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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.
List 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
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).
Summary
Collates nine of the author's essays which explore the issues of race, educational reform and cultural politics. The book looks at the limitations of the cultural exceptionalism which underwrite current curriculum projects such as Afrocentrism, multiculturalism and Eurocentrism.
