Stereotyper och rasbegreppet i finlandssvenska läroböcker

En textnära komparation av beskrivningar av samer under fyra decennier

Abstract

Textbooks are in this article seen as reflections on values and ideas of its present. Often, it’s the majority’s culture and narrative that are told in a nation’s textbooks. What happens when one minority’s textbooks describe another minority? In Finland such a study is possible, since their Swedish- speaking minority, Finland-swedes, have their own tradition of textbook- production. This article analyses textbooks-quotes about Sami, a Finnish minority-group. The textbooks in question are written 1963, 1972, 1981 and 1997, for the Finnish minority-group, Finland-swedes. The aim of the article is to, by comparison, enlighten and analyse how and why one minority’s textbook describes another minority during four decades of status-change for minorities in Finland. Questions raised are i) How do textbooks for the Finland-swedes describe Sami-people, another marginalized minority during a period of 40 years? ii) Which identity-markers and concepts are in focus in textbook- descriptions? iii) What changes or stagnations are seen in textbooks and what factors could have made impact on the textbook-content over time?Results show that the first three books are reproduced intertextual but with an out-fading of stereotypical identity concepts which reflects a change from a biological definition of ethnicity to a more social definition. Although the concept ‘race’ appears in the textbooks from 1997, which can be caused by new race-debates, combined with change in the status of both Finland-swedes and Sami’s in Finland in the beginning of 1990s. The article argues that a marginalisation of Finland- swedes, as the same time as Sami’s got recognition as Finland’s indigenous people, made it important to connect Finns and Swedes as the common people – the common race – in order to get acknowledged as a natural part of Finlands population. In other words: When a majority culture defines and narrows down what is included in a national identity, it effects the minorities at several levels.