Pierre Bourdieu by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1791026
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Interests in education, art and economics

At one point, Bourdieu states that there are as many interests as there are fields, and presumably subfields, although these interests must also be seen, and partly define themselves, in relation to each other. Once he had established what interests were and how they operated, he was able to express the concept in a range of social contexts.

Education

Interests operate in all levels of the education system. Bourdieu constructs his analysis of education around concepts such as pedagogic action, pedagogic authority, pedagogic work and school authority. From his empirical analyses, Bourdieu concludes that pedagogic action is not, as is normally claimed, aimed at equal opportunities within the education system; rather, it is constituted according to principles – upon which the forms and content of teaching and learning are created – which are grounded in a particular class culture – that of the dominant classes. Such cultural prerequisites are arbitrary; they only need to act as a medium through which the culture of the dominant acts in order to exclude that of the dominated. That this occurs in an implicit way is necessary to prevent the opposition of those excluded by the education system for not being “one of us”. In other words, education, by imposing meanings, ways of thinking, and particular forms of expression, acts as a carrier for the culture of the dominant classes; it therefore operates to perpetuate specific power relations as they unfold and are expressed in the dynamic of social evolution. Pedagogic action – and the cultural arbitrary which underpins it – therefore becomes a form of symbolic violence, corresponding to the “objective interests (material, symbolic and … pedagogic) of the dominant groups or classes” (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977a: 7). Such interests can express themselves everywhere in education; indeed, they become even more pronounced as a student advances. For example, by the time French students are sufficiently tutored to enter one of the prestigious grandes écoles in French higher education, their success is conditional on them already sharing the illusio – interests – of the dominant classes or groups; and this according to the specialist focus of the particular school: École Polytechnique – engineering and military; École Normale Supérieure – teaching; École des Mines – industrial engineering; École des Hautes Études Commerciales – commerce and business; and, increasingly after the Second World War when it was set up, École Nationale d’Administration – public service management (cf. Bourdieu 1996b: 170). Such interests are also played out in terms of attitudes, dress, and cultural consumption as set out in Bourdieu’s study of taste: Distinction (1984). It follows that any policy drawn up in order to open up accessibility to educational success – through, for example, the formation of a rational pedagogy (see Grenfell 2007: 77f) or the democratization of education – is bound to fail since it would entail a form of pedagogic work which runs contrary to the “interests of the dominant classes who delegate its pedagogic authority to it” (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977a: 54).

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