Based on a four-year ethnography, I draw on critical race theory and Bourdieuian theory of language to analyze why a Chinese Immigrant couple regarded their 1.5-Generation Chinese Canadian leaders at an evangelical Christian church as "Westerners," and how the leaders differentiated themselves from "Westerners" and…

This article traces the ways in which notions of diversity inhered in educational policies and practices to mediate the everyday schooling realities of immigrant youth in a Catalonian public secondary school. Diversity, even as it was celebrated and shrouded in liberal appeals to tolerance and cosmopolitanism, was also something requiring…

This study uses an ecological framework to map one Japanese child's transition between elementary school life in the United States and Japan. I privilege the child's perspective while weaving in parent and teacher views, as well as observation and document data. Implicit and explicit expectations in the focal student's classrooms…

This article focuses on children's engagement in extracurricular activities from the perspective of middle-class parents in Rome, Italy, and Los Angeles, California. Analysis of parents' accounts captured in interviews and ethnographic fieldwork reveals that both sets of parents perceive activities as important for children's success. Yet Roman…

In this article, I highlight the challenges, tensions, and affinities between Latino educational anthropology and diaspora studies. Some of the urgent questions include attention to new Latino destinations, transnationalism, and Latino diversity. It concludes by suggesting future pathways through Latina feminist thought.

This article presents a (post)anthropological framework for understanding adolescent coming-of-age in U.S. public high schools. Coming-of-age is conceived as a complex, fluid, seemingly contradictory process of identity formation and community integration in which adolescents representing diverse ethnic, racial, gender, and social class locations…

This yearlong ethnographic study of principals' leadership in Papua New Guinea high schools describes influences of imposing a bureaucratic school organization on principals' decision making in a communal society. Communal values of kinship relationships, "wantok" system, and "big men" leadership challenged principals' responsibility to uphold…

Educational anthropologists have helped create symbolic spaces in which conversations can take place about children's lives, language, literacy, and learning. In the "New Word Order" children have no histories, no identities. Culture doesn't count. Home languages are considered interference. As the curriculum is narrowed by the use of "reliable…

What are the prices of "must knowledges?" Does the study of English impose Anglocentric control on its learners or can English as an icon for "must knowledge" enable disempowered populations to empower themselves? This article examines these questions through an ethnographic study of middle-/lower-class Orthodox and Sephardic Jewish women in an…

Compared the child-rearing practices and values of low-income Mexican immigrants raising their children in the United States with those of their siblings raising children in Mexico, discussing family accommodation within the ecocultural niche, variation in ecocultural contexts, effects of immigration, cultural change of different types, and…

Delves into the "black box" of Palestinian Israeli women's experiences in university literacy. Utilizes interview and observation data to disclose practices women use to unearth the construction of dominant Jewish Israeli knowledge and to reconstruct gender in the Palestinian Israeli ethnonational discourse. Results reveal how liberal…

Investigated the meaning of early marriage among Hmong American female college students. Interview and observation data attested to the complexity of the meaning of early marriage in the Hmong American community. Results refuted explanations of cultural difference as underlying early marriage and indicated that early marriage was an expression of…

Responds to a paper that focused on the "domestication of the ivory tower" and that highlighted indigenous, field-based education associated with higher education institutions in Alaska. Shares two stories that illustrate what indigenous students often encounter in higher education, places of learning that frequently devalue or ignore their world…

Examines a distinctive genre represented by the ethnodrama, "Finding My Place," relating this work to the practice of arts-based research in educational ethnography. The drama highlighted the relationship between a prominent educational ethnographer and the young man who was his research subject. Discusses the kinds of textual practice invented…

An ethnographic analysis of the schooling experiences of Muslim youth in Canada who are committed to maintaining Islamic lifestyles despite pressures to conform to the dominant culture, this article discusses how religious identity intersects with other forms of social difference (e.g., race and gender) in school experiences. Presents a case study…