School bureaucracy, ethnography and culture: Conceptual obstacles to doing ethnography in schools

The object of this essay is to offer a reflection on the obstacles that block the ethnographic intent when we try to do ethnography in school institutions. These obstacles are presented conceptually with reference to three main axes that shape school as a bureaucratic reality: school as a hypertrophied medium of individualistic codifying, school as a universalist and instrumentalist device, and school as a device to restrict the cultural field. These ideas are illustrated by means of some empirical examples, the majority of which come from an ongoing investigation in Guovdageaidnu, in northern Norway.