Education, Aspiration and Social Mobility

Informed by over two decades of anthropological research in Chhattisgarh, Education, Aspiration and Social Mobility brings ethnographic nuance to the contradictory ways in which education represents both a strategy for social mobility and a very tangible risk, whose transformative potential is not as straightforward as proponents suggest. This book examines the relationship between education, aspiration and social mobility amongst marginalized Adivasi (tribal) youth in rural India and how young people navigate the tensions and uncertainty that emanate from this contradiction - fashioning their own meanings and understandings of education against a backdrop of structural constraints and a future in flux.

Peggy Froerer is a Professor of Anthropology at Brunel University of London. She is the author of Religious Division and Social Conflict (Routledge, 2018) and has been co-investigator on a collaborative, multi-regional research project on education systems, aspiration and learning outcomes in remote rural areas in India, Laos and Lesotho.