Social Science Research Council

"Identity, Knowledge, Work: The Role of Teachers in Constructing the Eritrean Nation-State"

I consider my project to be an ethnography of nation building and state making "from below." This project will examine the construction of the Eritrean nation-state by studying the ways in which national educational policy is mediated by teachers and altered in the process of implementation. I suggest that through teachers' experiences of becoming "educated people" and through their lived experience of the nation, teachers develop a world view which situates "education" and "nation" in ways that may resist, support, alter or reinterpret official policies and perspectives on nation-building through education. I will look at how the state is constructed both discursively, through teacher's narratives of their experiences as citizens, nationals and employees, and through teacher practice as they actively participate in the shaping of educated citizens. The study will place teacher practice in the context of Eritrea's official vision for education and teachers' processes of identity formation. The study hopes to both enhance our understanding of teachers' role in policy implementation and nation building, and raise questions about the nature of the state and the multiplicity of cultural, social, and political forces that are invoked in its construction.