‘Remembrance isn’t working’: First World War battlefield tours and the militarisation of British youth during the centenary

Pennell, Catriona

doi:10.1177/0907568220908307

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Notwithstanding the rather unique nature of the FFSC, we contend that there is fertile ground for political geographers to explore similar situations where young people are brought into contact with the performative practice of diplomats, government representatives, or when they participate in various government‐organised initiatives (Pennell, 2020). These opportunities might be more commonplace than initially assumed given the regularity with which young people take part in trips/events arranged by schools, universities and/or different recreational clubs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 The FIG's interest in the initiative stemmed from a desire to enhance knowledge about the Islands among younger generations living in the UK and aligned with their broader strategic narrative to 'Look Forward at Forty', as opposed to continually framing the Falklands through the limiting lens of the 1982 war alone (Mercopress, 2021). It was inspired, in part, by the UK government's funding of school visits to battlefields of the Western Front during the centenary commemorations of the First World War between 2014 and 2019 (Pennell, 2018(Pennell, , 2020. Our interests as academic researchers were focused on charting how young people's perspectives and understandings of the past, present and future of this British OT emerged, developed and shifted over the course of the competition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tracing young people's engagements with the diplomacy and geopolitics of a British Overseas Territory

Benwell,

Pennell,

Pinkerton

2024

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Research from political geographers has increasingly identified the diverse actors, practices, and performances of diplomacy, challenging narrow conceptions that had tended to associate them with the state alone. The following paper engages this plurality directly through, on the one hand, its focus on young people as diplomatic actors and, on the other, the diplomacy of a British Overseas Territory (OT)—the Falkland Islands—a polity characterised by its liminal subjectivity between colonial dependency and independent statehood. In 2022, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War, we partnered with the Falkland Islands Government Office (FIGO) in London, to design, deliver and evaluate a national schools' competition. The Falklands Forty Schools Competition (FFSC) culminated in an eight‐day trip to the Islands for seven prize winners. The paper reflects on our role in co‐organising the competition and the opportunities it afforded to observe young people probe and critically question the official narratives presented to them by government representatives. This offered us the opportunity to explore how geopolitical and diplomatic narratives can be projected, negotiated and challenged by young people in the context of a highly curated trip with narrative projection at its heart. We show how young people through their participation in the competition and, more specifically, a trip to the Falkland Islands, were able to identify slippages and inconsistencies in these ‘stable’ narratives related to governance of the Islands. The young people, far from being passive diplomatic ‘delegates’ unquestioningly imbibing the information presented to them were, instead, highly aware of narrative tipping‐points, tensions and slippages in their engagements with government representatives and diplomats.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing young people's engagements with the diplomacy and geopolitics of a British Overseas Territory

Benwell,

Pennell,

Pinkerton

2024

Area

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The study focuses on the instrumentalization of Soviet myths 3 and historical memory, particularly about World War II (WWII), and the amplification of a regional identity in the educational system to examine how processes of militarization infiltrate spaces of everyday life (Bernazzoli and Flint, 2009;Pain, 2015). The article also demonstrates how children engage in performative meaning-making practices of war remembrance (Danilova and Dolan, 2020;Pennell, 2020), thus becoming not only objects but subjects of militarization processes. Further, the article highlights how school museums 4 became spaces that allowed for the diffusion of militarization from the everyday to the geopolitical and vice versa (Henry and Natanel, 2016: 852).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’

Hoban¹

2021

Cooperation and Conflict

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This essay critically examines how the militarization of childhood(s) takes place in the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. The intensification of hostilities in Eastern Ukraine in mid-2014 has had a profound impact on local populations, particularly children. While no systematic recruitment and participation of children in conflict has been reported, childhood has become what Agathangelou and Killian would characterize as a ‘site for displacement and maneuvering for militarization.’ Drawing on feminist methodologies, I examine processes of the militarization of children’s everyday lives. This article investigates a range of ways in which authorities of proto-states in the Donbas region address children as participants and potential collaborators in the processes of militarization. In my analysis, I examine how war and preparation for it are simultaneously co-constituted by the geopolitical—legitimation of new proto-states—and everyday practices, such as engaging with school curricula, visiting museums, and (re)inventing historical narratives. Understanding of mechanisms that militarize childhood and how children become subjects and objects of militarization allows for a critical analysis that reveals spaces of everyday violence. This article, therefore, enhances our understanding about the intersections of childhood, militarism, and security.

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“…For the purposes of this article, I present an understanding of experiential learning that is tied to places of historical and contemporary significance, outside of the classroom. This form of experiential learning has been referred to by other scholars as an "outbound mobility experience" (Innes & Sharp, 2021), or more commonly as a "study tour" or "tour" (Atherton & Moore, 2016;Pennell, 2018Pennell, , 2020. Keeton and Tate's (1978) definition of experiential learning is applicable to the study tour:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Walking in their footsteps: Historical empathy and experiential learning on battlefield study tours

Karn

2024

HEJ

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Reflecting on my experience leading battlefield study tours for secondary school students, this article explores the pedagogical benefits of experiential learning for fostering historical empathy. I suggest that experiential learning offers students opportunities to engage with both the cognitive and affective dimensions of history, which are necessary for developing historical empathy. In doing so, I adopt Davison’s (2017) conceptualization of historical empathy as a cognitive-affective “pathway” to demonstrate how experiential learning supports students’ understandings of perspectives and experiences in the past. On the study tours, students entered the past by developing emotional connections to historical actors and particular places, based on their family histories and backgrounds. While visiting historic sites and interpreting battlefield landscapes, students worked with the historical record to build contextual knowledge and consider diverse perspectives. Finally, students exited the past to form ethical judgments about the World Wars and applied their learning within their communities back home in Canada.

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‘Remembrance isn’t working’: First World War battlefield tours and the militarisation of British youth during the centenary

Cited by 12 publications

References 44 publications

Tracing young people's engagements with the diplomacy and geopolitics of a British Overseas Territory

Tracing young people's engagements with the diplomacy and geopolitics of a British Overseas Territory

Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’

Walking in their footsteps: Historical empathy and experiential learning on battlefield study tours

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