Schooling Passions Nation, History, and Language in Contemporary Western India [Paperback]

Schooling Passionsexplores an important, yet often overlooked dimension of nationalismits embodied and emotional components. It does so by focusing on another oft-neglected area, that of elementary education in the modern state. Through an ethnographic study of schools in western India, V?ronique Benei examines the idioms through which teachers, students, and parents make meaning of their political world. She articulates how urban middle- and lower-class citizens negotiate the processes of self-making through the minutiae of daily life at school and extracurricular activities, ranging from school trips to competitions and parent gatherings. To document how processes of identity formation are embodied, Benei draws upon cultural repertoires of emotionality.

This book shifts the typical focus of attention away from communal violence onto everyday banal nationalism. Paying due attention to the formulation of senses of belonging, this book explores the sensory production and daily manufacture of nationhood and citizenship and how nationalism is nurtured in a nation's youth.

V?ronique Benei is Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, Department of Anthropology where she has taught since 1997, and holds a permanent position as Senior Research Fellow with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (LAIOS/IIAC). She has also taught at Princeton University and Yale University. Benei's compelling ethnography is much more than a book about schooling; it's about schooling in the service of the nation, how schooling functions to create citizens, and how nationalism is inculcated in our youth. I have seldom read a more powerful, beautifully written book. This book builds on and yet challenges much of the concept-driven work on nationalism. Its interconnection of the topics of language ideology, embodiment, gender, story, schooling, nation, and patriotism is unique and quite persuasive. I highly recommend this book to anyone interestel.