ABSTRACT
Critical ethnographers of education draw on a range of theoretical perspectives to work at the intersection of theory and method. Indeed, the relationship between theory and method is central to the kind of analyses that result from such studies. This tenet in many ways sets critical ethnographic work apart from other kinds of empirical education research. In our own critical ethnographic work, Bourdieu’s generative sociological model and concepts have been integral in enabling us to bridge the theory–method gap and work our method in ways that are ontologically consistent with the theories applied (Fitzpatrick, 2013; May, 1994, 1998, 2011; see also Albright and Luke, 2008). One of the reasons this is possible is because Bourdieu himself was a methodologist who conceptualized theory through his empirical (often ethnographic) work. He pointed out that method requires as much theoretical insight and nuance as analysis, and he warned against what he called ‘the mania for methodology’, by which he meant a ‘recipe’ of method devoid of theory:
As well as threatening to induce paralysis and even error, the mania for methodology also makes it possible not so much to achieve the economy of thought that all method permits, but rather to economize on thought about method.
(Bourdieu, Chamboredon and Passeron, 1991, p. 62)