Education and Identity in Rural France
The Politics of Schooling

In an ethnographic study of a remote community in the Auvergne, Dr Reed-Danahay challenges conventional views about the French school system.

Deborah Reed-Danahay (Author)

9780521616171, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 18 November 2004

256 pages, 9 b/w illus. 2 maps 2 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.388 kg

"Reed-Danahay presents a first-rate description of the local kinship system, domestic organization and socialization practices." David S. Moyer, Anthropologica

Drawing on an ethnographic study of a remote farming community in the Auvergne, Dr Reed-Danahay challenges conventional views about the operation of the French school system. She demonstrates how parents and children subvert and resist the ideological messages of the teachers, and describes the ways in which a sense of local difference is sustained and valued, through a complex interplay of schooling and family life. This book explores the role played by history, identity, and power in local responses to a national institution. A significant contribution to the anthropology of education, this book offers fresh insights into the ways in which French culture is transmitted to the coming generation. Dr Reed-Danahay also provides lucid and critical discussions of sociological theories on education, including those of Bourdieu.

l. Introduction: journey to Lavialle
2. Theoretical orientations: schooling, families, and power
3. Cultural identity and social practice
4.Les notres: families and farms
5. From child to adult
6. Schooling the Laviallois: historical perspectives
7. Families and schooling
8. The politics of schooling
9. Everyday life at school
l0. Conclusions: persistence, resistance, and co-existence

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]