Search for a Theory of Cultural Transmission in an Anthropology of Education: Notes on Spindler and Gearing

Abstract

Since its inception as a subdiscipline, the anthropology of education literature has been characterized by the volume and richness of descriptive ethnographies. Periodic review papers have commented on the lack of conceptual clarity in the key areas of cultural transmission and acquisition, but the theoretical challenges of such papers have been addressed infrequently. This paper attempts to clearly focus on the conceptual dilemmas that are inherent in the theories most widely adopted in the subdiscipline. By an analysis of the intrapsychic and interpsychic models of cultural transmission that underlie the influential work of Spindler and Gearing, it is shown that there is a mismatch between the culture theory of mainstream contemporary anthropology and the subdiscipline. The continuity of certain forms of instrumentalism in particular is shown to have unfortunate consequences for the anthropology of education insofar as the theoretical nexus between personal identity, culture, and institutionalized meanings is inadequately formulated. CULTURAL TRANSMISSION, ANTHROPOLOGY OF EDUCATION, CULTURE THEORY, EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, SOCIALIZATION.