Kozlova Maria

School book as an instrument of adaptation and integration of minorities: strategies of intergenerational cultural transmission in primers of Russian emigration of the 1920–1930s

Abstract

This article discusses the issues of intergenerational cultural transmission, with primers published for Russian children in Latvia in the 1920‒30s as an example. The conceptual framework of the study is made up by classical and contemporary theories of social cohesion and intergenerational cultural transmission. In textbooks published during the liberal period of the 1920s, the child is motivated to his own development of values and behavioural practices while the adult community provides the relevant media, namely knowledge and education. Thus the community orients the child towards the inclusion in the network of “weak ties”, reducing the internal cohesion but preparing the child for the integration into the dominant culture. In the primer published a decade later, we identify certain signs of the “isolating” of the group, namely the “immutability” of transmitted values, the illusion of stability, which, making the community more uniform both horizontally and vertically, provides intra-group cohesion and as a cocoon protects the group from cultural diff usion and assimilation. Comparison of the identified strategies with the results of the content analysis of textbooks published in different cultural and political contexts, allows us to estimate the described patterns as a universal strategy of adaptating minorities to the changing attitudes and politicies of the majority.

Keywords

intergenerational cultural transmission, Russian emigration, alphabet book, terminal and instrumental values, social cohesion, adaptation of migrants

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Information about the author

Kozlova Maria

Academic Degree: Candidate of Sciences* in History;
Place of work: National Research University Higher School of Economics; 9, Mjasnitskaya str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation;
ORCID: 0000-0001-5516-2611;
Email: makozlova@yandex.ru.

*According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011, the degree of Candidate of Sciences (Cand.Sc.) belongs to ISCED level 8 — "doctoral or equivalent", together with PhD, DPhil, D.Lit, D.Sc, LL.D, Doctorate or similar.

Acknowledgments

The article is written in 2018 within the framework of the project № 17-06-00071а supported by RFBR Foundation.