Images of Non-Western Cultures. The influence of history textbooks on public opinion in Dutch-speaking Belgium 1945- 1984.

The This Ph.D. study tries to answer the question "Do history textbooks have an impact on people's ideas about other cultures?", by comparing the contents of a large sample of in- fluential history textbooks and curricula (covering 1945- 1984) with the results of a wide array of public opinion surveys about the Third World and immigrants (covering 1949- 1987). The theoretical part reviews ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and racism as dimensions of cultural images, focuses attention on the phenomenon and mechanism of influence, and assesses the place of the textbook in the complex network of... Mehr ...