A Companion to the Anthropology of Education

by Bradley A. Levinson, Mica Pollock

A Companion to the Anthropology of Education presents a comprehensive and state-of-the-art overview of the field, exploring the social and cultural dimension of educational processes in both formal and nonformal settings.

Genres: Anthropology

592 pages, Hardcover

First published March 29, 2011

About the author

My interests include student culture and identity formation at the secondary level, in Mexico and the United States; civic and citizenship education for democracy, especially in Latin America; the sociocultural practice of policy formation and implementation; critical social theories in education; transnational migration and education; and ethnographic research methods.

Bradley A. Levinson is a native of Los Angeles, California, and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1984. He taught immigrant students at a middle school in San Diego for 2 years and then completed a doctorate in Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, in 1993. His dissertation research explored the construction of national identity, equality, and civic solidarity at a Mexican secundaria. Over the next several years, he completed follow-up research on Mexican youth identity formation, and eventually published his book, We Are All Equal: Student Culture and Identity at a Mexican Secondary School, 1988-1998 (2001, Duke University Press; translated and published as Todos somos iguales, 2002, Editorial Santillana, Mexico City).
Currently, Dr. Levinson is Professor of Education at Indiana University, with Adjunct or Affiliate appointments inAnthropology, Latino Studies, and Latin American Studies. He is also a proud father of 2 bilingual daughters, 6 and 8 years old (in 2011). Levinson specializes in ethnographic studies of youth and student culture, and reform processes, in secondary schooling; civic and citizenship education for democracy; the culture and politics of educational policymaking; and transnational migration and education. He has edited or co-edited a series of books, including: The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice (1996, SUNY Press); Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education (2000, Rowman and Littlefield), Policy as Practice: Toward a Comparative Sociocultural Analysis of Educational Policy (2001, Ablex), Reimagining Civic Education: How Diverse Societies Form Democratic Citizens (2007, Rowman and Littlefield) and Advancing Democracy through Education? U.S. Influence Abroad and Domestic Practices (2008, Information Age Publishing), A Companion to the Anthropology of Education (2011, Wiley-Blackwell), andBeyond Critique: Exploring Critical Social Theories and Education (2011, Paradigm). From 1999-2007, Dr. Levinson conducted team research on the integration of Latino newcomers to the state of Indiana (see research). He has also published on civic education in the International Journal of Educational Development, Theory and Research in Social Education, The Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, and Anthropology and Education Quarterly, as well as in numerous books and Spanish-language publications. Dr. Levinson was a founding editor of the Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, and for the academic year 2007-08, he held a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship, to study “democratic transition and civic education reform in Mexico.” He was on sabbatical for 2011-2012, serving as a Guest Professor at the Danish Pedagogical University-Aarhus University, Denmark, from Feb. 1-June 30, 2012.

Reviews

[Dusty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, this must be an impossible book to market. If you're a professional anthropologist of education or educational anthropologist (don't be fooled: the two phrases are not exactly interchangeable), you probably don't have much use for a "companion" such as this except, perhaps, to keep tabs on what your friends in the field are writing. And if you're either a casual reader or an educator looking for ways to improve your craft, you probably wouldn't come within a mile of this collection of rather dense essays about the work being done in an admittedly marginal field both of education and anthropology.

So the book caters to the in-betweens, that is, students who're enrolled in an Anthropology of Education course. As one of those, I have just a few reflections: First, at $160 (or more), the book is just way too expensive. Good thing the University of Texas library had an electronic copy I could sponge, or this review would've been ugly. I don't think I would've ever overcome spending that kind of money for a 600-page anthology of essays. Unbelievable. Second, although they vary in quality, the essays collected here have clearly been vetted and edited well; they cover a vast terrain without losing touch with one another and, more importantly, they're not too redundant. Sure, lots of mentions of Spindler & Wife, Margaret Mead, and Bourdieau, but that's to be expected. Third, and lastly, at its heart the book is little more than a "state of the field" display, with various field leaders sounding in their opinions on where the discipline has been, where it is presently, and where it should go. As such, it's an enlightening lesson in history and context... but not such a great research tool. Now that I'm working on an actual paper for the Anthro/Ed course, I find the book's best help is its copious bibliographies.

I know it isn't easy to edit a collection of so many chapters on so many related topics, and I know it isn't easy to market a book for a limited audience within what it already a rather small subfield. So I'll be generous: four stars.