Anthropologies of Education
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Anthropologies of Education

A Global Guide to Ethnographic Studies of Learning and Schooling

Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt, Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt

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eBook - ePub

Anthropologies of Education

A Global Guide to Ethnographic Studies of Learning and Schooling

Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt, Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt

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About This Book

Despite international congresses and international journals, anthropologies of education differ significantly around the world. Linguistic barriers constrain the flow of ideas, which results in a vast amount of research on educational anthropology that is not published in English or is difficult for international readers to find. This volume responds to the call to attend to educational research outside the United States and to break out of "metropolitan provincialism." A guide to the anthropologies and ethnographies of learning and schooling published in German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Slavic languages, Japanese, and English as a second language, show how scholars in Latin America, Japan, and elsewhere adapt European, American, and other approaches to create new traditions. As the contributors show, educators draw on different foundational research and different theoretical discussions. Thus, this global survey raises new questions and casts a new light on what has become a too-familiar discipline in the United States.

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Year
2011
ISBN
9780857452740

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TOWARDS A HISTORICAL CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF EDUCATION

The Berlin Ritual Study
Christoph Wulf

Introduction

Since the very beginnings of Western thought, anthropology and pedagogy have been linked. Even though the term anthropology was coined only in the sixteenth century, the resonance between pedagogy and anthropology is manifest in Plato's Republic and in the writings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas of Aquinas. It cannot be denied in the seventeenth century in the works of Comenius, nor in the eighteenth century in the writings of Rousseau and Pestalozzi nor yet in the nineteenth century in Kant's, Herbart's, Humboldt's and Schleiermacher's oeuvre. In the course of the twentieth century, anthropology grew steadily in influence, particularly within philosophy. Max Scheler explains that, in about ten thousand years of history, our era is the first in which man has become “problematical” through and through, but also the first in which he does not know what he actually is, and at the same time knows he does not know (Scheler 2009). That situation constitutes the starting point of pedagogical anthropology, which has, in the second half of the twentieth century, developed into a very important field of educational knowledge.
According to Kant the human situation is as follows: What human beings are depends on what they must be and on what they may be. Human beings are nothing by and of themselves and must make themselves into who they are and turn themselves into who they must become, while in so doing they frequently hurl themselves against their very own limits. The study of these interconnections constitutes, for Kant, the duty of pragmatic anthropology (cf. Kant 1982: 699), which examines the field of human action and human freedom.
If we wish to discharge this duty properly, it is first of all necessary to resolve what we understand, today, by anthropology. What meaning does this term have for the humanities? As I will argue, anthropology today can be developed only within the framework of the historical, ethnological, and philosophical study of human beings, that is to say as historical cultural anthropology.

Anthropological Paradigms

If we wish to put the epistemology of anthropology of education on a more profoundly reflected footing, then a confrontation, at once critical and constructive, with the anthropological paradigms that are internationally significant is indispensable. I am referring to:
  • evolution and hominization
  • philosophical anthropology developed in Germany
  • historical anthropology and the history of mentalities, initiated by historians in France and taking its cue from the Annales-School
  • the American tradition of cultural anthropology and
  • historical cultural anthropology.
In order to provide a framework for educational anthropology, I suggest that we use the paradigm of historical cultural anthropology as a basis for further research (Wulf 2002, 2004). This paradigm integrates perspectives from the other four major anthropological paradigms and provides a basis for an adequate understanding of educational phenomena, processes, and institutions in a globalized world. In this brief chapter, I shall focus on diachronic and synchronic perspectives and historical and cultural research within educational anthropology. To provide an example of ethnographic research in education, I have selected just one of the major research projects in the field of historical cultural anthropology in Germany to present to you. Together with historical and philosophical methods, the ethnographic approach is one of the main methods of educational anthropology, conceived as historical and cultural anthropology.

Evolution and Hominization

The branch of anthropology that studies hominization stems from an attempt to fit the natural history of human beings into the horizon of anthropology in order to understand the “lost paradigm,” the human (Morin 1973). Yet the natural history of human evolution can be understood only when considered as part of (social and cultural) history. Its irreversibility, as well as that of the history of life itself, is grasped today as a consequence of material self-organization (Eigen and Winkler-Oswatitsch 1992).
Hominization, the long process of evolution from Australopithecus to primitive human beings, can be understood as a multidimensional morphogenesis arising from the interplay between ecological, genetic, cerebral, social, and cultural factors. This process necessitated three types of change. The first were ecological changes, which led to the expansion of the savannah and thus to an “open” biotope. Second, a genetic change took place in the highly developed primates, which were already walking upright. Third, there was a change in social self-reproduction due to the splitting off of young groups and the use of new territories. It was the new ecosystem—the savannah—which triggered the dialectic between the feet, hands, and brain that became the source of technology and all other human developments. The process of hominization was intensified by a prolonged infancy or neoteny, incomplete development of the brain at birth and prolonged childhood with longer affective ties between the generations, with the associated potentials for comprehensive cultural learning. The cerebralization, prolonged youth, and increased social and cultural complexity were mutually dependent. The complexity of the brain requires a corresponding sociocultural complexity. The creative potential of the brain can be expressed and develop only in a sociocultural environment that grows in parallel. This dialectic relationship means that humans have been cultural beings from the very beginning, i.e., their “natural” development is cultural.
The final stage of this process of hominization is, in fact, also a beginning. The human species, which has reached its completion in Homo sapiens, is a youthful and childlike species: our brilliant brains would be feeble organs without the apparatus of culture; all our capabilities need to be bottle-fed. Hominization was completed with the irreversible and fundamental creative incompleteness of human beings. The course of hominization also clearly illustrates that Homo sapiens and Homo demens are inseparably linked and the great achievements of humankind have their downside: the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the human race (Wulf 2004).

Philosophical Anthropology

While taking evolution into account in anthropology serves to highlight the shared lineage and mutual parentage of all forms of life and the long time-span of hominization as well as the general laws of evolution, philosophical anthropology turns its attention to the particularity of “man's” character.
The centerpieces of philosophical anthropology are the anthropological works of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen. In 1927, Max Scheler gave a lecture in Darmstadt entitled “Die Sonderstellung des Menschen,” which was published in 1928 under the title Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (The Human Place in the Cosmos) and is regarded as the beginning of philosophical anthropology. When Scheler died in the same year, he left no concrete preparatory material for the anthropological work he had intended to publish in 1929. The philosopher and biologist Helmuth Plessner, however, published his main anthropological work Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (Levels of Organic Being and Man) in 1928. Despite their differences, Scheler's seminal article (2009) and Plessner's book (1928) share the assumption that organic life is structured in levels. Arnold Gehlen's work (1988) took a different approach and focuses on humans as acting beings.
The preoccupation of this strand of anthropological thought was to understand the essence, the nature of human beings in general. Within this framework, anthropology concentrated upon a comparison between “man” and animal (Gehlen 1988; Plessner 1970), with a view to distinguishing shared features and differences. To grasp the conditio humana, philosophical reflections were brought to bear upon biological insights. It was thought that the conditions for the formation of the human species could be glimpsed in biological and above all morphological characteristics. This perspective has had two consequences: a focus of anthropological reflection and research on the human body, and a generalizing discourse relating to one unique and unitary model of man.
Due to its focus on the human being as such, philosophical anthropology fails to address the historical and cultural diversity of human beings in the plural. To investigate the diversity of human life is the aim of a branch of historical science that is oriented towards anthropological issues.

The Annales School and the History of Mentalities

Anthropology underwent an additional development and refinement in a historical turn, which can be discerned in the historical treatments of anthropological topics of the Annales school and the history of mentalities that flowed from it (Burke 1991; Ariùs and Duby 1987–1991). Quite opposed to those who insist that social structures as well as the social actor's subjective experiences be rooted in a character common to all human beings, the practitioners of historical studies with an anthropological orientation inquire into the specifically historical and cultural character of each of these phenomena. Fernand Braudel's study of the Mediterranean (Braudel 1949), Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie's on the village of Montaillou (Leroy Ladurie 1978), and Carlo Ginzburg's on the world of a miller around 1600 (Ginzburg 1980) may be cited as successful examples for this endeavor.
Historical anthropology investigates elementary situations and basic experiences of being human. It studies a basic stock of patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that is anthropologically constant (Dinzelbacher 1993); basic human phenomena; and elementary human behavior, experiences, and basic situations (Medick 1989), not to make statements about humans in general but to gain an understanding of the multidimensional conditions of life and experiences of real people in their respective historical contexts. This diversity of phenomena is paralleled by the multidimensionality and open-endedness of anthropological definitions and research paradigms. From the point of view of the historical sciences, the feelings, actions, and events under investigation can be understood only in terms of their historic uniqueness. It is this that lends them their dynamic nature and makes them subject to historical change.

Cultural Anthropology or Ethnology

Even though anthropology is the result of a process of philosophical and scientific evolution, it can no longer pretend, these days, that at the end of the day Europeans are the only human beings and act as though European human beings are the only possible yardstick. It is obvious, even in an era of globalization deeply marked in its content and form by Western culture, that different forms of human life exist today, influenced by various local, regional, and national cultures. The Anglo-Saxon tradition of cultural and social anthropology has turned its attention to this situation. Its accent lies on the social and cultural diversity of human life. Its research explains both to what extent cultural evolutions are heterogeneous and to what extent the profound diversity of human life remains unnoticed. It is precisely the analysis of foreign cultures that makes it plain to us how limited and problematic our understanding is. Thanks to the analysis of cultural manifestations drawn from heterogeneous cultures, anthropological inquiries make an important contribution to the elaboration and development of anthropology while its ethnographical methods oblige practitioners to draw upon historical sources. Besides creating a sensitivity for the strange and foreign character of other cultures, it creates a sensitivity for that which is strange and foreign in its own culture. The (self-)reflexive point of view adopted by cultural anthropology towards European cultures has contributed to a considerable evolution and advance of anthropological knowledge (see Geertz 1973, 1993; Sahlins 1976; Harris 2001; Evans-Pritchard 1965; Malinowski 1922; Mead 1950; LĂ©vi-Strauss 1992).

Historical Cultural Anthropology

Confrontation with philosophical reflection has given rise to a critique of anthropology. The specific situation of human beings in the world, the comparison with animals or machines, is no longer anthropology's center of interest. Instead, historical and cultural inquiries focus on understanding the cultural diversity of social life. A particular and very pronounced interest in the study of current phenomena is noticeable. Expanding on historical anthropology, historical cultural anthropology touches upon the historical and cultural determination of culture and its manifestations, and demands that their study and reflection take into account ethnological and philosophical perspectives and questions. Committed to this task, historical cultural anthropology makes an important contribution to the self-comprehension and self-interpretation of cultures and societies today. In this process of cultural understanding, research efforts rapidly run the risk of being unable to move beyond the level of their own initial insights. To safeguard against this risk, historical cultural anthropology needs to reflect upon its relation to power and knowledge, as well as to make efforts specifically aimed at bringing to light the involuntary and often unacknowledged normative implications of its own research.
Within this frame of reference, “reflexive historical cultural anthropology” designates multiform transdisciplinary and transnational efforts to pursue the universal idea of an abstract anthropological norm and to continue analyzing diverse human phenomena. Historical cultural anthropology is the common denominator of history and the humanities. Nevertheless, it is not limited to a history of anthropology as a discipline nor to making a contribution to history from the perspective of an anthropological subdiscipline. It attempts, rather, to bring into an accord the historical and cultural determination of its perspectives and methods with the historical and cultural determination of its object of study. It can harness insights gleaned in the humanities to those yielded by a critique of anthropology based on the history of philosophy, and bring both to fruition in order to create new perspectives and lines of inquiry out of a new consciousness of methodological problems. Historical anthropology is limited neither to certain spatial frames nor to particular epochs. Reflecting on its own historicity and its own cultural condition, it succeeds both in leaving behind the Eurocentrism of the humanities and moves from the interest in history to concern with current and future problems (Wulf 1997, 2002, 2004; Wulf and Kamper 2002).
Building on the four prior paradigms, a historical cultural educational anthropology has been developed over the last twenty years and has now become an institutionalized branch within the German Educational Research Association. The range of research in this field includes a variety of theoretical, historical, and empirical studies, the most prominent of which is the Berlin Study on Rituals. This study combines ethnographic research in an inner-city school with conceptual work on the dynamics and performativity of rituals and their potential for engendering social relationships in education and community life. In what follows, I shall demonstrate how ethnographic research on rituals contributes to a historical cultural anthropology of education.

The Berlin Study on Rituals

What role do rituals play in the genesis of the social dimension in people's lives in contemporary society? Answering this question is what the Berlin Study on Rituals (Berliner Ritualstudie), conducted over the past twelve years aims to do (Wulf et al. 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010a, 2010b). The research focuses upon the importance and meaning of rituals for the learning and educational processes of children and adolescents, drawing on rituals from four areas of socialization, namely, family, school, children's and youth culture, and media. Empirically, the study's main focus is on the children of an inner-city elementary school and their families, where the research is confronted with the usual conditions prevalent at such inner-city schools: about three hundred pupils from twenty different ethnic communities. The school in question is an innovative UNESCO model school with an excellent principal and a very active and competent teaching body.
The results of this ethnographic project are extensive and can be covered only cursorily in the framework of this article. I will begin with an overview of five broad lessons from the project.
First, rituals and ritualizations play a central role in the pedagogy, education, and socialization of primary-school children. They structure the children's lives and help them to become integrated in a social order and also to work with it. Rituals shape transitions between fields of socialization as well as between institutions, and they also facilitate social learning, which is vital in the classroom.
Second, pedagogic rituals and ritualizations are performed in all fields of socialization. The performativity of actions becomes apparent in the way that children carry out their behavior and actions either by themselves or together with adults. The performative character of pedagogic and social practices points to their corporality.
Third, important parts of cultural life among children take place by way of mimetic processes, that is, the incorporation of the images, schemata, and imaginations of other people, social situations, events, and actions and their integration into a mental world of images. Through mimetic proc...

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