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Bourdieu - education and reproduction
pp. 86-108
Abstract
Many English-speaking commentators seem to assume that Bourdieu's fundamental work on education is to be found in two major books (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; 1979) and a number of articles (Bourdieu 1967; 1971; 1973b; 1974: Bourdieu and St Martin 1974).2 But those who think this are mistaken. To the extent that these works constitute the limit of reading they constrain a proper understanding of Bourdieu's theoretical enterprise, which has blossomed from a continual reworking of his ethnographic material from Algeria (Bourdieu 1962; 1963; 1973; 1977; 1979), and from France itself (Bourdieu 1984). The essential point is that it is inappropriate to extrapolate Bourdieu's theoretical enterprise solely from the educational writings, since they predate the intensive development of his theory of practice during the 1970s. Hence evaluations of Bourdieu that appear in the educational literature and which do not take into account these later theoretical developments, are inadequate and misleading. This chapter attempts to overcome such difficulties.
Publication details
Published in:
Harker Richard, Mahar Cheleen, Wilkes Chris (1990) An introduction to the work of Pierre Bourdieu: the practice of theory. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Pages: 86-108
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-21134-0_4
Full citation:
Harker Richard (1990) „Bourdieu - education and reproduction“, In: R. Harker, C. Mahar & C. Wilkes (eds.), An introduction to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 86–108.