Backward countryside, troubled city

French teachers' images of rural and working-class families

Bibliographic Data

ID2466471
AuthorsD Reed-Danahay (0000-0002-2046-4895, Emory University), Deborah Reed‐danahay, Kathryn Anderson-Levitt (0000-0001-5412-1818, University of Michigan), Kathryn M Anderson‐levitt
Year1991
Volume18
Issue3
Pages546-564
Publication date1991-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ae.1991.18.3.02a00070
OpenAlexW2043751073
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited46

French primary school teachers criticize both urban working-class and rural families, but often for different reasons. Their discourse about families reflects conflicting themes in French culture-the romanticization of rural life and the idealization of the bourgeois family model. Our analysis shows that the dominant ideology of the family in France is not coherent, and that teachers make use of ambiguous symbols and images of the family in order to privilege the "rationality" of the middle classes over the "irrationality" of the lower classes. We argue that more attention must be placed on such "everyday uses of domination" so that the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in dominant ideologies may be better understood. [education, ideology, France, social class

Bourgeoisie · Class (philosophy · Epistemology · Everyday life · Family life · Idealization · Ideology · Irrationality · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing · Rationality · Rural area · Social science · Sociology · Working class · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Education, sociology, and vocational training · French Urban and Social Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy

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