Producing cosmos? The explanatory power of social drama for school reform

The winds of decentralizing reform that have been driving their way through various government education systems across the globe over the best part of two decades have generated a great deal of conflict. In the late 1990s those working in the Western Australian government high school in which I conducted the research reported here found themselves in the middle of a devolutionary storm that drew them into an increasingly disruptive conflict with their reform-minded principal. Victor Turner's influential depiction of significant conflict in terms of a processual unit that he called a social drama has considerable analytical purchase for this case study. However, while the four stages—breach, crisis, redress and reintegration—were easily recognizable in the events described here, it is Turner's claim that conflict brings ‘fundamental aspects of society, normally overlaid by the customs and habits of daily intercourse into frightening prominence’ that is of greater interest. Linking social dramas with practice theory provides a productive means for analysing and explaining the sorts of conflict produced in any social setting.