In environmental education research, the classical debate between a normative and open foundation of environmental education (Bonnett 1999; Jensen & Schnack 1997), has also been framed in terms of Biesta's (2015) typology of functions of education and with an emphasis on the importance of subjectification in environmental education and against socialisation of education (e.g. Hasslöf & Malmberg 2014). In this call for open and subjectification-oriented environmental education the framing of education and its objectives aligns with the idea of a non-affirmative education and its Bildungsideal that imposes a an imperative of independence of the self (Aufforderung zur Selbstständigkeit) onto both learning and teaching as well as sees education as to relate to human practice (Benner 1987).

In this paper, I challenge these two assumptions and offer an alternative outlook on the role of environmental education that embraces socialization in education as an imperative from both an democratic and non-anthropocentric standpoint. Against the current educational and societal debate in European and particularly Swedish society, I argue that independence and the focus on subjectifiation is problematic given that a) a prevalent polarization of society and b) the danger of self-socialization under the disguise of subjectification (cf. Bengtsson et al. 2024a), that is students are affirming already norms and values that they associate with due to family rather than opening up for reconsidering social norms and values in educational processes. What, this paper argues for is a non-affirmative form of socialization through rituals in education.

The paper makes an argument for a re-engagement with rituals in education, highlighting their role in allowing for experiences of being-in-community (communitas) given the participants' performance of these rituals (Turner 1977). Contrary to the depiction of rituals in critical pedagogy as a form of socialization according to hegemonic norms and values (McLaren 1986, Jackson 1968, Giroux & Penna 1979), ritual theory (Turner 1977) is applied to a didactical analysis of processes in environmental education to highlight how the aesthetic dimension of rituals and their ability to produce at this experiential level a liminal space in which identities are rendered indeterminate. Accordingly, in rituals identities can be reconfigured and transitions among identities are facilitated (Turner 1977). Reconfiguration and transition of identities are here understood as open-ended in the sense that priori identities can be again identified with (seeming reproduction) but also abandoned (seeming subjectification).

Expanding this theoretical outlook, the paper makes also an argument for a non-anthropocentric perspective on rituals in environmental education, relating the discussion in this paper to the emergence topic of non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental education (Quinn et al. 2016, Affifi 2020, Kopnina 2012). Against the axiom of education as a primarily human practice, this paper makes an argument that in everyday rituals of education that "non-human" objects are ascribed a primary and at times sacred role that allows for an experience of being in community (non-only among human learners).

In sum, this paper aims to outline a didactical framework for understanding rituals a form of non-affirmative socialization in education, highlighting how objects, learners and teachers perform and experience community in rituals. The paper focuses here particularly on how rituals relate to the experience of community and how this experience relates to the experience of significance (Bildungssignifikanz). In addition, the paper focuses on how these two experiences allow for the transitions of identities, including particular social positions as well as hegemonic logics according to which identities are constituted (e.g. human learners vs. contents of education).

This paper consists of theoretical development intervention that re-introduces Tuner's (1977) ritual in the context of education research and develops it further into a didactical theory of rituals as a form of non-affirmative form of socialization in education. Turner's ritual theory has been addressed previously in critical pedagogy (McLaren 1986), yet in contrast to the broader critical pedagogical view of rituals (McLaren 1986, Jackson 1968, Giroux & Penna 1979), I do not reduce a theory of rituals to a sociological theory of education as a form of assuring social reproduction. Instead of incorporating Turner's theory into a broader Marxist critique of social production of identities in education as in McLaren, I turn to Turner in order to develop a theory of rituals of education as relating to a primarily aesthetic and performative aspect of education that is partially non-reducible to symbolic, discursive and cognitive constitution of identity (cf. Bengtsson 2022). In line with early educational research on the role of rituals in providing educational relief structures (Burnett 1976) highlights here the role of ceremonial rituals in schools that work as emotional relief structures and also highlights the possibility of production of liminal spaces as sites where identity is in limbo and at the same time the participation allows for a sense of community (Maloney 2000), the paper aims to provide conceptual insights in how teachers didactically engage with rituals to allow students to transform identities as well as to provide a sense of shared (learning) community. It will in this regard return to Turner's (1974) anthropological ritual theory to allow fora conception of teaching that can be described as both exclusionary and producing forms of community at the same time. Rituals in education are exclusionary in the sense that they require the participation in them as well as the acknowledgement of that which is sacred and abject in them. It is object-oriented (Bengtsson et al. 2024b) or aims to challenge the anthropocentric assumption of education as a primarily human practice, showing how objects par-take in and even are central to rituals as sacred items of ritual performances and requirements for experiences of community.

This paper aims to make a double contribution to the field of environmental education research, by a) providing a concrete didactical framework for understanding the roles of emotions (Manni et al. 2017, Håkansson & Östman 2019) and aesthetics in environmental education and teaching practices (Häggström 2020, Rautio 2013, Borg et al. 2014). Further, it aims here to challenge the normatively of seemingly "open" or "pluralist" environmental education that as the paper argues is based in a problematic notion of independence of human self in the Bildungs-oriented tradition that Biesta has labelled the subjectification-oriented function of education. The paper makes here the argument for the danger of solipsism in a political and philosophical perspective. With regards to the latter, subjectification can be seen to impose an impossible task onto the subject which is to constitute its identify discursively as separate and autonomous from discursive and social structure. It further can be seen an experience of failure, isolation, loneliness and existential failure. The paper offers here an entry point for reconsidering environmental education as not solely a symbolic and discursive practice but sees education rituals to embrace partially non-discursively and aesthetics-focused practices aiming at experiencing community and transitioning identities without focusing on providing a pre-determined identity.

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