EDUC 800- Ways of Knowing
Elizabeth Hanna
Kathy Nutt
Hye-Young Shin
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flz6shD3g2s
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Born August 1, 1930 in Denguin, PyreneesAtlantiques, France in a modest rural family.
Educated at the Lycee in Pau, Lycee Louis-leGrand.
Studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale
Superieure.
Worked as a lycee teacher at Moulins from 19551958.
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Undertook ethnographic research among the
peasants of Kabylia in 1958 -1962 after
completing his military service in the Algerian
War.
Switched to the study of sociology which
allowed him to combine both theory and
practice.
Married Marie Claire Brizard in 1962. They
had three sons.
Returned to the University of Paris in 1960.
Pierre Bourdieu
Biography, cont.
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Gained a teaching position at
the University of Lille where he
remained until 1964
Director of Studies at the
Ecole Pratique des Hautes
Etudes from 1961.
Chair of Sociology at the
College de France, in the VIe
section in 1981.
In 1968, took over the Centre
de Sociologie Europeenne
until his death in 2002.
Died January 23, 2002 in Paris,
France (age 71)
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Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of
taste (1984)
In other words: Essays towards a reflexive
sociology (1990)
Language and symbolic power (1991)
The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the
literary field (1996)
Masculine domination (2001)
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Max Weber (1864–1920)
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German political economist & sociologist
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He is typically cited, with
Émile Durkheim and
Karl Marx, as one of the
three principal architects
of modern social science.
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• A German philosopher, political economist
and revolutionary whose ideas are credited
as the foundation of modern communism.
• He summarized his approach in the first
line of chapter one of The Communist
Manifesto: “The history of all hitherto
existing society is the history of class
struggles.”
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Émile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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A French positivist sociologist
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Influential in both sociology
and anthropology, Durkheim
published groundbreaking
sociological studies on law,
education, crime, religion,
suicide, and many other
aspects of society.
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Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009)
• French
anthropologist
and ethnologist, and has
been called the "father of
modern anthropology”
• He was one of the
central figures in the
structuralist school of
thought, where his Ideas
reached into fields
including the humanities
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Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)
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Influenced Bourdieu’s focus on the body, action, and practical dispositions, which
found their way into his theory of habitus.
Edmund Husserl
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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A French mathematician, physicist, and Catholic
philosopher
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He corresponded with
Pierre de Fermat on probability
theory, strongly influencing the
development of modern
economics and social science.
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Bourdieu titled his Pascalian
Meditations after Blaise Pascal.
Howard Winant
Michel de Certeau
France Winddance Twine
Loïc Wacquant
Bourdieu
Habitus
Capital
Economic
Social
Cultural
Symbolic
Symbolic Violence
field
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a setting in which agents and their social
positions are located
a structured social space with its own rules,
schemes of domination, legitimate opinions
and so on.
relatively autonomous from the wider social
structure, in which people relate and struggle
through a complex of connected social
relations.
Education
Law
Politics
Field
ART
Economy
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a structure of the mind
characterized by a set of
acquired schemata,
sensibilities,
dispositions and taste.
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a system of durable &
transposable
"dispositions”
the individual agent
develops these
dispositions in response
to the determining
structures (such as class,
family, and education)
and external conditions
(fields) they encounter.
1.
2.
3.
4.
important factor contributing to social
reproduction.
provides the practical skills and dispositions
necessary to navigate within different fields
constantly remade by these navigations and
choices
mediates between “objective” structures of
social relations and the individual “subjective”
behavior of actors
"the aggregate of the
actual or potential
resources which are
linked to possession
of a durable network
of more or less
institutionalized
relationships of
mutual acquaintance
and recognition."
The Forms of Capital (1986)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND7UgjXHenY
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non-financial assets
that involve
educational, social,
and intellectual
knowledge.
provided to children
who grow up in nonwealthy but highlyeducated and
intellectuallysophisticated families.
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forms of knowledge, skills, education, and
advantages that a person has, which give them
a higher status in society.
parents provide their children with cultural
capital by transmitting the attitudes and
knowledge needed to succeed in the current
educational system.
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in the embodied state incorporated in mind
and body
in the institutionalized state, such as
educational qualifications
in the objectified state, simply existing as
cultural goods such as books, artifacts,
dictionaries, and paintings
•YouTube - Pierre Bourdieu - Different Tastes
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the resources
available to an
individual on the
basis of honor,
prestige or
recognition.
functions as an
authoritative
embodiment of
cultural value.
a crucial source of
power.
Symbolic Capital cannot be converted
to other forms of capital (economic,
cultural, social). However, these
latter three can have also symbolic
value.
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economic +
symbolic value
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buying a work
of original art
economic
capital + the
cultural capital
to appreciate it
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first introduced by Pierre Bourdieu
a holder of symbolic capital uses the power this
confers against an agent who holds less, and
seeks thereby to alter their actions.
incorporation of unconscious structures that
tend to perpetuate the structures of action of
the dominant
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more powerful than physical violence in that it
is embedded in the very modes of action and
structures of cognition of individuals, and
imposes the specter of legitimacy of the social
order.
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Cultural Capital (e.g.,
competencies, skills,
qualifications) can be a
source of
misrecognition and
symbolic violence.
working class students
vs. middle class
students
transformation of
people's symbolic or
economic inheritance
(e.g., accent or property)
into cultural capital
(e.g., university
qualifications)
YouTube - Sociology is a Martial Art (2/
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“In broad terms, literacy is the ability to make
and communicate meaning from and by the use
of a variety of socially contextual symbols. A
literate person can mediate their world by
deliberately and flexibly orchestrating meaning
from one linguistic knowledge base and apply or
connect it to another knowledge base. The
definition of literacy is dynamic, evolving, and
reflects the continual changes in our society.”
http://www.bridgew.edu
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“Language forms a kind of wealth…”
According to Kramsch in Pierre Bourdieu and
Literacy Education,“Bourdieu’s main
contribution to education is a deep
appreciation of the fundamental paradox of
literacy as being both liberatory and
conservative, an instrument of both social
change and social reproduction.”
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“a Bourdieusian stance enables educators to
better understand their own and their
students’successes and failures, and thus turns
the paradox into a creative experience.”
Consistent with Bourdieu’s social practice, he
recommended that teachers “combine the
awareness of the theory and the empathy of the
practice.”