TNS Annual Lecture Seminar
- Time:
- 18:00
- Date:
- 24 April 2013
- Venue:
- Lecture Theatre C Avenue Campus Southampton SO17 1BF
For more information regarding this seminar, please email Ulrike Meinhof at u.h.meinhof@southampton.ac.uk .
Event details
Transnationalized Trajectories: Good Nation and Good Citizenship in East Asian School Curricula and Textbooks
Rather than juxtaposing nationalism and transnationalism as normative stances or states of affairs, I offer transnationalization as an analytical node to capture the diffusion of non-nation-specific, universalistic frameworks, models, and standards, and the engagement of nationally located actors' (states, social movements, professional organizations, and individuals) with such frameworks to orient their actions and strategies. Densely organized at the national level and beyond, education policy is highly susceptible to transnational isomorphism. The analysis of the post-World War II school curricular reforms and content shows that national educational systems in East Asia increasingly assume a globalized society, and the role of active and able citizens and nations in making this society. In so doing, they systematically insist upon the "distinct" contributions of the nation and its citizens to the good of the wider world. Yet, as the nation (and its uniqueness) is expressed fiercely, the policy reforms themselves affirm transnationally diffused, common models of social order. Nations as "imagined communities" and individuals as citizen acquire increasing commonalities across societies.
All welcome!
Speaker information
Yasemin Soysal, University of Essex. Before taking her position at Essex University, Yasemin Soysal studied (PhD in Sociology, Stanford University) and worked (Assistant and then John Loeb Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Harvard University) in the US. She has written extensively on the historical development and contemporary reconfigurations of the nation-state and citizenship in Europe. Her publications include Limits of Citizenship: Postnational Membership in Europe (University of Chicago Press), The Nation, Europe, and the World: Curricula and Textbook in Transition (edited with H. Schissler, Berghahn Books), as well as articles in the British Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Sociology of Education, Theory and Society, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and European Societies. Currently she is working on two projects: a comparative and longitudinal study of the changing concepts of “good citizen” and “good society” in Europe and East Asia (with S.Y. Wong, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK, and the Hong Kong Research Grant Council), and a survey study of “life course and self projections” of immigrant and non-immigrant origin youth in Spain (with A. Gonzales and H. Cebolla, funded by Juan March Institute and the Spanish Ministry of Education). Soysal has held several fellowships and guest professorships, including Wissenschaftskolleg, National Endowment of Humanities, National Academy of Education, German Marshall Fund, Max Planck Institute, European University Institute, Juan March Institute, New York University, Hitotsubashi University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is past president of the European Sociological Association, and the 2013 Niklas Luhmann Distinguished Visiting Chair in Bielefeld University.