Linguistic anthropology of education: An Introduction

Stanton Wortham, University of Pennsylvania

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Postprint version. Published in Linguistic Anthropology of Education, edited by Stanton Wortham and Betsy Rymes (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), pages 1-30.

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Abstract

In "Resuscitating the Place of Educational Discourse in Anthropology," Bradley Levinson (1999) argues that cultural anthropology could benefit from research on education and that education could benefit from research on anthropology as well. He describes how contemporary cultural anthropologists, following a "cultural studies" focus on media, have not attended sufficiently to the roles schools play in cultural production and reproduction. He makes a strong case that topics of central interest to cultural anthropologists - like globalization, post-coloniality, and the cultural production of identity, could be illuminated by research on educational contexts and processes.