"Again with the Jews?" : transnational governmentality, holocaust discourse, and the struggle for tolerance education in Post-Soviet Lithuania
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Acknowledging that legislation and policy are technologies of power used to organize societies and influence how individuals construct themselves as subjects, this study examines the intersections of transnational discourses, the politics of memory, and post-Soviet reforms for tolerance and Holocaust education in contemporary Lithuania. Using a multi-sited, anthropological approach based on 2 years of fieldwork, the central focus of this study is how policies, programs, and discourses adopted for EU and NATO accession were appropriated by individuals on the ground. What this study finds is that while the historical facts of the Holocaust are generally not in debate, what tolerance and Holocaust education mean in contemporary Lithuanian identity and collective memory is still widely debated. The implications of these findings suggest that, even in resistance, Holocaust and tolerance education have been incorporated into local discourses about how Lithuanians view themselves as democratic citizens. Furthermore, while many studies about post-Soviet educational policies for tolerance and Holocaust education focus on local attitudes, pedagogical methods, or regional historical circumstances, this study takes the intersections of transnational policy discourses and national educational reforms as its starting point to examine not only what tolerance and Holocaust education mean to individuals in the local context, but what they mean in western policy conversations as well. The aim of this dissertation is to contribute comprehensive qualitative research to better understand how international policy conversations about education, memory, and politics are representative of international and transnational negotiations of power.
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"Again with the Jews?" : transnational governmentality, holocaust discourse, and the struggle for tolerance education in Post-Soviet Lithuania. . 2014: https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-3102
