Education, Recognition and the Sami people of Norway

Jonas Jakobsen, University of Troms, Norway

Published in: Niedrig, H. & Ydesen, C. (eds.) Writing Postcolonial Histories of Intercultural Education, Peter Lang 2011

In this article I present and discuss selected aspects of the case of the Sami people in Norway, their struggle for influence over their own education institutions, and for equal as well as special rights in the Norwegian education system. Compared to many other Indigenous peoples, the case of the Sami in Norway appears to be a story of success (Stordahl 2008: 249). For example, the Norwegian Sami have their own education institutions, and they are among the most educated Indigenous peoples in the world (Eiheim 1995; Stordahl 2008). I also use the Sami case to reflect upon the relation between education and the self-identity of cultural minorities, here drawing upon (and discussing) the work of German social philosopher Axel Honneth.

1. The Sami in Norway: introduction The word Sami is used to identify an Indigenous people living in Northern Europe, in the northwest of Russia and in the northern reaches of Sweden, Finland and Norway. Since the definitions of ethnicity vary, it is difficult to determine the exact number of Samis today, but official sources estimate the number to be between 50,000 and 80,000, out of which the largest part, approximately 40,000, are living in Norway, primarily in the northern regions. The International Labor Organization Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal peoples (ILO 1989), which Norway has ratified with 17 other countries worldwide, defines indigenous peoples as:
() peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions (ILO 1989).

Until World War II, the official policy in Norway was to assimilate the Sami, that is, to make them discard their Indigenous identity in favor of an ethno-national Norwegian identity and state citizenship (Gaski 2008: 220). As a result of an intensive and long lasting policy of assimilation from the 17th century onwards, a radical decline in people who identify themselves as Sami can be witnessed, as well as extensive impoverishment, political powerlessness and a lack of knowledge about Sami history and culture. Many Sami parents, for example, did not teach their children the Sami language (ibid.). A turning point for the political organization of Sami interests came in the 1950s, where a revitalization movement focused on the Sami identity led to a new Sami self-image. Crucial for this new movement was to create a self-concept of the Sami as being a distinct people who had lived in the area before the present state came into existence and drew its national borders (ibid). Based on this new selfunderstanding, the Sami have increasingly made the political claim to selfdetermination, which includes the rights of self-government, autonomy, territorial integrity and exclusive enjoyment of their own lands and resources (Weigaard 2008). Norwegian authorities have to some extent acknowledged this. Thus, in his 1997 speech to the Sami Parliament, HM King Harald said that the Norwegian State was built on the territories of two peoples, the Norwegians and the Sami (Weigaard 2008: 189). By this, the King openly expressed some sort of symmetry between the two peoples based on historical possession of territories, and he clearly put the Sami in a different category than other national minorities, such as immigrants. Even though the basis of the Sami movement was political, the drive towards ethnic revitalization was also expressed through art, music, education and popular culture. In the 1970s and 80s, this process expanded toward nation-building that included creation of Sami maps and a flag. Through this process, the Sami movement tried to transform the negative stigma associated with Sami culture into a positive marker of Sami identity (Stordahl 2008; Gaski 2008). In 1989, the Constitution of Norway was changed in order to recognize the Samis, and the obligations of the Norwegian state towards the Sami people: It is the responsibility of the authorities of the State to create conditions enabling the Sami people to preserve and develop its language, culture and way of life (The Constitution of Norway, article 110a). In the same year, and partly as a result of a long con2

troversy between the Sami community and the Norwegian state over the decision to build a power dam across the Alta River in the Sami core areas, the Sami Parliament was established. This parliament, which is financed by the Norwegian state and has been granted authority over specific areas, works to promote a viable Sami culture, and to make sure that the indigenous rights of the Samis, as expressed in ILO 1989, but also in the article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities (1992), are effectively protected and realized. To be recognized as a Sami in Norway today, which includes the right to elect members of the Sami Parliament, one must both self-identify as Sami and have at least one grandparent whose primary language is Sami. For many Sami living outside the traditional areas, however, the ethnic borders between Sami and Norwegian is blurred; they do not bear visible cultural traits or possess knowledge that is traditionally seen as an expression of Saminess, and many can not speak the Sami language (Gaski 2008: 219). For others, the assertion of a strong Sami identity is part of an ongoing struggle for national self-determination and cultural recognition within the Norwegian society.

2. From being objects of assimilation to being subjects in control of their own education institutions Since the 17th century, the Samis way of live underwent great changes as a result of nation building among the four nations of Russia, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Each of these nations was fighting for territory and wanted to include the Sami as part of their population. As a result, the Sami where sometimes taxed by several governments. Because they needed additional reindeer to pay taxes, the Sami began with large-scale reindeer herding. Thus, the Sami in (what is today) Northern Norway where pushed more or less violently to assimilate: linguistically (from Sami to Norwegian), religiously (from shamanism and animism to official Christianity) and as subjects of state administration. In 1717, the first educational initiative towards Sami society, the so-called Seminarum Scholasticum, was established in Trondheim. The task of this college was to teach educators, clergymen, and missionaries the Sami language in order to prepare them for missionary work among the Sami (Stordahl 2008: 252). The head of college, the missionary Thomas Westen, also called the apostle of
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the Sami, was influenced by Luthers view on the importance of ones mother tongue for adopting the message of Christianity. However, in the 19th century, when Norway was liberated from Danish control and a new romantic nationalism flourished, a new linguistic policy emerged (Stordahl 2008: 253). Education and language were now seen more directly as central means of assimilation: Norwegian was established as the primary language also in Sami schools by the new Norwegian state. Sami culture was expelled from all curricula or even said to be non-existing, and there where no longer translations of schoolbooks into Sami. In addition, extra pay was awarded to teachers who could demonstrate good results in teaching Norwegian to their Sami pupils (Hirvonen 2004). Some Sami children were sent to dormitories or boarding schools, far away from their parents, to learn how to become Norwegian. As the Norwegian Scholar on Sami culture and history Harald Eidheim writes, the Sami were forced into a school system designed to promote competence in the language and culture of the majority population (Eidheim 1995). This assimilation led to feelings of inferiority resulting in shame, self-contempt and unreleased aggression (ibid.). As I will argue with Axel Honneth in section three, such feelings are the result of experienced disrespect, that is, a fundamental lack of recognition, which violates the possibility of developing and maintaining a positive self-relation. According to the Norwegian scholar Vigdis Stordahl, the change in Norways assimilation policy after the Second World War should be seen in relation to a general loss of credibility of the ideologies of Social Darwinism and nationalism (Stordahl 2008: 253). Furthermore, she continues, The commitment that Norway made to the United Nations work with the Declaration of Human rights was another nail in the coffin for assimilationist ideologies (ibid.). In other words, the Norwegians increasingly understood themselves as a democratic and humanistic nation, in which discrimination, racism and second class citizenship could not be tolerated. The northern areas therefore had to be brought to the same social and economic standards as the rest of the country they had to become a part of the Norwegian welfare state. Thus, over a few decades the northernmost region was redeveloped after the destruction of WWII, when Norway was under German occupation, into modern towns and townships and the welfare state reached the smallest of out-of-the-way-places (ibid.). Therefore, we have witnessed two interdependent processes since World War II: (1) a planned integration of the Sami society into the Norwegian society on behalf

of the nation state, and (2) a political, Sami revitalization on ethnic grounds (Stordahl 2008, 255). Stordahl writes:

The Sami organizations, as well as local Sami politicians, use the arguments of the welfare state for what it was worth. The result being that Sami communities not only kept track with the general social and economic development of the state, but also managed to build an infrastructure of Sami institutions like museums, a radio and TV station, healthcare institutions, secondary high schools, a research institution and eventually a University College (Stordahl 2008: 255).

A central part of this process was the decision to expand and reform the primary educational system in Finnmark. The training of Sami teachers for primary school has been going on for a long time, but only since the 1970s have the views of the Sami themselves on what such training should consist of been taken into account (Hirvonen 2004: 8). A Sami teacher training department was established at the college of higher education in Alta (in Northern Norway) in 1974, though it was not until 1989 that the Sami have been able to organize the training of their teachers, with the founding of the Sami University College in Kautokeino. Here, pre-school and primary school teachers are trained in Sami language, culture and history (Hirvonen 2004). Sami culture and history is now an obligatory part of national curricula in all elementary schools in Norway. Furthermore the Sami have a legally enacted right to education based on Sami language and culture, which is recognized as a precondition for a viable Sami culture in the future.1 This means that children in the core Sami areas have a right to primary school education in the Sami language, and that in municipalities outside these areas, a minimum of ten Sami speaking pupils have the same right. National Universities have also integrated Indigenous themes and research in their curricula, as well as quotas for indigenous students in specific studies. In addition, annual public reports on Indigenous issues help shape state government policies for Indigenous research and education (Stordahl 2008: 253). Generally speaking, the success of the Sami struggle for rights both as Norwegian citizens and as Indigenous people as well as for influence and cultural

Translated from a document from the Norwegian ministry of labor: http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/ad/dok/regpubl/stmeld/19961997/stmeld-nr-41-1996-97/9.html?id=191245 5

recognition within Norwegian society has benefitted from the development of the welfare state, coupled with a serious movement to overcome earlier assimilation policies of the past, and recognition of Sami self-determination. Harald Eidheim writes:

This Sami project has, of course, benefitted from the fact that it originated and gained momentum in welfare states which also to a certain degree have developed liberal views on the position of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples. The Sami have had access to elementary and higher education and to material welfare in general to an extent which indigenous peoples in the greater part of the world can hardly dream of attaining (Eidheim 1995).

This is not to suggest that the struggle is over or that Sami-Norwegian relations are always harmonious. Mutual distrust on both sides still exists, and disagreements over rights, land, economy, culture, and Indigenous rights are still on the political agenda, both nationally and locally. But I concur that the overall process is correctly moving towards what Jrgen Habermas has called a difference-sensible inclusion of the Other (Habermas 1999).

3. Axel Honneth, recognition, and Sami education In this section I will give a brief overview of Axel Honneths work on the concept of recognition (Honneth 1995; 1996; 2007), focusing on those aspects I deem useful for a theoretical reflection of the Sami struggle for rights, influence and positive selfimage. All three aspects of the Sami struggle are visible in the field of education. Though Honneth has not elaborated specifically on the implications of his theory for the field of education, other authors are beginning to do that (e.g. Huttunen & Heikkinen 2004; Huttunen 2008; Straume 2011). In my opinion, education is relevant for all three spheres of modern societies, which are analyzed by Honneth: (a) the private sphere and its face-to-face relations, (b) the legal sphere and (c) the social sphere or society. Since the publication of Honneths Struggle for Recognition (1996), his work has been taken up by sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, social workers and others. This illustrates the breadth of his theory and its relevance for understanding tendencies and problems in modern societies. After Jrgen Habermas, Honneth is said to be the most influential living representative of the so-called Frankfurt School of
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critical philosophy. For Honneth, what is viable in the tradition of the Frankfurt school sometimes described as critical theory are three obligations: (1) to produce critical research on the social reality of modern, capitalist societies; (2) to focus on different areas of society, including the workplace, family, culture, the welfare state and so on, since alienation and inequality occur in all areas of society, not just in the state or in the economic sphere; and (3) to engage in interdisciplinary work and draw on insights from, for example, political science, law, sociology, cultural studies and philosophy. Honneth is probably best known for combining a theory of self-realization with a critical theory of modern society. The idea that human beings do not only exist, like plants and animals, but are confronted with the task of realizing themselves by developing the potentials of their humanity is not new of course; it goes back at least to Plato and Aristotle, and can be found in different variants within the great world religions. Honneth claims that successful human self-realization amounts to the development of three positive forms of self-relation, which he calls (a) self-confidence, (b) self-respect and (c) self-esteem (Honneth 1996: 129). According to Honneth, selfconfidence is an emotional self-relation, which can be developed only in personal relations such as family, love relations or friendship. Self-respect, by contrast, is developed through the experience of counting as a bearer of equal rights, that is, as a person with the same legal status as all others. Finally, self-esteem is the result of being seen as an important contributor to society, typically through ones work, but also more broadly through ones way of life, knowledge or cultural tradition. Honneth is of course aware that different cultures and life-forms have very different views on human self-realization, but he nevertheless claims to have formulated a basic philosophical anthropology that is permeable and open enough to different cultural interpretations that it does not presuppose or bias any particular culture or worldview (Honneth 1996). According to Honneth, the three aspects of self-realization correspond to three spheres of modern societies, namely as mentioned above the (a) private sphere, (b) the legal or juridical sphere, and (c) the social sphere (sometimes called the sphere of solidarity). Participation in all three spheres, he claims, is a minimum condition for living a free and non-pathological human life. Societies in which some citizens are systematically prevented from participating in one or more of these spheres, therefore, are unjust societies: Why should only some, and not all citizens, be able to realize
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themselves in this basic or minimal sense? Common for all three spheres, Honneth continues, is that their moral grammar or infrastructure consist of intersubjective relations of recognition; in each sphere, a central aspect of our humanness is recognized: our particular emotional and bodily needs in the private sphere, our moral dignity and autonomy qua human persons in the legal sphere, and our concrete capabilities and contributions to society in the social sphere. Recognition is therefore not about polite behavior or etiquette, it is as Charles Taylor (1992) puts it, a vital human need (26). In the following, agreeing with Huttunen & Heikkinen who claim that [e]ducational practices are in many ways associated with the process of recognition (2004: 163), I will take a closer look at the three forms of recognition analyzed by Honneth, and relate them to the case of Sami education, and the Sami struggle for recognition in Norway. (a) Love and self-confidence: The first form of recognition, Honneth calls love. Ontogenetically speaking that is, seen from the perspective of the individuals historical self-development this is the first sphere of recognition in which we participate: We all begin as our existence as members of a family or a child-parent relation. Using the concept of love, therefore, Honneth refers to something more than romantic love-relations between adults, namely our fundamental dependency on care and positive feedback from significant others. As infants and small children, of course, we are completely delivered to the emotional and physical care of our parent(s). Honneth here draws upon the psychoanalytic research of Donald Winnicot to show that an infants and small childs early experience of love is a precondition for developing the amount of emotional self-confidence, which allows it, later in life, to engage in healthy personal and intimate relations with others, and to manage the precarious balance between independence from the other and dependency on the other, which good personal relations demand. In addition, our ability to participate as citizens in public and political life without shame (Honneth 1996: 164)) is conditioned by our participation in successful interpersonal relations; that is, relations in which our emotional life, our inner drives and needs, are recognized as worthy of articulation and consideration by others. Education at least in the most common usages of the word is an institutionalized and public phenomenon, typically organized by the state, and not a personal or emotional matter. Nevertheless, Honneths analysis of the ways in which
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emotional care influences our basic self-trust and self-confidence is relevant to the field of education. After all, education is not just about curricula and accumulation of knowledge, but also (some would say primarily) about the meetings between pupils or students and their educators, teachers or supervisors. For many young pupils and students, the teacher is one of the first adults, apart from their own parents, with whom they enter a long lasting relation that demands some degree of mutual trust and sympathy to work well. Therefore, recognition in form of care at a personal level is important for the pupils development of the basic form of self-confidence, which Honneth locates in the private sphere:

This relation of recognition thus also depends on the concrete physical existence of other persons who acknowledge each other with special feelings of appreciation. The positive attitude which the individual is capable of assuming towards himself if he experiences this type of emotional recognition is that of self-confidence (Honneth 1995: 253).

In the 19th century, as mentioned above, Sami children were systematically separated from their families at a young age and sent to boarding schools, administered by the Lutheran Church, with the explicit goal of assimilating them into the majority in language, culture, and in their overall view of themselves (Todal 1998). Honneth does not discuss such examples himself, but in my view, his theory would estimate that such separation would pose a clear threat to the childs development of emotional self-trust, at least if the recognition by family members is not replaced with a similar recognition by other close persons, e.g., teachers or pupils. But our knowledge of these schools tells us that the atmosphere there was not an atmosphere of recognition and emotional bonding. Many Sami describe their experiences in the boarding schools as traumatic. Thus, in an interview in the book No Beginning, No End: The Sami Speak Up, Kerttu Vuolab (1999) states that the Sami childrens feelings of self-worth and their knowledge of their mother tongue were destroyed by the assimilation process and by being torn away from their families and homes. She also goes on to describe how the children felt awkward going home after having been all the time speaking some other language than Sami, and after having eaten other types of foods. According to Vuolab, the experience of being removed from home at an early age and subjected to cultural confusion was traumatic and confusing on a personal level. In the short story, The Boarding School (1996), by Ellen Marie Vars, we get a similar im-

pression of what many Sami children experienced in the boarding schools. Like Vuolabs description, the main character in the story (Katja) must live in the boarding school and cannot visit her family except during Christmas and summer vacations. Katja is constantly told that she is dirty, and she has a trubled relation to the other children (Vars 1997). (b) Equal rights and self-respect: Most often, the political demands of the Sami movement have been formulated as demands for rights; sometimes for equal rights, sometimes for special rights (that is, rights not granted to other citizens). This is also the case in the Sami struggle for education. In the following, I discuss aspects of this struggle in the light of Honneths understanding of legal recognition and its relation to the practical self-relation that he calls self-respect (Honneth 1996: 80). The idea of equal rights regardless of gender, sexual orientations, social status, ethnicity, religious belief and so on is a historical formation of western modernity. This link between human rights and the Western project of modernity has made some postcolonial theorists very skeptical of the idea of human rights as such. For example, the influential anthropologist Talal Asad (2003: 127-158) sees human rights as (a) bound to Western ideas of individualism and autonomy, which are alien to most non-western traditions, and (b) ideological tools with which the nation state can discipline, and legitimize violence against, its own citizens: The state has the power to use human rights discourse to coerce its own citizens just as colonial rulers had the power to use it against their own subjects (Asad 2003: 135). Since nation states, according to Asad, are free to interpret and use human rights as they please, he has no hope that appeal to such rights can be of help for suppressed minorities; such minorities are rather governed and disciplined (in the sense of Foucaults governmentality) by adopting the majoritys view of a true human being and its rights. However, as touched upon in section 1 of this article, the Sami struggle for recognition and influence has been closely linked to the vocabulary of human rights; it has referred extensively and often successfully to global human rights declarations ratified by the Norwegian state, such as the ILO. In contrast to Asads misgivings, therefore, the Sami case seems to confirm Honneths view that there is a universalistic potential inherent in the very idea of equal rights, which, no matter how poorly this idea is realized in a given society, can be used by disadvantaged groups in

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their struggle for inclusion in the legal order as equals.2 The idea of equality exhibits what Honneth calls a normative surplus of validity (Honneth & Fraser 2003: 18687, 263-64), which means that the normative idea always transcends the way we have institutionalized this idea in a particular legal order; if it did not, marginalized groups like women, workers, gays and lesbians, or ethnic minorities would not have been able to use human rights vocabulary to delegitimize ideologies and practices that previously excluded them from the group of people who has a right to have rights,, as Hannah Arendt has put it. Today, the idea of legal equality has become a part of the standard normative framework of Western societies, which means that those groups who struggle within this framework can use a normative principle already recognized by the majority population, namely formal equality in the legal system, to show that social reality does not match the norm. However, to show this often calls for redefinitions of the culturally hegemonic interpretations of legal equality, which means that some sort of conflict or social struggle is unavoidable. When groups or individuals struggle for inclusion in the legal system as equals, what kind of recognition are they struggling for? What is it that we recognize in other persons when we recognize them as bearers of equal rights? Honneths reply is to these questions is influenced by Kantwhen we recognize others as equal addressees of the law, we recognize their fundamental status as morally autonomous beings, that is, as ends in themselves, who should never be used purely as means for others purposes (Honneth 1996: 111). Legal recognition, in other words, is bound to a universal respect for the freedom and dignity of the human person. To deny anyone an equal status in the legal system, by contrast, means to disrespect or misrecognize the shared dignity that makes us human. According to Honneths strong intersubjectivism, therefore, it is only through the experience of being recognized as an equal bearer of rights that the subject learns to respect itself. Or put negatively, the experience of being structurally disadvantaged in the legal system violates the ability to relate to oneself with self-respect. In the course of Western legal history, Honneth writes, not only the amount of people who count as bearers of rights has been expanded (quantity), but also the meaning of the concept of equal rights (quality). Following T.H. Marshalls classic distinction (Honneth 1996: 115), Honneth here mentions three paradigmatic changes
2

See also my critique of Asad in Jakobsen 2011

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in the conception of human rights. First, in the 18th century, human rights were understood as negative freedoms or civil rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of movement and so on; secondly, in the 19th century, these freedoms where supplemented with the positive right to political participation, that is, with democratic and political rights; thirdly, in the 20th century, a new understanding of social rights emerged according to which the two other types of rights are seen to be little worth for the citizen without a certain amount of economic security, general welfare and education. It is clear that the explicit interest in the field of education by both Sami and non-Sami scholars as well as politicians is due to the growing recognition that, in order for this group to use their civil and political rights on an equal footing with non-Sami Norwegians, their access to elementary and higher education is crucial. The field of education, however, is a good example of the fact that different treatment sometime is necessary to create equal opportunities. To recognize the Sami as equals in the education system does not mean to give them the exact same elementary education as everyone else; this would clearly disadvantage Sami, whose language and culture has historically been marginalized within the Norwegian education system. The right to receive elementary education in Sami language, and in accordance with Sami culture and values, it can be argued, is necessary if the ideal of equality is to be taken seriously. Agreeing with authors such as Jrgen Habermas (1999), Seyla Benhabib (2002) and Will Kymlika (1995), Honneth has in fact argued that cultural rights are legitimate in some cases, not in order to protect the culture as such, but in order to secure formal equality between different. The right to eat Halalslaughtered meat can, for example, be granted to Muslim children in schools in order to secure their equal participation in the education system (Honneth & Fraser 2003). Nevertheless, since Honneths model is still focused on equality among citizens of a modern nation state, it has difficulties explaining and justifying the extensive use of special rights granted to the Sami and not to other minorities, such as immigrants or religious minorities in the Norwegian case. Why should not Russians or Muslims have their own universities and be taught in their mother language? Here, it makes sense to differentiate with Will Kymlika between national minorities and ethnic groups. National minorities are defined by Kymlicka as previously selfgoverning, territorially concentrated cultures (Kymlicka 1995: 10) that have been incorporated into a larger state through conquest or federation. By contrast, ethnic
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groups are defined as voluntary immigrants who do not occupy homeland. Thus, Alaska Natives, Native Americans or Sami can be called national minorities, whereas Italians or Afghans (living in Norway) will be ethnic groups. For Kymlicka, national minorities have more substantive entitlements to certain group-differentiated rights because they have been forcefully incorporated through colonization, war and purchase of territories. Even though this differentiation (as all group differentiations) can be questioned in a number of ways, it still points to the importance of including the colonial history as normatively significant for the Sami, and other post-colonial subjects, when it comes to balancing difference and equality within the legal framework of the nation state. From that perspective, I believe, the poststructuralist position of Talal Asad (2003) correctly reminds us that the nation state has a history, a violent history, and that its legitimacy is not self-evident. Honneth, by contrast, seems to regard the nation state as an unproblematic starting point for social theory and critique.

(c) Contribution and social esteem: According to Honneth, humans have a basic need not only for love (in the private sphere) and equal respect (in the legal sphere), but also for recognition of their concrete capabilities and achievements. By this he means that the human subject needs to develop those personal strengths and skills, which separates it positively from others. By doing just that, typically through ones work, one can experience the importance of ones own skills and capabilities for the reproduction of society; through the recognition of ones positive contribution to society, one is able to esteem oneself as a unique and important individual (Honneth 1996: 133, 173). For Honneth, therefore, self-esteem is something we develop in the social sphere, which he sometimes calls solidarity and sometimes the sphere of contribution (Honneth 1996: 130). Thus, the large percentage of Sami in higher education suggests that this group is well equipped to participate in social life as recognized contributors to Norwegian society. Even though Honneths focus is on work, the struggle for social esteem also plays a major role in other contexts, such as minor groups and subcultures, or at an institutional level. According to Huttunen & Heikkinen (2004), Honneths concept of social esteem, which he has not applied to the field of education himself, is especially relevant for this field. First of all, they write, a teachers work is a process of giving and receiving recognition (2004: 164); and secondly, the dialectics of recognition is at the heart of the process of education (Bildung) (ibid.). In both cases, what is at
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stake is the students or pupils contributions to the learning process, the active effort he or she makes, and the response from the teacher, which can be, but is not always, a form of recognition. The teachers evaluation of the pupil, of course, and the teachers way of evaluating, play a major role in the development of a fruitful learning environment, and therefore is a process of learning itself. In addition, it can, at an early stage in the pupils life, further or inhibit his or her development of self-esteem, that is, the development of a positive view of ones own abilities and skills. According to Huttunen & Heikkinen, therefore:

The teacher should be discreet when giving negative feedback to a student. Refraining from giving any negative feedback is of course no solution. That could lead to false selfesteem, and have even worse consequences. In giving feedback, it is essential the recognition be genuinely based on the work. Critical feedback is very important, but it must be given in a discreet way without any humiliation. Even when the students work is a total failure, the teacher should tacitly point out where the student has gone wrong, and how he or she can proceed toward an acceptable performance. The student should always be given a new chance to earn respect with his or her work, and the student should be encouraged to go on with the work. () When a strong solidarity is established, the learning community is guided by something higher than an individual consciousness: by a collectively constructed culture and spirit (2004: 172).

In practice, however, positive circles of recognition and learning are not always easy or unproblematic to establish. When it comes to education of national minorities, for example, there might be substantial disagreement between teachers, schools, parents, pupils, national curricula or minority representatives about correct knowledge and methods of teaching. Vuokku Hirvonens study Sami Culture and School (2004), for example, provides numerous examples of discrepancies between national curricula and established teaching methods on the one hand, and experiences of Sami teachers in Sami schools on the other. Even though the Sami curricula open up for the integration of Sami culture and knowledge, the school system in the Sami areas still has to adapt to a Norwegian and Western context, which, in some respects, contradicts the teachers ideas of effective learning and Sami culture. Piera, a teacher who works at a combined primary and lower school secondary school, for example, expresses the view that the ideal Sami school would be outdoor, and that the curricula would have
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to focus more practical issues and less on theoretical ones (Hirvonen 2004: 117). This implies, of course, that some of the skills and achievements of the pupils could be recognized in a way that classroom teaching and a theoretical focus do not allow for. Generally, Hirvonens study show that Sami teachers focus on practical ways of learning as better suited for Sami children, as expressed by the teacher Niillas:

The Sami way of learning often means learning by doing things in practice. And we also use a lot of stories and narratives when teaching. Thats the first thing that comes to my mind when talking about Sami ways of learning. [] Theoretical knowledge should be based on practical training (ibid.).

According to Niilas, not only would adopting educational methods that are suitable for the Sami produce better learning results, it would also help to make the local culture more visible in the educational plans:

If, again, you wanted to adopt a conception of learning that you could call Sami pedagogy, it would involve having a closer connection between the schools and the local community. The culture of the community would be visible in all the planning done in the school (ibid.)

For Sr, another Sami teacher, the local aspect is important since those who have knowledge of Sami culture often are the older people and people outside the school system:

It is the older people and institutions that have the knowledge. However, we are used to thinking that all knowledge can be found within inside the school walls. The teacher is the one who is supposed to do the teaching. In the Sami world nowadays, it is very often the older people and people working in other occupations who know about things and know the proper Sami words. What I mean is that we should have a lot more resources to use this knowledge. At the moment, we are restricted to the school building and the usual sources of information (ibid. 121).

To the extent that Sr wishes to challenge the hegemonic view of learning in the Norwegian school system, and the majority view of knowledge, she participates in a struggle for recognition in Honneths sense. This struggle is also a struggle for so15

cial esteem at the level of national discourse and politics: like other social or cultural groups, the Sami make demands on society and argue why their contribution or way of life deserve to be esteemed more, for example through institutional changes of the school system, or in form of more state resources (e.g. resources to bring in local elders or bring teaching out in the nature). Only in this last sense can we speak of a struggle for cultural recognition, and not just for equal or extended rights. Such struggles may lead to redefinitions of the cultural infrastructure of society, but Honneth sharply refuses that his theory can be used as an argument to secure anyone a direct guarantee of cultural recognition (Honneth & Fraser 2003: 160-170). For one, we never know with certainty what a culture is the borders that define a culture, and separate it from others, are always a matter of contestation or conflict, first and foremost for those who are associated with it or said to be its members. Honneth would therefore agree with Seyla Benhabib who claims that

Any view of cultures as clearly delineable wholes is a view from the outside that generates coherence for the purpose of understanding and control. Participants in the culture, by contrast, experience their traditions, stories, rituals and symbols, tools and material living conditions through shared, albeit contested and contestable, narrative accounts (Benhabib 2002: 5).

Thus, Sami also disagree on the question of Saminess; some wish to distance themselves from this label, others to defend it, still others to redefine it. For some, an official recognition as Sami, e.g., a pupil who can learn better outside in the nature than inside the classroom, may be just as much a stigma, a reifying identification, as liberation. A critical, social theory can criticize the structural asymmetries that condition contemporary struggles for cultural recognition, such as political practices or ideologies that exclude certain groups from influence and respect, but it should not according to Honneth try to decide the substantial outcome of such struggles. It is up to the cultural subjects themselves to do that. To present Sami culture in a worthy way in national curricula, and in general in nation media and discourse, is not to recognize it as such, but to give the Sami a more fair chance of struggling for recognition.

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4. Concluding remarks I have argued that recognition is an important aspect of learning and education and that Honneths critical theory of recognition has explanatory force when analyzing the postcolonial situation of the Sami people of Norway. The Sami struggle for inclusion and influence over their own situation has to a large extent been fought as a struggle for rights and for cultural recognition. However, I also pointed to some problems in Honneths focus on the nation state as a given analytic entity; the legitimacy of the Norwegian nation state and its territorial claims, for example, have always been called into question by (some of) the Sami. Honneths refusal to deal directly with thick cultural identities and questions of cultural recognition can be seen both as strength and as weakness. It is a strength because it avoids a homogenizing concept of cultures as substantial wholes that define their members in static or rigid ways, and also in the sense that it avoids taking a political stance to specific demands for cultural recognition in a given society. For Honneth, as we saw, only the formal conditions for a fair struggle for recognition, such as the absence of stigmatizing or demonizing portrayals of certain groups in national discourse or media, can be evaluated with his theory, not specific demands for cultural recognition: no one can be criticized for not liking (or even disliking) a cultural tradition.3 However, this formalism could also be seen as a weakness in the sense that it doesnt take the problem of cultural difference and marginalization seriously enough. Honneths focus on work as the prime sphere of social esteem (see also Jakobsen & Lysaker 2010) ignores a range of contemporary struggles for recognition, and experiences of misrecognition, that are related more to cultural stigma than to work in any traditional sense.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Heike Niedrig, Christian Ydesen, Adrea

See Niedrigs contribution Multicultural Education and Apartheid Educational Discourses in South Africa in this anthology for a more detailed discussion of the ambivalences of multiculturalism and cultural identity.

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Lawrence and Chris Frey for helpful comments, critiques and suggestions.

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