Re: Production vs Reproduction

SERPELL (SERPELL who-is-at UMBC2.UMBC.EDU)
Fri, 06 Mar 1998 17:56:23 -0500 (EST)

David kirshner wrote:

From: IN%"xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu" 22-FEB-1998 18:05:26.37
To: IN%"xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu"
CC:
Subj: Production vs Reproduction

I read hints in the literature of critiques of sociohistorical theory
as accounting for the reproduction of culture more successfully than
for the production of culture. Could someone direct me toward such
critiques, and also towards the responses that have been offered to them?
Thanks.

David Kirshner
Louisiana State University
cikirs who-is-at lsuvm.sncc.lsu.edu
-------------------------------------------------
Perhaps relevant, and certainly worth reading is the integrative review by
Bradley Levinson and Dorothy Holland of the debate over the limitations of
reproduction theory in Marxist and neo-Marxist accounts of education, and of
cultural difference theory in American anthropology. Their chapter is
entitled "The cultural production of the educated person", and serves as the
introduction to the book by the same title published in 1996 by SUNY Press,
Albany, edited by Levinson, Foley & Holland, which i flagged on XMCA last year.
I wonder if anyone else has read this and has thoughts about the perspective
advanced in the chapter and/or the book as a whole ?

Incidentally the book, which is richly stocked with multinational,
historically situated critical ethnographies of education, also contains
a pungent chapter by Douglas Foley that challenges the authenticity of Susan
Philips oft-cited work, entitled "The silent Indian as a cultural production".

Robert Serpell Telephone: (410)455-2417
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