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The Two Traditions in Educational Ethnography sociology and

anthropology compared

Sara Delamonta; Paul Atkinsonaa Department of Sociology, University College, Cardiff

To cite this Article Delamont, Sara and Atkinson, Paul(1980) 'The Two Traditions in Educational Ethnography: sociologyand anthropology compared', British Journal of Sociology of Education, 1: 2, 139 — 152

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British Journal of

Sociology

of Education, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1980

The Two Traditions in Educational Ethnography:

sociology and anthropology compared*

S AR A D E L A M O N T & P A U L A T K I N S O N , Department of Sociology, University

College, Cardiff

There is a vigorous, and possibly growing, research interest in the 'ethnography' of

schooling. That is, broadly speaking, research on and in educational institutions

based on participant observation and/or permanent recordings of everyday life in

naturally occurring settings. We welcome this interest (cf. Delamont, 1978) and

have attempted to make some contribution to it (e.g. Delamont, 1976; Atkinson,

1976; Atkinson & Delamont, 1977). We believe, however, th at there is some danger

that 'ethnographic' research may come to be taken as a self-justifying activity. In

other words, there is a potential—and very serious—pitfall involved in identifying

such research activity solely or primarily in terms of the method.

'Ethnographic' research approaches

do

have affinities with particu lar theoretical

schools or traditions. The rationale for participant observation, for example, or for

the analysis of naturally occurring talk, can be found within a number of so-called

'interpretative' sociologies. Ethnographic research reflects the epistemological com-

mitments or presuppositions of such theoretical perspectives. But there is not a hard-

and-fast, determinate relationship between ethnographic work on the one hand and

any particular theoretical position on the other. Ethnography can be conducted

under the auspices of a range of theories. It is in this sense that we wish to warn

against the premature identification of an 'ethnographic' approach which might lose

sight of its theoretical possibilities. Many of those who have adopted an ethnogra-

phic approach to educational research have done so in reaction to 'positivism',

'mindless em piricism' (or whatever epithets are invoked in the same vein). The re is a

present danger that some of them at least may find themselves contributing to a

novel variety of the same inadequate work: an em piricism mindless of its' theoretical

bases.

We wish to highlight this general theme by documenting how 'ethnography' can

serve several masters: in particular, we wish to contrast the use of such research

* This is a revised version of a paper presented to the SSRC/Open University conference on the

ethnography of schooling, St H ilda's College, Oxford, 10th-12th September 1979.


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14 0 S. Delamont P. Atkinson

procedures in the study of schools in Britain and the United States. To a

considerable extent this means that we are also led to reflect on differences between

the anthropology and the sociology of education. In the course of this exploration

we also hope to draw together much of the literature from the respective countries

and disciplinary fields. Our reading of the literature suggests very strongly that

despite having—apparently—common concerns, scholars in the respective countries,

and those who work in the two different disciplines, have little awareness of each

other's work. This underlines our basic point. T he 'ethnograph y' of schooling seems

to be going on within more or less watertight academic boundaries. Despite a

common approach to the conduct of inquiry there seems to be little in the way of

shared interests or theoretical perspectives. Having indicated the existence of

contrasting 'schools' and briefly characterised their content, we shall then go on to

describe their abiding concerns and attempt to relate them to more general national

and disciplinary preoccupations.

Our starting point is a more particular one, however. Although we have both

carried out ethnographic research in educational settings, and both originally

studied social anthropology, it is only recently that we have turned our attention

systematically to the anthropological tradition in educational research. We had

been content merely to incorporate a diffuse sympathy for qualitative research into

our sociological work. The occasion for our more recent reflection was the

development of an undergraduate course on the Sociology of Wales, in which we

were committed to a component on 'language, identity and education'. We turned

therefore to the literature on bilingualism, biculturalism and 'culture clash' in

schools. The language issue in Welsh education is as contentious as anything in

Montreal, or among any other of the North American ethnic minorities. It was to

the North American literature that we turned, therefore. (Not that such educational

issues are confined to North America, of course, and this was not our exclusive area

of interest.) There we found a large corpus of published ethnographies of education

which seems to be generally overlooked by British sociologists ofeducation [1].

There is an obvious and striking difference between British and American school

ethnography. Whereas the American research on schools and classrooms has been

conducted primarily by applied anthropologists, that in Britain has been done

overwhelmingly by researchers who see themselves as sociologists. It is noticeable

that several researchers now working as sociologists were trained as anthropologists,

or began work in anthropology departments. Both of the present authors fall into

the former category, while the classic Manchester-based studies of Hargreaves

(1967),

Lacey (1970) and Lam bart (1976) were undertaken in a joint departm ent of

sociology and anthropology. The Manchester department was, at the time of these

educational research projects, turning attention more generally to research on

contemporary British society (including industrial settings); several of the British

'community studies' discussed later in this paper also emanated from the Manches-

ter department. While there was a strong anthropological impetus and an

ethnographic approach to this work, it is apparent that the school studies are more

strongly sociological in flavour. Since these initial studies both Lacey and

Hargreaves have looked increasingly to sociological paradigms such as symbolic

interactionism. Similarly, several members of the Centre for Research in the

Educational Sciences at Edinburgh, including ourselves, had backgrounds in

anthropology. But the published work associated with CRE S shows a much stronger

sociological orientation (e.g. Stubbs & Delamont, 1976).

Where British research has looked to North America it has been to American


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Two Traditions in Educational Ethnography 141

sociology in general—especially symbolic interactionism and, more recently, ethno-

methodology [2]. The comparatively few empirical studies of schooling in these

traditions are referred to much more frequently than the more numerous anthropo-

logical studies. The small numbers of American and Canadian school ethnographers

who see themselves as sociologists actua lly look to Britain to find inspiration an d an

audience for their w ork [3]. Th e different perspectives and tradition s on either side

of the Atlantic are exemplified by our own experience vis-a-vis schooling in Wales.

When we searched the literature for ethnographic research on Welsh education, we

found only one observational study of a Welsh-speaking school. This had been

undertaken by an American fieldworker (Khleif, 1976), and he treated the Welsh

pupils precisely as if they were North American Indians. At the same time he paid

scant attention to British work on education.

This Welsh example therefore exemplifies the first of our themes. We shall go on

to examine the literature in more detail. In this next section we shall attempt to

establish that the Atlantic really does divide school ethnographers into differing

traditions. Our first task, then, must be to establish the truth of our claim that

school and classroom ethnography in America and Canada is predominantly

anthropological in orientation, while that in Britain is more sociological. To do this

we need to show four things: a relatively large amount of educational anthropology

in North America; a small amount of sociologically inspired work there; the absence

of educational anthropology in Britain; the sociological orientation of British

ethnographic work.

It seems incontrovertible that there is a great deal of American and Canadian

work in educational anthropology. With very little effort, in our preliminary survey

of the field we 'discovered' that there exist a specialist journal, numerous special

issues of other journ als, man y text-books and collections of pape rs an d several major

review articles, as well as numerous monographs and journal articles [4]. Although

there are many workers in the field, there are several major figures who have been

particularly influential in developing it, in sponsoring other researchers through

their edito rial w ork an d so on [5]. T he field is not w itho ut its critics: the collection

of papers edited by Weaver (1973) attests this. But it is undeniable that it is

remarkably homogeneous, characterised by a common style, tone and recurrent

concerns. It has been going strong for at least the last twenty years. It is therefore a

well-established and thriving research tradition: at least in terms of the quantity of

material published and the number of active researchers involved it dominates

North American educat ional ethnography.

In contrast to the abundance of anthropological work, there appears to be a

relative lack of fieldwork in schools and classrooms which is recognisably sociological

in style and orientation. That is, there are few studies which explicitly ally

themselves to sociology, with citations of sociological literature. It is hard for us to

prove a negative in this context, but the search procedures which generated the

volume of citations of anthropological work failed to produce anything like the same

amount of material . We doubt very much whether anyone could find enough

sociological work from North Am erica to m atch the list of ethn ogra phic research

given by Burnett (see below). The list of sociological school ethnographies we know

of is relatively small [6]. Even the once buoyant and seminal symbolic interactionist

tradition of studying occupa tional socialisation seems, in the 1970s, mo ribu nd an d

negative (see Atkinson, forthcoming). The lack of material available for review by

Lightfoot (1974, 1979) also lends support to our conclusion.

Several years ago one of us pointed out the lack of British research in the


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anthropological tradition, and an apparent lack of interest in the possibility of such

work (Delamont, 1975a, b). With the exception of one or two isolated individuals

(e.g. Driver, 1979) it is clear that, in the 'boo m ' of obse rvatio nal, eth nog rap hic

research, anthropological perspectives have had little direct influence. British

researchers have certainly not been influenced by the American work of this sort.

Nor does there appear to be much cross-fertilisation in the opposite direction. Only

two British scholars appear in any of the American collections or in the Burnett

(1974) bibliography for educational fieldwork (as opposed to work on child

socialisation). Musgrove (1973) is included for his work in Uganda, and Lacey

(1973) has a paper on his Hightown Grammar research. Even these two authors

have not drawn on the American research with which they were once anthologised

in their subsequently published work.

One of the most striking pieces of evidence in this context is provided by a survey

by Landman (1978) of applied anthropologists in Britain, carried out in 1975 and

1976.

Landman comments that because there is no professional organisation for

applied anthropologists in the United Kingdom, she had to find her target

population by combing publications and using respondents' personal networks. She

claims to have found nearly all those people who are working as 'applied

anthropologists' , and her total numbered sixty; of these ten were working on

education. Landman found that:

The specific label 'applied anthropologist' is generally avoided by them

because of its frequently negative connections in Britain today. '

Some of her respondents reported feelings of inferiority, because of the low status of

the applied field and its lack of theoretical development. Others acknowledged the

low status, bu t argu ed that this was the result of prejudice an d ha d no reason to feel

themselves in any way inferior. A minority felt that applied anthropology was a

legacy of colonialism and that it should therefore die away. Landman herself

thought that the subject had lost ground in Britain since the demise of the Colonial

Social Science Research Council and the lapse of the Applied Anthropology chairs,

readerships and lectureships at the London University Institute of Education and at

the London School of Economics. Of course, work on schooling does not have to be

designated 'applied' but our feeling is that if a search like Landman's can find only

ten people who are anthropologists working on education, then we can be confident

in our claim that the speciality is underdeveloped in the United Kingdom.

In contrast to the almost complete absence of anthropology, when we turn to

sociological work in Britain it is apparent that recent years have witnessed a good

many ethnograp hic studies [7], Th ey derive from a numb er of different theoretical

perspectives—although the theoretical underpinnings are not always explicitly

acknowledged. Some of this work has been inspired by American sociology—especi-

ally the Chicago school of symbolic interactionism. The cognate formal sociology of

Goffman has likewise been draw n on in the same overall program me of research.

The relative lack of

theoretical

development in this context, however, has moved

Hargreaves to inquire in a recent paper 'Whatever happened to symbolic

interactionism?' (Hargreaves, 1978). There has been fresh impetus to such observa-

tional work from the so-called 'new sociology of education', in which varieties of

phenomenological and Marxist analyses have been combined, with particular

emphasis on the organisation and reproduction of knowledge (Karabel & Halsey

(1977), indeed, have quite erroneously seen this tendency as the only inspiration for

ethnographic research in educational settings.) This British movement has appeared

in some few American studies (e.g. West, 1975). Th e ethnomethod ological approa ch


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Two Traditions in Educational Ethnography

14 3

has also led to number of sudies of naturally occurring interaction in educational

settings: this is, of course, true for the United States as well [8]. Although it is not,

strictly speaking, a work of educational ethnography , W illis' (1977) recently published

monograph has also occasioned considerable interest in ethnographic research. The

fact that Willis allies this approach to a Marxian analysis only serves to underline

the fact that ethnography is not a theoretical perspective in

itself,

but can be

employed in varying theoretical frameworks. (Although we cannot elaborate the

point here, we also believe that the attem pt to m arry ethnography a nd Marxism has

led Willis into some pitfalls w hen it comes to the interpretation of his data.)

In making these remarks we are not unaware of the fact that the American

literature contains several outstanding works of sociological research. Nor are we

confusing quality of research with quantity. (A thorough critical review of all the

relevant literature would be quite beyond th e scope of this essay.) Overall, however,

we believe that we have been able to indicate that sociologically oriented

ethnographic research is much more lively and active in Britain than it is in the

United States and Canada. In very general terms, then, it can be concluded that

'ethnography' in North America and in Britain is being carried out under the

auspices of rather different traditions. W hile the labels 'sociology' and 'anth ro-

pology' are not absolute they do indicate the different styles of the respective

traditions—their characteristic concerns, substantive, methodological and theoreti-

cal. We shall continue with a more detailed examination of these concerns.

We shall do so first by ou tlining some salient aspects of the American educa tional

anthropology. We begin by outlining the general substantive concerns of the

research. This discussion is based on the contents of the 157-page annotated

bibliography compiled by Burnett (1974). We have chosen this as a convenenient

summary of the field, and the parameters it suggests square with our wider reading

in the area in journals, text-books and edited collections. Table I shows the ethnic

and linguistic groups which have been studied inside the North American continent,

and Table II shows the other areas of the world which have been studied. It is clear

from Table I that the number of studies focused on an ethnic group bears no

relation to their proportionate place in the total population. Indians are numerically

insignificant, but have received the bulk of the research attention. Research

attention has been concentrated on groups who are a 'problem' in educational

terms,

because they are seen to be 'failing'. T he studies of Indians, Blacks, Chicanos

and Puerto-Ricans together make up the vast bulk of the published work.

Table II shows that the bulk of the work has been done in Africa, with lesser

amoun ts in Asia, and in the Pacific Islands and Australasia. The African studies are

TABLE I. Ethnic groups studied in the North American Continent

Ethn ic group No. of published studies

Indians (in USA and Can ada) 89

Wasps/Anglos 40

Negroes 38

Chicanos (in USA and Mexico) 23

Pue rto Ricans (in USA and Puerto-Rico) 14

Eskimo 8

Rur al Deprived (Ozarks, Appa lachians etc.) 6

Orientals (mainly Japane se) 5

Oth er (e.g. Italians) 2

Tot al no. cited 225


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144

S. Delamont


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Two Traditions in Educational Ethnography 14 5

groups. Despite the very visible presence of different ethnic groups in many British

schools, this has not been the subject of ethnographic school studies. Naturally

enough young British pupils from West Indian, Indian, Pakistani, Cypriot and other

' immigrant ' backgrounds appear among the dramatis personae of some studies. They

are not normally treated as the focus of the research, however. Of course, the

situations differ as between the two countries. Amongst other things there exist in

North America schools which are exclusively Indian, Eskimo and so on, and to that

extent, perhaps, may appear to offer more 'obvious' research potential.

If that aspect of Britain's colonialism has been overlooked, then it is also the case

that the so-called 'internal colonies' have received little explicit attention. The

peripheral areas of the 'Celtic fringe', for intance, have not attracted field research

to any extent. (As we pointed out in introducing this paper, the only substantial

study of a Welsh rural school is in the style of Am erican a nthropology .) I ndeed there

has been no significant British work on the ethno grap hy of rural schooling which, in

the American style, might investigate the school in the context of its rural

'community ' set t ing.

There has been an important research tradition in Britain which does span

'anthropology' and 'sociology'—and that is the collection of 'community studies'. At

one time a flourishing approach, this style of intensive study of small-scale (usually

rural) communities is now rather in abeyance. But here perhaps one might have

found something which approximated the concerns of the American anthropolo-

gists.

Remarkably, however, those authors who contributed to this

genre

devoted

precious little time to the discussion of schools and schooling as such. The topic is

not ignored altogether, we must admit. Emmett (1964), for example, in her account

of life in a rural Welsh community, points out that school was a distinctively

'English' enclave. In a similar vein Littlejohn (1963), in his study in the Scottish

border country, comments on attitudes to schooling on the part of farmers and other

members of the local population. He comments on the extent to which the school

at tempted to inculcate 'middle class ' language and manners. While these and

similar community studies include some remarks on local schools as part of their

'holistic' ethnographic accounts, there is little or no evidence that the schools

themselves were ever the topic of systematic observation and inquiry. Unique in this

respect among European community studies appears to be that of Wylie (1957).

This is a study of a village in southern France which included some specific

attention to education in the ethnographic data collection. Interestingly enough, the

author was an American.

If we were to characterise the British ma terial, the n, in terms of the sort of schools

studied, their location and so on, we would be forced to conclude that it is

predominantly urban in character. By and large secondary schooling has predomi-

nated over other segments of the education system. Although by no means

homogeneous in their subject-matter, then, the British studies of schooling

concentrate on a fairly consistent and limited range of types of schooling. While

neither the British nor American traditions are uniform, they do have distinctive

emphases, then. (They also have blind-spots in common—such as a neglect of

gender as an organising theme; but this is hardly restricted to school ethnographies.)

The relative homogeneity of the American research certainly does not mirror

cultural and geographical uniformity in the schools and cultures which have been

investigated. There is a world of difference—on the surface at any rate—between,

say, the school in a remote K wakiutl village on the northwe st Pacific coast (W olcott,

1967) and one catering for Puerto Rican adolescents in Chicago (Burnett, 1973).


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What unites so much of this apparently diverse research is a consistent preoccupa-

tion with issues of cultural variation and 'culture clash'. This indeed is a theme of

much American educational writing, and it is to this more general theme that we

now turn.

Over the past ten years or so there has been considerable interest in ideas about

'multiculturalism', 'biculturalism', 'bilingualism', 'bidialectism' and similar notions,

all connoting a preoccupation with cultural pluralism and a stance of cultural

relativism. This enthusiasm has followed the widespread rejection of the ideas

implicit in those now infamous calls for assimilation of all ethnic and cultural

groups into mainstream WA SP Am erican culture (e.g. Glaser & Mo ynih an, 1954).

In contrast there have been celebrations of all kinds of non-W ASP cultures (see, e.g.

Dworkin & Dworkin, 1976). In education this has led to a flood of books and special

issues of jou rna ls on cultu ral plu ralism [9]. Th e calls for Spanish lang uag e schools

for Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, for example, and the resulting struggles for

political and linguistic control of the schools have produced a climate of interest in

which anthropological studies celebrating Amish, Cherokee and Ijaw culture are

likely to be read and used as texts in teacher training.

The American ethnographies thus have this in common. They serve to document

one of two things. Either they celebrate the cultural uniqueness of the researcher's

chosen setting, or they go on to stress the 'clash' between th at culture a nd that of the

school, which is representative of white urban middle-class America. The school

therefore is portrayed (implicity or explicitly) as an arena where the diverse cultural

backgrounds and assumptions of teachers and ta ught , of school and com mu nity

impinge on one another and conflict.

If the anthropological perspective is in harmony with the American obsession

with cultural pluralism, educational interests are also congruent with the more

general concerns of American anthropology. The American tradition of cultural

anthropology, in contrast to British social anthropology, has always accepted, and

indeed welcomed, considerable influence from other social sciences—not least from

social psychology. The sub-discipline of 'culture and personality' studies has a long

and respectable history in American anthropology. The subject has therefore been

committed to the investigation of socialisation and enculturation. Childrearing, for

example, has for long held ac en tra l p lace in the anthropological literature (see, e.g.

Wilbert, 1976).

In contrast, British anthropologists have tended to hold themselves

aloof,

and to

regard such psychological influences with some suspicion. British scholarship has

fostered a more austere outlook, emphasising the structural-functional or structural-

ist modes of analysis. With one or two exceptions, British social anthropologists have

paid little explicit attention to issues of education and socialisation (except in so far

as they are implied in issues of kinship and marriage, rituals of the life-cycle, descent

and inheritance and so on). The one collection of papers on socialisation (Mayer,

1970) quite clearly includes a number of 'afterthought' essays. It is perhaps

indicative of the relative standing of such topics that several of the papers are also

contributed by the female halves of researcher couples. It seems to be 'women's

work'. (In making this point we recognise the sexual division of labour; we do not

aim to endorse it.) In short, then, whereas American anthropologists can study

education without appearing to abandon the confines of their 'pure' discipline, the

subject in Britain is much less accommodating to such work. Furthermore, as we

have noted already, there has been a far greater willingness to endorse an 'applied'


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Two Traditions in Educational Ethnography

14 7

role for the subject in the United States and Canada. Applied anthropology had

been viewed askance in Britain and has very few practitioners [10].

As we have indicated, the North American anthropologists t reat as problematic

the juxtaposition and incongruence of cultures, and the school as an arena for such

conflict. On the other hand, the actual process of schooling tends to be glossed over.

That is, the organisation and day-to-day accomplishment of social life in the schools

and classrooms remains implicit. There is little or no systematic ethnographic

material on the classrooms themselves, and such data that are presented tend to be

rather scrappy and anecdotal. Burnett (1973) is rare in having an avowed aim of

analysing critical events in the classroom. But the underlying assumption—that of

culture clash between Puerto Rican youngsters and an Anglo school—dominates the

analysis, while never being explicitly addressed or questioned itself. Remarkably ,

Burnett, like other authors in the same style, makes no reference to earlier Chicago-

school ethnographies. Howard Becker and Blanche Geer might never have existed

for all the use she makes of their work.

As we say, Burne tt is unusua l in this context in referring explicitly to the research

methods employed. The ethnographer 's techniques usual ly remain implici t in the

published works of educational anthropologists. It is often far from clear what they

did and why they did it . It may not even be evident to the reader how long the

researcher was in the field, what roles were adopted, or how data were collected and

recorded. Most of the studies are also remarkably lacking in theory. This point has

been made most forcefully by Foster (1972) in a review of the major collection

edited by Wax et al. (1971). Foster launched a vigorous attack on the whole sub-

discipline, arguin g that it was charac terised by a relative absence of conc eptua l

advance and significant fieldwork , and that a large proportion of the authors were

afflicted w ith an unw arra ntab ly roma ntic view— or, as he puts it , with sublim inal

Rousseauianism .

If we turn now to the sociological versions of 'ethnography', with particular

reference to British work, then a rather different picture emerges. In contrast to the

anthropological literature we have just described, there app ears to be a higher level

of theoretical and methodological self-awareness. It clearly derives from a number of

theoretical developments in sociology and th e ethnog raph y is informed by the m

(al though, as we warned at-the beginning of this paper, there does appear to be

some danger of the research coming adrift from the theoretical moorings). It is not

our purpose in this brief review to outline and evaluate all the theoretical

undercurrents. A useful summary is provided by Woods & Hammersley (1977), in

their editorial introduction. They sketch out how various types of anti-positivistic

and 'interpretative' approach became incorporated into the British sociology of

education: symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology and so on.

In some contexts they were mixed with other more structurally based perspectives,

including the Marxist, in the heady brew normally referred to as the 'new sociology

of educat ion' . Woods & Hamm ersley co mm ent:

Central to this 'new approach' was a focus on teacher and pupil

experiences as revealed in teachers' and pupils' own accounts, their

interpretations and feelings merging, changing, developing, converging,

blurrin g, clarifying and so on in the course of everyday life in schools. This

carried implications for the significance of the impact of schooling, for

example, on the pupil 's conception of self and his construction of identity

within the society of which he is part.

Thus the recurrent preoccupation of the British sociologists has been the


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148 S. Delamont P. Atkinson

organisation and negotiation of everyday life in schools and classrooms. Although

the American literature is rather sparse, sociological research on both sides of the

Atlantic draws on common sources and inspiration—a great deal of it American in

origin. Whereas the anthropologists tend to treat the process of schooling as

unproblematic, the sociological approach has treated that process as the topic of

research in its own right. Hence the sociologists are, to that extent, more

sophisticated in their analyses of schooling as such. The anthropologists would do

well to adopt this perspective, at least in part: their work would benefit enormously

from the inclusion of more detailed and systematic ethnography of schooling, from

the sort of 'micro-ethnographic' research presently current in some sociological

circles.

At the same time there is little room for complacency on the other side. The

sociologists' apparent ignorance or disregard of the anthropological literature is

hardly praiseworthy. We find it regrettable that those bodies of work should be

developing in almost total isolation. The anthropologists may well have something

to contribute. Whatever their theoretical, methodological, and indeed ideological

shortcomings, they do display the varieties of cultural setting in which schooling is

conducted. As we have indicated already, we find the present range of studies

unnecessarily and regrettably limited. There has been little enough attention paid to

the schooling of minority groups, or in rural and peripheral regions. There has,

perhaps, been a disproportionate amount of attention paid to the educational

experiences of urban working-class children in secondary schools. Cer tainly they a re

important, but they are not the be-all and end-all. The contrast between the

anthropology from the United States and the sociology of the United Kingdom

reflects an abiding difference: between a preoccupation with race and culture on the

one hand, and with social class on the other. At the same time, the anthropologists

have much to teach on the location of schools within cultural milieux. The

sensitivity of British sociologists to the negotiation of everyday life within schools

and classrooms has tended to obscure relationships between schooling and local

culture, local social structure and so on (rather than the very broadest categories of

social structure ).

In conclusion, therefore, we wish to commend to researchers in the two academic

disciplines in the different countries a g reater awareness of each other. We believe

that each body of research would benefit greatly thereby. We hope that the

bibliographic material embodied in this paper, as well as the arguments we have

put forward, will contribute to this rapprochement. We have also attempted to

demonstrate how 'ethnographic' research can be conducted under the auspices of

different theories and traditions, and hence cannot in and of itself subs titute for

theory as such.

Correspondence:

Sara Delamont & Paul Atkinson, Department of Sociology, Universi-

ty.College, PO Box 78, Cardiff CF1 1XL, Wales.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

[1] We are grateful to our colleagues in the Sociology of Wales teaching team for inspiring us to

struggle with the literature discussed. We are also grateful to Shelagh Pollard and her assistants on

the Inter-Library Loan desk at University College, Cardiff's Arts and Social Science Library who

rustled up most of the studies we used.

[2] British ethnographers cite the Chicago school symbolic interactionists (e.g. Becker

et al.,

1961;


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Two Traditions in Educational Ethnography 14 9

Becker et al., 1968) and their imitators (e.g. Werthman, 1963) or the work of Sacks (e.g. 1972),

Garfinkel (1967) and Aaron Cicourel (e.g. 1968).

[3] This is noticeable in the special issue of

Interchange

(1976) on school observation, and the way in

which over the last ten years Louis Smith, Ann and Harold Berlak, Robert Stebbins and others

have found more interested audiences in the United Kingdom than at home.

[4] The specialist journal is the

Anthropology an d Education Quarterly,

which has reached Volum e 10. Ther e

are special issues on Anthropology and Education of Human Organization (Vol. 27, No. 1, 1968 and

Vol. 34, No. 2, 1975), Journal of Research an d Development in Education (Vol. 9, N o. 4, 1976), School

Review (Vol. 79, No. 1, 1970) and Youth an d Society (Vol. 8, No. 4, 1977).

There are text-books by Kneller (1965) and Spindler (1955, 1963), and collections of papers by

Calhoun & Ianni (1976), Chilcott

et al.

(1968), Fischer (1970), Gearing & Sangree (1979), Gruber

(1961), Holmes (1967), Ianni & Storey (1973), Kimball & Burnett (1973), Lindquist (1970),

Midd leton (1976), Roberts & Akinsanya (1976), Spindle r (1974), W ax

et al.

(1971) and Weaver

(1973).

Bibliographies include Burnett (1974), Lindquist (1971) and Storey (1971).

Review articles of the state of the field include Brameld & Sullivan (1961), Shunk & Goldstein

(1964), Wolcott (1967) and Sindell (1969) in Review of Educational Research, La Belle (1972) in

Teachers College

Record, Foley (1977) and Ma sema nn (1976) in

Comparative Education Review,

and

Gmelch & Zenner (1978) in

Urban Anthropology.

[5] Foremost among such arbiters of fashion are George and Louise Spindler, who are the general

editors of the series

Case Studies in Education and Culture

(Holt , Rinehart & Winston). There are

seventeen titles in this series: they include eight books in North America and Mexico (three Indian

groups, two Negro schools, one Eskimo group; The Amish, and one on school principals); five books

on Africa (Kpelle, Sisala, Ijaw, Kanuri and Neoni); and one each on the Philippines, Borneo,

Germany and Japan. Murray and Rosalind Wax enjoy a similar position as senior authors and

editors in the field.

[6] We w ould include Stinchco mbe (1964), Jackso n (1968), Smith & Geoffrey (1968), Rist (1970),

Cusick (1973), Stebbins (1975), Martin (1976), Berlak

et al.

(1976) and the work of Silvers, West &

Heap (1975) published in

Interchange.

[7] The re are sociological ethnographers represented in C han an & Delam ont (1975), Stub bs &

Delamo nt (1976), Hammersley & Woods (1976), Woods & Ham mersley (1977). At an individual

level there a re sociological ethno graphies arou nd by Ball (1978), Bellaby (1977), Denscombe (1978),

Hannan (1978), Andy Hargreaves (1977), David Hargreaves et al. (1975), King (1978), Willis (1977)

and Woods (1979).

[8] E.g. Cicourel

et al.

(1974), McHoul (1978), Mehan (1978) and Payne (1976). Torode (1976) takes a

not dissimilar—although idiosyncratic—view.

[9] A cursory look at

Current Contents

for the last four years revealed special issues of the following

journals : Compare (Vol. 8, No. 1, 1978); Education

and

Urban Society (Vol. 10, No. 3, 1978); Educational

Leadership (Vol. 33, No. 3, 1975); Educational Research Quarterly (Vol. 2, No. 4, 1978);

Eng lish Journal

(Vol. 66, No. 3, 1977); Florida FL Reporter (Vol. 7, No. 1, 1969); Human Organization (Vol. 29, No. 1,

1970); Interchange (Vol. 9, No. 1, 1979); International Review of Education (Vol. 21, No. 3, 1975); Journal

of Research and Development in Education (Vo l. 11 , No. 1, 1977); Journal of Social Issues (Vol. 33 , No. 4,

1977); Th e Journal of Teacher Education (Vol. 28, No. 3, 1977); Language Arts (Vol. 33, No. 3, 1976);

Linguistics

(No. 198, Oc t. 15, 1977);

Th e Personnel a nd Guidance Journal

(Vol. 55, No. 7, 1977);

Prospects

(Vol. 6, No. 3, 1976); and

Social Problems

(Vol. 23, No. 5, 1976).

[10] Th e collection edited by Jam es W atson (1977) may be the begin ning of a change of direction h ere.

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