Anthropological Turn: Preconditions, Latent Traditions, and Discourses. The third part: Discourses

Abstract

This article presents the concluding part of the series The Anthropological Turn: Premises, Latent Traditions, and Discourses1 2. The concept of the anthropological turn is examined within the frameworks of cultural-analytical and transdisciplinary approaches, where anthropology is regarded as a crucial component of contemporary social knowledge. It is essential to distinguish between anthropological knowledge, which exists in the interdisciplinary realm of social and human sciences, and anthropology, which encompasses a wide range of research fields — including biological, sociocultural, medical, pedagogical, and others. The paper illustrates that the latent development of anthropological, cultural-psychological, and humanistic ideas occurred predominantly within the interdisciplinary space of diffuse and spontaneously evolving social knowledge, especially under the pressure of authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies. In Russia, anthropological and humanistic discourses have primarily advanced within the field of pedagogy. Even when officially suppressed, intellectual movements (such as the teaching of philosophy in the 1850s or the development of pedology in the mid-1930s) continued to evolve under different names within related disciplines. Pedagogical anthropology has served as a foundation for the development of a synthetic understanding of human nature, integrating anthropological, cultural-psychological, and humanistic streams. The characteristics of the Russian anthropological tradition include its latent nature and pedagogical orientation. Today, the explication of latent traditions and hidden discourses provides additional prerequisites for the realization of the anthropological turn in both the education system and everyday life practices.