SFB 640 I: Ceremonial Education in Phases of Radical Modernization of Agrarian Societies: Japan, Russia, and Mexico in the Second Half of the 19th Century (TP A 4)

<p>The title Ceremonial Pedagogy is derived from Mona Ozouf and Christian Harten's work on the French Revolution. This metaphoric expression essentially refers to a media representation of programmes designed to comprehensively reorganise entire states and societies, typically conceived and politically implemented in connection with revolutionary upheavals. The following post-revolutionary societies, which provide interesting cases for comparison from this point of view, will be examined in this sub-project: Japan in the wake of the Meiji Revolution from 1868 to ca. 1912 (by Daniel Hedinger), the Soviet Union during the 1930s (by Matthias Braun) and Mexico after the 1910 Revolution to ca. 1940 (by Carlos Martínez and Eugenia Roldán Vera).</p>

<p>All three units of comparison share certain common, specific intentions in the implementation of the forms of representation designated as Ceremonial Pedagogy . They set out to convey a widespread picture of comprehensive reorganisation designs counterposed against time-honoured societal structures including the ideologies or (historical) myths legitimating such designs , and with a strong socialisation purpose, in the form of public celebrations, architecture and spatial arrangements, collective rituals, visual media and choreographic staging. On account of such intentions, this project deals not only with the symbolic aspects of social order implied in its forms of representation and the constitutive aspects of social organisation. Equally central to this research will be the potential ascribed to such forms of representation for visually impressing, emotionally overwhelming and/or charismatically moulding consciousness. In this sense, the project will primarily deal with the instrumental value of the forms of Ceremonial Pedagogy under examination and will analyse their efficacy on issues of cultural homogenisation, societal integration, social mobilisation and/or consolidation of a political system.</p>