Brian Bullivant kindly praises Louts and Legends (LL) for its portrayal of the real worlds of the subjects, its account of methodology, and its reflexive stance. He gives generously of his anthropological expertise in a patient explanation of his views on culture and the curriculum, together with accounts of his own anthropological work, and how they relate to the theory and fieldwork of LL. Indeed, so munificent is he in sharing his views that he waives the opportunity to abate his at mine by exploring the theoretical background to the ideas presented in LL. I would like to take this opportunity to fill in a little of this background. I think it is likely that there are points on which, perhaps because he has such strongly held and discipline bound theoretical commitments himself, Bullivant has misunderstood me. On many of these our views are not so far apart as he thinks. Second, there are points on which, whether he has understood me or not, I must beg to differ. As Bullivant acknowledges, LL was written as much for the nonspecialist as the specialist. Its emphasis was more upon presenting the findings of the study than on presenting a full-blown statement of the theory driving it. I did take some trouble, however, to indicate in the endnotes and bibliography, for the interest of theoretically minded readers, further publications in which my ideas are spelled out. Although Bullivant is a keenly theoretically minded reader, he notes only one of these (out of the eight cited). He draws slightly upon a review of LL by my theoretical collaborator Colin Evers, but then fails to understand the crucial point he quotes from Evers. He does not explore these sources in any detail in his attempt to sort out his bemusement at my theoretical position. This is a pity, since they address a good many of the points on which he expresses puzzlement. They would also have helped him to see that the book's Conclusion, dealing with educational implications of the