Authors(S) of Proposal Including Affiliations and Email Addresses

Paper proposal / ECER 2015

Title of proposal

Understanding Constructions of Danish-ness using Heterogeneous Types of Sources across Historical Settings

Authors(s) of proposal including affiliations and email addresses

Christian Ydesen, Assistant Professor,Departmentof Learningand Philosophy, Aalborg University,

Trine Øland, Associate Professor, Sections of Educational Research, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen,

First and second choice network

First priority: No. 17 – History of Education

Second priority: No. 28 – Sociology of Education

General description of research questions, objectives and theoretical framework (up to 600 words)

This paper contributes knowledge creation on two different, but intimately linked, levels. The first is an analytical level and the second is a methodological level.

At the analytical level the paper addresses the issue of understanding how Danish-ness is constructed in two historical settings characterized by great upheavals in popular moral codes, culture and national self-imagery. The first setting is the first decade after World War II and the second setting is the post-9/11 era. The empirical focus is on the way police officers and adjoining professionals of the Danish welfare nation-state construct ‘disturbing/disquieting behavior’, delinquency, and misbehavior andhow these constructions are made into a category that activates educational and other interventions (MoldenhawerØland 2013). Using a comparative outlook between the two historical settings the purpose is to understand 1) the boundaries of legitimate behavior and membership of the Danish community inside the Danish welfare nation-state, and 2) the transformations of these boundaries according to the Danish state’s changing (inter-state) relations within the regional and global community (cf. Bourdieu 1999).

At the methodological level the paper works with the research question of how it is possible to adequately bring two different types of sources from two different periods to communicate in order to conduct history research on the construction of Danishnessacross the periods?

Methods/methodology (up to 400 words)

Empirically the analysis is based on sources pertaining to police officers and adjoining professionals and their handling of immigrants or foreign elements. The first period 1945 – 1955 is treated through the archival sources available at the ‘Regional Archive for Southern Jutland’ concerning the handling of the German minority in Southern Jutland/Nordschleswig (cf. Ydesen 2011). The archives contain information about the key professionals engaged in this period, such as the triad teachers, police officers and intelligence agents. The contemporary periodis illuminated through interviews with police officers and street level workers working with (supposed) juvenile delinquents in Greater Copenhagen with a focus on immigrant youngsters, and through supplementary documents describing administrative and organizational arrangements addressing immigrant juvenile delinquency, for example the strategy of the crossprofessional organization called SSP, which is a well-organized collaboration between school administrations, social service administrations and the police force.

Concerning the methodological level our preliminary answer is that it is possible to bring two different types of sources from two different periods to communicate. Our methodology for doing so is to put theoretically guided questions to work empirically, which means that the sources used are read in a way followingfrom a theoretically informed way of understanding the object of study (Bourdieu et al. 1991, Bourdieu 2004, ØlandYdesen, forthcoming).Yet, we seek to prevent the handling, reading and interpretation of sources and other types of data to be determined by theory. In this process, the notion of field is the most important tool (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992, 97): it signals struggles and historicity (Steinmetz 2011). Covering both historical settings and all sources/data used, this means that every professional intervention, every professional position-taking and legitimization; every observed construction of ‘the immigrant’/’the foreigner’; every construction of the professional task and method, etc., should be placed in a structure of positions-taking, agents and institutions. Throughout the research process, in every choice we make, we will aspire to think relationally.

Expected outcomes/results (up to 300 words)

Through the relational mode of thinking, the paper creates knowledge about the transitionsand constructions of proper Danish-ness in and between two historical contexts:just after WWII (versus the German within) and after 9/11 (versus the imagined homegrown terrorist working from within). This entails knowledge creation about the spatial transformations and transitions of Danish-ness (from control of the mind to control of conduct). The knowledge created will be related to and contribute to European and international research in the area of study (e.g., Bookman & Woolford 2013, Maynard-Moody & Musheno 2003, McCarthy 2010, 2011, 2014). Working on this type of knowledge, undoubtedly, will be of relevance to most European countries today. The methodological insights created carry general relevance to the field of historical research (e.g., Noiriel 1995, 2007).

Intent of publication

History & Theory

History of Education

References (400 words)

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Bourdieu, P. (2004): Science of Science and Reflexivity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P.; J.-C.Chamboredon & J.-C. Passeron (1991): The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries. Walter de Gruyter.

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Maynard-Moody, S.Musheno, M. (2003):Cops, Teachers and Councillors: Stories from the Front Lines of Public Service, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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McCarthy, D.J. (2011): Classing early intervention: Social class, occupational moralities and criminalization, Critical Social Policy 31(4): 495-516.

McCarthy, D.J. (2014):'Soft' Policing. The Collaborative Control of Anti-Social Behaviour. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Moldenhawer, B. & Øland, T. (2013): Disturbed by the ‘stranger’: state crafting remade through educational interventions and moralisations, Globalisation, Societies & Education 11(3): 398-420.

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Wacquant, L. (2010) Crafting the Neoliberal State - Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity. Sociological Forum, vol. 25, no. 2, June, pp. 197-220

Wacquant, L. (2012): Three steps to a historical anthropology of actually existing neoliberalism, Social Anthropology 20(1): 66-79.

Ydesen, C. (2011): Educating Greenlanders and Germans - Minority Education in the Danish Commonwealth, 1945-1970. In: Niedrig, H., Ydesen, C. (eds.) Writing Postcolonial Histories of Intercultural Education. Frankfurt a.M: Peter Lang Verlag. 2011, pp. 239-267.

Øland, T. & Ydesen, C. (Forthcoming): Professional Interventions as a State-Crafting Grammar: Using a Sociological Concept of State in Historical Research. In: Heinesen, J.; Jørgensen, M.O.; Lytje, M. & Nielsen, T.K. (eds.): ChallengingIdeas? Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge: Cambridge Scolars Publishing