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Paper short abstract:

This paper critiques macroscopic tendencies in socio-cultural anthropology. Aversion to individuals overlooks the subjectivity of human existence and people's unique educational biographies. Talking therapy illustrates thinking and learning across human lives. Therapy, it is argued, is anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

While etymologically, anthropology is a study of human beings, aversion to 'psychologism' has resulted in an ongoing reluctance to study human beings themselves. Through its socio-cultural adjectives, anthropology tends to study the social and cultural world and the conditions and systems in which humans live. These social and cultural analyses help to illuminate much in the field of education. However, there can also be a sociocultural determinism that reduces human beings to social relations, cultural practices, communities, and categories. While existential anthropology recognises the diversity that distinguishes one human being from another, such nuance is lacking in 'intrinsically sociological' mainstream anthropology (Piette, 2019, p. 79). This presentation critiques these macroscopic tendencies of socio-cultural anthropology that are echoed in the anthropology of education. It is argued that engagement with the subjective sides of life is key to taking lifelong learning seriously. Human beings undergo various forms of learning from birth until death, with twists and turns, from sudden changes to subtle realisations. The anthropology of education has insufficiently addressed these educational undercurrents of people’s unique biographies. This presentation suggests that counselling and psychotherapy grant privileged access to the lived experiences of human beings. Among other insights, this intimate context illustrates the thinking and growth that occur across people’s lives. In both accessing and influencing this continued learning, therapy serves as a kind of applied anthropology. The presentation draws from the author’s ongoing therapy training and examples from secondary sources that demonstrate lifelong learning as an aspect of the human condition.