Qualitative Research: An Introduction to Methods and Designs

Theoretical and Historical Foundations of Critical Ethnography

Critical ethnography originated in the 1970s with studies of schooling. It developed out of a sort of marriage between previously competing ideas, concepts, and theories. Classical Marxism provided one key foundational leg for critical ethnography. Marxism posits that the economic structures in a society determine that society's cultural, familial, legal, political, and other structures. Capitalism requires workers and owners, and it is the relationship between these two groups, and between these groups and what is produced, that shapes everything else in society. Marx viewed capitalism as fundamentally an exploitative system (that is, it privileges the owners and oppresses the workers), ...