Faculty Bio |  |
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Biography
A long time ago (circa 1969), it was suggested by my advisors at Chicago that “as a foreign student” I should study “us.” Since then I have been fascinated with “America” as an object with properties. Over the course of my career I have emphasized a search for what these properties might be and how they might be told in such a way that the accounts do not fail where earlier accounts failed. I continue to be interested in the theoretical issues raised by my refusal to go “beyond culture.” Working in the United States is a particular good setting for raising fundamental questions about the stabilization of arbitrary patterns, as well as their change. In more recent years, I have emphasized how some of the most institutionalized of these properties produce particular forms of disabilities for the people who are caught by America whether they live in the United States or outside its boundaries. Much of this work has been conducted in “educational” settings (schools, families, etc.). In conjunction with my developing interest in conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, I am being led to explore what might happen if anthropology moved radically from postulates about “learning” (enculturation, inculcation, etc.) to postulates built on “education” as an ongoing process.
Representative Publications:
1977. Americans Together: Structured Diversity in A Midwestern Town.Teachers College Press.
1983. American School Language: The Rhetorical Structuring of Daily Life in a Suburban High School. Irvington Publishers.
1986. Symbolizing America. Editor. University of Nebraska Press.
1992. Ambiguous Harmony: Family Talk in America. Ablex.
1998. Successful failure: The School America builds. (with Ray McDermott) Westview.
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