ASA2022: Anthropology Educates
Online, throughout 2022
Latest: The conference is over, but the materials (PDFs, videos, comments) remain online and available to all to enjoy. View the studios.
Anthropology is, above all, a way of education. Anthropological study is potentially transformative for all involved, be they teachers or learners, researchers or participants. At its best, it is an education that opens to the wisdom, experience and knowledge of people everywhere, in a sustained, collaborative, and critical reflection upon the conditions and possibilities of collective life, both presently and into the future. Yet all too often anthropological education reproduces authorised knowledge and paradigms, shaped by institutional demands, thus perpetuating exclusion and privilege.
The purpose of this conference was to explore both the potential of Anthropology to educate, and what the limits of such education might be. This goes far beyond questions of teaching and learning, as posed within standard pedagogic protocols. We are not thinking of Anthropology as a subject to be taught, finding its place in the curriculum of higher education alongside other subjects like History, Geography or Sociology. Nor are we primarily concerned with studies in the anthropology of education which have treated institutions and practices of pedagogy principally as objects of ethnographic attention. We aim instead to focus on the work of Anthropology, whether in the classroom or in the field, as a fundamentally educational endeavour.
In order to put this aim into practice, we adopted an entirely novel format, where the conference comprised five consecutive studios, each extending over a month, with opportunities for ongoing conversation on the virtual conference platform. Our intention was not so much to provide a forum for the presentation of finished work as to open up a space for conversation, with a view to advancing the topic under discussion. By the conclusion of the conference, then, we expect to be in a very different place from where we began. This, in turn, will be reflected in the eventual conference volume, which we conceive less as a collection of papers than as a multi-stranded compilation of voices and perspectives.
Catch-up with the studios that made up this event:
Anthropology as education
Decolonising the academy?
Academic-student collaborations
Anthropology and the university
Anthropology across disciplines
How to take part
The conference welcomes participants at every stage of their career, whether they are working within or outwith higher education. Participants can view the files and recordings of the online discussions, and if logged in, can also contribute to the discussion in the comments.
Please note that comments placed on the conference platform will be visible to all delegates and may be used or referenced in the subsequent publication. Permission to use material in the publication will be sought from authors after the event.
To comment on a studio you must first be registered for the conference and logged in. Then click on the studio header to expand the studio content, click on the downward arrow head to see comment section beneath the Studio detail; or click the comment icon to load the comments in a separate side window.
Any queries or difficulties, please content conference(@)theasa.org.
The organising committee
- Chair: Sarah Winkler-Reid (Newcastle University)
- Caroline Gatt (University of Graz)
- ElSayed Mahmoud ElSehamy (The University of Manchester)
- Cris Shore (Goldsmiths, University of London)
- Soumhya Venkatesan (University of Manchester)
- Simone Dennis (Australian National University)
- Andrew Dawson (University of Melbourne)
- Camilla Morelli (University of Bristol)
- Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen)
