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A Review of “Language, ethnography,and education: bridging new literacystudies and Bourdieu”Geeta A. Aneja aa University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia , USAPublished online: 24 Sep 2012.

To cite this article: Geeta A. Aneja (2013) A Review of “Language, ethnography, and education:bridging new literacy studies and Bourdieu”, Language and Education, 27:3, 282-283, DOI:10.1080/13670050.2012.713584

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282 Book Reviews

sociologists, psychologists and policy makers who wish to gain a deeper understanding ofthis research field.

Baoqi Sun and Xiao Lan Curdt-ChristiansenNational Institute of Education

Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeEmail: baoqi.sun@nie.edu.sg; xiaolan.christiansen@nie.edu.sg

C© 2013, Baoqi Sun and Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansenhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2012.703393

Language, ethnography, and education: bridging new literacy studies and Bourdieu,by M. Grenfell, D. Bloome, C. Hardy, K. Pahl, J. Rowsell, and B. Street, Routledge,New York, 2012, 224 pp., US$44.95, ISBN-978-0-415-87249-2: £27.99

The compiled volume Language, Ethnography, and Education: Bridging new literacy stud-ies and Bourdieu, synthesizes traditions of classroom ethnography, New Literacy Studies(NLS), and Bourdieusian sociocultural theory into a novel framework with which to con-sider literacy practices and social dynamics in educational spaces. Far more than a seriesof discrete chapters considering social perspectives of classroom interaction, the bookdevelops a dynamic dialogue among principles, practical studies, and theory. Its logicalprogression renders content accessible to readers with varying experience and interest ineducational philosophy, social theory, ethnographic methods, and pedagogy. The book is di-vided into 11 chapters organized into three parts. The first, ‘Bridging New Literacy Studiesand Bourdieu – Principles’ presents a brief but comprehensive foundation in the theoreti-cal frameworks and history of classroom ethnography, literacy studies, and Bourdieusianphilosophy. The second part, ‘Language, Ethnography, and Education – Practical Studies’applies the synthesized perspective of classroom language ethnography to four interna-tional case studies. The third and final part ‘Working at the Intersections – In Theory andPractice’ comes full circle, urging researchers to consider future syntheses both relationallyand reflexively.

Chapters 1 to 4 lay the theoretical groundwork for the ethnographic accounts of part II.They provide a foundational understanding of classroom ethnography, NLS, and Bourdieu’sphilosophies of language and education for those readers unfamiliar with the fields. Chap-ter 2 outlines basic considerations of classroom ethnography, and Chapter 3 conceptualizesliteracy as a social practice and questions the notion that academic literacies alone shouldbe legitimized. Chapter 4 then applies a Bourdieusian interpretation, reframing educationand literacy as continual symbolic exchanges and highlighting the irony that only literatestudents can access material through academic pedagogy. Bourdieu’s relational approach toclassroom ethnography urges the researcher to consider not only surface-level interactions,but also deeper motivations rooted in performers’ habitus. This brief but comprehensiveoverview of three fairly distinct academic traditions outlines considerations applicable tothe ethnographies of part II.

Part II, Chapters 5–8, surveys the possible scope of classroom language ethnographyby applying the approaches detailed in part I to four cases from around the world: aliteracy-focused NGO with sites in India and Ethiopia, an elementary classroom in theUnited Kingdom, a high school class in New Jersey, and a primarily African Americanseventh-grade class in the southern United States. The diversity of considered cases, to

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some extent, demonstrates the possible scope of classroom language ethnography, though abalance between applications in the developing world and the developed world would havebeen appreciated. While the descriptions of program settings and research methodologyare limited, they successfully provide a field context for exploring the nexus of language,ethnography, and education. Chapter 5 examines access to literacy in terms of socioculturalcapital, Chapter 6 considers reflexive and relational aspects of classroom ethnography,Chapter 7 utilizes multimodal student presentations to access fractal habitus, and Chapter 8accounts a teacher simultaneously refracting and perpetuating social status quo. In everycase, classroom language ethnography expands the ethnographer’s observation of teachers’logic of practice to include sociocultural and environmental factors in addition to theteachers’ own pedagogical habitus and the researcher’s positionality.

Part III returns to theoretical implications and provides a more explicit, sophisticatedapplication of Bourdieusian frameworks to classroom ethnography. Chapter 9 systematicallyconstructs a triangular web of relations among practitioner pretheoretical understanding,literacy principles, and fundamental pedagogical theory, offering a philosophically rooted,analytical version of ethnography rather than a purely personalized description of humanbehavior. However, like the ethnographic accounts of Part II, this triangle model neglectsthe impact of national and institutional policy on teachers’ theories of practice.

Michael Grenfell’s concluding statements push for a relational and reflexive applicationof Bourdieu’s epistemological frameworks. He argues that in order to conduct comprehen-sive ethnography, the researcher must conceptualize classroom language ethnography notthe pursuit of categorical truth but as the discovery of dynamic dispositions dependent onfield position, maps, agents, and researchers’ own habitus. This synthesis of theory andpractice embodies the stated goal of establishing a dialogue among academic traditionsto establish a comprehensive approach to the conduct and interpretation of educationalethnographies.

Geeta A. AnejaUniversity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

Email: ganeja@gse.upenn.eduC© 2013, Geeta A. Aneja

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.713584

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