Leaving home: Schooling stories and the ethnography of autoethnography in rural France

This chapter discusses the process of becoming educated leads inevitably to a departure from their rural villages. The growth of interest in home or native anthropology represents a questioning of the dominant thinking in anthropology that the readers must leave home to do good ethnography. Education has long been one of the main avenues of social mobility for peasants, making Carles’ trajectory a familiar story in rural France. American anthropologists who seek academic jobs are also, however, subject to a related trend associated with home-leaving. Schooling facilitated the distancing from social origins that allows the life stories of both Hélias and Carles to become ethnographic. A crucial moment in each story is when the choice is presented for the child to continue schooling beyond the obligatory primary-school level. Whereas primary schools were established in each township by the national educational system, secondary schools were located only in large towns and cities.