Subdivision for Pedagogical Anthropology

The Subdivision for Pedagogical Anthropology is concerned with the connection between concepts of the human being and their explicit and implicit relations to education. The tasks of the subdivision thus consist, on the one hand, in understanding the human being from the perspective of upbringing, education and socialization; and, on the other hand, in considering the pedagogical implications of images of human beings. In pedagogical anthropology, historical-hermeneutic, conceptual-theoretical, qualitative-empirical, and cultural-comparative methods are used. Pedagogical images of human beings contain descriptive and above all normative ideas about what ‘human beings’ are and what they can and should make of themselves. Pedagogical images of human beings have interpretative, orienting, and legitimizing functions in the complex processes of education because they enable attributions, structure expectations, and legitimize educational measures. Without anthropological knowledge, pedagogical theories and pedagogical practices cannot be adequately understood. Not every pedagogy is a pedagogical anthropology, but every pedagogy has one. Against this background, the Subdivision for Pedagogical Anthropology has made it its task to make central anthropological concepts - such as image, space, time, institution, death, transcendence, body, technology, economy - accessible in pedagogical terms.

Cooperations

Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Historische Anthropologie, Berlin
Interdisziplinäres Zentrum Ästhetische Bildung, Erlangen