The next event in the series Anthropology Senior Research Seminar will be held at the Mediterranean Institute, ir-Razzett tal-Ħursun, on Friday 15 December 2017 at 1800hrs. The seminar, entitled 'I don't want to learn: Negotiating the self in relation to the idea of the educated person', will be delivered by Dr Sharon Attard De Giovanni.
Abstract
What does mass schooling aim to accomplish? Levinson & Holland (1996) hold that schools are sites where educated persons are produced across cultural and social space, an 'educated person' being someone who is knowledgeable and endowed with cultural capital. This paper considers what happens when different kinds of cultural capital are valued by the school and the local community respectively. What drives this tension in cultural capital, and how does it affect the way that children engage with school, and the recent approaches of the education authorities to reintegrate children who are regularly absent?
Sharon Attard De Giovanni holds a PhD in Anthropology from Brunel University, London. Her doctoral research explored how abjection comes to be socially produced across generations, and contested in moments of cultural resistance, through the appropriation of symbolic boundaries. She currently occupies the role of Research Entities Coordinator within the Presidents Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society.