In this video, Angela Bermudez, from the Center for Applied Ethics at Deusto University in Bilbao, Spain, tells us about her team’s research into the mechanisms for normalizing or denormalizing violence in history textbooks.
They have looked at history textbooks from several countries (including Colombia, Spain, the United States, and Serbia) and posed the question: How is violence represented in these narratives? From this research they have crafted a list of 10 mechanisms that repeat in textbooks narratives when talking about violent pasts.
In the video above, Angela explains one of them in depth: the apparent impossibility of peaceful resolutions to conflict.
Find out more: The Normalization of Political Violence in History Textbooks: Ten Narrative Keys.