Culture, Politics, and Irish School Dropouts: Constructing Political Identities

(Hardback)

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This book summarizes structural, reproduction, and resistance theories of education and provides a social research approach to problems of social inequity. It analyzes how these perspectives contribute to the political analysis of the production of early school departures and the consequent disadvantages and poverty. Fagan follows a deconstructive approach to research methodology that presents a text in which real characters and events are brought to life. Dublin working-class kids speak for themselves, tell their stories, and discuss their futures openly. They describe their schooling and their colorful responses to situations that seemed meaningless or demeaning when they were in school. They share their insecurities about the future and their experiences with poverty and unemployment outside the mainstream of middle-class society. As a unique contribution to cultural studies and a rare ethnographic glimpse of Irish urban society, this study establishes a model in educational and sociological research.

Author Bio

G. HONOR FAGAN, a native of Ireland, completed her graduate studies in education at Miami University in Ohio. After leaving her lecturing post in sociology at the University of Ulster, she has taken a position as sociology lecturer at the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa. She is the coeditor of Gendered Narratives, Aspects of Cultural Identity in Ireland (1995).