ABSTRACT
Critical ethnography is currently at a crossroads. What was originally seen as a productive synthesis of ideas is now unraveling, because the two perspectives that were united had different assumptions. The two perspectives were brought together because each offered a solution to a perceived weakness in the other. Critical theory was largely philosophical and lacked a methodology to allow it to expand into the social sciences. Interpretive ethnography, in contrast, was beleaguered by charges of relativism and relegated to the status of a “micro” theory. It was seen by many as useful at the level of social interaction but lacking a theoretical base to also be a “macro” institutional and sociocultural approach. Both perspectives shared a leftist orientation and a need for what the other could offer. The synthesis was first seen as creating a “new”sociology of education, which gave way to “critical ethnography”as educational anthropology joined the synthesis. In this chapter, I will explore the history and current status of critique in educational ethnography. It is a story of mutual benefit and of heady and provocative accomplishments, all built on a difference that although repeatedly spoken, could not be directly addressed without dissolving the union. The difference is critical theory’s claims to “objective reality and its determinate representation” (Hollinger, 1994, p. 81; i.e., there is a truth that can be definitively known and that specifies fixed relationships between things) and interpretive ethnography’s claim that all knowledge, including critical theory, is socially constructed. The former accepted the latter’s view that ideas emerge from specific contexts, or “situated knowledge” as referred to byMiron (1996). The latter accepted the former’s view to the extent that it accepted the centrality of power and ideology in the social constructions of schools and classrooms.
