Anthropology and education, two ways of accompanying different manners of dwelling the world
Orietta Marquina Vega
(Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP))
Both anthropology and education look to make easier our dwelling the world. To do so, both must reshape themselves to find new ways of action. It has to do with new forms of accompanying different manners of dwelling a humanely and sustainably developed world where our dreams may become true.
Paper long abstract:
As an artist, educator, and anthropologist I have been trying to put together art, education, and anthropology in daily life as a learning explorer journey. What I found so far is that these three (Disciplines? Social fields? Life dimensions?) have to do with dwelling the world: from perception, epistemology and ontology, respectively. I found dwelling a powerful and useful concept. It allows us to assemble daily life to make sense of it.
Sense is another point in common for them: Art, education, and anthropology are three ways of making sense of life. Thus, they are also deeply related to affect: how we affect and are affected by others. But, trying to focus on our studio theme, how do education and anthropology affect and make senses in contemporary society?
Educators have earlier taken in that learning doesn’t have to do with knowledge transmission but with experience (Dewey, Arendt). We are struggling to learn how to help students to have experiences which bring meaningful knowledge (David Ausubel) to them. We already know it is also social constructed (Lev Vygotski). At the same time anthropologists have learned that conditions and possibilities of collective life are only reachable by learning with others instead of learning about them. We are struggling to learn how to do it. We have looked to art strategies and technology possibilities and conditions. We already know it is also about experiences.
We understand contemporary society from two former ideas. First, the absence of a meta story which helps us to acknowledge our presence in the world (García Canclini, 2010) and an economic value production model which uses aesthetic-imaginative-emotional dimensions of arts to increase company profits and facilitate their access and positioning in new markets (Lipovetsky & Serroy, 2015). I name this economic value creation logic fragmented cultural capitalism. Therefore, in contemporary society, we construct meaning necessarily linked to the affective dynamics of desire and enjoyment (Blanco & Sanchez, 2018). This cultural economic global order works within a communicative ecosystem. It integrates all communicative processes, their interrelationships, and ways of meaning construction. From a communication ecology approach, the communicational and the digital are a "co-construction process in which the subjects affect the transformation of technologies and in which they modify the ways of being, doing and think about people” (Amador, 2013, p.13 in Barrios, 2015, p.86). The digital articulates the communicative ecosystem and, dynamically, configures the everyday life. It shapes our image of what reality is from the interactions we build when communicating, including the devices we use for this (Giraldo-Dávila & Maya-Franco, 2015). Thus, it affects our ways of knowing by building new and more experiential sensitivities.
These sensitivities demands us, educators and anthropologists, to take in the risk and stop leading out to the world but accompanying every different manner of dwelling it. Accompany means not only to respect others, but to be able to put on their shoes, to let them be. Then, a humanely and sustainably developed world, where our dreams may become true, might be possible.
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
As an artist, educator, and anthropologist I have been trying to put together art, education, and anthropology in daily life as a learning explorer journey. What I found so far is that these three (Disciplines? Social fields? Life dimensions?) have to do with dwelling the world: from perception, epistemology and ontology, respectively. I found dwelling a powerful and useful concept. It allows us to assemble daily life to make sense of it.
Sense is another point in common for them: Art, education, and anthropology are three ways of making sense of life. Thus, they are also deeply related to affect: how we affect and are affected by others. But, trying to focus on our studio theme, how do education and anthropology affect and make senses in contemporary society?
Educators have earlier taken in that learning doesn’t have to do with knowledge transmission but with experience (Dewey, Arendt). We are struggling to learn how to help students to have experiences which bring meaningful knowledge (David Ausubel) to them. We already know it is also social constructed (Lev Vygotski). At the same time anthropologists have learned that conditions and possibilities of collective life are only reachable by learning with others instead of learning about them. We are struggling to learn how to do it. We have looked to art strategies and technology possibilities and conditions. We already know it is also about experiences.
We understand contemporary society from two former ideas. First, the absence of a meta story which helps us to acknowledge our presence in the world (García Canclini, 2010) and an economic value production model which uses aesthetic-imaginative-emotional dimensions of arts to increase company profits and facilitate their access and positioning in new markets (Lipovetsky & Serroy, 2015). I name this economic value creation logic fragmented cultural capitalism. Therefore, in contemporary society, we construct meaning necessarily linked to the affective dynamics of desire and enjoyment (Blanco & Sanchez, 2018). This cultural economic global order works within a communicative ecosystem. It integrates all communicative processes, their interrelationships, and ways of meaning construction. From a communication ecology approach, the communicational and the digital are a "co-construction process in which the subjects affect the transformation of technologies and in which they modify the ways of being, doing and think about people” (Amador, 2013, p.13 in Barrios, 2015, p.86). The digital articulates the communicative ecosystem and, dynamically, configures the everyday life. It shapes our image of what reality is from the interactions we build when communicating, including the devices we use for this (Giraldo-Dávila & Maya-Franco, 2015). Thus, it affects our ways of knowing by building new and more experiential sensitivities.
These sensitivities demands us, educators and anthropologists, to take in the risk and stop leading out to the world but accompanying every different manner of dwelling it. Accompany means not only to respect others, but to be able to put on their shoes, to let them be. Then, a humanely and sustainably developed world, where our dreams may become true, might be possible.
Anthropology as education
Session 1