‘The more things change the more they stay the same’: The continuing relevance of Bourdieu and Passeron’s <i>Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture</i>

Abstract

The publication of Bourdieu and Passeron’s Reproduction had a mixed response. On the one hand the work was criticised for its determinism and pessimistic prognosis of the possibilities of educational change and, on the other hand, praised for its complex analysis of the relationship between education and class inequalities, and the workings of class domination through the educational system. This paper explores the reception Reproduction, and its companion text The Inheritors received before examining the contribution they have made, and continue to make, to understandings of social class inequalities in education. It argues that the work has continuing significance in contemporary England just as it had in 1960s France. As well as examining the relevance of Reproduction for the twenty-first century, it also focuses on the potential of Bourdieu and Passeron’s analysis for enabling animated and agentic conceptualisations of educational and social reproduction by drawing on recent case-study data from English schools. However, it also argues that the lack of sufficient questioning of the dominant educational code, as well as the absence of any moral dimensions of class culture make their study a work in progress which needed the insights of Bourdieu’s later work to bring its analysis to fruition.