Theorizing the professional habitus: operationalizing Bourdieu to explore the role of pedigree in Indonesian higher education

Abstract

Academia today is deeply hierarchical and continues to be centered around perceptions of prestige and symbolic capital. The symbolic capital, or pedigree, associated with the training one receives at the graduate level greatly informs how academics navigate their careers and how they advance professionally. In investigating the formation of the professional habitus of Indonesian academics, we are interested in how their graduate training informs both their career progression and their teaching practices. We theorize graduate training using the terms ‘hybrid’ for the participants who have a mix of overseas and domestic training and ‘homegrown’ for those who were educated solely in Indonesia. The data suggests that hybrid academics in Indonesia are more open to innovating their teaching practice and advance at a quicker pace than homegrown academics.