DSP Prague · Themenfeld 3 · Politics, Culture, Society · Jahrgangsstufe 11/12

Britain

How national stories get made — and who gets to make them.

Identity · Power · Memory · Narrative · Culture

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This strand is not about Britain.
It's about how stories become nations.

Seven instruments, moving from the contemporary to the historical and back. Each one uses a different object — political language, music, newspapers, empire, myth, archives — to ask the same question.

Students who complete this strand aren't just prepared to discuss Britain. They're equipped to interrogate any national narrative. That's the real claim. Looking at the instruments, it's a defensible one.

The strand also asks where its own framework fails. Narrative analysis can overemphasise construction and underemphasise contingency — the moments when the story could have gone differently. The instruments don't resolve that tension. They hold it open.

The instruments — seven
01
Epistemological
Who Gets to Leave?
"Why does the same word — sovereignty — mean opposite things to different people?"
Method: sovereignty language analysis · four cases
Brexit Scotland Catalonia Ireland
02
Epistemological
British Invasion
"If British music is built from elsewhere — what makes it British?"
Method: thread-pulling · three acts · four traditions
Wham! The Beatles Adele Blues · Soul · Gospel
03
Framing
Whose Story Is This?
"When history is written — whose story survives?"
Method: seven accounts · hidden labels · narrative reveal
Windrush Framing BBC Seven papers
04
Discovery
Bassline Britain
"Why do some cultures become visible only after they've already done the work?"
Method: infrastructure reveal · prediction confrontation
UK Jazz Tomorrow's Warriors Steam Down Marmot
05
Discovery
How British Is It?
"Why does empire keep appearing — even in things that seem entirely domestic?"
Method: spectrum rating · density reveal · Union Jack
Empire Sanghera 12 items Amnesia
06
Epistemological
Who Invented England?
"Why do some political ideas feel timeless?"
Method: undatable statements · five centuries of evidence
Dee 1577 Burke 1790 Thatcher 1988 Brexit
07
Archive · Capstone
Who Gets to Keep It?
"If you control the evidence — do you control the story?"
Method: object provenance · four cases · restitution arguments · Hicks
Benin Bronzes Elgin Marbles Koh-i-Noor Rosetta Stone
The strand ends here →
01
Who writes the political story?
Who Gets to Leave?
→
02
How do cultural forms move?
British Invasion
→
03
Who decides what an event means?
Whose Story Is This?
→
04
How do ecosystems survive invisibility?
Bassline Britain
→
05
Who gets included in national identity?
How British Is It?
→
06
Who keeps reinventing the founding myth?
Who Invented England?
→
07
Who controls the physical archive?
Who Gets to Keep It?
What the instruments share
Principle 1 — Object before argument
Students encounter a specific object — a political speech, a music industry map, a newspaper archive, a museum object — before any analytical claim is made. The argument emerges from the encounter rather than arriving as instruction.
Principle 2 — The same question, seven objects
Every instrument returns to the same question from a different angle: who gets to tell the story, and what happens to everyone whose version doesn't survive? The repetition is structural, not accidental.
Principle 3 — What the framework misses
The strand argues that national stories are constructed and contested. But the framework can overemphasise narrative and underemphasise contingency — the moments when the story didn't have to go the way it did. Ask this at each instrument: what would the framework miss here?
Threads across the instruments
Who gets to tell it
Who Gets to Leave?, Whose Story Is This?, and Who Gets to Keep It? all ask the same question at different scales — political, journalistic, archival.
Built from elsewhere
British Invasion, Bassline Britain, and How British Is It? all examine the same mechanism: a culture claiming ownership of something it took from somewhere else.
Myth and time
Who Invented England? and How British Is It? both ask how ideas and objects come to feel ancient when they are recent — and who benefits from that feeling.
The invisible infrastructure
Bassline Britain and British Invasion both trace the gap between who built the culture and who got credited for it.
Recommended sequence

Open with Who Gets to Leave? — it establishes that language is contested before any historical material arrives.

Run British Invasion and Bassline Britain in sequence — both trace the same mechanism of cultural appropriation at different scales.

Place Whose Story Is This? after the music instruments — students arrive already thinking about who gets credit.

Use How British Is It? and Who Invented England? as a pair — one contemporary, one historical, both about amnesia.

End with Who Gets to Keep It? — it asks the strand's final question at the level of physical evidence. It is the hardest to argue your way out of.

Abitur essay questions — Themenfeld 3
To what extent is national identity constructed rather than inherited?
How does control of historical narrative function as a form of political power?
To what extent does Britain's cultural identity depend on erasing the origins of what it claims as its own?
Should cultural objects be returned to the countries from which they were taken? On what grounds could this claim be resisted?
Is sovereignty a coherent concept — or does its meaning always depend on who is using it?
To what extent can narrative analysis overstate the role of stories and understate the role of material conditions — economics, geography, military power — in shaping national identity?
Are some national narratives more historically accurate than others — and if so, what does that mean for the claim that all national stories are constructions?