Drawing on an ethnographic study of a remote farming community in the Auvergne, Dr Reed-Danahay challenges conventional views about the operation of the French school system. She demonstrates how parents and children subvert and resist the ideological messages of the teachers, and describes the ways in which a sense of local difference is sustained and valued, through a complex interplay of schooling and family life. This book explores the role played by history, identity, and power in local responses to a national institution. A significant contribution to the anthropology of education, this book offers fresh insights into the ways in which French culture is transmitted to the coming generation. Dr Reed-Danahay also provides lucid and critical discussions of sociological theories on education, including those of Bourdieu.

"This socio-political-economic study adds a significant dimension in the field of rural France scholarship..." Choice

"...I found Education and Identity in Rural France very compelling reading, and I recommend it." Alan DeYoung, Anthropology & Education Quarterly

"It will be of considerable interest to all those interested in the school, as well as to those specifically interested in how local and national cultures interact within the French institutional framework. Danahay convincingly demonstrates the way that national institutions and ideologies are shaped by local cultures just as much as the other way around." Alexandra Jaffe, Anthropological Quarterly

"A fascinating ethnographic account.... Reed-Danahay provides rich materials for those interested in the sociology of education; in the relationship between the state, teachers, parents, and children; and in the endurance and dynamism of rural communities well into the twentieth century." Contemporary Sociology

"Reed-Danahay presents a first-rate description of the local kinship system, domestic organization and socialization practices." David S. Moyer, Anthropologica