Using Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical concepts to explain inequalities in education
Introduction
"Bourdieu's analysis states: all of the institutions of modernity share in a tendency to present themselves as working for the common good, but in fact reproduce social inequalities. They present themselves as agents of freedom, but in fact are organisations of power." (Calhoun, 2003, p.6)
The notion that schools are modes of reproduction was Pierre Bourdieu's 'big discovery' (Grenfell, 2010). Bourdieu viewed education as a central ideological and cultural site of socialisation; through differences between the culture of schooling and the home culture of pupils and students, there is a misrecognised form of social reproduction operating within the modern education system.
To analyse this theory Bourdieu designed three theoretical concepts: habitus, capital and the field (Bourdieu and Passerson, 1990). Researchers have been prolific in applying Bourdieu's concepts to their own research in order to explain how inequalities in education persist, even when policy is specifically directed towards countering such issues (Grenfell and James, 2004).
When Bourdieu's analysis of education is taken into consideration the within current discourses surrounding British education contemporary issues are easier to investigate. Currently policy initiatives targeting education reform have been criticised as measures that will only perpetuate inequalities within education. This essay will focus on three of these forms of inequality, namely: class, gender and ethnicity.
Grenfell (2010) argues that education is undergoing a neoliberal restructuring with successive British governments promoting de-regulation and marketization. The current government is continuing this trend with its attempts at marketization of education (The Guardian, 2016).
Alongside the debates over marketization there has also been an increased focus on ethnic marginalisation in education through the government's Prevent policy (Department of Education, 2015) and questions over why girls, as Howieson and Iannelli (2008) found, that low attainment in education had a more severe effect on women.
With these debates in mind it is necessary to undergo research that analyses these inequalities and utilises Bourdieu's tools that are designed to explain such social phenomena.
Outline of concepts and their application
Pierre Bourdieu's three main sociological concepts, or to paraphrase Jenkins (2002) 'thinking tools' are the holistic theoretical notions of habitus, capital and the field.
Habitus 'refers to something historical, it is linked to individual history' (Bourdieu, 1990). It is a production of practices and systems through the process of socialisation that is acquired through each individual agent's history; it is the embodiment of the external social structures that surround an agent and guide their actions. When discussing the influences of modern education on an agent's habitus, Bourdieu states:
"The habitus acquired in the family is at the basis of the structuring of school experiences; the habitus is transformed by the action of the school, itself diversified, is in turn the basis of all subsequent experiences … and so on, from restructuring to restructuring." (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p.134)
Habitus is internalised within each individual agent but it is the external field that defines interactions between agents. The field is a structured social space of competing forces vying for the limited amounts of capital available and it is the agents with the most appropriate habitus that are able to acquire the most capital and therefore dominate the field. Rawolle and Lingard (2008), describe how researching a field involves the identification of practices attached to it, identifying dominant and dominated agents and measuring different forms of capital possessed by agents.
Bourdieu (1986) expanded upon the Marxist notion of purely economic capital by introducing many different forms of capital that are constitutive of an agent's habitus and have different values within different fields. The main types of capital are: economic, understood as material resources and wealth; social capital, which consists of networks and an agents ability to create friendships; symbolic capital is awards and ideologies that legitimises established orders. Finally there is cultural capital which consists of the linguistic and cultural discourses valued within a field. Cultural capital is Bourdieu's most used concept in educational research:
"Cultural capital is a theoretical hypothesis which made it possible to explain the unequal scholastic achievement of children originating from different socials classes by relating academic success … to the distribution of cultural capital between classes and class fractions." (Bourdieu, 1984, p.124 )
Bourdieu's concepts in research
Rather, Bourdieu offers an explanation that embraces the complex relationship between structure and agency that moves beyond the singular explanatory factor of social class (Dillabough, 2004). McClelland (1990) asserts that: "it [Bourdieu's concepts] can easily be applied to the analysis of gender or ethnic disadvantage as well." As will be shown below, researchers often found complex matrixes of class, gender and ethnicity when explaining inequality.
3a. Class
In the book Bourdieu and Education (Grenfell and James, 1998) two research projects into education inequality and it's relation to social class are presented. The first, by Reay (1995), outlines her research that took part over eighteen months, with thirty-three mothers whose children attended two different schools; Milner, which was working class and, Oak Park, which was middle class. In her research Reay (1995) employed cultural capital and habitus as conceptual tools for examining how mothers' activities, add up to significant class differences.
Many of the middle class mothers with children at Oak Park had done very well academically and this success related to self-confidence when involving themselves in their child's education. For example, Alice (middle-class mother) describes her life growing up: "All the creativity went on at home, school was for repetitious learning."(1995) This was a general feeling amongst all of the middle class mothers who often talked as the home being 'complimentary' to the school.
The complete opposite was true for the working class mothers interviewed by Reay (1995): "I can't remember my mother ever going into my school. She was too busy working." The working-class mothers outlined a clear separation when growing up between education and home. This lead to Reay explaining how middle-class mothers would often get involved with the school and discuss the curriculum with teachers, whereas none of the working class mothers had the confidence –because of their habitus – to do anything similar. Reay (1995) utilises habitus and capital to explain how, in stark contrast to current government policy, working class mothers felt ill-equipped to engage in their child's education due their incompatible habitus and low amounts of capital. Middle class mothers when teaching their children at home found the process natural due to their embodied habitus, a disposition the working class mothers did not possess.
Reay (1995) used her access to Oak Park and Milner to also produce a separate study that researched habitus in the primary classroom. During her research children from both schools engaged with a computer game that put them in charge of a maid. The middle class children made comments such as "make her run" and, "we have to give her orders and be a bit rude because she's just a servant". When the working class children at Milner engaged in the same computer game they acted very differently. Instead of taking the place of an authority figure, they situated themselves as a guest who wanted to explore the house with the servant. Reay (1995) points to this example to state that middle-class children "Reveal their habitus that, already at the age of ten, they had learnt how to be assertive, use demonstratives, produce requests and imperatives." The culmination of their socialisation seemed to be teaching them to assume positions of power in relation to less privileged individuals.
The middle class children would go further than the computer game and place themselves above the teacher within the classroom by saying things such as "you're just a teacher" and comment on their clothing for not being 'designer'. Reay (1995) concludes her study of the primary classroom with: "Habitus helps to make visible the taken-for-granted inequalities of gender, ethnicity and class embedded in the social processes."
The second research project in the aforementioned book, Bourdieu and Education (Grenfell and James, 1998), was carried out by Hodkinson (1997). He used semi-structured interviews with sixteen-year olds who were looking for work placements. Hodkinson (1997) used habitus to encapsulate the ways in which a person's dispositions are subject to their objective positions and cultural traditions. He then relates the agent's habitus to their field and observes how the dispositions created by their habitus affected their perceptions of what was appropriate to them in the job market. Finally he uses capital to explain agency interactions in the field as the agents tried to use the capital they possessed to achieve their goals within their chosen field.
Clive, one the participants, wanted to sell cars, and in an interview with Clive's employer Hodkinson explains Clive's acquisition of the job through the concept of cultural capital. The employer talked about "his whole family being nice" and "Clive being very keen on cars"; to Hodkinson this was the utilisation of both Clive's personal cultural capital as well as his parents.
Hodkinson (1997) found further uses for the concept of cultural capital and habitus when explaining how class was a more dominant force in a particular field than gender. Another participant, Helen, was working as a car body sprayer – a stereotypically male job. To the employer however, Helen's gender didn't matter because she came from a "good working class family" which the employer clearly valued in terms of large amounts of cultural capital. Hodkinson points out another factor involved in the employer's decision to break with the stereotypical norm due to the employer's habitus. He'd previously employed a successful female worker and was therefore more prepared to take on another; in light of his experiences and consequent changes within his habitus it increased Helen's cultural capital within the field.
3b. Gender
As has already been shown in Hodkinson's study (1997) limiting research to one form of inequality is often impossible as different fields interact. Furthermore, Reay's (1995) work also produced results relevant to gender inequality as her research into parental involvement often showed that there was only maternal interaction; she cites this as a consequence of the entrenched gender norms which affect all womens' habitus.
Gorely et al (2003) explored the role gender plays in habitus when her team conducted thirty-minute group interviews with secondary school children.
Their interviews produced results in line with the conventional view of muscle being related to masculinity; one boy stated: "when you imagine men you imagine them muscly" and, "boys like to be muscly and strong". Through Bourdieu's concept of capital Gorely (2003) was able to show how 'physical capital' – muscly men – could be translated into social capital when trying to appear attractive to the opposite sex.
One of the boys interviewed by Gorely (2003) commented on an image of a female body builder by saying: "if you wanted to be the best in the world then you wouldn't be bothered about how you look, but if you are in the middle then it would be different." This comment suggested to Gorely (2003) that physical capital for women had a much worse transferability value because of the dominant masculine identity that permeates through each individual's habitus. By utilising habitus and capital Gorely (2003) was able to point out that women are unequal in physical education because they have to learn to live in accordance with the dominant patriarchal culture.
Mahbub (2015) took a different approach to habitus, gender and dominant patriarchy when she underwent in depth life-history interviews with immigrant Bangladeshi women to understand the inequalities migrant women face when entering the British education system.
The habitus of the women involved in this research was shaped not only by their experiences as a woman, but also as middle class immigrants. Sita, a participant, described how her parents paid for her to have an education in order to maintain their family's middle class image, but they wouldn't pay to send her to the best institutions in the big cities because that was a privilege reserved for her brother. Mahbub (2015) interprets this as a conflict between two diverging fields, the benefit of being middle class and the perceived drawback of being a woman; it was the different values of cultural capital within these fields that meant Sita received her education.
Gender also defined the habitus of another participant, Hansa, who saw academic qualifications from the best institutions as currency that could be converted into social capital when looking for a husband. All of the women interviewed in Mahbub's study were middle class and have all been able to achieve highly academically. However their gender was still powerful in shaping their habitus, meaning that each woman had different views on their place in society and the use of their qualifications. To Mahbub (2015) this appropriately accorded enough agency within the confines of social structure.
3c. Ethnicity
It has already been discussed how the different inequalities in education are not independent of one another, instead they interact in diverging ways to limit an agent's potential capital. As can be seen in Mahbub's research, gender, class and ethnicity all contribute to each participant's quantities of capital and their individual habitus. Bourdieu (1990), contents that the habitus implies a 'sense of one's place' but also a 'sense of the place of others.' This is particularly insightful when studying inequalities face by ethnic minorities in society.
Basit (2012) also approaches her research aiming to understand the role of gender and ethnicity of minority women in Britan: "we need to be cognisant of the fact that gender identities are not homogenous and intertwine with other identities, notably ethnicity".
Kavita, a participant in Basit's (2012) study discussed in an interview her first days at school: "You kind of notice; people act differently." Denise backs this up when she says "people look at you differently if you're not middle class and white." Basit (2012) draws links to Reay's study (1995) into the habitus of primary classrooms; during Reay's time at Oak Park a girl, Temi, who was from an ethnic minority joins the class, the teacher sits her next to a boy, Poonam, who is also from a minority, however Poonam soon stops paying attention to Temi, because the other children in the class – who are all white – do not accept Temi into their social circle. Reay believes this is because Temi has low cultural and social capital and the other children do not want to risk losing theirs. Basit (2012) and Reay (1995) both agree that habitus is useful in signifying the way young minority ethnic citizens make critical decisions about their lives, which is partly dependant on the way they have been socialised from an early age.
Connolly (2000), expands the use of habitus, capital and fields in his study ethnicity and women when young South Asian girl's in Britain. He states that capital and habitus in particular can: "explain how particular context provided by the young girl's peer-group relations has become racialized and in turn, has come to inform and shape the particular experiences of South Asian girls."
Connolly (2000) presents discussion that takes part at the beginning of a class: Reena is upset because no one wants to sit with her, her mother comes in to talk to the teacher before the lesson starts. When the teacher asks who Reena's friends are she names two South Asian girls from another class, when prompted by the teacher over who she'd like to be friends with in her class she points to a boy who is also South Asian. Connolly (2000) as reproduction of the perception that minorities 'stick together'. Connolly goes onto to describe that a pair of boys in an interview say how having a 'Paki' girlfriend was undesirable; "you go out with all the pakis, I go out with all the whites". Connolly interprets that the white children, who see themselves as dominant and therefore in possession of the most cultural capital contribute to the reproduction of ethnic inequality in education in order to maintain their position at the top.
Limitations
Through qualitative methods all of the researchers outlined above were able to successful interpret social phenomena through Bourdieu's concepts. However the same cannot be said for quantitative research; Driessen (2001) attempted to apply the concept of cultural capital to his study of ethnic minorities and educational inequality in the west. However he states that: "With regard to Bourdieu's reproduction thesis, the present findings provide no confirmation". This leads him to conclude if it may not be possible to measure the effects of cultural capital across groups in light of the fact that little or no variation for both indicators of cultural capital can be detected in his research. He closes with: "The entertainment of separate indicators of capital for each ethnic group does not, however, offer much solace for this problem as groups become incomparable."
This dilemma with Driessen's quantitative study shines a spotlight onto the problem of attempting to apply Bourdieu's concepts to quantitative studies. Hodkinson (1998) is wary of applying "models based on explanations of patterns in large populations to the interpretation of the actions of single individuals." This means that Bourdieu's concepts, even though they were intended to move away from 'fashionable forms of structuralism' (Bourdieu, 1990) still fall prey to the criticisms of determinism (Jenkins, 2002). Reay (2004) singles out habitus as being subject to widespread criticism of latent determinism.
Moreover, critics have also raised the issues that Bourdieu's concepts were designed during his studies of French society and that this cannot be applicable to all of the different cultures within the world (Reay, 2004). This therefore undermines Bourdieu's principle aim of providing 'thinking tools' which can be used in any social environment to understand the underlying themes of society.
5. Conclusion
By using Bourdieu's concepts to investigate inequalities in the education system provides highly insightful qualitative analysis. Habitus, capital and field are such highly sophisticated concepts that including the key psychological influences of gender and ethnicity alongside those of social class can be explained in a knowledgeable and concise manner. Bourdieu's tools can be used to shade in the details of cultural reproduction incorporating a much larger range of structures than the basic measures of quantitative methods. This therefore provides a better picture for understanding cultural reproduction in education through the inequitable distribution of resources; educational, economic and cultural all of in which an agent's actions can be defined within their social structure.
Through this enhanced method provided by Bourdieu educational researchers are able to explain how the neoliberal marketization of education is allowing the dominant white middle classes to re-establish their pre-eminence within the education system. The increased emphasise on the individual gives the members of society who control the most capital clear advantages over the people they dominate.
Basit (2012) concludes her study of ethnicity in education by using Bourdieu's concepts in order create a platform for argument in order to attack the rhetoric egalitarian narratives promoted by the government whilst it subversively legitimises patriarchal white supremacy. Basit argues that policies and practices are shaped by established structures of domination by the elites in control which undoubtedly perpetuate their control over the dominated. The issue of educational inequality can be explained through Bourdieuian methods; but they cannot be addressed solely through the field of education as it requires a much broader effort to change entrenched forms of domination in order to redistribute all forms of capital that affect an agent's habitus to prevent the process being reproduced through the education system.
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