied. The most common way to justify the use of historical consciousness is to claim that it is essential to how we create our identities: it is existentially important that a human being has and develops a historical consciousness. Who a person is depends on what kind of historical consciousness she has. Another common way of justifying the concept is to stress how it enables us to understand ourselves and the world around us. It gives us meaning. Yet another way of justifying the concept is by its ability to make us morally better people. In conclusion, historical consciousness is an important concept because it is a fundamental component of our identities (both morally and personally) and our understanding ourselves and people around us. Without a historical consciousness we would be lesser human beings. In fact, a popular understanding of the historical consciousness concept is that it is omnipresent and something that all human beings possess regardless of them being aware of it or not (Cf. Karlsson 2009b:48). Regarding the common, basic definition of the concept (i.e. historical consciousness as a multichronological concept) and its various applications, it is important to stress the fact that no researcher that I have studied justifies the concept of historical consciousness simply as a multichronological one, that it merely helps us connect the past, present, and future. 5. Summary Analysis and a General Discussion of the Results The presentation above shows that there is a consensus in Swedish history didactics about a general ground for how the concept of historical consciousness should be defined, but that the concept’s applications vary and that this creates a conceptual complexity and
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vagueness. Behind this conclusion lies the assumption that the way in which a concept is applied affects the way in which it could be understood. If, for instance, a historical consciousness is considered to influence a person’s identity, researchers tend to regard it as a concept that develops a person’s identity, i.e. something more than a mere multichronological capacity. In other words, it is analytically very difficult to separate the concept’s definition from its application. This is probably the reason why historical consciousness generally is believed to be a concept that is difficult to define. This leads us to the conclusion that multichronology is a necessary but not sufficient definition of what a historical consciousness is. The researchers that treat historical consciousness as an identity developing concept, tend to regard identity as a narrative concept. Unfortunately, it is not obvious in the literature how a historical consciousness affects a person’s identity. We can certainly, like Jörn Rüsen, claim that historical consciousness is in fact a narrative competency and that when we develop narratives, we also develop our identities. However, why do we not only talk about narratives then? Why does not historical consciousness become a superfluous concept with this view? It could be further argued that our historical consciousness provides the historical dimension in our narratives and identities, but we are still left with the question why we not only talk of ‘historical dimensions’ instead of ‘historical consciousnesses’? The same kind of problem arises when you treat historical consciousness as an insight-creating ability: why not only talk of critical assessment and reflection instead of historical consciousness? If you regard historical consciousness as a meaning-creating concept, it means that the ability to create meaning in a person’s life is the way in which a historical consciousness reveals itself. With this view it is essential with a theoretical discussion of how historical knowledge influences our ability to create meaning. Does all historical knowledge influence our historical consciousness, or just some of it, and, in that case, why does only some historical knowledge influence our historical consciousness? A similar problem arises if you treat historical consciousness as a value-creating concept: what is the connection between our values and our historical consciousness, and how does our historical consciousness mediate our historical knowledge and moral values? Historical consciousness as a history-creating concept is closely connected to how we create meaning, but it includes a component of
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agency that the meaning-creating application does not have. A problem connected with considering historical consciousness to be a history-creating concept, is that it turns history and history making into something quite trivial: all our actions create history. Some would argue that history-creating has to involve some kind of method, like source criticism, for instance. A common response to that kind of argument is that it depends on how you choose to define ‘history’: a scientific way of creating history is just one among others, and it is difficult to qualitatively determine which is better than the other (Cf. Zander 2001:52–7). A ten-year-old child’s history-creating is as relevant as that of a history professor per se, it is the context in which the history is created that determines its value, and in this case the context is highly existential. Hence it would be troublesome to claim that a professor of history is existentially ‘better’ than a tenyear-old child simply because she knows more about history and historical theory. One way to circumvent all these difficulties is to regard historical consciousness as a heuristic concept that cannot be explained in itself. One is then left with the question why so many researchers of history didactics have occupied themselves with trying to explain what a historical consciousness is if it cannot and should not be done? Have they all been mistaken? Furthermore, historical consciousness is a central concept in both Swedish history didactical research and Swedish schools, and if a Swedish history teacher is supposed to develop her pupils’ historical consciousnesses (which she in fact is), this is made a lot more difficult if one cannot say what a historical consciousness is. One could however claim that certain skills are essential for developing a historical consciousness and that history teachers should focus on these, but, still, how would you know which skills that develop a person’s historical consciousness if you cannot say what a historical consciousness is? Finally, it could once again be objected why you need the concept of historical consciousness at all, if you can talk of historical skills instead? It is also important to discuss what is called the risks of a monolithical use of the historical consciousness concept: since historical consciousness by its nature is a multifaceted and complex concept it is not meaningful to treat it as a general and inclusive one (Zander 2001:43). It is argued that it is always essential to specify what the concept means and in which way it is going to be used, otherwise you run the risk of ending up with a concept that includes
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everything and explains nothing. An example of this can be found in the otherwise excellent dissertation by Fredrik Alvén, in which he presents not less than five different definitions or applications of historical consciousness, without ever addressing this fact (Alvén 2011:27–8, 42–53). Considering the complexity of the concept this is very easily done, however. In conclusion, to be able to justify the concept of historical consciousness it is important to further investigate the concept both theoretically and empirically in order to address the issues connected to the concept that have been discussed above. Few would question whether individuals’ construction of identity and meaning are important components of history didactics, the challenge is rather to show that historical consciousness is in fact the concept that can do this in the most satisfying way. Conclusion This article has dealt with how the concept of historical consciousness is explicitly defined, applied and justified in Swedish history didactical research. In the studied research there seems to be a common ground for the understanding of what a historical consciousness is and that is as a multichronological ability that individuals possess. If an individual is able to develop a connection between what has been, what is, and what shall be, she expresses a historical consciousness. This far one could say that there seems to be a consensus among Swedish researchers in history didactics on what a historical consciousness is, but it is the ways in which the concept is applied that makes it difficult to understand what is meant by a historical consciousness. As this article has shown, there is quite a wide variety of ways in which the concept is applied, and some researchers apply the concept in more than one way. The reason why the applications complicate the definition of the concept is, as has been argued above, that it is difficult to analytically separate the concept from its applications. The application affects the definition of the concept. This is quite obvious if we consider how the concept is justified: no researcher chooses to justify historical consciousness simply because it is a multichronological ability in an individual, it is rather the applications that tend to motivate the use of the concept.
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Historical consciousness is considered to be an important concept because it develops identities, moral values, et cetera, in individuals. If we return to the example from the beginning of this article: according to history didactical research in Sweden the concept of historical consciousness seems indeed to be an appropriate one for studying how people’s religious and ethnical backgrounds influence the way they perceive history. The matter is rather being specific about how one chooses to define and apply the concept and how the definition and application are connected, since that seems to determine how the concept is understood. I believe that trying to sort out how researchers in history didactics actually define and apply the concept is a promising way to start. References Alm, M. (2002), Americanitis: Amerika som sjukdom eller läkemedel: svenska berättelser om USA åren 1900-1939, Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Alm, M. (2009), 'Historiens ström och berättelsens fåra', in K-G. Karlsson & U. Zander (eds), Historien är nu: en introduktion till historiedidaktiken, Lund: Studentlitteratur, 255–70. Alvén, F. (2011), Historiemedvetande på prov: en analys av elevers svar på uppgifter som prövar strävansmålen i kursplanen för historia, Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet. Ammert, N. (2008), Det osamtidigas samtidighet: historiemedvetande i svenska historieläroböcker under hundra år, Uppsala: Sisyfos. Ammert, N. (2010), 'To Bridge Time: Historical Consciousness in Swedish History Textbooks', Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2 (1), 17–30. Andersson Hult, L. (2012), Att finna meningen i ett historieprov: en studie om mer eller mindre utvecklat historiemedvetande, Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet. Aronsson, P. (2004), Historiebruk: att använda det förflutna, Lund: Studentlitteratur. Aronsson, P. (2002), Historiekultur, politik och historievetenskap i Norden. Historisk Tidskrift 122 (2), 189–208. Backman Löfgren, C. (2012), Att digitalisera det förflutna: en studie av gymnasieelevers historiska tänkande, Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet. Berntsson, K (2012), Spelar släkten någon roll?: "Den lilla historien" och elevers historiemedvetande, Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet. Eliasson, P. (2009), 'Kan ett historiemedvetande fördjupas?', in K-G. Karlsson & U. Zander (eds), Historien är nu: en introduktion till historiedidaktiken, Lund: Studentlitteratur, 309–26. Eliasson, P. (2012), Vilken historia!? | Nationalencyklopedin, http://www.ne.se/rep/vilken-historia [Accessed 2012-09-06].
The Concept of Historical Consciousness in Swedish History Didactical Research 223 Grahn, M. (2011), Möbelrike i tiden: om historiebrukets betydelse för identifikationsprocessen i en näringslivsregion, Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet. Hartsmar, N. (2001), Historiemedvetande: elevers tidsförståelse i en skolkontext, Malmö: Institutionen för pedagogik, Lärarhögsk. Ingemansson, M. (2010), 'Det kunde lika gärna ha hänt idag': Maj Bylocks Drakskeppstrilogi och historiemedvetande hos barn i mellanåldrarna, Göteborg: Makadam förlag. Jeismann, K-E. (1979), 'Geschichtsbewusstsein', in K. Bergmann et al. (eds), Handbuch der Geschichtsdidaktik, Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann, 42–4. Jensen, B. E. (1997), 'Historiemedvetande - begreppsanalys, samhällsteori, didaktik', in C. Karlegärd & K-G. Karlsson (eds), Historiedidaktik, Lund: Studentlitteratur, 49–81. Johansson, R. (2001), Kampen om historien: Ådalen 1931: sociala konflikter, historiemedvetande och historiebruk 1931-2000, Stockholm: Hjalmarson & Högberg. Karlsson, K-G. (2009a), 'Den historiska kunskapen - hur utvecklas den?', in K-G. Karlsson & U. Zander (eds), Historien är nu: en introduktion till historiedidaktiken, Lund: Studentlitteratur, 211–22. Karlsson, K-G. (2011), 'Historical consciousness – The fundament of historical thinking and history teaching', in P. Eliasson, C. Rönnqvist, & K. Nordgren (eds), The processes of history teaching: an international symposium held at Malmö University, Sweden, March 5th-7th 2009, Karlstad: Karlstads universitet, 34–41. Karlsson, K-G. (2009b), 'Historiedidaktik: begrepp, teori och analys,' in U. Zander & K-G. Karlsson (eds), Historien är nu: en introduktion till historiedidaktiken, Lund: Studentlitteratur, 25–70. Karlsson, K-G. (1997), 'Historiedidaktiken och historievetenskapen - ett spänningsfyllt förhållande', in C. Karlegärd & K-G. Karlsson (eds), Historiedidaktik, Lund: Studentlitteratur, 17–48. Krohn Andersson, F. (2012), Kärnkraftverkets poetik: begreppsliggöranden av svenska kärnkraftverk 1965-1973, Stockholm: Konstvetenskapliga institutionen, Stockholms universitet. Linderborg, Å. (2001), Socialdemokraterna skriver historia: historieskrivning som ideologisk maktresurs 1892-2000, Stockholm: Atlas. Ludvigsson, D. (2003), The historian-filmmaker’s dilemma: historical documentaries in Sweden in the era of Häger and Villius, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Långström, S. (2001), Ungdomar tycker om historia och politik: en studie i pedagogiskt arbeite, Umeå: Inst. för svenska och samhällsvet. ämnen, Umeå univ. Marc-Wogau, K. (1984), Filosofisk uppslagsbok, Lund: Doxa. Nordgren, K. (2011), 'Historical consciousness and September 11 2001', in P. Eliasson, C. Rönnqvist, & K. Nordgren (eds), The processes of history teaching: an international symposium held at Malmö University, Sweden, March 5th-7th 2009, Karlstad: Karlstads universitet, 141–62. Nordgren, K. (2006), Vems är historien?: historia som medvetande, kultur och handling i det mångkulturella Sverige, Umeå: Fakultetsnämnden för lärarutbildning, Umeå universitet.
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Persson, B. (2011), Mörkrets hjärta i klassrummet: historieundervisning och elevers uppfatttningar om förintelsen, Lund: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik, Lunds universitet. Potapenko, I. (2006), Elevens egen historia och skolans historieundervisning: historiemedvetande och identitet hos några ungdomar från forna Jugoslavien, Stockholm: Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm. Potapenko, I. (2010), Historiemedvetande och identitet: om historiens närvaro i några estniska ungdomars liv, Stockholm: Institutionen för didaktik och pedagogiskt arbete, Stockholms universitet. Renander, C. (2007), Förförande fiktion eller historieförmedling?: Arn-serien, historiemedvetande och historiedidaktik, Malmö: Malmö högskola. Rüsen, J. (2006), 'Historical Consciousness: Narrative, Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development', in P. Seixas (ed), Theorizing Historical Consciousness, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 63–85. Schechtman, M. (2007), The Constitution of Selves, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Schüllerqvist, B. (2006), 'Kanon och historiemedvetande – två centrala ämnesdidaktiska begrepp', in L. Brink & R. Nilsson (eds), Kanon och tradition: ämnesdidaktiska studier om fysik-, historie- och litteraturundervisning, Gävle: Lärarutbildningen, Högskolan i Gävle, 131–48. Schüllerqvist, B. (2005), Svensk historiedidaktisk forskning, Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet. Selling, J. (2004), Ur det förflutnas skuggor: historiediskurs och nationalism i Tyskland 1990-2000, Eslöv: B. Östlings bokförl. Symposion. Wibaeus, Y. (2010), Att undervisa om det ofattbara: en ämnesdidaktisk studie om kunskapsområdet Förintelsen i skolans historieundervisning, Stockholm: Pedagogiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet. Zander, U. (2001), Fornstora dagar, moderna tider: bruk av och debatter om svensk historia från sekelskifte till sekelskifte, Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
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Towards an Epistemological Theory of Historical Consciousness Robert Thorp Umeå University & Dalarna University, Sweden Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Germany ABSTRACT: This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the concept of historical consciousness. It argues that a focus on the epistemological problems concerning historical consciousness can be a way of constructing a theory of the concept that both incorporates the diverse perspectives that exist in research about the concept and specifies how a historical consciousness can be developed in an individual. KEYWORDS: Historical Consciousness; History Didactics; Historical Culture; Historical Thinking; Uses of History.
Introduction This paper deals with historical consciousness. By stating that, I want to inform the presumptive reader that this text will be primarily theoretical in character and that the concept of historical consciousness (or, rather, the author’s attempts at coming to terms with the concept) will be what guides the theoretical investigation that follows. I will also deal with some central history didactical concepts that relate to and enhance an understanding of the concept of historical consciousness. From a Swedish perspective historical consciousness has been the central concept of history didactics for the last 30 years and recently (pre-dominantly in the last decade) it has attracted an increasing amount of attention in the UK and North America as well. I believe this may have interesting repercussions on how the concept of historical consciousness can be understood. Historical consciousness is, however, a concept generally perceived to be vague and complex (Cf. Duquette, 2011, p. 259; Nordgren, 2006, p. 15), and at the same time it has been theoretically deployed in a variety of areas (Cf. Fausser, 2000, pp. 42–44). Consequently there are many bids as to how a historical consciousness could and should be interpreted; a historical consciousness is claimed to enhance such diverse things as sense making, history making, identity constitution, and moral character in an individual. There are also different views regarding how it is developed in an individual (Thorp, 2013a, pp. 213–217, 2013b, pp. 107–112). It has also been argued that historical consciousness is difficult (if not impossible) to study since it is an immaterial notion and that it is not obvious how it relates to its manifestations (Cf. Axelsson, 2004, pp. 23–24). Furthermore, research on historical consciousness in Germany and Scandinavia has been regarded as incompatible with research on the concept from the UK and North America (Cf. Lund, 2012, pp. 97–98, 110). These issues have rendered historical consciousness a rather multifarious notion that can be hard to grasp and the aim of this paper is to outline a comprehensive theory of historical consciousness that will incorporate these various perspectives and specify how it can be manifested and developed in an individual. As the title of this paper suggests, what is HISTORICAL ENCOUNTERS: A Journal of Historical Consciousness, Historical Cultures, and History Education. Vol.1, No.1, June 2014, pp. 17-28. ISSN: XXXX-TBA [ Available Online ]: http://hej.hermes-history.net © Author. Contact Robert Thorp:
[email protected]
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presented here should be regarded as a brief sketch of what such a theory could look like. As brief and sketchy as it may be, this approach to the concept is original and can hopefully inspire (or provoke) new theoretical investigations or perspectives. I will argue that historical consciousness ought to be understood as as an understanding of how matters past, present, and future relate to each other in a way that enables the individual to create a specific kind of meaning in relation to history. It will be further argued that historical consciousness can be discerned through three different manifestations that are on different levels; narratives, uses of history, and historical culture. Given these manifestations, it becomes evident that one must understand historical consciousness as a phenomenon that can be of different kinds due to basic assumptions concerning an awareness of the need of contextualisation and awareness of the temporality of truth claims, and it will be claimed that the genetic historical consciousness is the most developed form of historical consciousness in that it is a form of historical thinking that enables persons to acquire a historiographic gaze through genetic and genealogical contextualisations of history. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion concerning the significance of historical consciousness, and it is argued that understanding genetic historical consciousness as the ability to contextualise history and historical knowledge is exactly what makes historical consciousness an important history didactical concept since it can be the foundation of a development of individuals’ identity and morality. The presentation that follows will be divided into the following sections: ‘Definition’ (that argues for a certain definition of the concept), ‘Development’ (that delves into matters of how an individual develops a historical consciousness), and ‘Significance’ (this section offers an argument to why the concept is important to individuals).
Definition Definition and Application In 1979 the German historian Karl-Ernst Jeismann defined historical consciousness as a notion that ‘[incorporates] the connection between interpretation of the past, understanding of the present, and perspective on the future’(Jeismann, 1979, pp. 40–42), and this has become the generally accepted definition in history didactical research (Ahonen, 2005, p. 699). This is an ability that is sometimes called ‘multi-chronological’(Ammert, 2008, p. 56). I believe this definition poses both ontological and epistemological problems. Ontologically, it seems to assume that there is a connection between the past, present, and future. Epistemologically, it links different types of cognitive approaches to the different temporal segments: a past is interpreted, a present understood, and a future perspectivised. With Jeismann’s definition, it could be argued that it becomes essential to show that there is a connection between the temporal segments (an ontological problem), and that the different temporal segments require different kinds of cognitive approaches (an epistemological problem). Another way of defining the concept can be as an understanding of the relation between past, present, and future (Cf. van der Leeuw-Roord, 2000, p. 114). With this definition the epistemological problems of Jeismann’s definition are reduced to matters of understanding. This definition does, however, also have ontological problems connected to it (there is still a relation between past, present, and future), but I want to argue that these can be evaded with this definition since it focuses on our way of viewing the world, not the world itself. It is the individual’s understanding of the relation between what has been, is, and will be that is the focus, not the relation itself.
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If the definition of historical consciousness is that it deals with how people understand multi-chronological relations, an extended understanding of the concept can be reached by applying it to how people understand history. It does not specify how this comes to be the case, but I want to argue that understanding at this general level does not have to do that. It merely suggests that an individual that has an understanding of multi-chronology makes a different sense of history than a person that does not, hence it affects the meaning she makes. Furthermore, meaning construction through an understanding of multi-chronology can be regarded as a fundamental and inclusive definition and application of historical consciousness. The sense we make of things deals with matters of cognition at a very basic and existential level. From this level it will then be possible to construct theories about historical cognition and its development, and how identity construction happens and how this affects an individual’s view of morality. This is what the rest of this paper will deal with. Manifestations This sub-section seeks to specify how a historical consciousness can be manifested. I want to argue that at the most fundamental level a historical consciousness is manifested through narratives, and that these narratives can be applied to uses of history on an individual level and historical culture on a societal or public level. Narratives When an individual expresses something historical she does it through narratives (Cf. Rüsen, 2004, pp. 128–129, 2012, p. 47). Narratives could be regarded as cognitive structures we use to connect individual statements to create meaning of what we experience (Cf. Kuukkanen, 2012, p. 342). Thus, it could be argued that an individual’s understanding of history and, consequently, her historical consciousness is expressed through narratives. This view has been criticised since it has been argued that history can be expressed by other means, i.e. through frameworks and facts, and that we for this reason should include other manifestations of historical consciousness (Cf. Lee & Howson, 2009, p. 241). With the basic view of narration applied above it could however be argued that these frameworks and facts have to be narrated to become meaningful as well and that they therefore could be regarded as narrative. The definition of historical consciousness presented above focuses on how an individual understands narratives and it is by assessing in what manner this is narrated that we can say something about an individual’s historical consciousness. Uses of History When an individual narrates history she can be said to portray a use of history. Individuals use history to achieve various things, and these different uses have been typified by the Swedish historian Klas-Göran Karlsson; they can for instance be political, existential, ideological, and scientific in character (Karlsson, 1999, pp. 55–60). We can call these uses of history whatuses. It is, however, interesting not only to assess what use of history an individual makes, but also how the individual uses history. To illustrate how individuals can use history, I will employ Jörn Rüsen’s typology of historical narration as strategies for what he calls ‘sensegeneration.’ I believe this typology can be applied to illustrate how-uses of history since it typifies how historical narratives are used to portray history. Firstly, there is the traditional narration in which an individual uses history to show that traditions should be upheld in society. The next type of narration is exemplary, and here an individual uses history to generate rules of conduct. The third type of narration is critical and here history is used to criticise both contemporary and historical societies and cultures. The fourth type is the genetic
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one, and here history is used to explain continuity and change in societies both historical and present (Rüsen, 2012, pp. 52–54). Historical Culture When individuals use history they uphold a historical culture. A historical culture can thus be perceived as an agglomeration of different uses of history. An important aspect of historical culture is that it is the societal historical landscape that individuals are born into. The historical culture of a society thus a priori affects how individuals interpret historical events or facts (Carr, 1986, pp. 50–53; Karlsson, 2008, p. 11). This means that a historical culture is constituted by the historical consciousnesses and uses of history of its members, but at the same time it determines and affects what kind of historical consciousness and use of history its members have or make. In other words, the historical culture of a society is present when the individual member is born into or otherwise enters it, but this individual member can later on influence the historical culture of that same society to a certain degree through her use of history (which is determined by her historical consciousness). Historical culture can thus be seen as a dynamic concept that shapes individuals’ historical consciousnesses, but at the same time can be shaped by the historical consciousnesses and uses of history of its individual members (Cf. Karlsson, 2005, p. 724; Rüsen, 2012, pp. 57–58). Epistemic Qualities of Historical Consciousness From the narratives and uses of history of individuals we can discern that there can be different epistemic qualities of a historical consciousness. This sub-section presents a typology that allows us to illustrate different types of historical consciousnesses and differentiate between them. Furthermore, by using a qualitative typology of the concept it enables us not only to theorise on whether an individual understands multi-chronology, but also to say something about how she understands it. Peter Seixas has extended Jörn Rüsen’s widely accepted typology of historical consciousness (Rüsen, 2006, p. 72) to illustrate different ways of understanding history, and I think these extensions can be helpful for the present purposes. The types of historical consciousness are the (i) traditional type, (ii) exemplary type, (iii) critical type, and (iv) genetic type. The traditional type of historical consciousness is epistemologically quite rudimentary: we know history because we are told so by parents, relatives, friends, media, and history teachers. Pieces of historical knowledge have the character of being substantive and either true or false. There are no means for a critical assessment of history or historical accounts, and, consequently, no means for treating contradictory accounts of history (Seixas, 2006, p. 145). The exemplary type of historical consciousness turns history into a positivist science: the truth is out there waiting to be discovered. It is only a matter of applying the right kind of method when approaching history. Furthermore, values, such as human rights, are historically derivative: we can, for instance, know what rights the individual has through studying history (Seixas, 2006, pp. 146–147). This view is similar to the traditional view because it treats historical accounts as substantive, although this view is more advanced since it engages with how to verify or falsify historical claims, albeit in a simplistic manner. A critical type of historical consciousness is a move beyond the positivist view of the previous types since it questions the possibility of truth in history (Seixas, 2006, p. 148). It does not, however, offer us a method of how to treat history, apart from falsifying (or verifying) its accounts. What follows is a kind of relativism: all historical accounts are equally false (or true). Furthermore, it displays an inability to historicise the point of view of the meaning-making subject: it is one thing to claim that everyone else makes mistakes when
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using history, and another to realise that the only way of making that postulation is to use the same kind of method as the others: the historical example. It is consequently a failure to realise that all categories and all statements about the world are subject to historicity, including those of the experiencing subject. Finally, the genetic type of historical consciousness is the most advanced type, and a person with this kind of historical consciousness takes neither an objectivist nor a relativist stance regarding the possibility of historical knowledge from an epistemological perspective. Instead, it displays an appreciation that knowledge is constructed ‘by a community of inquiry that exercises mutual checks and balances within itself.’ Thus, ‘[h]istorical knowledge changes over time, and, yet, in any particular historical era, there are standards for valid historical accounts or arguments’(Seixas, 2006, p. 149). Hence, it is a realisation that all categories and all points of views are contingent on the historical context in which they take place, and that this is absolutely normal, and, consequently, a pre-requisite for historical knowledge. It is still possible to talk about true and false accounts of history, but it is a much more complex matter than with the other types of historical consciousness. What I perceive to be essential in distinguishing between traditional, exemplary, and critical historical consciousness on the one hand and genetic historical consciousness on the other, is the individual’s ability to appreciate the representative aspects of history. A person with the three former types of historical consciousness treats historical accounts as true (or false) propositions about reality, thus conflating historical representations of facts with historical facts. This leaves little room for meta-historical considerations. A person with a genetic historical consciousness, however, could be argued to distinguish between historical representations of facts and historical facts in themselves, enabling a meta-historical approach (Cf. Ankersmit, 2013, pp. 190–191). By relating this typology to the manifestations of historical consciousness presented above, it can be possible to show how a certain use of history emanates from a certain historical consciousness. It can be argued that an individual that has no understanding of the contextual contingency of history cannot make a genetic use of history. Furthermore, she cannot negotiate or analyse the historical culture or cultures that she is a member of. With a genetic historical consciousness, however, the individual is able to analyse and scrutinise different uses of history from a contextual perspective, and she is thus able to negotiate and analyse the historical cultures she belongs to. Summary - the Definition of Historical Consciousness To summarise then, a historical consciousness can be regarded as an understanding of how matters past, present, and future relate to each other. This understanding enables the individual to create a specific kind of meaning in relation to history. Furthermore, there are different epistemic kinds of historical consciousnesses: for example the traditional, exemplary, critical, and genetic, which all relate to what kind of understanding an individual has of history. A historical consciousness is expressed through narratives, but it should be perceived as an attitude towards these narratives. When an individual makes historical narratives she uses history in different ways. Uses of history can be categorised according to what kind of use they are, and how they are used. How an individual uses history is determined by what kind of historical consciousness she has: a traditional historical consciousness results in a traditional use of history, etc. When individuals use history they uphold a historical culture, but this same culture also determines how the individual perceives history and uses it. This view of
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historical consciousness also shows how the concept can be perceived as distinct and different from the concepts of narration, uses of history, and historical culture.
Development I want to argue that an ability to appreciate the representational aspects of history is what distinguishes between different types of historical consciousnesses, and for this reason it is important to look closer into the development of the epistemic types of historical consciousness. It is also important to remember that it is presently not possible to say anything about how a historical consciousness is developed in an individual: it can only be theoretically specified what it may be and we can describe its manifestations and epistemic qualities. To theorise about how a historical consciousness is developed there is a need for some kind of structure of how historical rationality and its progression works (Cf. Straub, 2006, p. 79). I believe that a fruitful way of approaching how individuals come to acquire the ability to regard history as representation (i.e. a meta-historical approach) is the concept or notion of historical thinking, predominantly developed and applied in research in the UK, USA, and Canada. Before going into the specifics of that, I think it is important to outline how I regard historical cognition. Historical Cognition Generally speaking there are two ways of regarding historical cognition in history didactical research: it can either be perceived as an ability to apply genetic-genealogical approaches to history (which is quite common in Sweden), or it can be perceived as an ability to contextualise historical factual knowledge and representations (which is common in the UK, USA, and Canada). I think these two approaches have a lot in common for reasons I will demonstrate below. To apply genetic and genealogical perspectives on history is to connect the past with the present and the future, i.e. it is an ability to understand history both prospectively and retrospectively (Eliasson, 2009, p. 309). A person who understands history genetically regards historical change and development prospectively, meaning, for instance, that she explains historical change starting at one historical event and stopping at another. To view history genealogically means that one starts with the personal or contemporary point of view and from thence constructs historical accounts. A genealogical understanding of history acknowledges that all historical investigations are contemporary in the sense that the person performing the historical investigation (and the historical culture or cultures she is a member of) affects how she chooses to approach history and how she interprets it (Persson, 2011, pp. 27–30). Applying prospective and retrospective approaches can be regarded as promoting a multi-chronological understanding of history; the individual gains an appreciation of how temporal perspectives influence how we perceive and interpret history (Eliasson, 2009, pp. 317, 325; Persson, 2011, p. 128). If a genetic-genealogical approach to history enhances a multi-chronological understanding of history, it can also be claimed to increase an individual’s ability to contextualise history, since an understanding of the importance of temporal perspectives more or less forces the individual to take the historical context into account. If my perspective on history affects what kinds of questions I pose to history and how I choose to interpret the answers I get, then the perspectives of others also should be taken into account. Research has shown that individuals read or decode historical texts differently depending on what epistemic beliefs they have about history and historical facts. People with a
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procedural approach (i.e. a methodological and critical approach) to history and historical facts take the context into account when they study history, whereas people with no procedural training tend to regard history and historical facts as being either true of false (in the positivist notion of the term) and run into trouble as soon as they come across conflicting historical accounts. Having a procedural training in history thus enables the individual to take the point of view of the other, of the historical agent (Kolikant & Pollack, 2009, pp. 673–674; Seixas, 1993, pp. 366–367; Wineburg, 1998, pp. 337–340). Furthermore, it has been claimed that an ability to contextualise is what will enable individuals to reach a rich and full understanding of history, if an individual is not able to contextualise historical matters, she will judge them according to her own standards, i.e. she will regard history anachronistically (Cf. Wineburg, 2001, pp. 18–24). This view of historical cognition seems to harmonise well with the view of historical consciousness that was presented above: the more advanced a historical consciousness a person has, the greater is her ability to appreciate her own point of view as essential to how she perceives history, and vice versa. Historical thinking is a notion that can afford a theoretical approach to how individuals may gain an appreciation of the importance of context in history. Historical Thinking Historical thinking is commonly defined as an ability to understand how historical knowledge has been constructed and to know what that means, and an ability to contextualise historical facts, events, and persons (Lévesque, 2008, p. 27; Seixas & Morton, 2013, p. 2). To obtain a historical thinking an individual has to learn to think like a historian, i.e. to learn to apply theoretical tools to analyse how historical knowledge is constructed (Seixas & Morton, 2013, pp. 2–3). A key element in learning to think like a historian is to acquire the ability to differentiate between and apply 1 st and 2nd order concepts in history. 1 st order concepts deal with the stuff of history, i.e. ‘the French Revolution,’ ‘Feudalism,’ et cetera. 2 nd order concepts are more important when developing historical thinking because they deal with how we analyse historical facts (Seixas & Peck, 2004, pp. 115–116). Examples of these are ‘historical significance,’ ‘evidence,’ ‘cause and consequence,’ and ‘continuity and change’ (Lévesque, 2008, p. 17; Seixas & Morton, 2013, p. 4). By applying these concepts individuals will be able to gain a deeper understanding of what can be called the historical practice: an articulated historical thinking can enable the individual to realise that history is an art of interpretation and representation. What historians (and others) write is contingent on how they interpret and narrate history. It is thus an appreciation that there is always a use of history inherent in historical representations, be they scientific or popular in character. Hence, historical thinking can provide us with the theoretical tools to develop our own use of history and analyse that of others. It has been argued that the main objective of historical thinking is to enable the individual to make meta-historical analyses of historical narratives (Lee, 2006, pp. 134–135; Shemilt, 2000, pp. 97–98). When an individual has mastered the ability to contextualise history and its accounts, it is claimed that she will possess an ability to scrutinise not only the historical accounts, or representations, as such, but also the person behind them. This will help the individual in making meta-theoretical analyses of how history is created. The Australian historian Robert Parkes has coined the term ‘historiographic gaze’ to illustrate this ability. He argues that the historiographic gaze extends the ‘gaze of the historian to everything, even [herself], revealing the specificity of historical knowledge and practice’ (Parkes, 2011, p. 102). Without the historiographic gaze, pieces of historical knowledge take on the appearance of being objective and factual, when they in fact are a result of a historian’s conscious choice and interpretation. Through the historiographic gaze, we get the full picture on how history is
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created and gain a richer understanding of the contingent character of historical representations (Parkes, 2011, pp. 119–120). If we return to what was written above about historical consciousness and uses of history, we may have a promising way of theoretically connecting historical consciousness and historical thinking. A historiographic gaze is not only the result of an advanced historical thinking, but also enables the individual to analyse uses of history, both that of herself and others, at quite an advanced level. A person with a historiographic gaze seems to have the meta-historical approach of a genetic historical consciousness: an appreciation the contextual contingency of history and its representations. Summary - the Development of Historical Consciousness Historical thinking is a theory that deals with how progression in historical cognition works: it is argued that the most advanced kind of historical cognition is the one that takes the context of historical representations into account. The term historiographic gaze can be a convenient way of illustrating what an appreciation of the contextual contingency of historical representations can look like, and since it can also be regarded as a meta-historical attitude or stance towards (historical) narratives, it harmonises well with the view of historical consciousness presented here.
Significance Identity It has often been claimed that a historical consciousness is relevant to an individual’s identity and morality (Cf. Friedrich, 2010, pp. 649–650; Karlsson, 2009, p. 52). I think that an understanding of historical consciousness as an appreciation of the contextual contingency of history could make the concept important to identity construction and morality. A narrative view of identity suggests that individuals create their identity when they create narratives about themselves and that an individual that has an awareness of this fact has a more profound sense of her identity (Cf. Schechtman, 2007, pp. 93–94). Furthermore, individuals that realise that they are temporally persisting subjects with a past, present, and future, will appreciate that their experiences (or the narrations of their experiences) influence how they perceive themselves in a multi-chronological manner, i.e that a temporal awareness is an important part of an individual’s identity construction (Cf. Schechtman, 2007, pp. 143– 144). This view of identity construction conforms well with the view of historical consciousness presented in this paper since it may establish a connection between an individual’s epistemological stance towards narratives and identity formation: how you perceive the world affects what kind of a person you are. A person that has a traditional historical consciousness and a traditional use of history will most likely regard her image of personal identity as something static, perhaps resulting in a deterministic or alienated view of the self. A genetic historical consciousness, developed through historical thinking, will however more likely regard personal narratives as dynamic and contingent on both spatial and temporal contexts. From this line of reasoning it seems that the nature of a person’s historical consciousness could indeed be significant for the kind of identity she develops.
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Morality Closely connected to the view that a historical consciousness affects an individual’s identity, is the view that it is essential to her moral character as well (Cf. Rüsen, 2006, p. 67). I want to argue that how we perceive ourselves as individuals also affects how we view morality. What kind of person I regard myself to be determines what I believe to be meaningful in life. To be someone is to define what you are and what you are not, and to know what you like and do not like, and this obviously has moral implications (Cf. Taylor, 1992, pp. 28–29). On a similar note it can be claimed that who we perceive ourselves to be determines how we treat other people: I empathise with those that I can identify myself with and vice versa. Our identities are a source for our moral convictions (Cf. Appiah, 2010, pp. 24–25, 236–237). Thus what kind of historical consciousness an individual has seems significant. If we adopt the view that our morality is dependent on how we perceive ourselves, and if we empathise morally with those that we identify ourselves with, an ability to appreciate the contextual contingency of narratives is important. With the binary substantive attitude connected to a traditional, exemplary, or critical historical consciousness, the narratives of others can only be accepted or rejected at face value, resulting in an inability to appreciate the importance of context in morality. With a genetic historical consciousness, however, taking the perspective of the other comes naturally. Without this ability we may end up in a static view of identity contingent on our inability to contextualise narratives. Then there would be no way to treat the other in a tolerant and reconciling way (Cf. Zanazanian, 2012, p. 219).
Conclusion The aim of this paper has been to outline a coherent epistemological theory of historical consciousness that incorporates the diverse perspectives that exist in research on the concept and manages to evade some of the criticism that has been raised concerning historical consciousness. As was noted in the introduction, this is a far-reaching aim and for this reason some of the positions outlined here are merely tentative and in want of further argumentation. If one however regards this paper as a first attempt, I hope it may be possible to tolerate these deficiencies. According to the central thesis of this paper, an ability to contextualise history and historical accounts can make the individual aware that history and the sense we make of it are contextually contingent, something that in turn will allow the individual to make metahistorical analyses and regard history and its accounts as representations of historical facts rather than historical facts in and of themselves. This ability is illustrated by the term historiographic gaze according to which the individual regards all matters as contextually contingent, even the meaning she creates herself, an ability that will allow individuals to make genetic uses of history. These uses could then be regarded as symptoms of a genetic historical consciousness. Furthermore, I argue that this ability is an important aspect of identity construction and morality thus making historical consciousness an important concept concerning these aspects. My hope is that a focus on the epistemological problems of historical consciousness will enable us to theorise what a historical consciousness can be, how it may be manifested and developed, and why it can be regarded to be a significant concept.
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Straub, J. (2006). Telling Stories, Making History: Toward a Narrative Psychology of the Historical Construction of Meaning. In J. Straub (Ed.), Narration, Identity and Historical Consciousness (pp. 44–98). New York: Berghahn Books. Taylor, C. (1992). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge University Press. Thorp, R. (2013a). The Concept of Historical Consciousness in Swedish History Didactical Research. In J. Wojdon (Ed.), Cultural and Religious Diversity and Its Implications for History Education (pp. 207–224). Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag. Thorp, R. (2013b). Vad är ett historiemedvetande egentligen och varför är det viktigt? In D. Ludvigsson (Ed.), Kritiska perspektiv på historiedidaktiken (pp. 97–119). Eksjö: Historielärarnas förening. Van der Leeuw-Roord, J. (2000). Working With History - Developing European Historical Consciousness. In S. Macdonald & K. Fausser (Eds.), Approaches to European Historical Consciousness: Reflections and Provocations (pp. 114–124). Hamburg: Edition KörberStiftung. Wineburg, S. (1998). Reading Abraham Lincoln: An Expert/Expert Study in the Interpretation of Historical Texts. Cognitive Science, 22(3), 319–346. Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Zanazanian, P. (2012). Historical Consciousness and the Structuring of Group Boundaries: A Look at Two Francophone School History Teachers Regarding Quebec’s Anglophone Minority. Curriculum Inquiry, 42(2), 215–239.
Acknowledgements I wish to extend my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their valuable comments.
About the Author Robert Thorp is a PhD candidate at Umeå University and Dalarna University in Sweden. He has worked as an upper secondary school teacher of History, Philosophy, and English for ten years. In January 2012 he joined the Historical Media Postgraduate School at Umeå University and Dalarna University where he is currently finalising his licentiate thesis called Historical Consciousness, Historical Media, and History Education. In August 2013 he joined the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany, as a researcher for the project “Teaching the Cold War: Memory Practices in the Classroom.”
III
Historical Consciousness and Historical Media -
A History Didactical Approach to Educational Media
Introduction The aim of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework of historical consciousness and discuss what parts of it may have relevance for the analysis of historical media. The relevant parts of this theoretical framework will then be applied in textbook analysis which will be followed by a discussion of how the uses of history in a textbook relate to the concept of historical consciousness and its development. Highly interesting and relevant research has already been done in this field, but I would like to propose an understanding of the concept of historical consciousness that pushes the analysis of textbooks towards what has been called the practical turn in textbook analysis. Put very briefly, it states that the use of the textbook affects how its meaning is negotiated.1 Historical consciousness is a concept that has become one of the centrepieces of history didactics, and researchers from across the world deploy the concept in a variety of approaches to history didactical research.2 Two of the difficulties connected with the use of the concept is that it is perceived to be quite complex and vague in character3 and that it has been perceived as difficult to apply in analysis.4 The concept has become increasingly important in history education as well: in Sweden, for instance, history curricula state that the primary aim of teaching history in schools is to develop the historical consciousness of pupils since it influences their identities and conceptions of morality.5 Some researchers in the UK and North America have also come to the conclusion that pupils’ pre-conceptions of history influence the way they Manuscript currently under review in Education Inquiry (14th of May 2014). I would like to thank Tomas Axelson at Dalarna University and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this text. 1 Barbara Christophe, ‘Remembering Communism - Making Sense of Post-Communism. An Analysis of Discursive Strategies in Lithuanian Textbooks’, Eckert.Beiträge, no. 2010/10 (2010): 4. 2 Sirkka Ahonen, ‘Historical Consciousness: A Viable Paradigm for History Education?’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 37, no. 6 (2005): 697–699. 3 Cf. Catherine Duquette, Le rapport entre la pensée historique et la conscience historique. Elaboration d’une modèle d’interprétation lors de l’apprentissage de l’histoire chez les élèves de cinquième secondaire des écoles francophone du Québec (Québec: Université de Laval, 2011), 259; and Kenneth Nordgren, Vems är historien?: Historia som medvetande, kultur och handling i det mångkulturella Sverige, doktorsavhandlingar inom den Nationella forskarskolan i pedagogiskt arbete, 1653-6894; 3 (Umeå: Fakultetsnämnden för lärarutbildning, Umeå universitet, 2006), 15. 4 Peter Aronsson, Historiebruk: Att använda det förflutna (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2004), 69. 5 Läroplan, examensmål och gymnasiegemensamma ämnen för gymnasieskola 2011 (Stockholm: Skolverket, 2011), 66.
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learn the subject, urging teachers and researchers to focus also on what the pupils bring into the classroom in order for them to learn more and also because this has a bearing on what kind of views pupils can acquire of the world and people therein.6 Since research has shown that textbooks are a common tool used by history teachers at least in major parts of Europe,7 an analysis of textbooks in relation to the teaching of history from the perspective of historical consciousness seems relevant. For these reasons, aspects of the framework proposed will be applied in analysis of a textbook account. The paper will begin with a theoretical section that outlines a theoretical framework of historical consciousness and a discussion of what parts of the framework are relevant in textbook analysis and what kind of analysis can be done considering the framework proposed. I will then relate this approach to previous research. The relevant parts of the framework will then be tested empirically and this will be followed by a concluding discussion of the results.
Theoretical Framework Historical Consciousness The aim of this section is to present a theory of historical consciousness that can be used to understand how individuals make sense of history, how they express a historical consciousness, how a historical consciousness can be developed, and how this interpretation of the concept can be understood as a methodological approach, outlining its possibilities and restrictions regarding the analysis of historical media in general and history textbooks in particular. I will then discuss how this framework can be applied in textbook analyses. Definition and Application Historical consciousness can be defined as a concept that deals with people’s understanding of the relation between the past, the present, and the future;8 6 Cf. Denis Shemilt, ‘The Caliph’s Coin: The Currency of Narrative Frameworks in History Teaching’, in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives, ed. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 97–100; and Duquette, Le Rapport, 1. 7 Bodo von Borries and Magne Angvik, Youth and History: A Comparative European Survey on Historical Consciousness and Political Attitudes among Adolescents. Vol. B, Documentation: Original and Combined Measures for Dimensions in Historical Consciousness (Hamburg: Körber-Stiftung, 1997), 57–60; Monika Vinterek, ‘Different Kinds of Teaching Resources – Different Kinds of Learning?: Teachers’ Ends and Means’, in Opening the Mind or Drawing Boundaries?, ed. Thorsteinn Helgason and Simone Lässig, vol. 122, Die Schriftenreihe, Hg. Vor Georg-Eckert-Institut Für Schulbuchforschung (Braunschweig: Georg-Eckert-Institut für Schulbuchforschung, 2010), 123–140. 8 Cf. Joke van der Leeuw-Roord, ‘Working With History - Developing European Historical Consciousness’, in Approaches to European Historical Consciousness: Reflections and Provocations, ed. Sharon Macdonald and Katja Fausser, Eustory Series 1 (Hamburg: Edition Körber-Stiftung, 2000), 114.
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an understanding of how past, present, and future relate to each other in history. This ability has been dubbed multi-chronology by the Swedish history didactical researcher Niklas Ammert, and that is the term I will use henceforth when I refer to this ability.9 When an individual applies multichronology to history it can be claimed that she makes a different kind of meaning of the history she encounters than a person who does not make these temporal connections. Hence, I want to argue that the understanding of multi-chronology that was stipulated as a definition of historical consciousness should be applied to individuals’ meaning-making in history. Manifestations A historical consciousness can be manifested from at least three different perspectives: (i) narration, (ii) uses of history, and (iii) historical culture. At the most fundamental level, a person manifests her historical consciousness when she creates narratives.10 In order to convey historical matters (and others), we need to narrate them.11 When an individual narrates something historical, she can be said to make a use of history. It can thus be through the uses of history that we can access an individual’s historical consciousness. In this paper, there are two dimensions of uses of history that are central. The first dimension is what I call the what-dimension; these uses of history can be existential, political, scientific, et cetera, according to a commonly used typology developed by the Swedish historian Klas-Göran Karlsson.12 These kinds of uses of history illustrate how history can be used to achieve different things, i.e. if history is used politically, it is used in political debates or something similar to achieve a political goal. Another interesting dimension of the uses of history is what can be called the how-dimension. Here the analysis focuses on how individuals use history to achieve these things. Jörn Rüsen’s typology of historical narratives can be an appropriate way to illustrate these uses of history since historical narratives, according to Rüsen, are used to achieve various things. A traditional narration makes use of history to maintain or uphold tradition. An exemplary narration uses history to generate rules of conduct; history teaches us how to lead our lives. The critical narration uses the historical example to criticise historical and contemporary societies and cultures, while the fourth type of narration is the genetic one and here history is used to 9 Niklas Ammert, Det osamtidigas samtidighet: Historiemedvetande i svenska historieläroböcker under hundra år (Uppsala: Sisyfos, 2008), 56. 10 Cf. Jörn Rüsen, Berättande och förnuft: Historieteoretiska texter (Göteborg: Daidalos, 2004), 128–129. 11 Cf. David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy, 0550-0060 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1986), 50–53. 12 Cf. Klas-Göran Karlsson, ‘Historiedidaktik: begrepp, teori och analys’, in Historien är nu: En introduktion till historiedidaktiken, ed. Ulf Zander and Klas-Göran Karlsson (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2009), 59.
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explain continuity and change in historical and contemporary societies and cultures.13 All uses of history can be analysed according to what kind of use of history they are and how history is used in these examples. The third manifestation of historical consciousness that I want to highlight is historical culture. I want to argue that historical culture can be regarded as an agglomeration of uses of history. With this view, a historical culture is upheld by the uses of history of its individual members, but at the same time it also affects what kinds of uses of history there can be since it a priori determines how individuals interpret historical events or facts. This is because a historical culture is always present when an individual is born into or otherwise enters a certain society.14 Furthermore, uses of history can be found in the artefacts of a certain historical culture. How these uses of history are interpreted depends on what historical culture they adhere to and what kind of historical consciousness the interpreting individual has. Epistemic Qualities If historical consciousness deals with individuals’ understanding of multichronological connections in history, it seems important to be able to say something about how they understand these connections, i.e. what epistemic qualities a historical consciousness can have. Research has shown that the epistemic beliefs of individuals influence how they interpret history and historical accounts.15 For this reason, I want to propose a typology that allows us to analyse how an individual makes sense of history. Jörn Rüsen’s widely accepted typology of historical consciousness16 has been extended by Peter Seixas17 and I think these extensions could be used to illustrate these qualities. If an individual has a traditional historical consciousness, the typology states that she regards history and its accounts as either true or false in themselves without taking any notice of their historical context. She has a rudimentary and binary approach to historical accounts and the truth-value therein and encounters difficulties when exposed to two (or more) contradictory historical accounts. An individual with an exemplary historical consciousness still has a rudimentary and binary approach to truth-value in 13 Jörn Rüsen, ‘Tradition: A Principle of Historical Sense-Generation and Its Logic and Effect in Historical Culture’, History and Theory 51, no. 4 (2012): 52–54, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00646.x. 14 Cf. Aronsson, Historiebruk, 61–62.
15 Ivar Bråten et al., ‘The Role of Epistemic Beliefs in the Comprehension of Multiple Expository Texts: Toward an Integrated Model’, Educational Psychologist 46, no. 1 (January 2011): 54–55, doi:10.1080/00461520.2011.538647. 16 Jörn Rüsen, ‘Historical Consciousness: Narrative, Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development’, in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 72. 17 Peter Seixas, ‘Historical Consciousness: The Progress of Knowledge in a Postprogressive Age’, in Narration, Identity and Historical Consciousness, ed. Jürgen Straub (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 141–162.
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history, but she acknowledges that we need some kind of method for ascertaining the truth-value therein. Here history is regarded in a positivist (or Cartesian objective) manner: by applying the right kind of method, we can find out what is true and false history. The next kind of historical consciousness, according to Seixas’ typology, is the critical one, and a person with this kind of historical consciousness regards the truth-value in all history and its accounts as relative to their contexts, resulting in the view that there can be no (objective or inter-subjective) truth-value regarding history. The last epistemic quality is the genetic one, and this is a step beyond critical historical consciousness since it regards the contextual contingency of history not as an obstacle, but rather as the only way of reaching an objective or intersubjective truth in history. If we take the context of historical representations into account (including the context of the experiencing subject) we can come to know something about history.18 What distinguishes these different types of historical consciousness is the individual’s ability to contextualise historical accounts. A person with a traditional historical consciousness does not contextualise historical accounts at all whereas a person with a genetic historical consciousness contextualises both the historical account and herself as a “meaning-making” individual. It has been shown in research that the pre-conceptions of and attitudes towards history that individuals have affect how they understand the texts they read; a person with strong pre-conceptions is unlikely to sympathise with a historical account that presents a rivalling image of history.19 Hence, it can be claimed that the kind of historical consciousness an individual has can be relevant to how she interprets historical accounts and/or history.20 Finally, on the basis of the view presented here, it can be argued that a certain use of history is the effect, or symptom, of a certain kind of historical consciousness. For instance, a traditional historical consciousness can result in a use of history that does not consider context whatsoever, i.e. a traditional use of history. A person with a genetic historical consciousness, on the other hand, analyses both the context of the historical account and the meaning-making subject, taking the full context into account when using history and thus making a genetic use of history.
18 Ibid., 145–149.
19 Dan A. Porat, ‘It’s Not Written Here, but This Is What Happened: Students’ Cultural Comprehension of Textbook Narratives on the Israeli-Arab Conflict’, American Educational Research Journal 41, no. 4 (1 December 2004): 964. 20 For further arguments on how epistemic beliefs or qualities affect our consciousness and perception, see Pete Mandik, ‘An Epistemological Theory of Consciousness?’, in Philosophy in the Neuroscience Era, Special Issue of Reti, Saperi, Linguaggi, ed. Alessio Plebe and Vivian De La Cruz, Journal of the Department of Cognitive Science (Rome: Squilibri, 2008), 152–156.
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Development Since the view of historical consciousness presented above stresses the epistemic dimensions of the concept (an ability to contextualise history is perceived to be what distinguishes different types of historical consciousness), it is important to specify how individuals do in fact come to contextualise history and representations thereof. Such a theoretical approach is afforded by the concept of historical thinking where the aim of applying first and second order concepts to history is to enable the individual to appreciate the representational aspects of history, i.e. to have a meta-historical approach to history.21 For the sake of brevity, I will not go into specifics here on how an individual comes to appreciate these aspects of history through historical thinking, but I want to stress that research has shown that some kind of method seems to be required in order to develop individuals’ abilities to contextualise historical accounts.22 Previous Research This paper presents an analysis of a section of a history textbook and it should therefore be regarded as an example of one kind of textbook analysis. Since it is a rather vast and diverse area of research,23 in the analysis here I will only focus on textbook analysis that has deployed the concept of historical consciousness. One assumption in that research seems to be that the content of the textbook is essential for the kind of historical consciousness the individual develops: through reading history textbooks individuals develop their historical consciousnesses.24 It is claimed, for instance, that history textbooks that include multi-chronological (or reflexive) historical accounts that deal with values (such as freedom or benevolence) have a greater possibility of developing an individual’s historical consciousness since it engages the individual on a personal level (through values) and forces her to
21 Cf. Peter Lee, ‘Understanding History’, in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 134–135; and Shemilt, ‘The Caliph’s Coin: The Currency of Narrative Frameworks in History Teaching’, 97–98. 22 Sam Wineburg, ‘Reading Abraham Lincoln: An Expert/expert Study in the Interpretation of Historical Texts’, Cognitive Science 22, no. 3 (July 1998): 337–340, doi:10.1016/S0364-0213(99)80043-3. 23 Simone Lässig, ‘Textbooks and Beyond: Educational Media in Context(s)’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 1, no. 1 (1 April 2009): 4, doi:10.3167/jemms.2009.010101; and Stuart Foster, ‘Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision’, Education Inquiry 2, no. 1 (1 March 2011): 5, doi:10.3402/edui.v2i1.21959. 24 Cf. Ammert, Det osamtidigas samtidighet, 151; Aleksey Bushuev, ‘Contemporary History for the Modern Generation: The Specificity of Schoolchildren’s Historical Consciousness Formation in Post-Soviet Russia’, in Cultural and Religious Diversity and Its Implications for History Education, ed. Joanna Wojdon, Yearbook of the International Society for History Didactics 34 (Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag, 2013), 244; Halvdan Eikeland, Et laereverks bidrag til historiebevissthet og narrativ kompetanse. Analyse og praktisk bruk av historiedelen av Aschehougs laereverk i samfunnstag for ungdomstrinnet: ‘Innblikk’ (Tönsberg: Högskolen i Vestfold, 2002), 4; and Nordgren, Vems är historien?, 186, 218.
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analyse the accounts multi-chronologically by applying genetic and genealogical perspectives.25 Furthermore, historical accounts in textbooks need to be varied (in the sense that they include text, images, statistics, etc.), fascinating, multidimensional (i.e. they apply both synchronous and diachronous perspectives), and multi-perspectival (i.e. present historical accounts from different perspectives).26 The Norwegian researcher Halvdan Eikeland writes, for instance, that “various perspectives in historical accounts can be an important key to developing the historical consciousness of pupils: they have no choice but to reach balanced and rational conclusions [about history].”27 He furthermore finds that the textbooks he studied cannot develop pupils’ historical consciousnesses because the narratives therein are too one-dimensional and closed.28 Historical Consciousness as Methodological Approach Given the view of historical consciousness and its manifestations presented here, it can be possible to construct a methodological approach to interpreting educational media from the perspective of historical consciousness along these lines: the narrative of the historical media itself can be analysed as an artefact of a historical culture; the uses of history portrayed in these narratives can be analysed from the what and how perspectives presented above, and the cultural aspects of uses of history and historical educational media can be analysed from an inter-discursive perspective: how do the uses of history in the media in question relate to the larger historical culture surrounding it?;29 through the how-dimension of uses of history, we can access and assess historical consciousness as a level of contextualisation in narratives that make use of history. A research plan for historical media analysis based on the theoretical framework presented above needs to employ a variety of methods and be specific about what the aim of the research is. If the aim is to analyse the uses of history in historical media, it seems relevant to analyse the narrative structure and narrative strategies or uses of history in the media. It also needs to be specified whose uses of history we are analysing: those of the author or 25 Niklas Ammert, ‘To Bridge Time: Historical Consciousness in Swedish History Textbooks’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2, no. 1 (30 May 2010): 25–26. 26 Eikeland, Et laereverks bidrag til historiebevissthet og narrativ kompetanse, 7–8. 27 Ibid., 8.
28 Ibid., 158. 29 Cf. Eleftherios Klerides, ‘Imagining the Textbook: Textbooks as Discourse and Genre’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2, no. 1 (30 May 2010): 32–39, doi:10.3167/jemms.2010.020103.
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those of the consumer (if we are aiming at the consumer, some account of how she experienced the uses of history in the media seems necessary). If the aim is to analyse the media as an artefact of a historical culture, it seems relevant to deploy some kind of (critical) discourse analysis, and to relate it to the contemporary societies of its authors and consumers. If history textbooks are analysed in accordance with this logic, for instance, we will find a variety of uses of history in the textbook that we can analyse from the what and how-dimensions stipulated above. These uses of history will be the author’s since it is she who has constructed the narrative in question. The what-uses will tell us what kind of use of history the textbook displays: political, commercial, et cetera. The how-uses will tell us how this history is used politically, commercially, et cetera. The what-uses can tell us what the textbook author may have wanted to achieve with her account or has thought appropriate or important to include in the textbook, and the how-uses could give us information about what epistemic beliefs the author has: a traditional use of history could be regarded as a symptom of a traditional historical consciousness, et cetera. A traditional use of history could be regarded as presenting the textbook narrative as something that is free of interpretation, that we are witnessing a true account of history, whereas a genetic use would present the textbook narrative as something that is tentative and a result of careful interpretation. It could be argued that a traditional use of history cannot develop the historical consciousness of individuals in the same way as a genetic use of history can. However, considering the theoretical framework proposed, research that aims to analyse whether a historical media can develop a historical consciousness in an individual needs to go beyond the historical accounts of the media and analyse the uses of the media from the perspective of its users, for instance, the teachers and the pupils. How does the teacher interpret the accounts in the media and what effects does that have on its interpreted meaning. Consequently, and perhaps more interestingly, we can ask why the teacher interprets the accounts the way she does. If the teacher uses the accounts traditionally (and perhaps has a traditional historical consciousness), it seems unlikely that the historical consciousnesses of her pupils could reach a genetic level with the help of the teacher. To be able to assess any developments on the part of the pupils, their use of history will have to be analysed and, furthermore, to be able to answer the question why there has been progress, the classroom activities or assignments given to the pupils would most likely have to be analysed from a perspective similar to that afforded by historical thinking in relation to what the pupils have brought into the classroom, what other sources of influence they have had, and what epistemic beliefs they have.30 30 Cf. Duquette, Le rapport, 63–68.
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What I have written above imposes restrictions on how we can assess historical consciousness in textbooks: what we find in textbooks are uses of history that can be regarded as symptoms of historical consciousness. Furthermore, the only uses of history that we find are those of the textbook author. Hence it is difficult to say anything about the historical consciousness of the reader by analysing the textbook itself. The benefits of the approach suggested here are rather that the approach proposes a theoretical framework of historical consciousness that (i) suggests how a historical consciousness and its manifestations can be connected, (ii) suggests how progression or development of historical consciousness can occur, and (iii), since it focuses on uses of history as the key concept in activating and assessing an individual’s historical consciousness, suggests where to look for a historical consciousness, and, finally, (iv) suggests how a historical consciousness can be studied through an individual’s use of history. Below follows an analysis of a textbook according to the framework presented above. Since I will only analyse a textbook account, I will try to illustrate how parts of the proposed framework can be used to analyse uses of history in a history textbook, and from these uses of history make conclusions about historical consciousness.
Textbook Analysis This section will present a brief textbook analysis whose main purpose is to illustrate some possibilities for textbook research that have been outlined in the theoretical framework presented above. Aim and Method of the Analysis The study presented below analyses the uses of history in a Swedish history textbook31 for pupils aged between 13 and 15 years, i.e. Swedish lower secondary school, with the purpose of assessing what kind of historical consciousness the textbook portrays, and to discuss the relation between that representation and the historical consciousness of an individual. I studied the same section in a number of Swedish history textbooks and what is presented here could be considered a typical account of Swedish post-war society. The account of the post-war era was chosen for analysis since it is a recent phenomenon and something most members of Swedish society presumably have some kind of relationship to. I analysed the narrative structure and frameworks in the textbook account and their relation to historical culture by highlighting quotations that illustrate the topics dealt with in the textbook account and how they are pre-
31 Göran Körner and Lars Lagheim, Historia: För grundskolans senare del. Grundbok, Puls (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 2002).
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sented.32 The assumption here was that a structure and framework of a narrative can be regarded as being related to historical culture since what is included in the narrative is presumably perceived to be relevant (i.e. it is the result of a conscious choice), and the frameworks applied are what creates coherence and meaning in the narrative (i.e. it establishes common sense).33 Historical culture is understood as having at least two dimensions: as historical context and as meta-historical conceptions of what is historically meaningful and important. How the narrative refers to the larger historical cultural context concerning the history textbook was analysed by contrasting it to other history textbooks on a general Swedish scale. Since there is recent research on Swedish history textbooks, I will compare my results with Ingmarie Danielsson Malmros’34 study concerning this aspect. The next step was to analyse the uses of history in the highlighted quotations from the perspectives of what uses of history there are, and how history is used according to Rüsen’s typology presented above. I claim that the uses of history we can find in the textbook are those of the textbook authors since it is they who have created the narrative that portrays the uses of history in the textbook. Finally, the how-uses of history were used to analyse the historical consciousness portrayed in the narrative regarding what traces of historical consciousness there are and what can be said of the propensity of the narrative to develop an individual’s historical consciousness. Some Theoretical Specifications A historical medium is a medium that disseminates something historical. Hence, a history textbook is a historical medium. There are, however, constraints to how history can be presented in textbooks: it has to comply with the history curricula of schools and it has to be a desirable product on the textbook market. My assumption is that for these reasons, history textbooks have to take the historical culture of a society into account from at least two perspectives: a history textbook has to incorporate the official historical culture portrayed by the history curricula, and it has to relate to the historical cultures of the teachers, primarily, and the pupils they are going to teach. In a multi-cultural society (such as contemporary Sweden), many aspects need to be taken into consideration.35 Moreover, research has shown that what is included in a textbook depends on when the textbook was written since 32 All quotations have been translated from Swedish to English by the author of this text. 33 Cf. Peter Lee and Jonathan Howson, ‘“Two out of Five Did Not Know That Henry VIII Had Six Wives:” Historical Literacy, and Historical Consciousness’, in National History Standards: The Problem of the Canon and the Future of Teaching History, ed. Linda Symcox and Arie Wilschut (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub., 2009), 241. 34 Ingmarie Danielsson Malmros, Det var en gång ett land... Berättelser om svenskhet i historieläroböcker och elevers föreställningsvärldar (Höör: Agering, 2012). 35 Since 1990, there has been no official governmental control of textbooks in Sweden. It is entirely up to the market to determine what textbooks are to be used in teaching in Sweden and what they should include.
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contemporary events tend to influence what authors focus on, further stressing the importance of historical culture and context regarding history textbooks.36 Furthermore, when writing a history textbook, authors make conscious selections and interpretations of the historical cultures surrounding them in order to render the narrative a meaningful whole. Thus, it can be argued that the authors proceed from the historical cultures that surround them regarding what is perceived about history as a linguistic and symbolic entity, and what is regarded as belonging to its genre.37 Accordingly, it could be argued that history textbooks thus strive to present what can be regarded as common sense in history since it seeks to attract rather than repel its presumed readers and/or consumers. For these reasons, I argue that a history textbook can be regarded as an artefact of the historical culture of the society in which it was conceived, and that the narratives therein can be perceived as relating to the historical culture of its surrounding society in some way or another.38 This means that history textbooks can be claimed to portray what is regarded as more or less common sense in history in a society.39 It can, however, be difficult to analyse that common sense since there is probably an infinite number of perspectives that can be applied in the analysis. Finally, although textbooks can be regarded as offering meaning to its readers, how that meaning is interpreted may depend on how the textbook is used (for instance, if it is used with a critical or non-critical approach) and the epistemic beliefs and values of its readers. Analysis: Swedish Post-War Society Textbook Narrative: Structure and Frameworks The narrative about Sweden begins by stating that: The Swedes had survived the 2nd World War as a small peaceful island in an ocean of violence. Our cities and industries were unharmed, which gave us a giant headstart. We could deliver wood, steel, machinery, and other commodities to a Europe that lay in ruins. The incomes of companies, state, and families increased.40 36 Danielsson Malmros, Det var en gång ett land, 261–264. 37 Cf. Peter Aronsson, Historiebruk, 86–87; and Danielsson Malmros, Det var en gång ett land, 253.
38 Cf. Henrik Åström Elmersjö, Norden, nationen och historien: Perspektiv på Föreningarna Nordens historieläroboksrevision 1919-1972 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2013), 148–151. 39 Cf. Harry Haue, ‘Transformation of History Textbooks from National Monument to Global Agent’, Nordidactica: Journal of Humanities and Social Science Education, no. 2013:1 (2013): 80–89; and Arja Virta, ‘Finska kriget 1808-1809 i svenska och finska gymnasieböcker i historia’, Nordidactica - Journal of Humanities and Social Science Education, no. 2012:1 (2012): 55–60, 69–71. 40 Körner and Lagheim, Historia, 340.
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Sweden was in a special situation after the war since it was left practically unharmed by it and Swedish companies could produce goods for the European market when the war ended. For Europe on the other hand, the situation was worse. The use of the pronoun “we” in relation to what Sweden could do is probably used to make readers engage with the narrative on a personal level, but could at the same time be perceived as exclusive: we were well-off, they were living among ruins. The next part of the account deals with social reforms in post-war Sweden: The Dream of the Good Society The coalition government of the war years was replaced by a Social Democratic one. They claimed that the time had come to get rid of poverty in Sweden. We are going to build a people’s home, a country with social security, full employment, and higher salaries for the worst off. But was there enough money for all this? Yes, the first years after the war the GNP increased by more than 3 per cent per year and in the 1960’s by more than 5 per cent per year. 41
The coming to power of the Social Democratic Party is here strongly associated with the wish to transform Sweden from a poor society into a modern welfare state. The Social Democrats managed to build the Swedish welfare state in a short time thanks to an annual growth in GDP of between 3 and 5% during the 1950’s and 1960’s. A new human ideal started to permeate society: citizens should not have to ask for help when ill or poor; instead every person should have a right to get help from society. The social security system that was built after the war included almost everything, and it was a system that everyone should contribute to: All these reforms were to be paid by income taxes or payroll taxes and you should pay taxes according to your ability to pay, the rich should pay more and the poor less. This is called policies of economic re-distribution. 42
During the 1960’s, the welfare state was established: The 1960’s – the Dream Becomes Reality During the 1960’s, money was flowing into Sweden and the Swedes. The policies of economic re-distribution enabled more and more people to afford things they earlier could only dream of. Almost everyone had a telephone and more and 41 Ibid., 341. 42 Ibid., 342.
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more people got a car, refrigerator, freezer, and a television set. Those who did not have a summer cottage went on a chartered trip to the Mediterranean for a vacation in the sun. By the end of the 1960’s, Sweden, along with Switzerland, had the highest standard of living in the world. 43
In less than 20 years, Sweden had gone from a land of poverty to one of the richest countries in the world. The average Swede could afford to either buy a summer cottage or go on vacation abroad and all of this was because of the system of economic re-distribution that was launched by the Social Democrats. This also marks the peak in the narrative about Sweden: henceforth the narrative shifts its focus to problems in Swedish society. It begins with the “Million-Programme” that was launched in Sweden in the middle of the 1960’s: The Golden Years and the “Million-Programme” Overcrowding was remedied during “the golden years” of the 1960’s. The so called “Million-Programme,” that aimed at building one million homes in ten years, was launched between 1965 and 1974. In the city centres, excavators were wreaking havoc. Beautiful, old buildings had to be pulled down to make space for office buildings and multi-storey carparks made of concrete. Many of the new housing areas were like giant blocks of concrete.44
The shift is already emphasized in the headline of the section: the phrase “the golden years” has positive connotations whereas the “million-programme” has negative connotations. To many Swedes, it represents ugly housing areas where nobody wants to live. This is further accentuated in the quotation where beautiful buildings were torn down to make room for concrete carparks and office buildings. The million-programme also marks the transition into the 1970’s in the narrative. Then, in summary, the account states that the bolstering Swedish economy after the 2nd World War enabled the Social Democratic government to pass a number of welfare reforms that aimed at giving the average Swede a higher living standard. Through the welfare reforms that were initiated by the Social Democratic government, Swedes were able to afford various commodities and their material standard of living increased. The price to be paid for these welfare reforms was the demolition of city centres with beautiful, old buildings. The society described here is a progressing society. This changes with the transition to the 1970’s; now the focus is shifted towards a general decline caused by economic crises: 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 343.
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The 1970’s – Crisis for Large Corporations More than half of the production was exported. Export companies grew richer and richer and workers demanded higher salaries. But Swedish goods became increasingly expensive and foreign companies became tough competitors on the world market. Furthermore, world trade decreased, one reasonbeing the Oil Crisis (--). Swedish companies started selling less and less and economic growth waned. The state spent billions of Swedish kronor on protecting large corporations and avoiding unemployment. But shipyards like Kockums and Götaverken were beyond rescue. Many steel and textile industries were also discontinued.45
One interesting feature here is how the narrative shifts agency: earlier, the Social Democrats and their policies of re-distribution are presented as the things that made Swedish prosperity possible, whereas in the quotation above, they seem to be what causes the problems: workers demanded higher salaries and that made Swedish goods too expensive on the world market. Now the Swedish government is helpless and economic decline is what propels the narrative and portrays agency. This continues into the 1980’s and 1990’s as can be illustrated by the headlines of these sections: “The 1980’s – Loaning Craze and Bank Crisis”46 and “The 1990’s – Unemployment and Decreasing Welfare.”47 About the loaning craze and ensuing bank crisis we learn that: In the end the [financial] bubble burst. Real estate companies went bankrupt and also banks, who had granted giant loans on overpriced real estate, were on the verge of bankruptcy. They had lent enormous amounts of money that they were never going to get back. Yet again the government, i.e. the tax payers, had to come to the rescue. The Swedish tax burden became the heaviest in the world. 48
Once again, the economy is what provides agency and the government is more or less portrayed as a victim of incompetent bankers. Furthermore the government is equated with the tax payers, further accentuating a sense of othering: the economy and banks beset us, the people, and we have to pay the price for their foolishness. Now Sweden no longer has the highest standard of living in the world, but instead the heaviest tax burden. 45 Ibid., 344. 46 Ibid., 345.
47 Ibid., 346. 48 Ibid., 345.
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The last section of the account about Sweden deals with the social history of Sweden from 1950 to 2000. There are three sub-sections called “Women in Society,” “The Environment – the Price of Economic Growth,” and “The Swedish Population.” The sub-section about women in society states: Formerly it was customary that unmarried women did simple work in offices or health care. A married woman’s role was traditionally to “stand by the stove and give birth to babies.” The husband was the sole provider of the family. During the good years of the 1960’s, an increasing number of women joined the work force but they still took main responsibility for domestic chores and children. (--). Through the work of the women’s movement, public debate and legislation attitudes changed slowly. Women were able to get jobs that were traditionally male (--). Men started taking more responsibility at home. Daycare centres and schools took care of children. (--). Not until 1980 was the Gender Equality Act passed in the Swedish parliament. (--). However, despite this, the mean income of women remained lower than that of men and still women are clearly under-represented among higher executives. 49
Swedish women went from being tied to the stove and giving birth to children to becoming members of the regular work force, but they then had to perform double workloads since they had to work both at home and away. This was remedied by public debate in the 1970’s. However, despite the Gender Equality Act, the mean income of women was still lower than that of men, and more men are CEO’s. The framework applied is once again that of progress (from being child bearers and rearers to members of the work force), and decline (although women were still unequal). The shift in agency is also similar to that above: in the beginning, women are in control of the situation but then control is lost to some abstract entity. The fact that women started to work is presented in a positive manner. In the sub-section about environmental issues, it says that the enormous economic growth caused severe pollution and exploitation of natural resources. To remedy this, new laws were passed and companies and municipalities had to comply: “Everyone has to learn to think environmentally.”50 In 1980 there was a referendum about whether nuclear power should be abolished in Sweden: After a referendum in 1980, the Swedish parliament decided that Sweden’s nuclear plants should be phased out one by one and that the phasing-out should be 49 Ibid., 347–348. 50 Ibid., 348.
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done by the year 2010. This date gets increasinlgy closer, but no alternative (clean) energy sources that can replace nuclear energy fully have popped up [“dykt upp” in Swedish]. 51
Once again the framework of progress and decline is used: laws are passed and referendums are held, but nothing happens. The shift in agency is also similar to those above: people and the government act to solve problems but are stopped by some abstract entity (alternatives to nuclear energy have not popped up, for instance). The last sub-section deals with the social transformation of Swedish society in the post-war era. To illustrate the profound transformation of Swedish society in the latter half of the 20 th century, an account of an imaginary neighbourhood in an imaginary Swedish town is used: The Corner Shop that Disappeared – and Came Back! In the 1950’s: On one corner is a milk store and next to it a vegetable store. Kind women serve the customers. On the other side of the street there is a butcher, a shoemaker, and a barber. Around the corner, a petrol station lies next to a laundry service and next to that is the small bakery of the Anderberg [a Swedish surname with middle-class connotations] family. Early in the morning, seven days a week, the lovely smell of freshly baked bread can be felt in the street. Those were the sights and smells of a residential quarter in the 1950’s. In the 1970’s: The milk store and the vegetable store have closed. The shoemaker and the barber are dead. None of their children took over their businesses. They got educated and found, as they thought, “nicer” jobs. The premises have been turned into offices. The laundry service has become a solarium. In the 1990’s: Many Swedes have become fed up with industrial food and impersonal service. Many immigrants contribute to the changing residential quarters. Now you can find a tailor from Sarajevo and a baker from Beirut. There is a pizza restaurant and the old milk store has become a corner shop that is open 12 hours a day. It is energetically run by Amir and his wife Susan, from Iran, with the help of relatives. Where you once found the petrol station, there is now a sports and bicycle repair shop run by Börje from Borlänge [a Swedish working class name and an industrial town]. He is one of many unemployed Swedes who – like immigrants – have started their own enterprises.52
A striking characteristic of the passage above is the idealised image of the 1950’s, followed by the gloomy 1970’s, and a more complex image of Sweden 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 349–350.
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in the 1990’s. The corner shops have returned but they are not what they used to be: they are run by hardworking immigrants and formerly unemployed Swedes, not by artisans as in the 1950’s. In conclusion, I want to stress that the most basic framework in the section analysed seems to be that of progression and decline: the positive development of Sweden after 1945 is halted by economic difficulties in the 1970’s, and since then Swedish society seems to be more or less degenerating. Historical Culture If we regard historical culture as historical context and what is perceived as historically meaningful and important, the framework of progress and decline that is applied to the Swedish welfare state seems to make sense: the book was published in 2002 and the authors were probably influenced by the harsh economic realities and the decline of the Swedish welfare state that occurred during the 1990’s. How the authors choose to frame the individual sections in the passage also seems to harmonise with how these passages are generally presented in Swedish history textbooks: a strong trend since the 1970’s is to regard the Swedish welfare state as emanating from the social reforms of the 1930’s and to closely link it with politicians and political parties.53 The framing of women’s history could also be regarded as typical. Recent textbooks tend to stress the failed hopes of the Swedish gender equality movement: despite the women’s movement and public debate of gender issues in the 1970’s and the law of 1980, Swedish women and men are still unequal.54 Another aspect of historical culture that may be interesting is whether the narrative seeks to establish a view of history as something static and stereotypical, or as something dynamic and multi-faceted. I regard the narrative to be static and stereotypical in character. We are presented with a grand narrative of Swedish society after 1945, and, as shown above, this narrative also harmonises with those presented in other Swedish history textbooks, suggesting that the analysed section seeks to enforce one historical culture in Sweden that could be called traditional and commonsensical. Uses of History There are many examples of uses of history in the studied account and I will concentrate on what I perceive to be the most dominant ones. The explicit uses of history that can be analysed from the account above are those of the authors. To be able to analyse the uses of history of teachers or pupils, we need to go beyond the text itself. The authors of the text deploy a variety of uses of history from the what-dimension. There are many examples of politi53 Danielsson Malmros, Det var en gång ett land, 191. 54 Ibid., 247–251.
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cal uses of history when the authors make use of the historical example to explain the developments and changes in the political and economic organisation of Sweden after 1945, primarily in its focus on the Social Democratic Party as the primary political agent. Existential uses of history can also be found: the quoted segment about the transformation of the imaginary neighbourhood can be seen as the authors’ attempt to convey an image of everyday history to make readers understand how profoundly Swedish society has changed. The list of what-uses in the segment could go on, but if we want to assess the account from the perspective of historical consciousness, it seems more relevant to analyse how history is used in the textbook. I find no evidence in the segment that the authors apply any critical approach to uses of history or attempts at explaining continuity and change in Sweden in the latter half of the 20th century. The most dominating use of history is what could be typified as a traditional use of history: the authors seem to be mostly occupied with disseminating what could be called a rather traditional account of recent history. There is one example that could be characterised as an exemplary use of history: in the passage about the bank crisis of the 1980’s, the textbook states that “yet again” the government had to come to the rescue, suggesting that there is some kind of regularity concerning this and that this could be interpreted as a kind of rule derived from the historical example. The only example of a critical use of history I can think of is the account about the women’s movement: we learn that a lot has happened, especially during the 1970’s, but that there is still inequality between the sexes. However, the reader is not invited to muse on why this happens to be the case. Historical Consciousness S0 what can be said about historical consciousness concerning the studied excerpt? As I have argued above, it is difficult to assess whether reading the text develops an individual’s historical consciousness. What we can do is assess the historical consciousness of the authors from the uses of history they have portrayed in the narrative. Judging from that, it seems that the historical consciousness of the textbook authors is mostly traditional or exemplary in character: the account we are presented with bears no evidence that the authors have an appreciation of the contextual contingency of history and its representations. We should however be cautious in making assessments of this kind: from the framework presented above, we can say that a traditional historical consciousness most likely does not lead to a genetic use of history. Regarding the other types of historical consciousness matters are more complex, however. For instance, a person with a genetic historical consciousness can most certainly use history traditionally or exemplarily, and probably better than if she lacked a genetic historical consciousness. Furthermore, as was argued above, 18
textbooks have to comply with certain demands, and this could mean that certain aspects of the uses of history of the authors have been excluded. Considering this, it is difficult to say what historical consciousness the authors actually have on the basis of the account in the textbook. To be more certain, we would probably have to interview them or ask them to write something more. Finally, what is interesting about a textbook cannot be what historical consciousness its author has, but rather the character of the use of history that is manifested in it and whether it is possible to discuss what understanding or interpretation of the past that is facilitated by the textbook and how that in turn can affect the type of historical consciousness pupils can develop from using the textbook in different ways.
Concluding discussion Considering the theoretical framework applied, it is difficult to say anything about whether a textbook account develops a historical consciousness; in order to say anything precise about that, we have to move beyond the text itself. It may certainly be the case that a textbook that deploys multichronological and multi-perspectival accounts develops someone’s historical consciousness in a more reflected way, but we cannot be certain about that. As has been shown in research, a person’s epistemic beliefs determine how the person reads a text and if a person has a traditional historical consciousness, there are no guarantees that she will appreciate the contextualised contingency of accounts she is presented with. Furthermore, a textbook account like the one studied in this text can be used as a prime example of a stereotypical traditional use of history and thus be used to illustrate the importance of context when constructing historical accounts and in this way further the development of a historical consciousness. For this reason, I want to argue that the use of the text determines its propensity to develop a historical consciousness. Hopefully, the method outlined above and the textbook analysis will have illustrated both the difficulties and potential of applying the framework of historical consciousness in analysis. The primary difficulty with applying the framework is that it, more or less, inevitably pushes us beyond the textbook towards the practices surrounding it. If historical consciousness is related to how individuals understand history, and if individuals’ epistemic beliefs (as portrayed by the epistemic qualities of a historical consciousness) determine how they interpret texts, it becomes essential to focus on the experiencing subject when determining what he or she learns from reading a certain textbook account. The quality of the historical consciousnesses of the pupils will affect how they interpret the textbook. Perhaps the most significant person in teaching is the teacher and with the model presented here, the focus is also shifted towards the teachers as 19
meaning-making subjects. If the pupils’ historical consciousnesses are essential to how they understand a textbook, there is no reason to think that the historical consciousness of the teacher would be of less importance. It is, in fact, to a great extent the teacher who decides how the textbook is going to be used in teaching. If the teacher has a traditional historical consciousness, the chances seem slim that she will be able to teach the importance of context in determining the truth-value of historical accounts, and she will thus most likely fail to develop the historical consciousness of her pupils in any other direction. Finally, since an understanding of the concept can be that it deals with how individuals create meaning in history through the narratives and uses of history they portray, it enables us to move beyond the textbook account when analysing the impact textbooks have on learners. The framework presented here urges us to go into the classroom and engage with the pre-conceptions teachers and pupils have of history and how that influences the learning process. I am well aware that the theoretical assumptions and methodological approach presented in this paper perhaps raise more problems than they answer questions about textbook research, but the methodological approach outlined here may still be useful since it presents an operationalisation of the concept of historical consciousness that allows us to apply it in analysis of both historical media and the uses thereof and it seeks to specify how to deal with some methodological issues connected to historical consciousness. For these reasons the issues raised in this paper could be regarded as possible to overcome by further investigations into how historical media are used and appropriated in a learning situation along the proposed theoretical framework.
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Licentiate Theses from the Historical Media Postgraduate School [Licentiatavhandlingar från forskarskolan Historiska medier] Nr 1. Karin Sandberg, Möte med det förflutna: Digitaliserade primärkällor i historieundervisningen. 2014. Nr 2. Lina Spjut, Den envise bonden och Nordens fransmän: Konstruktioner av svensk och finsk etnicitet samt nationell historieskrivning i svenska och finlandssvenska läroböcker 1866–1939. 2014. Nr 3. Andreas Westerberg, Medieteknik och historieundervisning: Diskurser om teknik i klassrummet under 1980-talet och åren kring 2010. 2014. Nr 4. Maria Deldén, Historien som fiktion: Gymnasieelevers erfarande av spelfilm i historieundervisningen. 2014. Nr 5. Robert Thorp, Historical Consciousness, Historical Media, and History Education. 2014.
