Bourdieuian Thought

Bourdieuian thought is a systematic and audacious approach in the sociology of education that has effected a set of suppositions that have influenced greatly the fields of education and curriculum studies. The French sociologist of education Pierre Bourdieu (19302002) developed his theories from an array of resources drawn from statistical analyses, structuralism, and the social theories of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim, setting forth a sustained and critical analysis of the role of schooling in reproducing class structures of domination and subordination. Through his analysis, Bourdieu contended that the educational system is extensively involved in the reproduction of social structure, and it ensures the perpetuation of privilege by the mere operation of its internal logic. The way social and cultural reproduction is effected through the symbolic power of the school has placed the sociology of the curriculum at the center. Bourdieuian thought and the concept of social capital addresses issues embedded within curriculum studies, education, and teaching, and it has generated many criticisms that are relevant to the field of curriculum studies. The examination of the structures of schooling, relationships among players [Page 87]in education, and issues dealing with hidden curriculum, oppression in the curriculum, as well as who legitimizes knowledge to be taught at schools, who has access to it, and who participates in decision making are issues relevant to the fundamental curriculum questions. Based on sociological perspectives, educational inequality is embedded in the institutional practices connected to the transmission of curriculum, and in the principles of knowledge itself.

Bourdieu's central contribution has been the extension of the reproduction pattern beyond the boundaries of epiphenomenal economic-based superstructure models to analyze the internal logic of an educational system that, while concealing its role, simultaneously reproduces and legitimates the capitalist social formation, contributing to cultural and social reproduction. Bourdieu has articulated the argument that the dominant group, whose culture is embodied in the schools, controls the economic, social, and political resources of the capital of different subgroups. This capital is embodied in the habitus of subgroups, a system of durable, transposable dispositions that are the basis of structured, objectively unified practices, attributed by family, the educational system, and the force of social class. Economic capital refers to monetary assets that can be accumulated and invested as part of class strategy. Cultural capital refers to linguistic, stylistic, and knowledge attributes that are acquired from family through socialization as part of the habitus and that can enhance one's position in the cultural field. Social capital is the collective of actual or potential resources linked to possession of a durable network of essentially institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition. As per the Bourdieuian thought, the cultural capital the schools take for granted becomes an effective filter in the reproductive processes of a hierarchical society: Just as dominant economic institutions are structured to favor those who already possess economic capital, so educational institutions are structured to favor those who already possess cultural capital, defined according to the criteria of the dominant hegemony.

Bourdieu's theories include also notions such as the reproduction of structures, which is a system of objective relations that preexist the individuals and impart their relational properties to them. Misrepresentation is a systematic and collective illusion of the class-based power networks that secure the permanence and stability of social structures. Permanence is also secured via the misrecog-nition of the arbitrary aspects of dominant cultures, usually taken as universal and legitimate, avoiding the real violence that lies behind. For example, the work of Bourdieu in the 1970s illustrates that educational systems foster a misrecognition of the part that schools play in cultural and social reproduction. Symbolic violence is the symbolic effect exerted by social power that never presents itself in its naked form as brute force.

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