Reading :: The social life of a herstory textbook

The Social Life of a Herstory Textbook: Bridging Institutionalism and Actor-Network Theory
By Massilia Ourabah

Forgive me for a brief review of a book that deserves a more substantial one. 

In this short (80pp plus index)book, Ourabah examines the textbook La place des femmes dans l’histoire (The Place of Women in History). This historiography was written to be incorporated into French primary and secondary educational curricula, but so far, it rarely has been. To examine this case, Ourabah conducts ethnographic fieldwork, interviewing the people who conceived of, commissioned, wrote, and publicized the textbook, as well as some who have actually deployed it in classrooms. To analyze her fieldwork, she applies institutionalism and actor-network theory in separate chapters.

She concludes that this “pick-and-mix” approach, applying two different frameworks to the same case, is rewarding. Through it, she concludes that

the piecemeal approach to educational change that this story embodies is grounded in a tradition of feminist reformist and “under-the-radar” activism. It argues that feminist educational change cannot be substantive if it only relies on individual and opportunistic action, and if it requires a great amount of translational work from educational practitioners, as in the present case study. (p.71)

Although I didn’t double-check this, I suspect this book began its life as a dissertation or thesis. It’s short; the analysis is neatly bifurcated; the uptake (applying two frameworks to the same case is generative) isn’t particularly surprising. Yet I think it’s also useful for understanding how a piecemeal approach runs into the institutional wall of secondary education. If you’re interested in dual frameworks, secondary education, or educational change, definitely take a look.