Fabricating the Ideal Azerbaijani Child: Nationalism, Moral Politics and Post-Soviet Legacies of the Azerbaijani Curriculum

Abstract

My thesis examines how the Azerbaijani curriculum document and early-grade textbooks idealize and materialize an ideal Azerbaijani child and how this idealization inherits residues of the Soviet paradigm of child formation under the pretense of global competence and modernization. By integrating Foucault’s theory of governmentality, Popkewitz’s making kinds of people along with residues of Soviet colonialism, my study illustrates that the uniform curriculum document and early-grade textbooks in Azerbaijan education do not merely transmit knowledge, but they also act as moral and political technologies to produce the “ideal Azerbaijani child”. By primarily focusing on the discourses of patriotism, discipline, loyalty, global competencies, and citizenship in the archives, my research examines how these materials promote inclusion and reproduce exclusion by privileging certain moral values. Consequently, this thesis claims that the uniform curriculum document and textbooks in the Azerbaijan education system persist in generating colonial and national anxieties by fabricating citizens who are envisioned as modern, global, yet loyal, patriotic and disciplined with regimes of control. Through this framework, my research contributes to broader discussions regarding post-Soviet education reforms, particularly curriculum development.