The National Mind

Current Stage: The Formation of the National Mind

Project Title: “Learning to Feel Like a Nation: Nationalism and Emotions in Turkish School Books”

How do we learn to think, feel, and act as a member of a nation? How does the sense of national belonging become a part of our common sense? This project explores these hitherto understudied questions by investigating the dynamics of instilling national sentiments into children’s minds in Turkish schools. It analyzes national(ist) narratives in primary- and secondary-school textbooks, which represent the historical and contemporary sociopolitical reality from a nation-centered perspective.

The project focuses on Turkey as a highly-informative case due to its centralized school system, and the unquestionable dominance of a nationalist ideology. It deals especially with the last four decades (1980–2020), during which the country has experienced a transition from a military-overseen secular political regime to an Islamic-conservative one. This enables the researcher to observe continuity, as well as change, in national(ist) narratives during this period of seemingly significant sociopolitical transformation. By bringing together empirical, methodological, and conceptual contributions from the sociology of knowledge, the history and sociology of emotions, cognitive science, narratology, and nationalism studies, this project aims to shed new light on the influence of nationalism on our individual and collective minds.

Image sources:

  • Flags: Çiğdem Alemdar, İlkokul Hayat Bilgisi 1 – Ders Kitabı (Primary School Civic Education Textbook, 1st Grade), Pasifik Yayınları, 2021, pp. 155-157
  • (Turks spreading from) Central Asia: Cengiz Yıldırım, et. al, Ortaokul ve Imam Hatip Ortaokulu, Sosyal Bilgiler 6 – Ders Kitabi (“Social Knowledge”/Civic Education, 6th Grade), Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, 2021, p. 52.
  • (Central Asian Turkish) Mounted Archers: Erol Yüksel, et. al, Ortaöğretim Tarih 9 – Ders Kitabı (Secondary School History Textbook, 9th Grade), Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, 2021, p. 105.
  • Europeans tugging the map (fighting over the Ottoman territories): Ali Hocaoğlu, et al., T.C. İnkılap Tarihi ve Atatürkçülük 12 – Ders Kitabı (History of the Turkish Revolution and Atatürkism Textbook, 12th Grade), Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, 2022, p.13.
  • The British and French (arm) placing a Greek flag on the map of the Ottoman Empire: Hocaoğlu, et al., p. 57.