E. P. Thompson: culture, history and education

Abstract

This article analyzes the contributions of E. P. Thompson concerning culture, history and education. It shows how he prioritized the interrelation between subjectivity and objectivity in the construction of the socio-historical process. Thompson undertook an analysis of the social and historical context, highlighting the importance and interference of "human agency" in the process of forming a society. For this reason, he strongly questioned the analysis of historical-social formations through the determinant relationship between economic base and superstructure. He considered cultural issues, values and meanings to be as important as economic and political issues. There was a dialectical relationship between cultural, political and economic. This Thompson perspective leads him to the construction of what he termed humanist materialism that intertwined the cultural, political and economic, an important posture that created a new way of thinking about history and the role of education in the contemporary world. Education should be considered a fundamental aspect of culture, therefore essential for the constitution of a project of society.