Chapter 2: Anthropology Goes Inside: The New Educational Ethnography of Ethnicity and Gender

Abstract

hat has the discipline of anthropology contributed to the field of educational research? This is a daunting question that has been posed to us. It is also a question that invites some hubris. We try to avoid this temptation by narrowing our topic to highlight the growing influence of "insider" ethnic and gender research, especially on student identity and culture, within the U.S.-based anthropology of education. 1 We define such insider studies as those whose authors identify themselves principally with the ethnicity and/or gender of the students they study and who contribute ethnographic knowledge primarily for the benefit of such students. It should be clear that the review we develop here by no means constitutes an exhaustive survey of contemporary educational anthropology or even of educational ethnography more broadly. Rather, we present our own reading of this field within a field, our own sense of its most striking contributions and tensions, and, most important, our sense of the challenge and promise given by a new generation of socially committed researchers.Scholars of color, including what some now call "halfie" anthropologists, 2 are among the most visible and important insider ethnographers to have arrived on the intellectual scene. Their growing impact as researchers is a significant validation of me point that "insider" knowledge is important. To a certain extent, as we discuss later, the same can be said for feminist gender studies, in which women study women. "Insider" ethnographers become a species of border crosser. They construct insider ethnographic knowledge using conceptual tools from the academy, and they present this knowledge in a way that renders their subjects' actions and beliefs comprehensible and sympathetic to outsiders and insiders alike. We argue here that insider contributions are crucial in bringing to light the dynamics of culture that may lead to the design of more democratic educational arrangements and hence the attainment of greater equality of opportunity and achievement.

The Long March toward Revitalization: Developing Standpoint in Curriculum Studies

“…In the 1970s and 1980s, critical feminist scholars (see, e.g., Hartsock, 1998a) drew on the concept of proletarian standpoint to challenge both masculinist norms and regressive gender politics found in scientific research (Benton & Craib, 2001;Harding, 2004a). Since then, standpoint theory-along with feminist studies more broadly-has struggled with its own internal politics of difference surrounding issues of race, class, nationality, and sexuality, in which feminists of color critiqued earlier manifestations of standpoint theory for upholding the notion of a "universal woman," one that often neglected non-White, non-Western experiences (Foley, Levinson, & Hurtig, 2000;Hartsock, 1998a;Sandoval, 2000). In what follows, I sketch the outline of standpoint theory, one based on those theorists associated with more philosophically materialist conceptions (Benton & Craib, 2001), to argue the political and epistemological explanatory and analytic power that standpoint offers curriculum studies.…”

“…Howe (2009) further highlighted standpoint theory as an important challenge to issues associated with objectivist dogma found in positivist paradigms of scientific research, and Glasser and Smith (2008) noted that standpoint theory, as a manifestation of what they referred to as a "materialist accounts of gender" (p. 346), is used as one analytic framework for research on how the terms gender and sex are often conflated in educational scholarship. Foley et al (2000), despite mistakenly identifying standpoint theory as simply research coming from women's perspectives, ultimately upheld the novel contribution that standpoint makes to studies of gender in the field of educational anthropology. Fine (2006) offered strong objectivity as a guiding epistemological frame for critical scholarly research, and Sleeter (2000Sleeter ( -2001, in her review of research on teacher education and equity, explicitly equated standpoint theory with what she referred to as "emancipatory research" (p. 235).…”

“…These positivistic and erroneous attacks aside, there are some critical issues to address with how standpoint theory has been used in educational research. Henry (1996), Andre-Bechely (2005), and Foley et al (2000), for instance, despite their constructive use of standpoint theory, incorrectly framed it as mainly a feminist project that merely takes women's perspectives into account. Indeed, this applies to DeLissovoy's explanation of standpoint theory as well, despite his quite powerful analysis.…”

Imagining playwork using sociological perspectives from Mills, Foucault and Gordon

“…This is important to the ontological perspective adopted, which frames identity, including that of the researcher, as unstable, a self which is continually invented and reinvented (Foucault, 1993). In social anthropology this sensitivity to the power relationships inherent in the gaze of the researcher and its representation (or re-presentation) when written up, is known as a reflexive turn (Foley, Levinson & Hurtig, 2000;Geertz, 1973). One consequence of the custom of performing reflexive turns is an attempt to recognise the relationship between writer and reader, so what I present to you of my own reality, knowledge, understanding and experience should be balanced with your own proficiencies as playworkers, carers, pedagogues, students, academics and so forth.…”

Taking Relationships to School: Power, Authority and Identity Work in Young People's Dispositions to Schooling

“…Our approach saw it as crucial to understand how students themselves understood the 'problems'. This approach has been called 'advocacy ethnography' (Thomas, 1993;Foley et al, 2000;Willis & Trondman, 2002;Foley, 2002;Tedlock, 2003;Madison, 2005;Bailey, 2008;Smyth & McInerney, 2013). Our research sought to give legitimacy to the students' standpoint.…”