Religious picture book as a tool of ideology

Author(s):

Malgorzata Cackowska

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

25. Research on Children's Rights in Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

25 SES 09, Educational Contexts and Experience of Life and Learning

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-30

10:30-12:00

Room:

NIG, Seminarraum

Chair:

John I'Anson

Contribution

My paper focuses on socio-cultural conditions affecting present production of confession (religious) picture books for children in Poland in the context of European content of the field. Picture book is seen here as a cultural medium, within the content and form of which various (possible) ideologies and conceptions of the child co-occur, are concluded, manifested and have their representations. It could also be seen as the first “cultural framework” in the formation of subject's identity. The “cultural qualities” provided for children in religious picture books are analysed in the broad field of cultural production. I base my study of the mechanisms operating in the field (with its power mechanisms and relations) on the empirical material collected and chosen from the contemporary market of religious books for children. The market is comprehended here as a system including children with their parents and educators, publishers, book stores, book wholesale houses, places of retail (also bookstalls), organizations of social support, state policy, individual customers, institutions (churches) and firms.

Method

The methodology applied in the project consists mostly of content analysis and critical discourse analysis. The results show the knowledge/power relations, symptoms of symbolical violence in recognized discourses and explain to what practices of ideological, social and political control and power structures the subject is exposed. The research is a part of a bigger collaborative project called “Discursive construction of subjectivity” financed by Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland, grant no. N10702632/3637, and conducted at University of Gdansk.

Expected Outcomes

I assume that the above mentioned subjects (actors of the market) determine the ontological and axiological structure of the religious picture book in Poland. The aim of my research is to identify discursive formations and their potential impact on the child’s sensitivity and subjectivity

References

Apple, M. W., 1990. Ideology and Curriculum, New York – London. Apple, M. W., 1995. Education and Power, New York – London. Bourdieu P., 2002. Distinction. Social Critique of Judgment of the Taste. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (11th edition) Bourdieu P., Passeron, J-C., 1990. Reprodukcja. Elementy teorii systemu nauczania, PWN, Warszawa. [Reproduction in education, society and culture. (Richard Nice, Trans.). London: Sage Publications.(Original work published 1970). ] Cackowska M., 2007. Pozycja dorosłych „pośredników” w konstruowaniu estetyki treści i formy ilustrowanej książki dla dzieci. w: Dziecko – teksty – znaczenia. Konteksty edukacyjne i rozwojowe (red. Anna Wasilewska) Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego [Position of adults mediators in construing the esthetics of form and content of picture books for children.] Foucault, M., 2005. Inne przestrzenie. Teksty Drugie nr 6, 2005 [Foucault M., 1967. Of other spaces. Heterotopias http://www.foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html] Gee, J. P., 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. Theory and Method. Routledge: London and New York. Giroux, H.A., 2004. The Terror of Neoliberalism, Paradigm Publishers London, Garamond Press, Ontario. Kress G., van Leeuwen T., 1996. Reading images. The grammar of visual design, Routledge, London and New York. Žižek S., 2001. Wzniosły obiekt ideologii, Wrocław [The Sublime Object of Ideology, 1989]

Author Information

Malgorzata Cackowska

University of Gdansk

Department of Social Sciences, Institute of Education

Gdansk

170

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