Abstract
This chapter is based on analyses from a study exploring coloniality in Norwegian citizenship education through fieldwork, textbook(s) analysis, and teaching interventions (Eriksen, 2021). Coloniality is here understood with Quijano (2000) as manifested in how colonialism is not restricted to historical colonialism based on European territorial occupation but is reproduced through ongoing material and epistemological structures. The text shows how coloniality was empirically detected in the Norwegian classrooms through the reproduction of a dominant national self-image embedded in discursive structures of National exceptionalism (Loftsdóttir & Jensen, 2012). Empirical examples illustrate how National exceptionalism works to obstruct critical conversations about processes that systematically reproduce violence and injustice. The author argues that in order to unsettle the coloniality of citizenship education, we will need to go beyond addressing how colonial patterns are kept in place at the level of knowing, and engaging with the level of being, i.e., the ontological level.
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Notes
- 1.
The concept “Nordic region” refers both to a historically embedded geographical entity, and a current political partnership between the countries Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Scholarly works has argued the existence of a particular Nordic national self-understanding and sociability related to colonialism, racism and whiteness (Loftsdottir & Jensen, 2012; Keskinen et al., 2019). I will not here engage a discussion about this Nordic imaginary, but rather discuss the case of Norway in relation to the globally oriented concept coloniality.
- 2.
Sápmi stretches across Northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and North-eastern Russia. As category, Sámi encompass several different groups with distinct self-identities, languages and traditions. The Sámi are recognised as indigenous through the ILO-convention 169 in Norway.
- 3.
I here apply the concepts of Global North and South in line with Santos (2018), as epistemological rather than purely geographical terms.
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Eriksen, K.G. (2022). Coloniality and National Exceptionalism in Norwegian Citizenship Education: Engaging the Ontological Baseline. In: Moncrieffe, M.L. (eds) Decolonising Curriculum Knowledge. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13623-8_7
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