Commissions of inquiry as ritual: Bourdieu, the marquis and the Endowed Schools of Ireland, 1854–58

Abstract

Recent concerns in Ireland with memorialisation and cultural nationalism facilitate a sociological appraisal of the unjustly neglected Kildare Commission on Endowed Schools, 1854–58. Uniquely, it was an exercise in modernisation and rationalisation of cultural capital set to supply hope to Irish Protestants in the post-Famine era. The sociological significance of the Commission lies in the understandings it offers of the link between print culture, Blue Books (parliamentary inquiries) and politics; Bourdieu's notion of informational capital; and Weber's interest in social inquiries as checks on bureaucratic power. The fieldwork of the inquiry had ritual and quasi-ethnographic properties which systematically brought to light the hidden social conditions of these schools.