Revisiting Critical Education and Anthropology of Education

Abstract

This paper revisits critical approaches in educational studies through an anthropological lens, focusing on the relative under-analysis of how power is lived, enacted, and naturalized in everyday school life. The paper examines major traditions in critical education—social and cultural reproduction, cultural difference, and critical pedagogy—alongside governmentality studies. While these approaches offer indispensable insights into domination and subject formation, they tend to privilege structural explanation or normative critique at the expense of lived practice. In response, the paper argues for a closer engagement with anthropology of education, particularly ethnography. It introduces the concept of micro‑ritual regimes of schooling as an analytical bridge between critical education, governmentality studies, and educational anthropology, enabling a closer examination of how power is enacted, embodied, and normalized through everyday practices. Through an emphasis on micro‑ritual regimes of schooling, the analysis shifts attention toward the embodied, situational, and affective dimensions through which power becomes ordinary and durable in schooling.