Humanity, Rights and De/Humanisation: A Practice Ontological Account

This chapter aims to deepen the theory of practice architectures (TPA) in terms of its affordances as a tool of ethical analysis. Drawing on the author’s doctoral research with young asylum-seeking students in Australia, it leans on TPA in the direction of human ontology and its implications for ethical practice. The chapter distils Kemmis’ (2019) notion of the self as a confluence of practices into the concept of human beings as ‘practice ontological’. On this basis, it explores ethical implications of what practically comprises de/humanisation, through (a) TPA’s account of praxis and the good, (b) Arendt’s philosophy of human rights and (c) Hallie’s account of the nature of cruelty. The chapter also addresses how three asylum-seeking young people—Janet, Aliah and Reza—explain how social exclusion impacts their human being. Further, it considers participation in local sites, through practices, in terms of how they politically comprise human-qua-human rights and the ways in which social exclusion orchestrates dehumanisation. The chapter concludes by first clarifying how its argument sharpens TPA as a tool for understanding how practices of de/humanisation happen and then by encouraging the contestation of practices that constrain the human being and becoming of all people through social or educational exclusion.