Anthropologies of Education

Despite international congresses and international journals, anthropologies of education differ significantly around the world. Linguistic barriers constrain the flow of ideas, which results in a vast amount of research on educational anthropology that is not published in English or is difficult for international readers to find. This volume responds to the call to attend to educational research outside the United States and to break out of “metropolitan provincialism.” A guide to the anthropologies and ethnographies of learning and schooling published in German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Slavic languages, Japanese, and English as a second language, show how scholars in Latin America, Japan, and elsewhere adapt European, American, and other approaches to create new traditions. As the contributors show, educators draw on different foundational research and different theoretical discussions. Thus, this global survey raises new questions and casts a new light on what has become a too-familiar discipline in the United States.

Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Michigan–Dearborn and a former editor of Anthropology and Education Quarterly. She is the author of Teaching Cultures: Knowledge for Teaching First Grade in France and the United States (Hampton 2002) and the editor of Local Meanings, Global Schooling: Anthropology and World Culture Theory (Palgrave Macmillan 2003). She is now Lecturer and Doctoral Advisor, Social Research Methodology Division, at UCLA.