Anthropology of education: mapping the origins of a research field

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe the practice through which the foreign network of studies on anthropology of education acquired credibility for its writings, using literary inscription. The literary inscription is a methodological principle that allows the analysis of intellectual networks in educational research about learning and knowledge acquisition processes. The threads connecting the components of these networks are explored through the analysis of a seminal book for anthropology of education in the United States and Europe, but which was and continues to be disregarded by Brazilian academia. The book Education and anthropology, edited by George D. Spindler, in 1955, seminally described the main ideas, approaches and theoretical-methodological affiliations that began to organize research on anthropology and education abroad. The work is analyzed to offer Brazilian academia an agenda for uses and interpretations of the anthropology of education outside the country. From the analyzed book, it was possible to perceive the construction of a polysemic agenda of uses and interpretations of the term culture by the field of education studies. In this way, a partial narrative of the conception of the scientific field of anthropology of education is offered, which can be connected to other local, state and national versions.