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International Journal of Qualitative
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Orientalism(s), world geography
textbooks, and temporal paradox:
questioning representations of
Southwest Asia and North Africa
a
Lisa Zagumny & Amanda B. Richey
b
a
College of Education, Tennessee Technological University ,
Cookeville , TN , USA
b
Inclusive Education, Kennesaw State University , Kennesaw ,
GA , USA
Published online: 30 Oct 2012.
To cite this article: Lisa Zagumny & Amanda B. Richey (2013) Orientalism(s), world geography
textbooks, and temporal paradox: questioning representations of Southwest Asia and North
Africa, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26:10, 1330-1348, DOI:
10.1080/09518398.2012.731534
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2012.731534
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2013
Vol. 26, No. 10, 1330–1348, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2012.731534
Orientalism(s), world geography textbooks, and temporal paradox:
questioning representations of Southwest Asia and North Africa
Lisa Zagumnya* and Amanda B. Richeyb
a
Downloaded by [Uppsala universitetsbibliotek] at 01:40 18 December 2013
b
College of Education, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN, USA;
Inclusive Education, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA
(Received 4 October 2010; final version received 28 June 2012)
In this critical discourse analysis of six high-school world geography textbooks,
we explore how constructions and representations of North Africa and Southwest Asia have served to reinforce Orientalist discourse in formal curriculum.
Visual and written representations in these textbooks were overwhelmingly confounded by a traditional/modern dichotomy that constructed a paradoxical “Muslim world.” Gender and religion coding perpetuated the temporal paradox with
women and Islam used as symbols of the traditional in need of western modernization. This paper begins with a contextualization of the study of textbooks and
addresses investigations of media portrayals of Muslims, Arabs, and Islam. We
then describe our theoretical grounding in criticalist perspectives and detail
methods of analysis. Lastly, we present the three themes revealed through analysis and conclude with recommendations for enhancing geographic literacy in
schools.
Keywords: discourse; textbooks; Orientalism; visuality; Muslims
For there is no doubt that imaginative geography and history help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by dramatizing the distance and difference between what is
close to it and what is far away. (Said 1978, 55)
Introduction
Kincheloe (2004, 1), in the introduction to The Miseducation of the West and
speaking to “the ways images of Islam have been embedded in the Western and
especially the US consciousness,” proclaims, “It is high time to clean up the historical distortions developed centuries ago and passed down across the generations.” We
could not agree more. Our research is an investigation of visual and written representations of the people and cultures of Southwest Asia and North Africa in six highschool world geography textbooks available for adoption in Tennessee from two
consecutive six-year cycles – 1996–2001 and 2002–2008. Critical discourse analysis
revealed that visual and written representations were confounded through the use of
a traditional/modern binary constructing a paradoxical “Muslim world.” The juxtaposition results in a time warp effect where western props work to modernize traditional Orientalist trappings. Gender and religion coding further perpetuated the
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Ó 2013 Taylor & Francis
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
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temporal paradox with women and Islam used as symbols of the traditional in need
of western modernization. This paper begins with a contextualization of the study of
textbooks and textbook content and addresses investigations of media portrayals of
Muslims, Arabs, and Islam. We then describe our theoretical grounding in criticalist
perspectives and detail methods of analysis. Lastly, we present the three themes
revealed through analysis and conclude with recommendations for enhancing geographic literacy in schools.
Background
By the end of the nineteenth century, textbooks had become a centerpiece of public
school curriculum in the USA (Cuban 1993). Textbook content is typically
presented as value-neutral, factual, and authoritative, and as such can influence the
textbook audiences’ perceptions of people represented in the book (Altbach et al.
1991; Apple and Christian-Smith 1991; De Castell, Luke, and Luke 1989). Despite
this routine notion of neutral objectivity, the current and widely publicized debate
in Texas over curriculum standards makes public a longstanding, and often heated,
struggle.1 Recently, Leahey’s (2010) study of how high-school history textbooks
“whitewashed” the Vietnam war demonstrated how textbook depictions coupled
with hegemonic mainstream media forces coalesced to push a pro-war, conservative
agenda, effectively blocking alternative (usually anti-war) viewpoints. Writing
specifically to depictions of Islam in school textbooks, Abukhattala (2004, 163)
acknowledges the persuasive power of textbooks: “School textbooks play a vital
and distinctive role in influencing students’ social images and interactions.
Textbooks provide formal means of learning about other cultures.” Moreover, in
their review of 11 world history textbooks, Douglass and Dunn (2003) argue that
while there has been greater inclusion of information on Islam and Muslims,
depictions continue to essentialize Islam and distort Muslim diversity.
Prior research demonstrates teacher, especially novice teacher, reliance on textbooks (Altbach et al. 1991; Apple and Christian-Smith 1991; De Castell, Luke, and
Luke 1989). Researchers also suspect teacher reliance on textbooks for unfamiliar
material. Results from studies by Mastrilli and Sardo-Brown (2002), and Sensoy
and DiAngelo (2006) highlight concern for pre-service teachers’ demonstrated lack
of rudimentary knowledge about Islam and Muslims, and self-reflection on how
their own knowledge is shaped by their social position. Without willingness or an
ability to examine positionality and how it informs knowledge construction, pre-service teachers will become in-service teachers who maintain knowledge as objective
and official, furthering misunderstandings of Islam and Muslims.
Stereotypes and misrepresentations of Muslims are deeply ingrained in US
culture (Kahf 1999; Kamalipour 1997; Kincheloe, Steinberg, and Stonebanks 2010;
Mabro 1996; Said 1997; Shaheen 1984; Steet 2000). All too often, outsiders see
single issues defining the entire region – for example, religious extremism/terrorism.
As a by-product of colonization, North Africa and Southwest Asia have long been
subject to misrepresentation. Public schools in the USA are an integral part of that
culture, and school textbooks are official apparatuses for producing and disseminating discourses. Kincheloe, Steinberg, and Stonebanks (2010) demonstrate how prejudicial perceptions of Islam, Muslims, and Arabic peoples existed long before 9/11
and how this trajectory has informed the pervasive phenomena of Islamophobia.
This study, in illuminating how we teach and learn about North Africa and
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L. Zagumny and A.B. Richey
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Southwest Asia, critically interrogates the deeply ingrained stereotypes that are
accessed and reinforced when we come into contact with taken-for-granted “recontextualized discourses” (van Leeuwen 2008) such as school textbooks. Futhermore,
it asks larger questions about how we are to combat pervasive prejudice and fears
about Islam that go relatively unchallenged in the official knowledge(s) of education.
Media studies
Depictions of Muslims, Arabs, and Islam have received a good deal of attention in
the last 25 years. Popular media sources in these analyses range from newspapers
and magazines, to television and movies. Said (1997) provides a foundation here
with his exploration of media sources and how “experts” have “covered” Islam.
Writing about the overwhelmingly negative caricatures from television and movies,
Shaheen (1984, 1997, 2003) has repeatedly demonstrated that racism and ignorance
construct the stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.
Kamalipour (1997) and Kincheloe and Steinberg (2004) have produced compelling edited collections that explore US media portrayals of Muslims, Arabs, and
Islam in which stereotypes and misconceptions abound. Kincheloe and Steinberg’s
edited collection makes implicit the ways in which formal and informal school
structures shape these portrayals. In Steinberg’s (2004, 173) analysis of 17 films
featuring Arabs or Muslims, she maintains, “that if pedagogy involves issues of
knowledge production and transmissions, the shaping of values, and the construction of subjectivity, then popular culture is the most powerful pedagogical force in
contemporary America.” She goes on to explain how pedagogy is ideological in
that it produces common-sense assumptions about the world.
Abukhattala’s (2004, 153–4) essay is equally informative here, in that his
interest lies in:
the origins and forms of the images of Arabs and Muslims in the West, and more particularly, with the cultural portrayals of Islam, Muslims, and Arabs, with emphasis on
the misconceptions and negative pictures provided by Western writers, media, and
school textbooks.
While Abukhattala relied on three previous reviews of textbooks that are arguably
dated, one important point to make is that these misconceptions and sometimes
outright errors in textbooks have a history where seemingly more and new information has had little ability to effect change. Jackson (2010, 3) recently examined
“images of Islam and Muslims in US media since 11 September 2001,” demonstrating the intersection between education and mass media. Our research addresses her
call for “critical media literacy in social studies.”
Our work further relies on Falah’s (2005) investigation of visual representations
of Muslim/Arab women in US newspapers and Steet’s (2000) critical, in-depth
analysis of representations of the Arab world in National Geographic. Falah’s
(2005, 317) work helps us to understand, “the way in which the media, especially
print journalism, help to produce and to reproduce particular ways of knowing the
Arab and Muslim worlds.” The resulting reduction of Muslim women to stereotypes, Falah (2005, 318) explains, “is damaging not only for Muslim women, but
also for those who consume these images, as they will eventually suffer the
consequences of their limited geopolitical awareness.”
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Steet’s (2000) book Veils and Daggers is an examination of the Orientalist
construction of the Arab world in National Geographic. In her words, she examined, “the magazine’s masculinist rhetoric, the one-directionalty of its cross-cultural
contact, its claim of objectivity, and representations that build layers of a West-toArab-world hierarchy” (Steet 2000, 5). Steet’s grounding in feminism and cultural
studies allowed for a depth of analysis uncommon in much work on representation. She artfully demonstrates that media representations are never innocent or
neutral.
Criticalism(s)
Criticalist research, according to Kincheloe and McLaren (2008, 406), works “to
confront the injustice of a particular society or public sphere within a society” and
is “unembarrassed by the label ‘political.’”2 As a “large scale questioning of the
order of things” (Fuery and Fuery 2003, 13), critical theory attempts to promote
change by addressing inequities. Post-structuralism, a variety of critical practices
that arose from structuralism, seeks “to examine any commonplace situation, in
order to think differently about that occurrence” (St. Pierre 2000, 479). Lastly,
post-colonialism, a historical rupture to colonial legacies, works “to produce more
nuanced discourses of particular historical events” (Koro-Ljungberg et al. 2009,
689). Our approach blends these criticalist perspectives in order to connect
discourse analysis, Orientalism, and visuality.
Discourse
According to Wodak and Meyer (2009, 3), “CDA [critical discourse analysis] is
characterized by the common interests in de-mystifying ideologies and power
through the systematic and retroductable investigation of semiotic data.” In other
words, discourse analysts seek to understand “the ways in which knowledge is
formulated and validated by society as truth” (Dittmer 2009, 1). Discourse is not
limited to spoken or written language, but also includes other modes of communication such as the visual. The emphasis on communication stresses the social engagement required to disseminate discourse. Leading discourse analysts (e.g. Fairclough
2006; Gee 1999; Jager and Maier 2009; van Dijk 2009; van Leeuwen 2008; Wodak
and Meyer 2009) refer to discourse as a form of social practice. As a social practice, discourse is phrasing and word choice that Gee (1999) associates with language-in-use. Material texts such as school textbooks are examples of discourse;
they constitute a communicative mode of representation. Discourse, another form of
social practice, brings an additional level of communication/dissemination to a
material text. School textbooks (discourse) situated within a school system
(Discourse) reflect the multiple strata of d/Discourse. School systems, at least in the
USA, exemplify Discourse through the ideologies, power, and knowledge they
disseminate hegemonically. As a branch of Foucault’s governmentality, specifically
policy, we see how schools manage their federal- and state-sanctioned audiences.
As Lather (2006, 787) puts it, “Policy is to regulate behavior and render populations productive via a ‘biopolitics’ that entails state intervention in and regulation of
the everyday lives of citizens in a ‘liberal’ enough manner to minimize resistance
and maximize wealth stabilization.”
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L. Zagumny and A.B. Richey
Orientalism
The power to construct Orientalism as “official knowledge” is central to our
research. The long tradition of constructing a Muslim Other is deeply entrenched in
Western thought (Said 1978). We employ Said’s (1978, 22) theory of Orientalism
where the West constructed (and continues to construct) the Orient in opposition to
itself with the West being in a position of power and dominance. Orientalism is
profoundly connected to material European/US culture, hence its long-term maintenance over the centuries. Moreover, Said emphasizes the Gramscian (1998, 214)
concept of hegemony that allows us to see how Orientalism has been further maintained through “spontaneous consent.” Spontaneous consent comes about, not as a
product of formal coercion, but as a dominant culture controls discourse production
and direction, arguably a stronger hegemonic force. A collective notion of “us” vs.
“them” perpetuates a sense of superiority where the Orient is constructed as backward, traditional, oppressive, and in need of modernization/Westernization. A monolithic Islam as subsumed under the Orientalist umbrella exists outside of time and
space; it has failed to keep pace with the progressive West, at least as Islam is represented in the media and textbooks. Such an unbalanced dichotomy perpetuates the
image of an antiquated Islamic world. Or, as Said (1997, 10) explains, “The
assumption is that whereas ‘the West’ is greater than and has surpassed the stage of
Christianity, its principal religion, the world of Islam – its varied societies, histories,
and languages notwithstanding – is still mired in religion, primitivity, and backwardness.” The complexity and diversity of Southwest Asia and North Africa are
reduced to an iconic other that is known only through its objectification. The textbooks under scrutiny here have “covered” Islam in much the same way that various
media have; that is to say, “they have portrayed it, characterized it, analyzed it,
given instant courses on it, and consequently they have made it ‘known’” (Said
1997, li). Underlying this analysis is the nineteenth-century Western knowledge project that continues, albeit in slightly different forms, today. For example, the idea
that an image somehow stands for some type of evidence, Banks (2007, 43)
explains, fails to recognize that the “notion of documentation itself is a socially
constructed notion.”
Critical visuality and image theory
Visuality – how we construct what we see – is culturally shaped, historically
specific, and socially constituted and mediated (Ball and Smith 1992; Banks 2007;
Fuery and Fuery 2003; Rose 2007). The metaphorical baggage that we as viewers
bring with us, supplies the lens through which we perform our viewing. The spectator is positioned, located within these intersections of time, place, and culture as
well as within more intimate identity categories like gender, race, class, etc. Such
dynamic intersectionality makes clear “that images do not simply exist – they must
be made visible” (Fuery and Fuery 2003, 12). Moreover, says Banks (2007, 7),
“Our initial understandings or readings of visual images are pre-scripted, written in
advance … representations are the products of specific intentionality.” When considering a photograph, for example, as we do in this investigation, Banks (2007, 50)
reminds us that a photograph is not merely a “representation of a person,” rather it
is a “representation of a representation” situated within a cultural embeddedness.
Or, in Berger’s (1989, 96) terms, “Photographs do not translate from appearance.
They quote them.”
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Representations and knowledge production are mutually constitutive, each
having the power to construct and reinforce the other. As such, the reciprocity
between claims (depictions) of truth is neither tidy nor linear. Our investigation of
representations of “the Muslim world” in high-school world geography textbooks is
thus mindful of an intertextuality where, “the meanings of any one discursive image
or text depend not only on that one text or image, but also on the meanings carried
by other images and texts” (Rose 2001, 136). With this being said, we need to clarify what we mean by representation, image, and text. We are cautious to distinguish
between written, visual, and imagined as Mitchell (2008, 17) warns:
The image, then, is a highly abstract and rather minimal entity that can be evoked
with a single word. It is enough to name an image to bring it to mind – that is, to
bring it into consciousness in a perceiving or remembering body.
Image should not then be collapsed to mean visual. Such troubling of the language
is indicative of the representations themselves, and the role they play in constructing and reinforcing knowledge and in (re)producing social inequities.
Representations are social constructions. Elkins (2008, 7) elaborates:
Our sense of self, both individually and collectively, is made and remade in and
through the visual, and therefore it is fundamentally important to learn to understand
images as social constructions rather than reflections of reality, instances of aesthetic
pleasure, or marketing tools.
While Elkins speaks specifically to the visual here, Steet (2000, 2) captures the
complexity of the connection between representations and knowledge production as,
“a process of demystification that helps develop an overall guarded reading and
viewing position toward ideas, images, and practices that masquerade as common
sense or objective knowledge.” The social constructions masquerading as objective
knowledge in our research are the representations of “the Muslim world.” Not mere
images intended for our viewing pleasure, but as an instance of discourse situated
within a socially powerful institution, sanctioned by the government, with a captured audience. The representations in these textbooks are, “groups of statements
which structure the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that
thinking” (Rose 2001, 136). Like representations in National Geographic, the textbook images are, “more than simple documents, both text and photographs call up
and then reinforce or challenge shared understandings of cultural differences” (Lutz
and Collins 1993, 2). We cannot, therefore, consider these representations outside
of knowledge production.3 While the Gramscian notion of hegemony via “spontaneous consent” troubles assumptions of passive reception, mis/representations of the
“Muslim world” continue to go unquestioned.
Methods
The data (primary sources) for this research include six high-school world geography textbooks: Glencoe World Geography (Boehm 1997, 2003), World Geography
Today (Sager and Helgren 1997, 2003), and World Geography (Baerwald and Fraser
1995, 2003). These textbooks were available for adoption in Tennessee from two
consecutive six-year cycles – 1996–2001 and 2002–2008. All six texts used a
common scheme of separating North Africa, the Middle East (sometimes referred to
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L. Zagumny and A.B. Richey
as Southwest Asia), and Africa (usually referring to all of sub-Saharan Africa). This
unitary naming of Africa in opposition to North Africa was sometimes confusing
and indeed is problematic (Ferguson 2007), but was beyond the scope of our study.
The textbooks varied in the amount of weight given to various subregions and
countries in the region. Additionally, all six texts positioned the chapters in the
second third to the back of the book (see Table 1 for a breakdown of individual
textbooks).
The approach we used in our analysis and recommend for such investigations
moves beyond the more traditional method of content analysis. While content analysis is useful for tallying captions, images, or typologies, it is less useful for
unpacking the myriad meanings and messages found in textbook images. “The presupposition of content analysis” is that a text says what it means (De Castell, Luke,
and Luke 1989, 9). Counting implies that each piece of data constitutes a singular
interpretation, imparting a “veneer of objectivity” (Wright 1996, 173) to the data
that we are challenging as “theoretically reductionist and methodologically superficial” (Gilbert 1989, 63). Thus, while we employed a count to ascertain groupings
of pictures and locations/quantity of text, we decidedly bypassed simple categorization in order to ask more of the data.
Our study of world geography textbooks took us two places, methodologically –
to the world of visual images and visuality, or how we construct what we see (Rose
2007), and to the various written textual forms in the books. With the former, we
employed critical visual discourse analysis in which the primary question was:
“what do pictures want?” (Mitchell 2005). With the latter, we considered the presence or absence of certain ways of communicating information in written text by
employing critical discourse analysis. In so doing, we concerned ourselves with
how the images and texts constituted the discourse(s) of Orientalism (Said 1978),
how those meanings were socially/culturally embedded, and how they drew from
assumptions of truth. We focused our critical visuality particularly on photographs
instead of other visual forms (such as graphs, cartoons, maps, etc.), considering the
potency of photographs as “messages without codes” (Barthes as cited in Banks
Table 1. Region by unit, chapter sequence, and page number.
Year
Publisher published Unit title
Glencoe
1997
2003
Holt
1997
2003
Prentice
Hall
1995
2003
North Africa & Southwest
Asia
North Africa, Southwest
Asia & Central Asia
Southwest Asia
North Africa
Southwest Asia
North Africa
Middle East & North
Africa
Central & Southwest Asia
Chapter
sequence
Number of
pages from total
6/11
17–19/34
59/786
6/11
17–19/34
75/894
7/11
(2) 8/11⁄
6/10
(1) 7/10⁄
7/11
32–34/50
36/50
19–20/32
21/32
22–24/35
38/662
10/662
46/800
16/800
76/812
6/9
21–23/
34⁄⁄
25/34
45/800
(2) 7/9⁄
North Africa
Notes: ⁄Number in ( ) denotes chapter within unit;
Unit
number
⁄⁄
Chapter 23 addresses Southwest Asia.
18/800
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
1337
2007, 177) and the common-sense notions of photographs-as-evidence implicit in
school textbooks. Barthes (1982) reminds us that photographs are outside of singular meaning, always contingent upon the meaning-making of the spectator, the person viewing the image after it has been filtered through various processes, in this
case image making, selection, and positioning within the highly visual “discourse
plane” (Wodak and Meyer 2009, 48) of a world geography textbook. Moreover, we
focused on photographs that featured people (see Table 2 for a breakdown of photographs with people).
Following Rose’s (2007) approach for critical visual methodology, we took
images seriously, considered social effects and relationships of images, and exercised reflexivity by considering our own responses and ideas about the images
under investigation. We took images “seriously” by giving them equal importance
to written text, noticing their primacy and their power. We considered the social
effects of images by questioning assumptions of “truth” in the images. Additionally,
we kept our subjectivities in check by having frequent discussions about the personal impact of some of these images and texts – essentially, about the personal
effects some of these images had on us as women, Americans, non-Muslim
researchers, and so on.
Following Rose’s (2007) discourse analysis for visual materials, we focused on
the discourse(s) of Orientalism (Said 1978) as they were “spoken” from and with
textbook pictures, looking at how these discourses were supported and connected to
textual passages (such as narrative text and picture captions). We examined the
pictures/text closely and repeatedly to look for common themes. Instead of merely
cataloging and coding the data on various criteria, we unearthed discursive formations – the way meaning-making is connected in discourses (Foucault 1972).
Additionally, we used van Leeuwen’s (2008, 137) two central questions related
to photographs of people: “(1) How are people depicted and (2) How are people
depicted related to the viewer?” This was done by examining social relation (the
angle at which the viewer interacts with the people in the picture), social distance
(the nearness/distance between photographed people and the viewer), and social
interaction (are the people in the picture “looking” at the viewer or are we looking
upon/at them?) (138–41). Social relation in photographs of people clues us into the
issue of power and the amount of interaction between viewer and “viewed” – i.e.
looking “down” upon a person from a height “exert[s] imaginary symbolic power
over that person” (139), rather than an eye-to-eye gaze. Similarly, looking upon the
back of someone in a picture puts the viewer in a voyeuristic role, helping to
distance “us” from “them,” effectively othering the person/objects in the photograph. We effectively keep human beings at a distance in pictures, allowing us the
Table 2. Number of photographs with people by gender.
Publisher
Year published
Women
Men
Both
Total
Glencoe
1997
2003
1997
2003
1995
2003
0
8
3
6
6
5
2
16
3
17
7
8
2
3
3
3
6
9
4
27
9
26
19
22
Holt
Prentice Hall
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L. Zagumny and A.B. Richey
opportunity to gaze at their otherness, allowing the “objectification,” “distanciation,”
and “disempowerment” of the people pictured (van Leeuwen 2008, 141).
Barthes’ (1982) concepts of punctum and studium were particularly useful. The
punctum, or wound, of an image often differs from the studium, or the inherent
sensibility or common interest in an image. This meant that it was important to pay
attention to how an image made us feel or what “wound” it inflicted upon us. The
punctum of an image disrupts the studium, and, Barthes (1982, 26) explains, it is “this
element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.”
Both of us (Zagumny and Richey) did our own repeated coding of data – both
visual and written text – constructing lists of potential codes, which were then
grouped into categories and themes. The process of co-constructing themes from a
large collection of multimodal data meant that we spent much time discussing and
processing the images and text – using both paper and pencil list-making, memoing,
and analysis work but also the qualitative software program NVivo8 which allowed
us to catalog and sort through large amounts of graphical data.
Findings
The traditional/modern binary was the dominant narrative construction employed in
textbook depictions of the geography of North Africa and Southwest Asia, often
used as a discursive formation (Foucault 1972) to caption pictures and to buttress
written materials. Additionally, the gendering of place – marked by how women
and men were used in images – meant that these textbooks put women (especially
Muslim women) in narrowly defined roles, often omitting them entirely. The depiction of Islam – in both text narrative and images – served to reinforce the dominant
misperceptions of Islam and Muslims, while effectively distancing Islam from the
other Abrahamic faiths.
Traditional/modern binary
In our examination of these textbooks, the traditional/modern binary was employed
to subtitle narrative text, caption pictures, explain geographic and physical features,
discuss women’s role and status, and to preface nearly every discussion of a major
city (Tangier, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, etc.). Textbooks’ repetitive use of this
binary made it clear that to understand the geography of “the Muslim world,” one
must first grasp its very paradox – that is, the juxtaposition of the modern (i.e.
Western, colonial, new, advanced) with the traditional (i.e. East, Muslim, Orientalist,
old, developing/underdeveloped). The construction of this binary and the framing of
the West (and its influences) as “modern” and the East (and its conflated religion,
Islam) as “traditional” are an Orientalist enterprise (Said 1978):
The West is modern … full of enriching contradictions and yet always “Western” in
its cultural identity; the world of Islam … is no more than “Islam,” reducible to a
small number of unchanging characteristics despite the appearance of contradictions
and experiences … as plentiful as those of the West. (Said 1997, 10–1)
The juxtaposition of traditional and modern introduces the reader to a unit on
Southwest Asia and North Africa. Subtitled “The Cradle of Civilization,” two
images convey movement toward modernization/Westernization that has yet to be
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
1339
achieved. In the first image, a smiling man wearing a keffiya and iqual (the printed
cloth and cord worn on the head by some men in Southwest Asia) is featured in
close-up. He is talking on an antiquated cellular phone and looking off-center, a
wide smile crinkling the skin around his eyes. While capturing a seemingly
mundane event, the photo is cropped in such a way as to remove the context,
leaving the viewer to imagine the setting. The accompanying caption maneuvers us
to the oil-rich Arab so popular in Orientalist discourse:
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A man wearing a traditional headdress chats on a cellular phone in the Israeli desert.
Scenes like this one are common in countries with oil – or industry-based economies
that support higher standards of living. (Boehm 2003, 408)
Another photo on the same page reinforces the traditional/modern binary with a
voyeuristic view of five covered women shopping for athletic shoes in Afghanistan.
The women, aligned in a chambray-tinted queue under the dangling array of sneakers, are slightly hunched away from us, the spectators. This positioning affords the
ultimate voyeur position (van Leeuwen 2008). Again, the photo is cropped so that
we are provided with little context in which to situate the image. The photographer
has captured the women from behind, so we are presented with five column-like
figures. We wonder if the women were aware they were being photographed – the
composition suggests otherwise. Moreover, just what is intended by this juxtaposition? The caption reads:
Draped in flowing chadris, or body veils, women shop for shoes in a market in Kabul,
Afghanistan. The women practice a conservative form of Islam, which encourages
women to conceal their bodies under these traditional full-length garments. (Boehm
2003, 409)
This image and caption are situated on the same page as the man talking on the
cellular phone, and both images are preceded by the introduction to the overall unit
on Southwest Asia and North Africa. The introduction concludes with, “Just as
cultures mix in this part of the world, so tradition intermingles with the newest
technology. Ancient customs persist even in the most modern cities” (Boehm 2003,
408; emphasis added). Despite the newest technology and Western-style products,
people here are presented in a time warp. Such Orientalist temporal discourse constructs Muslim men and women as trapped by their cultures, customs, and beliefs.
Additionally, the gender coding in these photographs is worth contrasting. Students
are visually introduced to an expansive area (Southwest Asia and North Africa) via
two arresting images – a close-up of a smiling man in a “traditional” headdress and
a group of covered women photographed from behind. The former picture puts the
spectator in a social interactant (van Leeuwen 2008) mode even as the punctum
stings with Orientalist memories of the “oil-rich Arab.” In the latter, we become
voyeurs, gazing at the back of covered women who seem to embody the notion of
“tradition” as they ostensibly shop for “modern” (i.e. Western) footwear.
The traditional/modern binary was used with regularity when captioning
pictures. Consider the following caption:
This modern home in Saudi Arabia is furnished with many items of Arab culture.
Many Arab men, such as the one pictured here, wear a kaffiyeh, a cloth headdress that
offers protection against the sun and wind. (Sager and Helgren 1997, 384)
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L. Zagumny and A.B. Richey
This caption refers to a picture of the inside of a living room where the male
members of the family are watching television. The wall, like so many living room
walls the world over, is decorated with pictures and objects. But the distinction here
is that of a “modern” (i.e. presence of television, Western-looking) home with the
juxtaposition of “items of Arab culture” – somehow indicating that items, once
placed in the context of “modernity,” become relics of culture and imbibed with
(static) tradition.
Beneath a picture of Israeli adolescents in Jerusalem, a caption reads: “Israeli
teens live with the ancient and the modern” (Sager and Helgren 1997, 391). Once
again, the binary is used to hit the viewer with the punctum (Barthes 1982) of paradox – the frozen-in-time quality of the region and its signs of modernity (in this
case, it is not clear what the modern is – perhaps the teens themselves are embodiments of modernity?) situated in an “old” city.
Narrative text further drives the traditional/modern binary where people and
places in Southwest Asia and North Africa are depicted as striving to emulate their
modernized, Western counterparts. In an explanation of urban overcrowding brought
on by the supposedly progressive transition from traditional to modern, people
living in Cairo are characterized as macabre:
In cities such as Cairo, there is not enough housing. People crowd into slums, even
setting up tents on rooftops or in rowboats along the Nile. Communities have even
developed in cemeteries, where people convert tombs into bedrooms and kitchens.
(Sager and Helgren 2003, 493)
Saudi Arabia is a common exemplar of the precarious traditional/modern binary
in these geography textbooks:
Saudi Arabia has tried to create a harmonious balance between change and tradition.
Any radical changes in age-old traditions could upset more conservative members of
society and cause social and political unrest … hundreds of thousands of people are
provided with sanitation and medical facilities. (Baerwald and Fraser 1995, 472, 2003,
491; emphasis edit made to 2003 edition)
Sometimes the construction of paradox is much more subtle. For instance, under
a picture of a Moroccan city the caption reads: “Signs in Arabic and French compete for attention in the North African country of Morocco. Arabic is spoken
throughout North Africa and many parts of Southwest Asia” (Sager and Helgren
1997, 410). Here, while the words traditional and modern are not used explicitly,
they are implied in the competition of two languages – the thoroughly “modern,”
colonial French and the “old,” Orientalist Arabic. Moroccans are adept code-switchers who often speak three languages at one sitting (Tashelhit/Tamazight, Moroccan
Arabic, and French), but are positioned as subjects to competing languages in an
ostensibly “modern” city (where French is spoken).
Bazaars and the suq (market), constant reminders of the traditional/modern
dichotomy, receive a good deal of attention in all six geography textbooks. In
Cairo, “Only blocks away from modern department stores that display the latest
Paris fashions are the traditional Arab open-air markets, or bazaars” (Baerwald and
Fraser 1995, 486, 2003, 524). Vignettes within the narrative text amplify the quality
of timelessness that has trapped Southwest Asia and North Africa in tradition.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
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In a picture of a “Southwest Asian Market” (no city or country given), the caption
reads: “In many cities of the region, the traditional suq provides a marked contrast to
modern department stores” (Boehm 1997, 384). Positing the suq – which is simply an
Arabic term for “market” – as an icon of tradition denies the ever-changing and fluid
nature of culture in “Southwest Asia,” instead making it an either–or type of place
with entire chunks of cities somehow frozen in time. Suqs are usually located in the
oldest parts of a city, architecturally. Focusing on this constructed paradox takes away
the organic normalcy of city life – what would be taken for granted in a discussion of
a European or a US city – and places it in a Orientalizing realm.
Gender
Following Rose’s (2007) advice to pay attention to the invisible in images (i.e. what
is not pictured), we noticed that the textbooks present visual images of women in a
twofold role of traditional homemaker (often pictured hauling water) or as an exemplary figure pictured alone in headshot.4 There are very few images of women in
ordinary circumstances with their families, or women in educational or vocational
settings, giving the impression that to be female is to choose between a traditional
lifestyle of water-hauling/menial factory work or escaping to become Westernized
(often pictured as veil-less). Others have studied the overwhelmingly narrow and
stereotypical portrayal of Muslim women in the US media and historical literature
(Falah 2005; Kahf 1999; Sensoy and DiAngelo 2006; Steet 2000). Our findings
reflect that tradition. The written text in the textbooks, while attempting to maintain
“neutrality,” does nothing to challenge common misperceptions of Muslim women
and the hijab (the Muslim headscarf/covering).
Constructions of gender and the modern/traditional dichotomy converged in a
picture of a Saudi Arabian man standing in front of a shiny late-model Cadillac.
The caption reads:
Saudi Arabia’s oil economy produces huge incomes for the country’s royal family,
government, and businesspeople. The country’s elites use some money to buy
imported goods, such as automobiles. In recent decades, the modernization of the
country has greatly altered many traditional ways of life. (Sager and Helgren 2003,
444; emphasis added)
A closer examination of the picture is warranted. In it, a smiling man faces the
camera with one hand on his hip and the other placed on the trunk of the Cadillac.
Between his arm and body we see that the original background to this picture was
dark, but for some reason the background has been cropped to draw emphasis to
the subject. The caption implies that the modern is represented by the Cadillac and
the traditional by the man himself (and his traditional clothes). What is not
mentioned is the social/cultural significance of this juxtaposition in the collective
eye of the Western viewer – the assumption of truth behind the image. Steet (2000)
reminds us that images of Arab wealth in the 1970s and 1980s served to contrast
the relative suffering of Westerners in the face of seemingly newfound wealth in
the carefree Arab stereotype. Steet (2000, 128) says:
And so the image of the oil-rich Arab entered Orientalist discourse. This was a slick
addition that did not disrupt Orientalism at all. The time warp remained, but now oil
helped move the Arab world a few centuries closer to the twentieth.
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L. Zagumny and A.B. Richey
Islam
Douglass and Dunn’s (2003) findings on the way Islam was taught in world history
textbooks in the immediately post-9/11 context were reflected in the high-school
geography textbooks we analyzed. Like that study, our analysis of the discussion/
picturing of religion in these books found that the books tended to use the same
“separate but equal” approach in introducing the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. Despite many recent neoconservative declarations that modern school textbooks are “white-washing” Islam and touting a pro-Islamic agenda
(Ibrahim 2009; Sewall 2008; Stillwell 2008), we found that the textbooks’ treatment
of religion did not challenge the traditional depiction of Islam nor did it correct
misperception and outright factual errors about Islam. Instead of explaining the
religion in terms of what Muslims believe, the textbooks tended to frame Islam as a
Mohammedist cult. Consider the following excerpt:
Islam was founded by the prophet Muhammed … In recent years, Islamic fundamentalism has grown. They also wish to reduce foreign influence on the region. Equal
opportunity for women and the independence of children are seen as a reflection of
Western culture and thus are considered wrong. (Sager and Helgren 1997, 380–1;
emphasis added)
In this example, Muhammed is referred to as a “founder” – echoing Douglass and
Dunn’s (2003) concern that textbooks tend to portray Islam as a creation of a charismatic leader, rather than a continuation of Judaism and Christianity, as Muslims
believe. The Quran is portrayed as a book “written” by Muhammed, not the word
of God, as believed by Muslims, and Muhammed as a “founder” rather than the
last, and most important, prophet in a long line of prophets (including Moses and
Jesus). Additionally, the above excerpt highlights the inclusion of a highly generalized statement about Muslim fundamentalism. The concept of Islamic fundamentalism, while problematic (Abukhattala 2004; Asani 2003; Gerges 2003; Shaheen
1997), is also out of place.
In the following edition (Sager and Helgren 2003), Muhammed “established”
Islam, family unity continues to be stressed, but the word fundamentalism
disappears. Instead of sweeping statements about Islam and fundamentalism, discussion is specific to theocratic governance in Iran where some religious leaders, “view
Western ideas as a threat to public morality … some have tried to isolate the
country from Western influence” (443), and the Taliban in Afghanistan who are
“driven by an extreme version of Sunni Islam” (444). The representation of the
Taliban is carefully constructed; the text clearly states that most Muslims disagree
with the Taliban and “its interpretation of Islamic teaching to limit the role of
women in society” (444).
Islam is repeatedly characterized/constructed as the anti-thesis of modernity,
furthering the Orientalist project of a stagnant Muslim world trapped in the transition between traditional and modern. For example, in Jordan, “The king hopes,
through these reforms, to unite his country’s Islamic heritage with modern, democratic freedoms” (Baerwald and Fraser 1995, 464). Even with the transition of new
leadership in Jordan, the textbook description is little changed: “Since his death in
1999, his son, King Abdullah, has continued on that same path – to unite an Islamic heritage with modern political freedoms” (Baerwald and Fraser 2003, 483).
Saudi Arabia is similarly characterized:
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
1343
In less than two decades, Saudi Arabia transformed itself from an ancient desert
kingdom into a modern country. However, it did so cautiously. The government was
careful not to let modernization upset the Islamic and other traditions to which life in
Saudi Arabia is rooted. (Baerwald and Fraser 1995, 71, 2003, 490)
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The language – “cautiously” and “upset” – justifies an Orientalist imperialism
where Saudi Arabia is represented as irrational and infantile, and thus in need of
guardianship from a rational, mature entity who can maintain control, creating a
false binary that does not fairly reflect what any of these “changes” have meant for
Saudi Arabian citizens.
Under the heading “Islam and Democracy in the Middle East,” renewed interest
in Islam is contrasted against political participation:
Today there is a revival of Islamic values throughout the Middle East. More and more
Muslims are looking to answers to the challenge of living in the modern world … at
the same time … many people in the region are demanding a greater voice in their
governments. (Baerwald and Fraser 1995, 441)
The description is problematic in that it insinuates modernity is a relatively recent
phenomenon that people are struggling with; that they are perhaps incapable of
such existence. It further generalizes that life in much of the region is oppressive,
collapsing many cultures and peoples into the “Middle East.” Revival here is an
Orientalist code suggesting that Islam somehow conflicts with modernity
(Abukhattala 2004).
Out of the 107 pictures that we analyzed (based on the criteria that humans were
visible in them – sometimes in great numbers), 14 had religious themes. The bulk
of these (10) featured men together – praying usually, or in the mosque, or in
Quranic school. Photographs meant to show how great masses of Muslims gather at
sacred sites – as in the famous scene of countless pilgrims circling the Kabba in
Mecca and large lines of praying men, women, and children at Mecca – were
unique in the depictions of religion. Photographs depicting Christian or Jewish holy
sites limited the players to visible groups or families. For example, two (close-up)
photographs featured Jewish men praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. However, photographs featuring great masses of Muslims placed the spectator in the
panopticon position (Foucault 1977). We can see everyone, but they cannot see us.
The spectator is afforded an immense voyeuristic power by observing masses of
Muslims as if from a great tower, safely distanced. This tends to dehumanize, trapping human beings in crowds, and obliterating intimate social interaction (Barthes
1982). Thus, images of Muslims were complicit in separating Islam from the
Abrahamic faiths by effectively (and literally) distancing spectators and reinforcing
the Orientalist divide.
Discussion
It has been argued elsewhere that textbooks often have outright erroneous information about culture and religion (Douglass and Dunn 2003), and that textbooks and
other media sources present a one-sided, stereotypical view of Muslims and Islam
(Abukhattala 2004; Falah 2005; Kamalipour 1997; Kincheloe and Steinberg 2004;
Kincheloe, Steinberg, and Stonebanks 2010; Shaheen 1984, 1997, 2003; Steet
2000; Steinberg 2004). Others have looked at the explicitly American foreign
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L. Zagumny and A.B. Richey
policy agenda portrayed in media representations of Muslims and Islam, particularly in the 9/11 era (Falah 2005; Gerges 2003; Kincheloe and Steinberg 2004).
The argument here is not that these textbooks simply present erroneous information or explicitly endorse US foreign policy interests, but that the construction of
geographic knowledge concerning these vast geographic and cultural/religious
groups is presented in such a way to not challenge Orientalist meaning-making.
Additionally, the call to teach “against” Islamophobia (Kincheloe, Steinberg, and
Stonebanks 2010) inspires us to actively deconstruct and expose potentially damaging and inaccurate representations of Muslims and Islam in order to understand
how we can transform pedagogy.
The very complexity of a high-school world geography textbook deserves a
level of recognition for effort and content breadth, yet this does not excuse misinformation or the perpetuation of stereotypes. What such an approach to curriculum
does call into question is the production and presentation of constructed, “official”
knowledge (Apple 1993). Curriculum content has always been and will always be
contested as long as we have public schools intended to serve a diverse population
in the USA. We do not advocate removing politics from education as this would
silence the many voices who have worked so hard to finally be heard. Rather, we
encourage an ongoing dialog about knowledge production and how this is carried
out/represented in textbooks and curriculum. We urge a depth of understanding that
breaks down the monolithic representation of “the Muslim world” in order to
correct historical distortions and expand geopolitical awareness.
What we argue here is that if we are to include geography (and social studies)
in “critical literacy,” we must help students interrogate depictions of “others” that
they find in textbooks and other media sources. As Leahey (2010, 100) recently
wrote, it is important that we help students engage in critical “historical thinking” –
that is, going beyond standard textbook narratives, questioning and interrogating,
and using alternative ways of thinking about history. In the same way, we recommend that educators recognize the saliency of critical geographical thinking when
working within a standards-based regime where textbook depictions often constitute
“official knowledge.” Considering the recent anti-Muslim furor of the threat of
Quran-burning in Florida, the large public outcry against the legal construction of
Park51 near Ground Zero in New York, and the rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the
USA, it is time to critically examine and rectify these misrepresentations in order to
work, resolutely, toward social justice and democratic education.
Implications
Theoretically, this research pushes us to challenge simple claims of neutral, disinterested objectivity. Often disguised as common sense (Kumashiro 2009), curricular
content is socially constructed, historically situated, and routinely inequitable and
unchallenged. Blending theoretical perspectives with criticalist methodology allows
us to question where we get our knowledge, how it is constructed, and who benefits
from it. We can begin to see the relationship between knowledge and power with a
criticalist lens. This unearthing of power relationships is all the more important in
education, where standardized curriculum and increased pressure on teachers and
schools often de-emphasize the sociopolitical context of the curriculum itself.
Critical pedagogy as praxis grants educators opportunities to work closely and
deeply with their students to historicize, contextualize, and question. Letting
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
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students in on the social construction of knowledge is one step toward the libratory
practice Sensoy and DiAngelo (2012, 19) call “critical social justice literacy.”
Students (and teachers) who are allowed this opportunity can begin to recognize
social stratification and challenge social injustice wherever they find it.
This research refutes the notion that knowledge is neutral or objective and advocates a criticalist approach for investigating curricular materials. We encourage
researchers to move beyond tallying representations to dig deeply to uncover hidden
assumptions and meanings buried beneath the surface. This is particularly crucial
for visual representations considering the prominence they play in both formal and
informal curricula. In doing so, we contextualize present-day educational discourse,
allowing a better understanding of representation as social construction. Historical
and contextual understandings promote more sophisticated, nuanced research that
contributes to diverse perspectives and cultivates solidarity and liberation.
Notes
1. A nationwide emphasis on standards, testing, and accountability has been escalating over
the past few decades in the USA, and textbook publishing companies have responded
by adding state-developed and mandated standards to the textbooks. Texas and
California are the largest constituents for school textbooks in the USA, hence publishing
companies “test” textbooks in these two states first. If a textbook is approved for adoption in Texas and California, it is then made available to the remaining states. Historically, this process has gone largely unnoticed by the general public. The recent and
nationally televised debate in Texas over history standards has made the process
relatively public. So, while Texas passed the final draft of the curriculum standards
known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills on 21 May 2010, the struggle over
history textbooks will wait until 2011. The debate over standards (which eventually
become formalized curriculum in textbooks) clearly demonstrates the political quality of
knowledge and the power tied to that knowledge.
2. Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997) developed a rather extensive list of seven basic assumptions criticalist researchers accept when attempting to use their work as a form of social
criticism.
3. The challenge to recognize representations as social constructions produced to impart a
particular knowledge is evidenced by the following quotes: “Representations … are
never irrelevant, never unconnected to the world of actual social relations” (Lutz and
Collins 1993, 3); “Representations stand for a thing but do not, in fact, have to resemble
the thing itself” (Steet 2000, 31); “Far from being objective, representations are
fashioned for particular ends; they are made to construct the world in particular ways
for particular audiences” (Pulsipher 1997, 291).
4. It is worth noting that women in these three “headshots” were unveiled, or without the
Muslim hijab – or covering – suggesting, once again, that “modern” women do not don
the veil. The few women in work (“action”) or family shots were shown with a variety
of dresses – often with various forms of hijab. There was also not much information on
what it meant for particular women to wear hijab in different cultural contexts, and why
it was/is such a polarizing issue.
Notes on contributors
Lisa Zagumny is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at
Tennessee Technological University. She also serves as Director of the Exceptional Learning
PhD Program and Interim Associate Dean of the College of Education. Her research focuses
on the social construction of identity and knowledge from a critical poststructural
perspective. She is currently working on research projects addressing point-of-care
experiences of state medical assistance program recipients, international Muslim students’
experiences at university in the USA, and chess as an instructional strategy to enhance
academic achievement and critical thinking. She received her PhD in Education from the
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University of Tennessee and her MA in Art History from the University of WisconsinMilwaukee.
Amanda B. Richey is an assistant professor of TESOL in the Department of Inclusive
Education at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, USA. Her research efforts are focused
on how issues of gender, culture, and representation intersect with literacies and
multicultural education.
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