Anthropology of Science and Education: Reflections on Sociology in high school under the idiom of co-production

Abstract

This paper aims at discussing the theoretical and methodological contribution of the Anthropology of Science to the understanding of the relationship between Basic School and scientifi c knowledge. For this, the paper discusses the case of the return of the compulsory teaching of Sociology in High School, which occurs since 2006, a process that is accompanied by the emergence of a “disciplinary community” around this science. Guided by an ethnographic perspective, we move from this normative perspective on the teaching of sociology and locate it in the school. Thus, the data discussed here are the result of fi eldwork conducted in two schools in the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre (RS), using the ethnographic method. The displacement provided by the point of view of the Anthropology of Science allows us to conceive the school not as a place of simple reproduction of knowledge defi ned externally to it, but as a place of creation of a unique knowledge, based on the daily practice and on the encounter of different agents that “co-produce” it.

Keywords: anthropology of science, teaching of sociology, ethnography.