Self-Contained Ethnography or a Science of Phenomenal Forms and Inner Relations

Abstract

This article develops a critique of ethnography in educational research. It is argued that ethnography concerns the study of the phenomenal forms of everyday life. Beyond these phenomenal forms are inner relations, causal processes, and generative mechanisms which are often invisible to the actors. A science of social totalities, deriving from Marx, is advocated which can elaborate the relationship between phenomenal forms, the world of appearances, and deeper social structural causal mechanisms. This science cannot be generated by ethnography alone but only through historical and comparative analyses of modes of production in history. The argument is illustrated by an imaginary ethnographic study of a typical “fascist” school in Germany and by a discussion of developments taking place in schooling systems in the contemporary world.

A theory of reproduction is required which locates the analysis of capitalist schooling systems in a broader theory of the reproduction of all the economic, political, and ideological requirements for capitalist accumulation and the role of the state in this process. Ethnography carried out in schools informed by such a theory has a political rationale. It can lay the foundations for a critique of the world of appearances in everyday life, a necessary part of any political practice designed to produce a society in which essence and appearance are at one.