Global Cultural Identity Among Young People in Slovakia

It is becoming increasingly obvious that young people are facing the globalisation of personal identity. It is the result of ongoing interaction between individuals and their globalised socio-cultural environment that leads to changes in self-identification. Cultural openness and the “de-territorialisation” of identity are the key aspects of this process. The paper explores the globalisation of identities among secondary school students, using the concept of global self-identification. The analysis employs quantitative data from the Survey of Young People’s Cultural Literacy. The globalisation of identity is captured by the Global Identity Scale (Türken, Rudmin, 2013), which consists of two dimensions – “Non-nationalism” and “Cultural Openness”. The aim of the study is to examine to what extent young people in Slovakia can be characterised in terms of global self-identification and to identify what affects the propensity for global self-identification. Furthermore, it tests the relationship between global self-identification and other phenomena that are supposedly related to global identity. The results show that the global identity is present among young people in Slovakia. By applying multilevel modelling, we identified a variety of culture-related phenomena that affect cultural openness and non-nationalism, including multicultural interaction and cultural participation. In addition, the study confirms that type of school has a significant effect.

Visiting The Past: A Case Study of Experiential Learning with Young People at Historic Sites

Learning about the past is becoming a complex issue due to the increasing need to ensure the approaches consider not only the facts, but also the implications for increasingly diverse future societies. This paper studies how experiential visits to memorial sites contribute to young people’s understanding of history from a wider and more inclusive perspective. The article presents a case study of two educational activities carried out at two memory sites related to the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) involving various qualitative techniques such as participant- and non-participant observation, expert interviews and focus groups with young people. The results show that an experiential approach to the past that works with emotions, empathy and dialogue with secondary students (17 years old) and older young people (15–25 years old) is a very effective means of offering a touching interpretation of the past and learning opportunity for youth, regardless of level of previous knowledge. Other findings show that the content needs to be reconsidered so new generations can interact with it. Young people’s worlds are shaped by cultural diversity, globalisation and the need to connect knowledge with the social environment, which enables them to engage in a critical re-appropriation of the past. This may be a new perspective that could be incorporated into the school curricula, and these types of visits could prove very useful for teachers and historical institutions such as museums or memorial sites interested in including young people’s experiences when planning their activities.

Dramatising Cultural Diversity: Youth Theatre as a Performance of Local Memory and Identity in a Multiethnic Environment

This article presents a comparative analysis of two ethnographic case studies conducted in local theatres in the Slovak town of Komárno and the British city of Coventry. These two locations are very different – one is a small town on the Slovak-Hungarian border and the other an urban centre in the Midlands region of Britain – and yet they are both characterised by the multiethnic and culturally diverse composition of their populations. The two youth theatres in question are also distinct in their genres: one bases its performances on folklore traditions, whereas the other is an avant-garde physical theatre. At the same time, the productions of both groups manifest a deep involvement in the representation of cultural heritage and the current social issues in their respective locations. Drawing on anthropological conceptualisations of theatre as a form of ritualised performance (see Turner, 1969, 1982; Schechner, 1985, 1993), this paper explores the processes and contexts of the enactment of past conflict and/or violence presented by the two theatrical groups in order to engage with traumatic events in local (and national) history. These processes, which embrace the values of cultural diversity and inclusion, are important for the construction of community identities. The liminality of ritualised performance enables actors and audiences to cross social (including ethnicity and class) and temporal boundaries. They reproduce memories of past violence to make sense of present tensions, such as growing nationalism and xenophobia, and to project their vision of the communal future. This often results in the contestation of the very meaning of place, community and belonging. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that such artistic interpretations of the local past and heritage are instrumental in shaping the identities of the participating youth. The comparison of the two cases also reveals noticeable differences between cosmopolitan and ethno-cultural discourses, which are prevalent in imagining the place, history and heritage of Coventry and Komárno respectively.

Identity, Dominance and Contestation: Young People’s Engagement with Heritage and Culture

The exclusionary identities plaguing our contemporary times have strong linkages with the heritage and culture of communities. Heritage is a construct that not only records the past but is also created for contemporary social and political needs. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at two publicly contested heritage sites in Maharashtra, India, this paper seeks to understand, young people’s interactions with heritage and culture. These two sites are an ancient Buddhist monument combined with a Hindu temple and a museum articulating elitist narratives of Maharashtra’s past. We found that young people’s heritage conceptions are deeply rooted in inter-connected political identities of belonging to a region and a nation; and regionally popular symbols such as Shivaji and hill forts play a significant role in shaping them. Our fieldwork shows that the heritage represented by some institutions reproduces the broader social dominations and injustice. Worryingly, some of these projections are accepted by young people as their own heritage. This normalizes the partial representation of heritage. Some young people, however, contest some of those dominant projections and hold diverse ideas on heritage. These conceptions provide fertile ground for young people’s political engagement with the idea of heritage and are a call for them to participate in the current contest over India’s past. Diversity and contestations are hallmarks of heritage and culture in India. In that context, the paper enriches our understandings of those discursive and power laden processes that shape the formation of heritage and culture among youth, not only in the global South but also across the world.

Cultural Heritage and Responsibility: Linking Narratives of the Past to Perspectives of the Future

This paper aims at identifying factors behind the-making-of cultural heritage reproduced within educational settings by trying to answer the following question: How do young people link narratives of the past with their own cultural identities and perspectives on the future? Observations made at conferences by two different non-formal educational organisations in the same region in Germany form the data for this analysis. Both conferences were structurally similar but very different in their perspectives on Germany’s role in global history and on young people’s responsibilities to create a future worth living in. Since both organisations are concerned with political education and target a similar group of young people from similar economic and educational backgrounds, these differences seem especially significant for thinking about discursive practices in educational settings. Building on the understanding that heritage is a discursive practice in a field of power relations, the paper provides insights into the links between certain images of the past, which are recreated in very specific ways in different educational settings, and the cultural practices young people produce within their local contexts.

The Family as a Site of Consocial Learning: the Cultural Socialisation of Young People in the Process of Intergenerational Exchange

This article explores the family as an educational environment and space for the intergenerational exchange of knowledge. Focusing on the process of cultural socialization as viewed against the currently popular “culture wars” it employs the concept of consociality, which is aimed at grasping the diversity and unpredictability of human interactions, and has been recently rejuvenated by Ulf Hannerz. Investigating the consocial character of learning and intergenerational exchange within the family educational environment, the article takes examples from Slovakia and Latvia and problematizes the relationship between formal and informal learning to demonstrate how it changes knowledge infused with cultural meanings and references. The article argues that this process depends on the consocial conditions in which it is created. It also suggests that viewing the family environment in consocial terms provides us with an opportunity to rethink the role of experiences shared within the family and thereby mitigate ethnic-cum-cultural essentialism.

“The Charm of the PRL”. Memory Culture, (Post)Socialist Nostalgia and Historical Tourism in Poland

The article explores the mechanisms of memory culture and the commercialization of the socialist heritage from the period of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) (from 1945 to 1989) as a tourist destination, societal practice and cultural resource in today’s Warsaw. At the intersection of heritage studies, historical tourism and material culture, the ethnographic analysis focuses on three empirical case studies as examples of the commercial popularization of the history of the PRL. These are the communist heritage tours offered by WPT 1313 and the documentation of the socialist heritage at the Museum of Life in the PRL and the Neon Museum. These commodified products of Warsaw’s tourism and entertainment culture fill a gap in the tourist market, based on the prototypical, nostalgic longing of tourists for a sensual and emotional experience of the “authentic past”. This predominantly participant observation-based ethnographic study on the practices, spaces, images and agents filling this touristic niche, illustrates how they create sensual-emotive, aesthetic and performative fields of reifying, discovering and experiencing the socialist past. Finally, the paper focuses on how these polyvalent mechanisms shape the tourist infrastructure of Warsaw oscillating between critical distancing and entertaining appropriation of the socialist heritage.

Forming Pupils’ Positive Relationship to the Soviet Union in the Period of Socialism in Czechoslovakia Through the Lens of Chronicles

The cooperation of Czechoslovakia (and other socialist countries) with the Soviet Union was an important phenomenon during the period of socialism. It represented one form of building and consolidating socialism within socialist countries. Relationships with the Soviet Union affected political, ideological, economic and cultural domains, including education. This study follows points of departure and forms of building children’s positive relationship with the Soviet Union in the period of socialism. The content analysis of the Pioneer Organisation chronicles shows that the most frequently identified forms of activities were regularly organised (celebrations of memorial days and public holidays, politically motivated commitments, correspondence, games, expeditions, competitions, etc.). Some identified activities could be considered occasional, as they reflected current events in the Soviet Union (showing Soviet films, deaths of prominent politicians, anniversaries of birth/death of politicians, etc.). The proclaimed “diversity and attractiveness of content and forms” can characterise the process, and it affected many domains of children’s lives. However, the (in)direct power interest of the Soviet Union was hidden in the proclamation of “children’s well-being”, while the programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was implemented to reinforce the communistic ideology and actual political interests.