ABSTRACT
The anthropological study of institutionalized learning, and of formal education systems, usually focuses on rather different questions, often related to *power. This is true, for instance, of Bourdieu’s work on French education; his models emphasize the link between economic and *cultural capital, and the role of the educational system in reproducing *class domination. This work might well be classified as ‘sociology of education’, but many sociologists have in fact adopted ethnographic approaches in the study of formal schooling. Willis (1977), for instance, analyses in a very anthropological way the relationship in England between school-based working-class youth culture and shop-floor culture. He attempts to explain the (seemingly wilful) process whereby working-class boys end up in working-class jobs.
