2015 Volume 25 Issue 1 Pages 1_60-69
This study discusses pollution and pollution education from the perspective of educational anthropology. In fact, pollution has not been a main issue in educational anthropology before. However recent studies on World War Ⅱ, earthquakes, and pollutions have been published, which has resulted from a change in the understanding of the concept ‘political’ in educational anthropology.
First, we examine the development of postwar pedagogy and postwar educational anthropology in Japan. Through this examination we find that immediately after World War Ⅱ, Japanese educational researchers, especially in educational anthropology, examined Japanese national politics or political thoughts influenced by those of the United States and the ex-Soviet Union thinkers. They regarded the modernization of Japanese education and society as an urgent challenge during that time, and thus they were unable to work well with the problems inherent in the modernization, including pollution. Since the late 1980s, researchers have been forced to tackle the problems inherent in the modernization, especially in educational anthropology, as they have finally come to conduct clinical investigations into modern education and society in Japan with full consciousness of the historical, social, and political contexts. From the perspective of recent educational anthropology, we know now that we can regard pollution education as “calling human beings and modern education into question”.
