Choice Review

This book, based on the author's doctoral dissertation, generalizes from his recent ethnographic study of contemporary life in a Catholic middle school in Toronto populated by a majority of Portuguese students. The author acknowledges his debt to structural anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz and Sally Falk Moore, and especially to Victor Turner. McLaren stresses the rural character of the social acts that take place in school, and he develops a theoretical analysis that emphasizes the use of ritual, not only in the religious, but also in the secular life of the school and its surroundings. The book is in the critical tradition that views schools as reproducing the hierarchical structure of capitalist society. McLaren pays little attention to the work of education-based ethnographers, such as P. Jackson or F. Erikson, or to studies of the social structure of schools from a variety of sources, such as the work of Seymour Sarason, John Goodlad, or Dan Lortie. There is no systematic description of the fieldwork, only quotations throughout the chapters, so that the reader cannot assess the quality of the data or draw independent conclusions. The book would be of interest primarily to graduate students and sophisticated anthropology and sociology majors. The bibliography is extensive and the index is thorough.-G.E. Hein, Lesley College