Book Section
This chapter analyses the meaning of a materialist education. After a brief presentation of the Marxist principles behind such an education, I focus on the figure of the Soviet educator Anton Makarenko, and the way he mobilized the notions of ‘milieu’ and ‘circumstances’ to rethink his pedagogical practice. Instead of a directive education based on the relation between master and student, he conceived of education as being constructed through a collective milieu.
Keywords: collective education; materialism; circumstance; milieu; reform school; juvenile delinquents; Gorky colony; Makarenko, Anton; Marx, Karl
Part of Materialism and Politics Containing:
From ‘Materialism’ towards ‘Materialities’ / Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, Ayşe Yuva
Introduction to Part I / Stefan Hagemann
Materialist Variations on Spinoza: Theoretical Alliances and Political Strategies / Mariana de Gainza
Non Defuit Materia: Freedom and Necessity in Spinoza’s Democratic Theory / Stefano Visentin
Temporality and History in Spinoza: The Refusal of Teleological Thought / Ericka Marie Itokazu
Spinozist Moments in Deleuze: Materialism as Immanence / Mauricio Rocha
Are there One or Two Aleatory Materialisms? / Vittorio Morfino
Introduction to Part II / Marlene Kienberger, Bruno Pace
Language Follows Labour: Nikolai Marr’s Materialist Palaeontology of Speech / Elena Vogman
Materialism and Capitalism Today: Zoo-aesthetics and a Critique of the Social Bond after Marcel Mauss and André Leroi-Gourhan / Catherine Perret
The Product of Circumstances: Towards a Materialist and Situated Pedagogy
In the Labyrinth of Emancipation: An Inquiry into the Relationship between Knowledge and Politics / Bernardo Bianchi
A Materialist Education: Thinking with Spinoza / Pascal Sévérac
Introduction to Part III / Alison Sperling
Materialism, Matter, Matrix, and Mater: Contesting Notions in Feminist and Gender Studies / Cornelia Möser
Anarchafeminism & the Ontology of the Transindividual / Chiara Bottici
Psychodynamism of Individuation and New Materialism: Possible Encounters / Émilie Filion-Donato
Emergence that Matters and Emergent Irrelevance: On the Political Use of Fundamental Physics / Christoph F. E. Holzhey
Introduction to Part IV / Daniel Liu
Materialism against Materialism: Taking up Marx’s Break with Reductionism / Frieder Otto Wolf
Materialism, Politics, and the History of Philosophy: French, German, and Turkish Materialist Authors in the Nineteenth Century / Ayşe Yuva
The Historicity of Materialism and the Critique of Politics / Alex Demirović
On Populist Illusion: Impasses of Political Ontology, or How the Ordinary Matters / Facundo Vega
Theory’s Method?: Ethnography and Critical Theory / Marianna Poyares
Title
The Product of Circumstances
Subtitle
Towards a Materialist and Situated Pedagogy
Author(s)
Marlon Miguel
Identifier
Description
This chapter analyses the meaning of a materialist education. After a brief presentation of the Marxist principles behind such an education, I focus on the figure of the Soviet educator Anton Makarenko, and the way he mobilized the notions of ‘milieu’ and ‘circumstances’ to rethink his pedagogical practice. Instead of a directive education based on the relation between master and student, he conceived of education as being constructed through a collective milieu.
Is Part Of
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
2 March 2021
Subject
collective education
materialism
circumstance
milieu
reform school
juvenile delinquents
Gorky colony
Makarenko, Anton
Marx, Karl
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
en-GB
page start
145
page end
162
Source
Materialism and Politics, ed. by Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayşe Yuva, Cultural Inquiry, 20 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 145–62

References

  • Althusser, Louis, ‘Le Courant souterrain du matérialisme de la rencontre’, in Écrits philosophiques et politiques, I (1994), pp. 539–79
  • Althusser, Louis, The Future Lasts Forever: A Memoire, trans. by Richard Veasey (New York: New Press, 1993)
  • Althusser, Louis, Écrits philosophiques et politiques, ed. by François Matheron, 2 vols (Paris: Stock/IMEC, 1994–95)
  • Ball, Terence, ‘The Formation of Character: Mill’s “Ethology” Reconsidered’, Polity, 33.1 (2000), pp. 25–48 <https://doi.org/10.2307/3235459>
  • Capriles, René, Makarenko: O Nascimento da Pedagogia Socialista (São Paulo: Scipione, 1989)
  • Deligny, Fernand, Encontro Deligny Platform, ed. by Marlon Miguel and Mauricio Rocha (Rio de Janeiro: PUC-Rio) <https://deligny.jur.puc-rio.br/> [accessed 12 September 2020]
  • Deligny, Fernand, ‘Les Vagabonds Efficaces’ (1947), in Œuvres (Paris: L’Arachnéen, 2017), pp. 161–221
  • Engels, Friedrich, ‘Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft’, in MEW, IXX (1987), pp. 189–228
  • Engels, Friedrich, Anti-Dühring, in MECW, XXV (1987), pp. 1–309
  • Engels, Friedrich, ‘Principles of Communism’, in MECW, VI (1976), pp. 341–57
  • Engels, Friedrich, ‘Grundsätze des Kommunismus’, in MEW, IV (1977), pp. 361–80
  • Engels, Friedrich, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, in MECW, XXIV (1989), pp. 281–325
  • Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. by Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2005)
  • Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. by William Ellery Leonard (New York: Dover, 2008)
  • Lézine, Irène, A. S. Makarenko, Pédagogue soviétique (1888–1939) (Paris: PUF, 1954)
  • Lācis, Asja, ‘A Memoir’, South as State of Mind, 9 [Documenta 14#4] ([2017]) <https://www.documenta14.de/en/south/> [accessed 12 September 2020])
  • Makarenko, Anton Semyonovich, Poema Pedagógico (Spain: Omegalfa/ Biblioteca Libre, n.d.) <https://www.omegalfa.es/downloadfile.php?file=libros/poema-pedagogico.pdf> [accessed 12 September 2020]
  • Makarenko, Anton Semyonovich, Poème Pédagogique. En Trois Parties, 3 vols (Moscow: Éditions en Langues Étrangères, 1953)
  • Makarenko, Anton Semyonovich, The Road to Life (An Epic of Education) in Three Parts, 3 vols (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955)
  • Makarenko, Anton Semyonovich, ‘La Colonie de Poltava dite Colonel Gorki (1925)’, in L’Éducation dans les collectivités d’enfants (Paris: CEMEA, Les Éditions du Scarabée, 1956)
  • Makarenko, Anton Semyonovich, Педагогическая поэма [Pedagogical Poem] (2003) <http://makarenko-museum.ru/Classics/Makarenko/Makarenko_A_Pedagogic_Poem/Makarenko_Ped_poema_full_text.pdf> [accessed 12 September 2020]
  • Makarenko, Anton Semyonovich, O Poema Pedagógico (São Paulo: Editora 34, 2012)
  • Marx, Karl, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, ed. by Friedrich Engels, in MECW, V (1976), pp. 6–8
  • Marx, Karl, The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism, in MECW, IV (1975), pp. 3–211
  • Marx, Karl, ‘Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council’, in MECW, XX (1985), pp. 185–94
  • Marx, Karl, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy, in MECW, XXVIII (1986), pp. 49–537
  • Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in MECW, VI (1976), pp. 477–519
  • Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, Marx-Engels-Werke, 44 vols (Berlin: Dietz, 1956–2018) [= MEW]
  • Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, 50 vols (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975–2004) [= MECW]
  • Miguel, Marlon, À la marge et hors-champ: l’humain dans la pensée de Fernand Deligny (doctoral dissertation, Université Paris 8, 2016) <https://www.theses.fr/2016PA080020/document> [accessed 12 September 2020]
  • Miguel, Marlon, ‘Pour une pédagogie de la révolte: Fernand Deligny, de la solidarité avec les marginaux au perspectivisme’, in Cahiers du GRM, 15 (2019) <https://doi.org/10.4000/grm.1696>
  • Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882) <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27942/27942-pdf.pdf> [accessed 12 September 2020]
  • Owen, Robert, A New View of Society or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London: Cadell & Davies, 1813) <https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/owen/index.htm> [accessed 12 September 2020]
  • Rikowski, Glenn, ‘Marx and the Education of the Future’, Policy Futures in Education, 2.3–4 (2004) <https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2004.2.3.10>
  • Wallon, Henri, De l’acte à la pensée (Paris: Flammarion, 1942)

Cite as: Marlon Miguel, ‘The Product of Circumstances: Towards a Materialist and Situated Pedagogy’, in Materialism and Politics, ed. by Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayşe Yuva, Cultural Inquiry, 20 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 145-62 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-20_08>