The Uses of Culture: Education and the Limits of Ethnic Affiliation

by Cameron McCarthy

Overview

The Uses of Culture , a collection of nine of Cameron McCarthy's most provocative essays, explores the issues of race, educational reform and cultural politics. This volume looks at the limitations of the cultural exceptionalism which underwrite current curriculum projects such as Afrocentrism, Multiculturalism and Eurocentrism.

Drawing upon a variety of literatures as well as popular culture, McCarthy contends that any single ruling identity at the core of a curriculum will be restricting. He offers as a solution a curriculum reform based on the complex, cultural linkages and associations that exist among all human groups, which acknowledge their many sources of knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135227272
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/10/2014
Series:	Critical Social Thought
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	375 KB

About the Author

Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is co-editor of Race, Identity and Representation (Routledge, 1993) and author of Race and Curriculum (1990).

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. English Rustics in Black Skin: Cultural Hybridity and Racial Identity at the End of the Century Chapter 2.The Postcolonial Exemplar: Wilson Harris and the Curriculum in Troubled TimesChapter 3.Hooray for Those Who Never Created Anything: Popular Culture and the Third World in the Sociology of EducationChapter 4.Contradictions of Experience: Race, Power, and Inequality in SchoolingChapter 5.Reading the American Popular: Suburban Resentment and the Representation of the Inner City in Contemporary Film and TelevisionChapter 6.After the Content Debate: Multicultural Education, Minority Identities, Textbooks, and the Challenge of Curriculum ReformChapter 7.The Last Rational Men: Citizenship, Morality, and the Pursuit of Human PerfectionChapter 8.The Devil Finds Work: Re-reading Race and Identity in Contemporary LifeChapter 9.The Uses of Culture

Editorial Reviews

"Cameron McCarthy's The Uses of Culture: Education and the Limits of Ethnic Affiliation is a rigorously argued, brilliantly conceived and cogently written book about the politics of identity and identity of politics in contemporary education. McCarthy's book not only examines the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in theory, and in the classroom, but he provides as well incisive readings of popular texts against the backdrop of contentious cultural debates. The Uses of Culture is tour de force of educational and cultural studies!" — Michael Eric Dyson, Visiting Distinguished Professor of African-American Studies, Columbia University, and author of Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line
"Cameron McCarthy's The Uses of Culture: Education and the Limits of Ethnic Affiliation is a rigorously argued, brilliantly conceived and cogently written book about the politics of identity and identity of politics in contemporary education. McCarthy's book not only examines the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in theory, and in the classroom, but he provides as well incisive readings of popular texts against the backdrop of contentious cultural debates. The Uses of Culture is tour de force of educational and cultural studies!" — Michael Eric Dyson, Visiting Distinguished Professor of African-American Studies, Columbia University, and author of Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line

From the Publisher