Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education (2014) by Karl Maton

Abstract

Maton's book charts the evolution of aspects of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), from its roots in Bourdieu's field theory and Bernstein's code theory, to the multifaceted toolkit for the understanding of social practices that it currently offers. Maton describes LCT as a practical theory rather than a paradigm, a conceptual toolkit and analytic methodology rather than an -ism (p.15), providing the means for analyzing actors' dispositions, practices and contexts within a variegated range of fields (ibid). Maton's goal is to address the issue of 'knowledge blindness' in educational research by developing awareness of knowledge as having existence beyond discourse, with distinctive emergent properties and real effects. He builds a convincing argument that there has been inadequate attention to the nature, structure and effects of types of knowledge, hence the need for a sociology of knowledge and its possibilities and effects. LCT thus locates itself within a social realist paradigm, challenging what Maton argues is a false dichotomy between relativist constructionism and absolutist positivism.