Educational Anthropology

A central theme in anthropoligical research is the socialization process. Yet, when applied to student life, the literature tends to neglect a frequent phenomena of student life: that students are uprooted from their home countries and resettled in culturally different areas. The contributors to School and Society provide a comparative assessment of how cultural knowledge relates to learning. They discuss qualitative research and national politics as they relate to cultural education; explore American and Japanese day care centers, Peruvian schools, and the effects of Asian refugees on American schools; and examine peer socialization among Iranians, Israeli adolescents living on Kibbutzim, and other ethnic and cultural groups. In a final analysis, the editors attend to the very conception of culture and the need for "cultural therapy": an understanding of one's own culture in order to study another's.

George and Louise Spindler are widely regarded as significant founders of the field of educational anthropology. This book brings together their best, most seminal work from the last 50 years--a time frame representing the developmental epoch of the field--and binds them together with a master commentary by George Spindler. Previously scattered over a wide range of publications, the articles collected here allow for a unified view of the Spindlers' work and of the development of the field. The book opens with an insightful Foreword by Henry T. Trueba, a fascinating piece titled "A Life With Anthropology and Education: Interviews With George and Louise Spindler by Ray McDermott and Frederick Erickson," and George Spindler's "Previews" essay which gives the reader a grasp of the whole to which the parts of the book contribute. These pieces frame and contextualize the work that follows. In Part I, Character Defining, many of the major themes of this volume are first encountered; this section sets the stage for what follows. Part II, Comparisons, focuses on comparison, which the Spindlers view as essential to an anthropological approach. Part III, Ethnography in Action, is devoted to the explicit exposition of ethnographic methods (though actually every piece in the book is a demonstration of method). Part IV, American Culture, moves from a traditional representation of American Culture to a processual analysis of how the culture is transmitted in real situations, and finally to an interpretation of right-wing actions that seem to constitute a reactive movement; the implications for education are pursued. Part V, Cultural Therapy , explains what cultural therapy is and how it may be applied to teachers and students. The volume concludes with Part VI, Orientation, Susan Parman's overview of the works of the Spindlers that spans their whole career.

This text for preservice and in-service education courses provides a brief, yet comprehensive overview of a number of non-western approaches to educational thought and practice.

Class, culture, and race have influenced the educational experiences of children for centuries. As the demography of the United States shifts to create an even more diverse society, socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic issues gain growing importance to schooling in America. This reference work explores the critical importance of these issues to American schooling and employs historical, anthropological, sociological, and theoretical perspectives to provide an overview.

Coming of Age in U.S. High Schools: Economic, Kinship, Religious, and Political Crosscurrents takes readers into the lives of urban and suburban adolescents for a close-up look at how they navigate the conflicting discourses and disciplinary practices of American cultural crosscurrents that flow through economic, kinship, religious, and political domains of American life. The book is distinctive in how it combines classic anthropological theory and contemporary post-anthropological perspectives into an innovative framework for understanding adolescent coming of age processes in U.S. public high schools. Coming of age is conceived as a dual process of community integration and identity formation. In this expansive multi-site ethnography of high school students representing diverse racial, ethnic, social class, gender, and sexual backgrounds, coming of age is described and analyzed as it unfolded in the classrooms and corridors of three high schools: a racially desegregated urban school; a suburban school serving middle class students; and a school with a majority of Black youth living in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods. The study goes well beyond issues of academic achievement to recognize and explore the function of U.S. high schools in smoothing adolescent transitions into the multiple domains of American life. Graduating seniors in the final analyses are heralded as absorbers of traditions, barometers of trends, and harbingers of change. Of interest to a broad range of researchers, teachers, and educational policymakers, this book is particularly relevant for scholars, faculty, and graduate students in social foundations of education, educational anthropology, secondary teacher education, qualitative educational research, and related fields.

Third in the series "Sociocultural Studies of Educational Policy Formation and Appropriation," this volume brings together scholars from North America, South America, and Europe to examine the relationship between ethnographic research and educational policy.

The aim of this book is to explore the current research into the ways in which Andean peoples create, transmit, maintain and transform their knowledge in culturally significant ways, and how processes of teaching and learning relate to these. The contributions, from eminent researchers in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and linguistics, include cross-disciplinary approaches, and cover a diverse geographic area from Ecuador to Peru, Bolivia and Northern Chile. The case studies reflect on the variously harmonious and conflictive relationships between knowledge, power, communicative media and cultural identities in Andean societies, from within local, national and global perspectives.

Leading African American scholars examine the often neglected cultural context in research and policy development in African American higher education in this collection of essays. Past research has most often been conducted by individuals unfamiliar with the historical and cultural considerations of specific ethnic groups. Therefore, the outcomes of research and the development of programs have been based on deficit models, that is, what is wrong with African Americans, or what they cannot achieve. The book examines the questions; what is the relationship between African Americans' culture and experiences, and how should their culture be integrated into research and practice? How do African Americans' intra- and interrelations differ in higher education? How does understanding African American culture as it relates to higher education research enhance policy-making and practice? What role do HBUCs play in African Americans' participation in higher education? What are the policy and practice implications of,past and current research? Scholars and practitioners of education, culture and race relations will find this collection informative and interesting.

College students and graduates have fond memories of campus events such as commencement, founder's days, convocations, and baccalaureate. These events, defined as rites of passage, secular ceremonies, or cultural performances, create a special feel to a campus remembered for years to come. Borrowing from interpretive anthropology, the author spotlights the following ideas: culture is revealed and forms of life are expressed through the actions and words of community members; human communities are dynamic, complex, and ever-changing environments revealed through analysis of cultural events; and commonplace rituals and ceremonies play a central role in the cultural work of human meaning. The purpose of the book is to explore campus culture as revealed through rituals and ceremonies.