Difficult Collective Deliberations: Anthropological Notes Toward a Theory of Education

Policy Context: There are two main strains of research by those concerned with education as something that does not happen solely or even mainly in schools. In anthropology, it has been necessary to be aware of this given the absence of institutions easily recognizable as schools in many of the societies in which anthropologists have worked. But even in this discipline, the emphasis was more on incidental enculturation than on education as deliberate effort. In sociology and related fields, many have looked at nonschool environments as causal to the socialization that appears to be a precondition to success in schools. The point of reference remained schooling.

Purpose: In this analytic article, I pick up two key terms in Cremin’s definition: “effort” and “deliberation.” Through a contrast with Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, I show that both words make sense in terms of an amended take on Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology, Lave’s understanding of learning as movement through differentiated social fields (“communities of practice”), de Certeau’s insistence on “enunciation,” and Rancière’s focus on productive ignorance. I show how all the case studies included in the special issue take us out of the world of early learning and into the world of continued efforts to change both oneself and one’s consociates through often difficult collective deliberations.