“Manas dzimtas vēsture – tā ir daļa no manas valsts vēstures”: ģenealoģiskās prakses Latvijas skolās

Agita Lūse focuses on the environment workshop of the state’s reproduction, namely schools. Lūse investigates the practice of creating family trees in Latvian schools and points out the ambiguous relationship between the publicly presented “family history” and what it is really like. On the one hand, children study and find out the names of their ancestors with interest; nevertheless, these ancestors are not always the ones that the children themselves want to talk about in public. Lūse argues that equating schools with the state or its “ideological apparatus” (Althusser 2006) is simplistic, as direct indoctrination into the state’s narrative is far from what Lūse observes. This chapter demonstrates the ambiguous relationship between the school as a part of the state and kinship ties, which are not always mutually complementary.