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Paper short abstract:

What is the pragmatic role of anthropology in the opening of education to the world stage? This panel investigates the ethical and evolutionary role of emerging languages, techniques and technologies, as a means of opening the educative role and vocation of anthropology in addressing world issues.

Paper long abstract:

The recent (re)turn to Kant's conception of a "pragmatic anthropology" opened the potential for imagining and working towards a better world. In Kant's world vision, the teleological educative role of anthropology should be aimed towards creating better world citizens, free-thinking agents guided by communicability and reason in the quest for "world cognition" ["Welterkenntuisse"]. In this context, anthropology has an active role in the formation of a new "world society", referring to the historical and technological developments and international mechanisms that enhance a collective ethos of a unified world out-there emerging out of "the totality of social relationships linking the inhabitants of earth" (Keith Hart 2003, OAC group; Levinson & Pollock 2011, Ingold 2017, Wies & Haldane 2022). Emerging teaching online platforms and social technologies of representation and networking pave the way for opening new fields in education, transgressing the physical and political limits of time and space. This technological opening if the 'third' ethnographic space (Fischer 2018) presents Anthropology with new sets of opportunities, as well as challenges regarding the educational role of anthropology at all levels of the curriculum. This panel hosts three papers focusing on the role of teaching technologies of representation and networking as a means of paving the way towards opening new 'fields' in anthropology and/as education within the emergence of an open and diverse world educative system. It focuses on the evolution (challenges and impact) of English language on the world stage (Hart), the practical impact of a teachers’ training online program for refugee education in Greece (Apostolidou, Askouni, Androusou), and the ethical impact of religious education beyond the institution in a postnatural world society (Paganopoulos).