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ONGOING RESEARCH/EVALUATION PROJECTS

Project Title: "Bringing 'The Reformation Era' into the classroom: Modern schooling and the formations of new subjectivities in Java, Indonesia".

Institution in Norway: Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen
Name of researcher/evaluator: Lars Edvin Gjelstad
Year started: January, 2001
Planned year of completion: December,2005
Source of Funding .
Executive summary of key ideas, context, methods etc.: The project deals with the significance of modern Indonesian schooling in the formations of the young generation=s conceptions of personal and social development. During three decades of development policy under Suharto=s New Order, the classroom served as the regime's most important arena for implementing their notions of development. In 1998 we witnessed the downfall of New Order after large reformation (reformasi) campaigns where students played a decisive role. The project aims to understand more closely what kind of impacts the democratisation process currently has for the construction of morality and authority in school classrooms.

I approach these issues through an in-depth analysis of how the Areformation era= is dealt with in high school classrooms in a situation where textbooks are rewritten in subjects like national history and 'morality and citizenship'. I will also argue that the significance of the ideological production in school better can be measured if we also follow particular students >backstage= into their peer groups and family contexts, where talk is less regulated and controlled, and see how state ideologies are articulated and reworked in various discourses and practices localised there.

The project builds upon my earlier fieldwork (1996) among a gang of urban Javanese youth, most of them middle class high school students. Then I was concerned with teenagers= involvements with popular youth cultures and their moral framing of these involvements. Now, I will study more closely how far Indonesian teachers are capable to pass on ideas and knowledge that make sense in the cultural landscapes that youths live in.

For further information (e-mail address/home page where more information could be found): lars.gjelstad@sosantr.uib.no
http://www.svf.uib.no/antro/index.html

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