ABSTRACT
In recent years there have been an increasing number of calls for a 'critical ethnography'. This term is used in a variety of ways, but the most common implies an 'appropriation' and 'reconstruction' of conventional ethnography so as to transform it into a project concerned with bringing about human emancipation; this usually being interpreted in socialist and/or feminist terms. 1 Conventional ethnography is criticised by advocates of critical ethnography both for adopting an inappropriate theoretical perspective that neglects oppression and its causes, and (even more importantly) for not being closely enough related to political practices that are designed to bring about emancipation. Thus, in a review of Peshkin's study of a fundamentalist Christian school (Peshkin 1986), McClaren advances the following criticisms:
Peshkin's interpretive research paradigm sorely lacks a critical praxis-oriented dimension. . . . The researcher [should] take seriously the establishment of a theoretical context which enhances the possibility of critical analysis capable of transforming the asymmetrical relations of power and privilege that constrict human life and limit human possibility.... Peshkin seems to believe that ethnography can and should confine itself to a cultural analysis, to analysis of symbols, statements and values. ... This is ethnographic insularity with a vengeance, field work devoid of necessary theoretical and activist dimensions.
(McClaren 1987: 136, 138)