{"id":7224,"date":"2020-08-15T23:05:44","date_gmt":"2020-08-15T22:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/infed.org\/mobi\/?p=7224"},"modified":"2025-08-11T16:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T15:25:07","slug":"pierre-bourdieu-habitus-capital-and-field-exploring-reproduction-in-the-practice-of-education","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/infed.org\/dir\/welcome\/pierre-bourdieu-habitus-capital-and-field-exploring-reproduction-in-the-practice-of-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Pierre Bourdieu on education: Habitus, capital, and field. Reproduction in the practice of education"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s exploration of how the social order is reproduced, and inequality persists across generations, is more pertinent than ever. We examine some key lessons for educators and pedagogues.<\/h2>\r\n

_______<\/p>\r\n

contents: introduction<\/a> \u2022 Pierre Bourdieu – life<\/a> \u2022 habitus<\/a> \u2022 field<\/a> \u2022 capital<\/a>\u00a0\u2022 exploring reproduction<\/a> \u2022 developing practice<\/a>\u00a0\u2022 conclusion<\/a> \u2022 references and further reading<\/a> \u2022 acknowledgements<\/a> \u2022 how to cite this piece<\/span><\/a><\/p>\r\n

<\/a>Introduction<\/h3>\r\n

Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s (1930-2002) <\/strong>theorizing has become a major focus for exploration within sociology. His work, and that of Michel Foucault<\/strong><\/a>, is amongst the most frequently cited of the late twentieth-century social theorists. New generations of researchers have continued to look to him (see, for example, Thatcher et. al<\/em>. 2018) and with justification. Bourdieu\u2019s exploration of how the social order is reproduced, and inequality persists across generations, is more pertinent than ever. The concepts he marshals shed considerable light, for example, on the dynamics at work for educators and pedagogues. Schooling, academic institutions and local structures were of great interest to him.<\/p>\r\n

Here we examine three key notions informing his labour’s \u2013 habitus, field, and capital. We also explore their role in the reproduction of the social order, and in structuring people\u2019s experience of education. As well as deepening our understanding, they can help us to develop practice. Sadly, the power of these ideas is often be lost in the abstraction and posturing of the academic industry that has grown up around Pierre Bourdieu. He was dismissive of grand theory and of theory for its own sake. Instead, he looked as he once commented, to developing ‘thinking tools visible through the results they yield’ (Wacquant 1989: 50). Fundamentally concerned with change and practice, Bourdieu’s efforts only make sense in the world when those that engage with them look to praxis<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 informed, committed action<\/strong><\/a> (even if he disliked the word – see below).<\/p>\r\n

The notions of habitus, field, and capital are intricately connected so there is danger in approaching them separately. As Loic Wacquant put it, his \u2018work which is so catholic and systematic in both intent and scope has typically been apprehended in “bits and pieces” and incorporated piecemeal\u2019 (op. cit.<\/em>: 27). This had been especially the case in the United States and in Britain. However, as Michael Grenfell (2014) has argued, by looking at the concepts one by one we can approach the whole \u2013 \u2018how ultimately all of them are of one and the same epistemology\u2019. More importantly, though, they are born of a coherent, critical, and committed stance or attitude to the world (what has been discussed as haltung<\/strong><\/a> within social pedagogy).<\/p>\r\n

Before we turn to these ideas, we look briefly at Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s life and the contexts in which he was operating. His experiences of schooling and local life when growing up had a profound impact on his focus and thinking, as did the time he spent in Algeria.<\/p>\r\n

<\/a>Pierre Bourdieu – life<\/h3>\r\n

One of the common ways of describing Pierre Bourdieu is as an outsider who became an insider. Whether he did become an insider is questionable. Richard Nice, who translated a lot of Bourdieu\u2019s work, has suggested that there are \u2018two versions of Bourdieu\u2019s past. One is the mythical one in which he is the peasant boy confronting urban civilization, and the other, which he actually thought more seriously, is what it\u2019s like to be a petit bourgeois and a success story’ (quoted by Silverstein and Goodman 2009: 6). His talent and disposition certainly enabled him to climb through the French education system. Being a \u2018success story\u2019 is not, however, the same as being an \u2018insider\u2019. Pierre Bourdieu described upwardly mobile students as \u201coblats miracul\u00e9s,\u201d or \u2018dedicated servants of the academic cult, who achieve a miraculous trajectory but nonetheless feel like outsiders to the consecrated educational elite\u2019 (Medvetz and Sallaz 2018: 2).<\/p>\r\n

Homelife and schooling<\/h5>\r\n

Bourdieu was born in 1930 a small village in southern France \u2013 Denguin in the B\u00e9arn region (Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es-Atlantiques). His grandfather had been a sharecropper but his father, who did not complete his schooling, had become a postman and then a postmaster. Bourdieu\u2019s mother had remained in school until she was 16. Gascon, a regional dialect of Occitan<\/a> which has now nearly disappeared, was spoken in the home. Looking back, Bourdieu talked about his petit-bourgeois family and rural background, and how it had made him ill at ease with class-based privilege and reluctant to separate himself from the \u201crank and file\u201d (quoted in Silverstein and Goodman 2009: 8).<\/p>\r\n

We know little or nothing about Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s private life and his experiences at home and school. He went to the local elementary school and gained entry to the lyc\u00e9e in Pau \u2013 some 15 kilometres from his home in Denguin. Like many other students from distant villages, he had to board \u2013 and he has written briefly about this experience. As \u2018a rural boarder in the lyc\u00e9e he was forced to wear a grey smock while the day pupils arrived in the latest attire\u2019 (Grenfell 2014). They also made fun of his Gascon accent (see Bourdieu 2002). However, such was his academic ability and his commitment to studying that he was entered for – and passed – the entrance exam for the Lyc\u00e9e Louis-le-Grand in Paris. The Lyc\u00e9e was one of the main feeders for the elite Parisian schools \u2013 the \u2018Grandes \u00c9coles\u2019 and in 1951 he entered the \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure (ENS) to study philosophy. Louis Althusser and Jacques Derrida were there at the same time.<\/p>\r\n

Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s experiences of the schooling system, and the pressures and prejudices, focused around those from poorer backgrounds within elite educational institutions were significant both in terms of the foci of his work and his concern to generate tools for change. \u2018A lot of what I’ve done has been in reaction to the \u00c9cole Normale,” he said in an interview with The New York Times<\/em>. \u2018I think if I hadn’t become a sociologist, I would have become very anti-intellectual. I was horrified by that world\u2019 (quoted in Riding 2002).<\/p>\r\n

Algeria<\/h5>\r\n

After graduating, Pierre Bourdieu worked as a lyc\u00e9e teacher before being conscripted into the French Army and deployed to Algeria in late 1955. There he was initially assigned to guarding military facilities and then to clerical work in the French document and information service in Algeria. Interestingly, this reassignment came following his parents making a request to a senior official in Algeria who came from their local, B\u00e9arn, region (Silverstein and Goodman 2009: 9). Bourdieu was opposed to colonialism and supported Algerian nationalist efforts to gain independence (their war had begun in 1954 and was to last until 1962). He was also concerned about the \u2018blind submission\u2019 of soldiers to authority, and increasingly interested in Algerian society. The move to the document and information service allowed him to follow this growing interest. He was both able to meet leading scholars and access the government\u2019s Algerian library.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"Following national service, Pierre Bourdieu stayed on in Algeria working as a teacher and researcher until 1960 (in the facult\u00e9 de lettres at the University of Algiers). While still drawing on his grounding in philosophical enquiry, he turned to ethnography and sociology. He engaged in extensive fieldwork with the Berber-speaking Kabyle \u2013 having to learn and develop his use of ethnographical research \u2018on the hoof\u2019 (Silverstein and Goodman 2009: 6). Bourdieu also had to find his way through competing factions ranging from far-Right groups who viewed him as a traitor; through moderate groupsarguing for reconciliation between France and Algeria based, in part, on a poor understanding of the situation; to those aligned with the Communist left (like Fanon and Sartre) whom he viewed as failing to engage with the reality of local daily life and consciousness. The immediate impact was that he had to leave Algeria following far-Right death threats. Another was that he gained a contract to write a book for the Que Sais- Je?<\/em> Series: Sociologie de l’Alg\u00e9rie<\/em> (Sociology of Algeria) which appeared in 1958. He went on to collaborate on two further books about Algeria: Travail et travailleurs en Alg\u00e9rie<\/em> (1963), Le d\u00e9racinement, la crise de l\u2019agriculture traditionelle en Alg\u00e9rie<\/em> (1964).<\/p>\r\n

Paris<\/h5>\r\n

On his return to France, Pierre Bourdieu became an assistant to Raymond Aron who was known both as a writer and journalist, and as a social scientist (at this time he held a professorship in political science at the Sorbonne in Paris). However, as Bourdieu put it, \u2018First, I went to Lille, where I gave this strange kind of course on the history of sociological thought: Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Pareto \u2013outrageous, an insane job\u2019 (Bourdieu, P., Schultheis, F. and Pfeuffer, A. 2011). He was at University of Lille from 1961 to 1964 and during this period he married Marie-Claire Brizzard (1936-2014) (in November 1962).<\/p>\r\n

Raymond Aron, like Bourdieu, was interested in Max Weber\u2019s work. However, \u2018it soon became clear to me that Aron and I had very different ways of looking at things: my Weber was opposed to Aron\u2019s Weber. It is staggering that Aron was hardly familiar at all with Weber\u2019s Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft<\/em>\u2019 (op. cit.<\/em>). One also wonders how Bourdieu managed more generally around Aron. Didier Eribon, who also came from a non-elite background, had described Aron as follows:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

I only met him once in my life, and immediately felt a strong aversion towards him. The very moment I set eyes on him, I loathed his ingratiating smile, his soothing voice, his way of demonstrating how reasonable and rational he was, everything about him that displayed his bourgeois ethos of decorum and propriety, of ideological moderation. In reality, his writings are filled with a violence that those at whom it is directed would not be able to avoid feeling were they ever to come across it. It suffices to read\u2014but there are other choices too\u2014the pages he wrote about the working-class strikes in the 1950s. People have praised his lucidity because he was anti-communist while others still blindly supported the Soviet Union. But this is wrong! He was anti-communist because of his hatred of the working class, and he set himself up as the political and ideological defender of the bourgeois establishment, defending against anything having to do with the aspirations or the political activities of the working class. Basically, his pen was for hire: he was a soldier in the service of those in power helping them to maintain their power. (2018: 520)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\"\"Pierre Bourdieu went on to be nominated as Director of Studies at the \u00c9cole Pratique des Hautes \u00c9tudes and then director of the Centre de Sociologie Europ\u00e9enne, which had originally been founded by Aron. These years at the Centre were highly productive. He explored (with, in particular, Jean-Claude Passeron) the education\/schooling system at its role in the reproduction of the existing social order: Les h\u00e9ritiers<\/em> (The Inheritors, French Students and their Relation to Culture) (1964; 1979) and La reproduction<\/em> (Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture) (1970; 1977). He also engaged with methodology: Le m\u00e9tier de sociologue<\/em> \u00a0(1968) (with Passeron and Chamboredon) and Esquisse d\u2019une th\u00e9orie de la pratique<\/em> (Outline of a theory of practice) (1972; 1977). Added to this were works on art and culture: Un Art moyen, essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie<\/em> and L\u2019Amour de l\u2019art, les mus\u00e9es d\u2019art et leur public.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

\"\"In 1979 one his best-known texts was published: La Distinction<\/em> (it appeared English as Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste<\/em><\/a> in 1984). It has been named as one of the ten important works of sociology in the twentieth century by the International Sociological Association<\/a>. The book became known\u2014jokingly\u2014as Bourdieu\u2019s \u201csuicide.\u201d The structure of its argument was \u2018homologous to that of Durkheim\u2019s seminal study of suicide, which showed that even the most personal of all acts\u2014that of taking one\u2019s own life\u2014was not immune to sociological analysis\u2019 (Medvetz and Sallaz 2018: 4). He argued that:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\u2026 many of the seemingly personal choices of everyday life\u2014what to wear, to eat, to display on one\u2019s walls, or to make of the latest blockbuster movie\u2014could be explained through reference to the overall class structure (in particular, the overall volume of one\u2019s capital and the relative composition of cultural and economic capital). (op. cit.<\/em>)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Many of Bourdieu’s books at this time were published by Les Editions de Minuit. Somehow, alongside the writing, Pierre Bourdieu also managed to edit one of their book series – Le Sens Common<\/em>. Amongst the books were translations of key texts including work by Erving Goffman. He also had three sons – J\u00e9r\u00f4me, Emmanuel, and Laurent!<\/p>\r\n

Bourdieu became Chair in Sociology at the Coll\u00e8ge de France in 1981 \u2013 and was awarded the gold medal of the CNRS \u2013 the French national research centre (Grenfell 2014: 25). Landmark texts followed including Homo academicus<\/em> (1984) and Raisons pratiques. Sur la th\u00e9orie de l\u2019action <\/em>(Practical Reason. On the theory of action) (1994 | 1998).<\/p>\r\n

In this later period, Pierre Bourdieu became more heavily involved in political debates. During the 1980s this included being a member of a committee set up by the Socialist government under Fran\u00e7ois Mitterand to review the direction and curriculum of the French education system. However, he became best known as a public intellectual via his critique of the rise of neoliberalism and the impact it had upon economic and social policies and debates (see, for example, Bourdieu 2008).<\/p>\r\n

Pierre Bourdieu died from cancer on January 23, 2002. He was 71. His death was the lead story on French TV news and \u2018ran with expressions of grief and loss from France\u2019s president, prime minister, trade union leaders, and a host of other dignitaries and scholars\u2019 (Calhoun 2002).<\/p>\r\n

<\/a>Habitus<\/h3>\r\n

\"\"Bourdieu’s distinction by Nicolas Nova<\/a> | flickr ccnync2<\/p>\r\n

To begin our journey through some of the key elements of Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s thinking it is worth starting with four key points.<\/p>\r\n

First, Bourdieu was steeped in the work of the founding theorists of sociology such as Durkheim and Weber, and in the changing currents of philosophy and social theory more broadly. He could draw upon philosophers such as Edmund Husserl (1939 | 1973), anthropologists like Durkheim\u2019s nephew – Marcel Mauss (1950 | 1966), and social theorists concerned with the \u2018civilizing process\u2019 like Norman Elias (1994).<\/p>\r\n

Second, his approach involves developing not so much a theory, as a method. This consisted \u2018essentially in a manner of posing problems, in a parsimonious set of conceptual tools and procedures for constructing objects and for transferring knowledge gleaned in one area of inquiry into another\u2019 (Wacquant 1992: 5).<\/p>\r\n

Third, he saw the task of sociology as uncovering \u2018the most profoundly buried structures of the various social worlds which constitute the social universe, as well as the \u201cmechanisms\u201d which tend to ensure their reproduction or their transformation\u2019 (Bourdieu 1989: 7).<\/p>\r\n

Fourth, rather than debating the priority of structure or agent, or system or actor, Bourdieu, \u2018affirms the primacy of relations. In his view, such dualistic alternatives reflect a common-sensical perception of social reality of which sociology must rid itself\u2019 (Wacquant 1992: 15).<\/p>\r\n

These capacities and orientations, combined with his concern to understand the forces that lead to the reproduction of social inequality, meant that he both identified the significance of habitus <\/em>and could develop it as a \u2018thinking tool\u2019 that might lead to change.<\/p>\r\n

The Latin word habitus<\/em> can be translated as habit. However, that narrows its meaning and makes it passive. It is better approached via the Ancient Greek notion of hexis<\/em>. Hexis<\/em> is an active condition and something more than a disposition (diathesis<\/em>) according to Aristotle. It entails a readiness to sense and know (Sachs 2001) that in everyday life is often constrained. This leads to a narrowing perception of what is possible for people within different social groups and helps to explain, for example, \u2019how working-class kids’ working-class jobs\u2019 (Willis 1977). \u00a0It is to this that Bourdieu pays special attention. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Experientially, we often feel we are free agents, yet base everyday decisions on assumptions about the predictable character, behaviour and attitudes of others. Sociologically, social practices are characterized by regularities\u2026 Bourdieu asks how social structure and individual agency can be reconciled, and (to use Durkheim\u2019s terms) how the \u201couter\u201d social and \u201cinner\u201d self, help to shape each other. (Maton 2014: 48)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

As Kark Maton also comments, habitus <\/em>is central to Bourdieu\u2019s approach, and to his originality and contribution to social science. \u2018Yet habitus <\/em>is also one of the most misunderstood, misused and hotly contested of Bourdieu\u2019s ideas\u2019 (2014: 48).<\/p>\r\n

Bourdieu defines habitus<\/em> as \u2018a property of actors (whether individuals, groups or institutions) that comprises a \u201cstructured and structuring structure\u201d \u2018(1987|1994: 131). It is a system of dispositions.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

The word disposition seems particularly suited to express what is covered by the concept of habitus\u2026 It expresses first the result of an organizing action, with a meaning close to that of words such as \u00a0structure; it also designates a way of being, a habitual state (especially of the body) and, in particular, a predisposition, tendency, propensity or inclination. (Bourdieu 1972|1977: 214, n l)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

There are five things to note here.<\/p>\r\n

First, Bourdieu is looking at habitus<\/em> as a habitual state, not a habit. It is a way of being.<\/p>\r\n

Second, \u2018being\u2019 (and habitus) are relational concepts. Being involves relationships with others and the environments we are part of.<\/p>\r\n

Third, we come back to hexis<\/em> and the readiness to sense and know. While there may be powerful forces acting to contain this, there is always the chance that it will shine through. The \u2018structuring structure\u2019 is not total. There is the possibility of learning and change, as J\u00fcrgen Habermas argued. In dialogue, there is \u2018a gentle but obstinate, a never silent although seldom redeemed claim to reason\u2019 (1979: 3).<\/p>\r\n

Fourth, this system of dispositions points and pushes us towards certain perceptions, appreciations, and practices. Defined by such a social trajectory, habitus can be considered as:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\u2026 a subjective but not individual system of internalized structures, schemes of perception, conception, and action common to all members of the same group or class and constituting the precondition for all objectification and apperception: and the objective coordination of practices and the sharing of a world-view could be founded on the perfect impersonality and interchangeability of singular practices and views. (Bourdieu 1972|1977: 86)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Bourdieu\u2019s concern to overturn binary thinking within social theory \u2013 especially around agency\/structure and subjectivism\/objectivism \u2013 provides an important and debated dynamic. Objective structures, as Graham Schambler (2015) has suggested, constrain thought, action, and interaction \u2013 and the way we represent the world. \u2018People\u2019s representations, in turn, affect objective structures.\u2019 These tensions or dialectics are at play in all that Bourdieu writes about the emergence of practice<\/em> (see below). Unfortunately, the way in which Bourdieu has presented these ideas has meant that some commentators interpreted his efforts as an attempt to defuse these tensions rather than recognize their relational significance (see Martin 2003).<\/p>\r\n

Last, and certainly not least, habitus<\/em> only makes sense when it is related to his other concepts \u2013 field, capital, and practice. It does not stand on its own.\u00a0Bourdieu was later to express this in a formula in Distinction<\/em> (1977|1984: 101). This was probably included more as a way of inviting people to think about the relationship between the phenomena than as a summation of an actual theory of practice. In fact, Bourdieu does not take us much further forward concerning the relationship in the book, but the formula certainly invites discussion.<\/p>\r\n

Maton comments, \u2018This equation can be unpacked as stating: one\u2019s practice results from relations between one\u2019s dispositions (habitus) and one\u2019s position in a field (capital), within the current state of play of that social arena (field) (2014: 51).<\/p>\r\n

<\/a>Field<\/h3>\r\n

Bourdieu approaches the notion of field<\/em> as a social space in which interactions, transactions and events take place. Patricia Thomson comments:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

In English, the word \u201cfield\u201d may well conjure up an image of a meadow. Perhaps it is early summer, and the meadow is a profusion of wildflowers and grasses surrounded by a dark mass of trees. In French, the word for this kind of field is le pr\u00e9. However, Bourdieu did not write about pretty and benign les pr\u00e9s, but rather le champ, which is used to describe, inter alia<\/em>, an area of land, a battlefield, and a field of knowledge. There are many analogies for Bourdieu\u2019s champ: (1) the field on which a game of football is played (le terrain in French); (2) the field in science fiction, (as in \u201cActivate the force-field, Spock\u201d); or even (3) a field of forces in physics. Bourdieu\u2019s concept of champ, or field, contains important elements of all of these three analogies, while equating to none of them.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

If we follow this through, we can see that Pierre Bourdieu – as before – is developing a tool for thinking. Like a football pitch a field it is something with boundaries. However, within it shapes change, and different forces are at play. Field in this way is different from a system, but an idea that we can use to help us make sense of different situations.<\/p>\r\n

Kurt Lewin<\/a> <\/strong>had made a significant prior contribution to field theory. For him, a \u2018field\u2019 was \u2018the totality of coexisting facts which are conceived of as mutually interdependent\u2019 (Lewin 1951: 240). Individuals were seen to behave differently according to the way in which tensions between perceptions of the self and of the environment were worked through. The whole psychological field, or \u2018life space\u2019, within which people acted had to be viewed to understand behaviour (see Smith 2001). Bourdieu and his various collaborators shared significant concerns with Lewin. They focused on space \u2013 whether social or physical \u2013 as a relational phenomenon. They questioned \u2018the existence of an absolute (social or physical) space and consequently of individual objects or agents existing independently of a set of relations\u2019 (Hilgers and Mangez 2015: 4-5). However, while Lewin broadly looked to social psychology, Bourdieu was concerned with stratification and domination. He was interested in the nature of social space and the relation between different fields and any relative autonomy and power they might have.<\/p>\r\n

A great deal of Bourdieu\u2019s later work involved the exploration of contrasting fields of practice \u2013 and fields within fields. This included investigations of schools and universities, cultural industries, science, and housing. One study, on television, contained this oft-quoted summation of his understanding of field. It is:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

a structured social space, a field of forces, a force field. It contains people who dominate and people who are dominated. Constant, permanent relationships of inequality operate inside this space, which at the same time becomes a space in which various actors struggle for the transformation or preservation of the field. All the individuals in this universe bring to the competition all the (relative) power at their disposal. It is this power that defines their position in the field and, as a result, their strategies. (Bourdieu 1998b: 40\u201341)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Bourdieu also pointed to the steps that needed to be taken to explore a field:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

First, one must analyze the position of the field vis-a-vis the field of power\u2026.<\/p>\r\n

Second, one must map out the objective structure of the relations between the positions occupied by the agents or institutions who compete for the legitimate form of specific authority of which this field in the site.<\/p>\r\n

And, third, one must analyze the habitus of agents, the different systems of dispositions they have acquired by internalizing a determinate type of social and economic condition, and which find in a definite trajectory within the field under consideration a more or less favorable opportunity to become actualized. (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 105-6)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Various criticisms have been made of field theory – and Pierre Bourdieu’s reading of it. Here we just need to note three further things about the approach he takes.<\/p>\r\n

First, as Patricia Thomson (2014) and John Levi Martin (2003) have noted, this approach can yield many fields, often with very fuzzy boundaries. However, it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing a field as a representation of a formal system rather than an analytical approach.<\/p>\r\n

Second, ‘field’ is a tool for thinking. Bourdieu both wants to explore, and encourage, reflexivity. In this case, he is concerned with the capacity of people (agents) in different fields to see the various forces at work in their socialization and how they may either change their situation and\/or the social structure itself. It is also about something more \u2013 and this is linked to habitus<\/em> \u2013 the disposition to strive for change.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Third, and linked to the above, Pierre Bourdieu was\u00a0interested in the relative autonomy of agents and field within fields. Having more control might well be linked to social characteristics such as class, ethnicity, and gender, and to the location and nature of the field. Here, the third of our components \u2013 capital \u2013 is of special importance.<\/p>\r\n

<\/a>Capital<\/h3>\r\n

\"\"<\/p>\r\n

\"Kultur<\/p>\r\n

There are often problems when one imports a concept born of one setting into another where there are rather different forces and concerns. Taking ‘capital’ from the economic sphere and using it to describe things like networks and relationships (social capital) and familiarity with \u2018valued\u2019 cultural forms (cultural capital) can smuggle in unhelpful meanings and be taken too literally. As John Field (2017) has suggested, the central idea of social capital is that \u2018social networks are a valuable asset\u2019. It is a metaphor implying that \u2018connections can be profitable; like any other form of capital, physical or financial, you can invest in it, and you can expect a decent return on your investment\u2019 (op. cit.<\/em>: 13). Some tried to make it more concrete and measurable \u2013 much as economists did with human capital in the 1960s (see, for example, Becker 1964). The result was often rather crude and unhelpful \u2018bean-counting\u2019 that both tended to dehumanize and to ignore the meaning of social behaviour and processes.<\/p>\r\n

Thankfully, Bourdieu stayed focused on the use of different forms of \u2018capital\u2019 as a tool for thinking. He saw \u2018capital\u2019 as a helpful metaphor to shed light on the continual process of remaking of the social order.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

[C]apital can present itself in three fundamental guises: as economic capital<\/em>, which is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalized in the forms of property rights; as cultural capital<\/em>, which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of educational qualifications; and as social capital<\/em>, made up of\u00a0 obligations (\u2018connections\u2019), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of a title of nobility. (Bourdieu 1986: 242]<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Three things need noting here.<\/p>\r\n

First, the possession or not, of different forms of \u2018capital\u2019 could be a significant factor in the ways that people experience education and access to opportunities in general.<\/p>\r\n

Second, Bourdieu is highlighting two key processes \u2013 conversion and institutionalization. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n