Ethnography and Education in the South : The Emergence of Alternative Schools of Thinking

This book presents results of educational ethnographies carried out in non- hegemonic academies situated in the South. The chapters bring out methodological and theoretical contributions and offer the possibility to discuss tensions between universalizable and local ways of knowing and the emergence of alternative schools of ethnographic thinking. The term ‘South’ transcends geographical location to refer allegorically to the generation of situated knowledge and experience, and to original ways of producing knowledge that show how social theories about the modern world from non- hegemonic academies are equal in intellectual rigour and often of greater political relevance to our changing world. The chapters take education in an ample sense considering that educational processes extrapolate the school context and transcend institutionalised forms. The various singularities of the educational ethnographies exposed here try to make explicit aspects of this tension between universalizable and local ways of knowing. They reach issues of the relationship of collective knowledge with learning, cognition, socialization, transmission of culture, languages and corporeality. They also analyse local educational practices in scenarios of intense political conflict where issues such as poverty, migration, gender, ethnicity, memory, territory, and academic training intersect. The book brings to light the range of contributions that emerged since the last decade of the twentieth century and stimulates the understanding of the breadth and extension of Ethnography and Education. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnography and Education.