ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to revisit the general criteria that distinguish educational ethnography, curriculum, and pedagogy as a critical enterprise. Over the past several decades especially, the notion of "critical" has managed to attract a number of different meanings when used in conjunction with literacy, pedagogy, multicultural education, and educational research in general. The chapter sketches an ethical approach to educational research and practice centered largely around the recent work of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman on the topic of postmodern ethics. It argues for the development of a framework for better understanding the ways in which the micropolitics of the urban classroom are, in fact, the local instantiations of the sociopolitical and economic consequences of a rapidly expanding global marketplace. The chapter suggests that recent local antagonisms evident both in the larger social community and in the educational arena are inextricably linked to the politics of neoliberalism driven by an expanding global capitalism.
