Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
The anthropological study of institutionalized learning, and of formal education systems, usually focuses on rather different questions, often related to *power. This is true, for instance, of Bourdieu’s work on French education; his models emphasize the link between economic and *cultural capital, and the role of the educational system in reproducing *class domination. This work might well be classified as ‘sociology of education’, but many sociologists have in fact adopted ethnographic approaches in the study of formal schooling. Willis (1977), for instance, analyses in a very anthropological way the relationship in England between school-based working-class youth culture and shop-floor culture. He attempts to explain the (seemingly wilful) process whereby working-class boys end up in working-class jobs.
Recent anthropological work has examined the role of mass education in the historical development of national (and other) identities, and the implications of this for authority and power. For example, Eickelman has explored the growth of higher education in the Arab world, suggesting that this has a significant impact on religious and national identities (Eickelman 1992). More generally, the development of formal educational systems is seen to have played a key role in the historical expansion of *nationalism (Gellner 1983).
CHARLES STAFFORD
See also: childhood, cognition, literacy, socialization
Further reading
Akinnaso, F. (1992) ‘Schooling, Language and Knowledge in Literate and Non Literate Societies’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 34:68–109
Borofsky, R. (1987) Making History: Pukapukan and Anthropological Constructions of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
——and J.Passeron (1990 [1977]) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, London: Sage Publications
Coy, M.
(1989) Anthropological Perspectives on Apprenticeship, New York: SUNY Press
Eickelman, D. (1992) ‘Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab Societies’, American Ethnologist, 19 (4):643–55
Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell
Godelier, M. (1986) The Making of Great Men: Male Domination and Power among the New Guinea Baruya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Khatib-Chahidi, J. (1981) ‘Sexual Prohibitions, Shared Space and Fictive Marriages in Shi’ite Iran’ in S. Ardener (ed.) Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps, London: Croom Helm
Lave, J. (1988) Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
——and E.Wenger (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Richards, A. (1982 [1956]) Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia, London: Routledge
Spindler, G.D. (1987) Education and Cultural Process 2nd edn, Prospect Heights: Waveland Press
Street, B. (ed.) (1993) Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Toren, C. (1990) Making Sense of Hierarchy: Cognition as Social Process in Fiji, London: The Athlone Press
Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs, Aldershot: Gower
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