AbstractThis thesis deals with the cultural production of the educated person among teachers, pupils, and parents in a village school in North India. Methodologi-cally, we apply a multidimensional perspective and work with a multi-sited analytical object as we move from global and national education policies through an education program supported by the SIDA and DFID, Shiksha Karmi, into the local schools where we focus on the three main participants: Teachers, pupils, and parents. We are inspired by ethnographic methods; our data is based on fieldwork in Rajasthan, qualitative interviews with the partici-pants, observation of everyday life in the school, and policy documents.Theoretically, we place ourselves within educational anthropology, using Levin-son & Holland’s (1996) theory on The Cultural Production of the Educated Per-son, along with Holland & Cain’s (1998) concepts of Figured Worlds and Identity in Practice. Furthermore, when it comes to creating coherence between policy documents and participants’ active interpretations and adapting these in cul-tural production, we are inspired by Shore & Wright’s (1997) Anthropology of Policy. We arrive at the conclusion, that in their production of conceptions of the edu-cated person, participants in the school adapt global and national discourses on education to existing local religious ideas, power structures, gender roles, patri-archal family structures, and personal conditions of life. Despite adaptation of discourses on the education of girls, essential differences in the ideas about the education of men and women respectively are maintained; this reflects the fact that men’s education is seen as the most important.We find that ideas concerning the good life of the educated person are produced in the school, and these ideas are connected to white and blue collar jobs and improved conditions of life. Moreover, the educated person is associated with specific types of behaviour and character traits, which presents him or her as a better human being. Through that, participants in the school create a cultural distinction between the educated and the uneducated, which contributes to the local legitimacy of the education program.
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