Key themes in the ethnography of education - Sara Delamont

"This is a beautifully written book that takes the reader to the heart of ethnography as experience. Readers can walk in the shoes of ethnographers who have travelled before them, and learn as they learned. Sara Delamont is an undisputed expert in both ethnography and education, and here illustrates she is also a tour de force in writing style. All the important ingredients for a recipe to make a good quality ethnography are here, and they are served up with relish!"

- Karen O'Reilly, Loughborough University

"This is a
powerful, richly nuanced, evocative work; a stunning and brilliantly innovative
intervention. It provides ground zero - the starting place for the next generation of social scholars of education. A major accomplishment."
- Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


The ethnography of education has been conducted by sociologists and anthropologists, largely in self-contained and self-referential ways. This book celebrates the continuities and the strengths of ethnographic research on education in formal and non-formal settings, deliberately transgressing the sociology/anthropology divide. Education is broadly defined to cover many settings other than schools, in many countries, for many age-groups.

The book is structured thematically, including chapters on movement and mobilities, memorials and memories, time and timescapes, bodies, and performativities, multi-sensory research, and narratives. Strategies for designing innovative ethnographic projects, and for fighting familiarity are provided.