Ethnography and the Fate of Informal Culture: Rereading Paul Willis’ Learning to Labour

As the increasing discussion over social stratification and mobility indicates, the idea of “education changes destiny” has progressively been brought into question. In his classic study of British working-class boys from 1975, which is widely read in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and education, Paul Willis uncompromisingly revealed that liberal ideology about equal opportunity was only an empty promise and, more importantly, how the counter-cultural cognition and expression adopted the constraints of the structural conditions and at the same time leads to the reproduction of them. Despite the tragic mechanism behind the contradictory counter-culture, Willis remained optimistic about the radical potential in the symbolic works against dominant discourse. His in-depth ethnographic description didn’t only contribute to the endless theoretical debate about Structure and Process, but also provided a methodological approach encouraging extensive fieldwork, in which he believed the “theoretical uncertainty” lies. Ethnography can really “become the intellectual education of those who are governed,” if the scholars are willing to understand and communicate with the informal cultural groups and believe that their fate can be changed.