Telling a national narrative that is not your own. Does it enable critical historical consumption?

Abstract

National narratives are a key element in the process of history consumption and production. These master narratives have been analyzed in both theoretical and empirical studies as general schematic templates producing an essentialist and nationalist representation of the own past. The majority of studies examining historical representations of national narratives have used historical content of the students’ own nation. This study, on the other hand, analyzed the historical understanding of 34 Spanish university students concerning three dimensions of historical narratives about a nation other than their own. These dimensions were: the establishment of the historical subject, the moral judgment about the national group actions, and the legitimacy of the ownership of the territory. The distinction among three different dimensions is presented as providing a better both theoretical and empirical comprehension of master narratives as sociocultural devices. Our results indicated that participants had a more critical representation about the second and third mentioned features, whereas they had a romantic conception about the first one, suggesting then that the establishment of the historical subject could be the core dimension of the master narrative. Finally, some considerations about the process of history consumption and its relations to national identity are presented.

Keywords

History learning national narratives national identities

The narrative form has been traditionally considered an essential tool for the discipline of history. The most common narratives in the field of teaching history are national narratives (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Symcox & Wilschut, 2009). However, these narratives have several characteristic features that many times differ from historiographical understanding of history and hinder the development of a historical thinking in the students (Carretero & Lopez, 2010). We have developed a theoretical proposal concerning the main features of the process of production and consumption of national historical narratives (Carretero, 2011; Carretero & Bermudez, 2012). Also a number of empirical studies have been developed in relation to these issues (Carretero & Kriger, 2011; Lopez, Carretero, & Rodriguez-Moneo, 2014), which allowed us to have a detailed and analytical view on the different dimensions of these narratives.

This article focuses on three key characteristics of these national narratives. First, the nation and nationals are established as the main historical subjects of these narratives. They are displayed as if they were timeless and static entities and applied to every period of history. Second, the actions of the national group are always judged morally positive in contrast to foreign actions. In other words, the past is presented in an ethnocentric, biased manner (Dragonas & Frangoudaki, 2001). Finally, a conflict over a national territory, stressing its supposed atemporal link to the nationals is one of the narrative’s main themes.

These national narratives essentially have two clear objectives. The first objective is legitimizing the creation of nation-states that emerged during the 19th century. In doing so, national narratives interpreted the past in a teleological way, re-constructing it from and for present political objectives. The second objective of national narratives is the construction of a national identity that cognitively and emotionally binds the citizens in the present to the actors in the national past. Historiographical approaches that historians use when attempting to understand the past are practically absent in these national narratives (Carretero, 2011; Carretero, Asensio, & Rodriguez-Moneo, 2012). An example of these approaches would be precisely to compare and confront different historical narratives in order to build a critical historical explanation of an event.

From a sociocultural perspective, national narratives have constituted what Wertsch called schematic narrative templates (2004). These templates are socially shared master narratives that students encounter not only when they learn about their nation’s history in school—mainly in history textbooks (Ahonen, 1997; Foster & Crawford, 2006)—but also out of school through museums, monuments, films, or in the internet (Berger, Eriksonas, & Mycock, 2008; Valsiner, 2012). These narratives are schematic in the sense that they concern abstract, generalized functions. These schemes guide the subject to interpret the nation’s past and the very concepts of nation and national identity embedded in those narratives (Wertsch, 1997a, 1997b). However, these schemes about the nation’s past are commonly used in a completely unreflective, unanalytical, and unwitting manner and remain uncontested and unrevised from a historiographical point of view. Basically they transmit and display romantic, naturalized and mythical views about the nation’s past. As one of us have presented elsewhere (Carretero, 2011) school and everyday historical contents about the past tend to present narratives, which could be considered romantic, as opposed to critical and historiographical, in the sense of being full of essentialist, naturalized, and nationalistic features.

Previous studies conducted with students have demonstrated the problem with an excessive emphasis on national narratives for appropriate historical understanding. Alridge (2006) notes, “American history textbooks present discrete, heroic, one-dimensional, and neatly packaged master narratives that deny students a complex, realistic, and rich understanding of people and events in American history” (p. 662). In a study done in the United States, Wertsch (2004) shows how most students simply reproduced the official history without introducing irony or conflicting interpretations of the narratives. Other studies in different countries reveal that students normally use first-person plural pronouns, such as “we,” “our,” or “us,” to refer to their national past events, mixing their own national identities with protagonists from the past (Barton & Levstik, 1998; Carretero, 2011; Lopez et al., 2014). Thus, the national narratives that the students are exposed to not only show a clear difference between “us” and “them” but also attribute intentions and value judgments to different groups (Goldberg, Schwarz, & Porat, 2011; Hammack, 2010). Therefore, students tend to positively judge and legitimate the own group’s actions over those perceived as “the other” (Carretero, Lopez, Gonzalez, & Rodriguez-Moneo, 2012).

These results in the field of history are consistent with social identity and cognition theories, which postulate that people who define themselves in terms of their membership in a specific group are motivated to evaluate their group positively (Fiske & Taylor, 1984; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). This national identification connects the feeling of self-esteem to in-group esteem and establishes a cultural continuity between past and present (Chandler, 2000). The result is a simplified understanding of history that is skewed favorably toward one’s national group and exclusive to the “other” (Triandafyllidou, 1998).

The main and key paradox is that this common national identity—which constitutes the main subject of national narratives—that is meant to bind people in the past and the present, even includes events from the past in which the nation and the nationals did not exist at all. However, as reflected in many studies, the feeling of a timeless national community remains notably present in students’ minds (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Carretero et al., 2012; Lopez et al., 2014; Werstch, 2004). This misconnection between the past and present creates a misunderstanding of the nation and national identity, which are interpreted as permanent, natural, and immutable phenomena.

National identity is undoubtedly one of the most important social identities for an individual (Smith, 1991). The concept of national identity is a multifaceted one, and it is to be understood as a collective cultural phenomenon that relates to social practices and traditions. In his classic work National Identity Anthony Smith (1991) refers to five key elements of national identity: a historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a common public culture, common legal rights and duties, and a common economy. This article will just focus on the historical aspects of national identity and their connection to the cultural construction of this concept. Obviously, research on other aspects of national identity should be taken into account to have a full understanding of the historical dimension.

Today, it is practically impossible to think of a person who considers herself without a national identity, which creates the false impression that national identity is as natural as being men or women. From a sociocultural perspective Michael Billig (1995) describes how people encounter themselves with their nations in everyday life through many different ways. National flags on the buildings, sport games between nations, national memorials, national celebrations, and even streets’ names filled with references to national figures remember us that we are part of a nation. These cultural and social practices became so natural and routine in our lives that most times we are unaware of them. Nevertheless, the main goal of these practices is to celebrate the nation, and most of times they do it in an implicit way. This phenomenon constitutes what Michael Billig has called Banal Nationalism (1995) and it is one of the reasons why these naturalized and romantic conceptions of nation and national identity are so embedded in the citizens and are so rarely challenged. Nowadays, within historiography, the nature of nations and national identity is still a field of great debate (Connor, 2004; Smith, 2002). The traditional romantic and nationalist historiography that resulted from the formation of nation-states in the 19th century attempted to show that, in fact, these national identities were man’s natural essence and nations were as old as history itself (Bagehot, 1873; Calhoun, 1997). This romantic and nationalistic view on these concepts seems to have been challenged within the academic setting, though there are still some positions aligned with this approach. In contrast, modern approaches interpret both nations and national identities as complex modern social constructions (Anderson, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1997; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983; Renan, 2007). Additionally, intermediate paradigms could be found between the atemporal and natural point of view and the modern and socially constructed approach (Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005). However, from many current approaches the learned character of national identity is emphasized. Individuals are not thought to be born with feelings about national identity or patriotism; instead, these feelings are taught and learned (Bar-Tal, 1993; Billig, 1995). Modern states, which emerged at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, are considered the main creators of the nation and feeling of national identity in citizens, mainly by establishing a common and compulsory education (Gellner, 1983). As Connor indicates (2004), for most current nations, national consciousness was not present until the 19th and early 20th centuries. After the political changes that emerged with the French and the American Revolutions at the end of the 18th century, national consciousness among citizens was built, invented (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983), or imagined (Anderson, 1983). Previously, people identified more in terms of a village, clan, district, region, or local ethnic identity (Weber, 1976). This modern and critical approach differs greatly from the romantic approach that understands national identity as something ancient, natural, and immutable.

However, as noted before, in school and informal settings, a romantic and mythical understanding of the national phenomena is fostered through national master narratives, which creates an irreducible tension with these modern and critical historiographical approaches.

There is no doubt that nation and national identity are still one of the key concepts of the discipline. Yet, there are not many studies that empirically examine young people’s historical understanding of national identity. Many history educationalists have pointed out that taking into account peoples’ preconceptions is necessary if an effective learning process is to occur (Lee, 2004). To date, studies on these concepts have revealed that students’ understanding is closer to the traditional romantic view than to modern ones (Berti, 1994; Carretero et al., 2012; Carretero, Castorina, & Levinas, 2013). Nearly all previous studies have focused on content related to the history of the students’ own nation. These studies have helped us to detect and better understand main students’ misconceptions and the influence of identity elements on their historical understanding. However, in order to explore further the influence of identity elements and national narratives on students’ understanding of history, we think it is important to analyze how they interpret content that relates to a foreign country instead of their own country.

In using a foreign historical event, we aim at analyzing students’ understanding of national narratives and concepts once their identity and emotional link with the content is minimized. That is, a detached historical content could serve as a catalyst in order to enable a different understanding of national contents (Beckstead, Cabell, & Valsiner, 2009). Additionally, the content relates to a foreign national narrative to which the participants in this study had not been exposed before. Thus, understanding how students interpret other’s national histories could lead us to relevant information about the processes of how national historical narratives are consumed. On the one hand, it gives us information about the effects of this distance to the historical content on students’ understanding of the past. It could help us to determine whether using detached contents enables a more critical understanding of the past, with respect to each specific element. On the other hand, if citizens’ historical understanding of a detached national content has more critical features, analyzing these characteristics in depth could be beneficial for getting them to reflect on their own nation as well. Therefore, we think that studying people’s representations about historical narratives of other nations is indeed necessary in order to fully understand the process of historical contents consumption. Furthermore, both theoretical (Wertsch, 1997b, 2004) and empirical (Barton & Levstik, 1998, 2004) approaches of master narratives consumption and production (Carretero, Jacott, & Lopez-Manjon, 2002; Hammack, 2011) have emphasized the importance and centrality of them to fully understand historical representations from a sociocultural point of view. However, all these contributions consider national master narratives as general schematic templates, but without providing a specific analysis of their dimensions. Our contribution (Carretero, 2011; Lopez et al., 2014) as stated earlier is trying to analyze more specifically these dimensions, because a more detailed knowledge of them could help to gain a better understanding both theoretically and empirically of these essential cultural phenomena.

Understanding others’ national histories

To analyze the ways in which students assign meaning to historical content related to a foreign nation, we analyzed the narratives of Spanish students regarding a key theme in Greece’s national history. The period analyzed refers to the so-called Ottoman occupation of Greece and the nation’s subsequent independence. Conflicts over national territory and wars of independence are central elements in the romantic national narratives of most countries (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Carretero & Kriger, 2011; VanSledright, 2008). The following excerpt from the Greek declaration of independence perfectly reflects the romantic view of this historical process:

We, descendants of the wise and noble people of Hellas, we who are the contemporaries of the enlightened and civilized nations of Europe (…) find it no longer possible to suffer without cowardice and self-contempt the cruel yoke of Ottoman power which has weighed upon us for more than four centuries (…). After this prolonged slavery, we have determined to take arms to avenge ourselves and our country against a frightful tyranny. The war which we are carrying on against the Turk is (…) aimed at the advantage of any single part of the Greek people; it is a national war, a holy war, a war the object of which is to reconquer the rights of individual liberty, of property and honor, rights which the civilized people of Europe, our neighbors, enjoy today (National Greek Assembly, 27 January 1822. Declaration of Greek Independence). (Lozano, 2004)

As shown in this excerpt, the three core characteristics of national narratives mentioned earlier clearly appear. That is, first, the Greeks who proclaim independence are understood as the “descendants of the wise and noble people of Hellas,” in a clear interpretation of the Greek identity as ancient and permanent. Second, the main dispute centers on “reconquering” a supposed national territory that has been subjected to Ottoman rule for more than four centuries. Finally, there is a clearly positive judgment toward the Greek cause with the use of terms such as “wise,” “noble,” and “freedom.” However, the Ottoman contingent, which is the out-group, is linked to terms such as “cruel,” “terrible tyranny,” and “slavery.”

In choosing this historical content we are not aiming to generalize it to every historical content, since this kind of generalization is not possible in history. Nevertheless, it is worth noticing that this kind of master narrative focused on the loss and recovery of the national territory could be found in many nations’ history. This specific content was selected for being a historical event in which the Spanish identity was not involved.

Objectives

The main objective of this study was to analyze the narratives used by college students to understand key and foundational historical events of a foreign nation, applying our theoretical framework, which allows us to distinguish different dimensions of the narrative (see above). The selection of a foreign national narrative has to do with the need for a better understanding of the consumption process of historical contents, since most of previous studies presented narratives about the own nation. That is, we aim to examine students’ historical narratives that are not so influenced by their national identity.

Through analysis of semistructured interviews, the three key dimensions of national narratives presented in the introduction were considered. That is, first, we were interested in analyzing the concept of national identity as the main subject of the narrative. Second, we aimed to determine the participants’ moral judgments about the different groups involved in their historical narrative. Finally, we examined participants’ ideas relating to the ownership of a foreign national territory.

Analyzing the nature of the students’ narratives on the three key dimensions when the content used is that of some nation other than one’s own, we expected critical and distanced interpretations rather than romantic ones as the narrative presented was not about their own nation.

Method

Participants

The participants were 34 Spanish college students from the Faculty of Psychology in Madrid (Spain) who voluntarily participated without prior knowledge of the study’s objectives. These participants had received little or no education in school about the content used. Abundant references to classical Greek culture are commonly found in Spanish textbooks. For example, emphasis is laid on city-states such as Athens and Sparta. However, content related to later periods, such as that analyzed in this article, is not present at all. All participants stated that they were very little or no familiar with the historical content analyzed. The age range of the participants was between 17 and 29 years old with a mean of 19.28 and a standard deviation of 3.11.

Materials

Participants were provided with three sheets of paper containing maps and information about the historical process analyzed (see Appendix 1). Each sheet referred to a different period of the process. The first period, specifically, the period of the Byzantine Empire, represents the situation prior to the Ottoman conquest (Varana, 2006). The second period represents the situation during Ottoman rule (Miller, 1913; Shepherd, 1923). The last period refers to Greece’s independence and subsequent expansion (Whistler, 2010). Each sheet includes a small amount of descriptive text about the period and several historical maps depicting the political situation.

Procedure

Semistructured individual interviews were performed in a quiet room by the first author (see Appendix 2 for the interview’s guideline used by the interviewer). By permission of the participant the interview was recorded. At the beginning of the interview, the participant read and examined the materials related to the three analyzed periods. Then the interview focused on each period in chronological order. For each period the participant was asked about: (a) who the inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula at that time were, (b) the legitimacy of the actions carried out by the inhabitants regarding the gain of the territory, and (c) the territorial right of ownership. After the last period, related to the process of Greek independence, the participants were asked about the nature and antiquity of that Greek national identity. The interview lasted around 45 min, but there was no time limitation.

A content analysis was performed (Ezzy, 2002). The participants’ answers were transcribed and then coded by a nominal system of categories (see Appendix 3), which allowed us to exclusively categorize the participant narratives with respect to either their romantic or modern and critical character, according to the main historiographical approaches mentioned earlier. One code per meaningful unit derived from the questions related to the three dimensions was performed. The categories corresponded to the three main dimensions: understanding others’ national identity, moral judgment of actions, and territorial right of ownership.

To validate the categories, an interjudge analysis was performed for the analyzed dimensions. Two judges independently categorized answers from 20% of the total sample. The intercoder agreement was above 85.7% in all of the cases. The discrepancies that were found were used to improve the definition of the categories.

In the next section, the results are shown for each of the analyzed dimensions.

Results

Establishing other’s national historical subject

The national historical subject is a central element of national narratives. It enables the establishment of a continuous subject, the nation, in the romantic narrative and grants national identity a natural, timeless, and permanent character. However, most historians currently understand national identity as something socially constructed in modern times.

Most participants (64.7%) showed ideas similar to the romantic approach to Greek national identity in their narratives. The following excerpt illustrates this conception.

[How long could the feeling of belonging to the Greek nation have been present?]¹ I think since forever. (…)² If we forget history… there has always been a feeling of saying I belong to Greece, to ancient Greece (…). And then came a moment in which you say, “So far and so further!” Oneafter another spreads the word; (…) they create that feeling until they say: “We have been invaded by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans; now is our moment.” (…) “Now is the time for us to rebel and become independent as Greeks” (Maria,³ 21 years old).

Clearly, according to Maria, in each analyzed historical period, namely, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Greece’s independence, the historical subject of the Greeks is always present. This identity is the protagonist subject in history and constitutes the link between Classical Greece and the present. The feeling of Greek national identity was passed from generation to generation. The connection between a remote past and the present is established based on this common identity that had been latent for centuries until independence was obtained.

In contrast, some participants (35.3%) expressed ideas about the Greek national historical subject as a modern construction, illustrated in the following excerpt:

They had an identity according to the historical moment… for example, those in the Ottoman Empire (…) from the 14th to 19th (century); during that time, maybe there were generations that identified with this. I do not think that since Classical Greece there has been a feeling of classical Greece spreading from one generation to the next. (…) I think that it is something that has emerged, in fact, all because of economic interests… in fact, that identity is not felt since Classical Greece or by people themselves that they feel Greek, but it has been imposed. Somehow, Greeks were to feel that they must feel Greek, like the Spanish feel Spanish and the French feel French. It is something that has been established (Alba, 18 years old).

Clearly, according to Alba, national identity, as a historical subject, is not a natural characteristic of human beings but is something that is imposed and established for different reasons. Additionally, the timeless continuity of the Greek national identity from a remote past is not accepted.

These participants are aware of the historical time that has elapsed and the changes produced during the vast period of time analyzed. The Greek national identity is not something that emerges naturally; instead, it has a constructed and modern character. As we see in this excerpt, the participant denies the continuity of the historical Greek subject from Classical Greece until the independence of the Greek nation in the 19th century. The existence of a timeless historical subject, the Greeks, is denied, and the different identities of the inhabitants in different historical periods are taken into account.

Table 1 presents the distribution of percentages for this dimension.

Table 1.

Establishing other’s national historical subject.

	Frequency	Percentage
Modern/critical conceptions	12	35.30
Romantic conceptions	22	64.70
Total	34	100

Moral judgments of actions conducted by different groups

National narratives tend to judge the actions of the own group more positively than those of other groups. The participants in this study, who were not Greek, did not have a national identity linked to any of the groups participating in the process analyzed. Moreover, the participants have not been exposed to a national version of the historical process investigated.

However, part of the participants (29.4%) judged the Greeks’ actions more positively than the Ottomans’ actions. This judgment was based on a supposed timeless permanence of the Greeks in the disputed territory. The following excerpt reflects this view:

[Do you think they (the Ottomans) had the right to conduct these conquests or not?] I do not think so, (…) it does not seem right to me. The following seems better to me (…) [Do you think (the Greeks) had the right to become independent?] Yes, because they had been subjected to different empires for a long time, and why can’t they decide? If they were the ones who lived there. [And who were those who had been subjected for so long?] Their ancestors… [But whose, what people?] The Greeks. [Okay, since when had Greeks been in that territory?] I don’t know man… I’m thinking, homo sapiens in Greece (laughs), but I could not say any date… (Cristina, 18 years old).

Cristinas’s judgment is based on a view of the Greeks’ previous existence in the territory that legitimates their search for independence from Ottoman rule. This way, a positively biased narrative toward the Greeks’ actions is constructed, discrediting the Ottomans.

However, most participants in this category (70.6%) did not judge the Greeks’ actions to be more legitimate than those of the Ottomans. These participants did not think that the Greeks possessed a historical reason that legitimated their actions. The following excerpt from interviews with Isabel exemplifies this perspective:

[And these Ottoman conquests that you have been telling me about, from your point of view, does it seem to you that they had the right to perform these?] Well, the Byzantines did the same… one is just as bad as the other… the conquests from the Byzantines are like those of the Ottomans and nothing more… [Okay, in that sense, do you think that (the Greeks) had the right to become independent, that those territories became part of Greece?] Rights?… in that view, the same right that they had and they and they… to conquer what is other’s as far as it goes (Isabel, 18 years old).

As we observe in this excerpt, there was not greater legitimacy in the Greeks’ actions compared to those of the Ottomans. In doing this, different possible narratives are taken into account in a more critical way.

Table 2 presents the distribution of percentages for this dimension.

Table 2.

Moral judgments of actions conducted by different groups.

	Frequency	Percentage
Modern/Critical	24	70.6
Romantic	10	29.4
Total	34	100

Ownership of the territory

National territory is a central element of both national identity and nation. Dispute over territory and the legitimacy of possession generally comprise a fundament of national narratives. The narratives of our participants allow us to analyze their conceptions of foreign national territory.

A romantic conception of territory involves understanding it as a fixed, legitimate, and unquestionable property of the national group. The connection between the territory and national group is understood as established since ancient times. Some participants (32.4%) developed these kind of romantic arguments as we see from the conversation with Irene:

[And the territory, do you think the independent territory legitimately belongs to Greece?] Yes, right? If they have lived there all their lives and they believe that it is their land… Yes, I think so. [When you say they have lived there their whole life…?] Well, see, all their life… they have been invaded and such, but I don’t know. Greece is supposed to have had a territory since ancient times, and if it has always belonged somehow to Greek people who have settled there, they have not moved from there; well, and then yes, it is legitimate. [When you say they have been there since… since when, for example, before these periods?] Well, since ancient Greece, yes. They have been losing or gaining territory, but there has always been some kind of core that is maintained (Irene, 18 years old).

In this perspective, the different people inhabiting the territory over time are regarded as invaders of a territory that belongs at all times to the Greek people.

On the contrary, most participants (67.6%) did not regard the territory as the Greek nation’s unchangeable possession. According to these participants, territory is dynamic with regard to its possession. In the following conversation with Belen, we find these characteristics:

[Does it seem to you that it legitimately belongs to (the Byzantines) at that time?] Well, at that time, they had won it, right? So to speak. However, I also don’t think that a territory belongs to anyone concretely… (…) it is not attached to anyone. (…) [In that sense, does it seem to you that the territory (in the period of the Ottoman Empire) legitimately belongs to the Ottomans or not?] No, as with the Byzantines, it is a matter of ambition to have more territories but I do not see that it has to belong to anyone as I said with the Byzantines… (…). It does not belong permanently to anyone. (…) [In the period of Greek independence, does it seem to you that the territory legitimately belongs to the Greeks?] No, not to them either. [Why?] Well, what I have said before, the territories are there, and an empire that wants to have more territories, well they are going to conquer them, but I don’t think that because of that it always owns this territory and that the territory has always belonged to it, because it doesn’t. It is not going to be like this forever (Belen, 17 years old).

These participants have an understanding of the territory that allows them to acknowledge the dynamic and changeable nature of the territory, enabling them to account for historical changes over time.

Table 3 presents the distribution of percentages in this dimension.

Table 3.

Conceptions about the ownership of the territory.

	Frequency	Percentage
Modern/Critical	23	67.6
Romantic	11	32.4
Total	34	100

Discussion

The majority of the participants (64.7%) created a timeless historical subject based on a romantic conception of Greek national identity. However, with respect to moral judgments about the actions of different protagonist groups in the historical process, a majority of judgments (70.6%) were more critical and in line with modern historiographical approaches. Additionally, in relation to disputes about territorial ownership, there was also a majority of modern and critical conceptions (61.8%).

As historical subjects were considered timeless, their national identity was mostly understood as a phenomenon that remains unchangeable throughout the long time period analyzed (approximately 14 centuries). Thus, the majority of Spanish students thought that the feeling of Greek national identity has always been present. Since there is no national identity link between the characters from the past and the participants, there is no use of “we” or “us” in the participants’ narratives as was found in previous studies about the own national historical events (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Carretero et al., 2012). However, students’ understanding of foreign historical subjects such as the Greek one shares a main characteristic, namely the permanent and ancient nature. Therefore, using a historical content from a different nation is not enough to enhance a critical and modern understanding, concerning this specific dimension. As Billig has pointed out, people tend to think about national identity as intrinsic and natural human conditions (1995). But in this case, it is surprising that this also appears in the narrative presented about a foreign nation. One might think that these romantic ideas are transferred from students’ conceptions about their own national identity and applied to others as well.

This romantic manner of understanding national identity has some relevant implications for the study of historical narrative consumption. If we focus on the strategies used by the participant to construct the narrative, this view about the historical subject enables the participants to organize the historical narrative they construct around a constant protagonist, in this case the Greeks. In this way, participants structure their narratives in a way similar to 19th-century historiography. That is, both the students and the historiography of that period regard history as a logical succession of events that naturally and teleologically led to the constitution of a nation. Thus, according to this romantic view, the Greeks, whose origin is lost in ancient times, suffer from conquests of different empires that occur over time, but without ever losing their identity as a main group. The logical consequence and ultimate end of this story is the establishment of the Greek nation. The participants believe that the inhabitants of so-called Classical Greece and those of the Greece that became independent in the 19th century share the same national identity. This view is a simplification and an inadequate understanding of history because the organization of Classical Greece into city-states was never related to the nation-states that emerged in the 19th century. This way of understanding national identity ultimately obliterates the complexity of changes in cultural, demographic, and political terms produced in a territory over time.

The consumption process, from a historiographical point of view, should focus on stressing the changes over time suffered by people identifications. As many historians point out, national identities emerge in a historical context—for many of them never prior to the 18th century—and change over time (Anderson, 1983; Connor, 2004). That is, its socially constructed character should be stressed instead of a supposed natural one. In doing this, multiple identities can be taken into account throughout the different historical periods, so that the students not just encounter with a simplified and invented national identity that structures all periods in history. Moreover, confronting students with the constructed and changeable character of historical subjects and their national identities prepares them to better understand the current society in which they live, and denies “natural” and “permanent” rivalries between identity groups. The final aim would be helping students to acknowledge that national identities are dynamic sociocultural phenomena and making progressively explicit to the students the implicit social practices that reinforce the romantic nature of these identities.

The title of this paper refers to the possibility of enabling critical historical consumption through narratives that are about others national subjects. According to our results, this would be the case but not in the case of the first dimension. This is to say, the distinction of three different dimensions of master narratives has offered the possibility of considering the establishment of historical subject as the core dimension of master narratives as schematic templates, because this dimension includes a timeless subject even if it refers to other national groups. The other two dimensions analyzed in this study that are linked to emotional and affective elements, such as moral judgments and a group’s ownership rights over a territory, indicate a critical and modern predominance in the participants’ narratives. This result offers empirical inputs to a better understanding of master narratives as sociocultural devices.

When judging others’ nations actions most participants do not take part for any specific group in an uncritical way. As indicated by Tajfel and Turner (1979), the mere awareness of the presence of an out-group is sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination that favors the in-group. In this study, the lack of such an identity link could justify the absence of both, positive biases toward a certain group and negative bias toward others. This allows students to take into account different perspectives on the same historical event. This acknowledging of different points of views and possibilities has been determined by many historical contents researchers as a fundamental skill in order to develop a critical historical thinking (Lee, 2004; Lévesque, 2008; Seixas, 2012; Wineburg, 2001). These participants’ judgments greatly differ from the results when using a historical content from the own participants’ nation. Previous studies have stressed the tendency of students to uncritically understand, defend, and legitimate the own group’s actions (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Carretero et al., 2012; Lopez et al., 2014; Werstch, 2004).

This study showed very similar results regarding students’ conceptions of the ownership of the territory. Thus, foreign territory that is not linked to one’s own national identity is understood in a more critical and modern way. That is, changing over time and not exclusively tied to any particular group. In contrast, previous studies have shown how conceptions of territory associated with one’s own national group are predominantly romantic; that is, the territory is regarded as the nation’s legitimate, natural, and permanent possession (Carretero et al., 2012; Lopez et al., 2014). For instance, the work of Lopez and colleagues with Spanish students on the so-called Reconquest of Spain during the Middle Ages showed how most of them defended the idea of “reconquest” because “we were reconquering our territory” from the Muslims (Carretero et al., 2012). Thus, confronting students with territorial conflicts in which their own nation is not involved could help to better understand the dynamic and changeable nature of territories. Especially relevant in this understanding could be the use of historical time maps that show the political changes on a territory over the years. Practically all current national territories could be used to show this dynamic nature if we trace their development in time. Just as very recent examples we could think about the collapse of the U.S.S.R. or the changes on the former Yugoslav territory. Regarding the territory, it is necessary for our students to understand that our so familiar national boundaries have not always been there. That is, as Lowenthal pointed out The past is a foreign country (1985), and developing a historical thinking many times involves counterintuitive and unnatural way of thinking (Wineburg, 2001).

Identity issues have been considered to be as being very influential on historical narratives and concepts consumption, sometimes as a burden and other times as a benefit (Hammack, 2010). Current historiographical views and analyses on identity offer guides for addressing these relevant issues as to make the consumption of historical narratives more critical and transcending their romantic objectives (Lopez & Carretero, 2012). This paper suggests that acknowledging identities and historical narratives different from the proper national ones is a first step in developing more critical interpretations, at least demonstrated in two of the three dimensions analyzed in this study. Thus, on the one hand, these identity elements appear to fundamentally influence emotional and affective issues such as moral judgments of actions and conceptions over the ownership of the territory. On the other hand, this study shows that the representations about historical national subjects, central in the learning of history, retain a timeless, romantic, and naturalized quality for the students even when it concerns foreign identities. This study aims at contributing to the understanding of students’ representations of critical historical views such as those related to the nation and to the development of better strategies for fostering a critical and historical thinking not affected by nationalist and essentialist schematic templates.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This paper was written with the support of projects EDU-2010 17725 (DGICYT, Spain) and PICT-2008-1217 (ANPCYT, Argentina), coordinated by the second author, and the FPU fellowship (Autonoma University of Madrid) received by the first author. We would like to thank that support.

1

Square brackets are used for interviewer’s questions and italics for participant’s responses.

2

Dots in brackets are used for words omitted in order to make the excerpt clearer without affecting the sentence’s meaning.

3

All names are pseudonyms.

Author biographies

Cesar Lopez is a postdoc researcher at Autonoma University of Madrid. He also teaches at Camilo Jose Cela University and International University of La Rioja. His research interests are related to learning and teaching history, specially focused on the influence of national narratives and national identities. e-mail: cesar.lopez@uam.es

Mario Carretero is Professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, where he has also previously been Dean of the Faculty of Psychology. He is also a Researcher at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Argentina). He has done extensive research on learning history and national identities (M. Carretero, M. Asensio & M. Rodriguez Moneo, 2012). His book on Constructing Patriotism. Teaching of History and Historical Memory in Globalized Worlds (2011) has been translated into in Spanish and Portuguese. (Information Age Publishers). He has received the Guggenheim Fellowship (1997–1998) and the Santander Fellowship at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (Harvard University) (2009–2010). e-mail: mario.carretero@uam.es

Maria Rodriguez-Moneo is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and Director of the Institute for Educational Science at this University. She was Director of the Official First-Stage Secondary School Teacher Training Programme. She was also member of the managing boards of several Teacher Continuous Development Programmes offered by different domestic and international universities. She was Director of the Spanish National Center for Innovation and Research in Education. She also participated in several educational projects carried out within the EU Frame-Work Programs. She has done research in topics that include conceptual change, procedural learning, motivation and self-regulation and teaching and learning of competences. e-mail: maria.rodriguez@uam.es

Appendix 1: Maps and description of the three periods used during the interviews

Appendix 2. Interview guideline used in the study

Appendix 3. Nominal categorization performed for the three analyzed dimensions

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