ABSTRACT
The changing nature of ethnography in educational settings in the 20th and 21st centuries is a product of transforming globalized societies and the local contexts and situations in which schools operate. Ethnographic studies of schooling require complex theoretical, comparative, and historical treatment that places analyses beyond classroom walls. In this chapter I argue that the question is not “Does ethnography need to be integrated into or combined with other kinds of social science research that are better suited to studying whole institutional domains, national societies, and global forces?” (Hammersley, 2006, p. 7), but rather, “How might this be done?” Michael Agar (1996) echoes the need for “ethnography reconstructed” in the face of the contradictions and complexities of global, national, and historical contexts:
One no longer studies isolated, cradle-to-grave communities; one studies citizens and immigrants in turbulent states that are part of the world. One no longer reports fixed traditions; one deals with ongoing processes of change. One no longer limits the research to meanings and contexts; one includes the power that holds those meanings and contexts in place. Groups no longer have clear edges, and people present multiple and often conflicting identities, some of them rooted outside the community.
