Bourdieusian Framework Research Articles

Children’s accounts of parental influence on leisure choices

ABSTRACT This paper explores how children experience parental influence on their leisure time, or the time that they spend outside of schooling, including both organised leisure and casual leisure activities. Twenty-one focus groups were conducted with children (n = 147) aged 10–12, derived from seven primary schools in Ireland. Children discussed their hobbies, free time pursuits, sporting activities and digital media use, and elaborated on their parents’ interventions in this regard. Utilising a childhood studies approach within a Bourdieusian framework, findings indicate the salience of Irish culture and in particular gender as differentiating factors in terms of parental influence on children’s leisure choices. The frequency and type of leisure activity, the cultivation of Gaelic games and the gendered roles of mothers and fathers were key features of parental influence on organised leisure practices. Casual leisure such as outdoor play and hanging around involved less parental influence, apart from digital leisure which was heavily mediated by parents, and in particular mothers. Through a focus on social reproduction, this research demonstrates the social significance of childhood leisure practices for children themselves, their parents and in turn, wider society.

Unequal pathways to digital self-entrepreneurship: Class-inflected orientations regarding vlogging as a career

Digital self-entrepreneurship has become one of the most popular career options among younger generations. However, limited attention has been paid to the relationships between socioeconomic differences and digital self-entrepreneurship among youths. Using an extended Bourdieusian framework, this article critically reassesses vloggers’ digital creative labour, conditions and decisions by conceptualising them as various outcomes of position-taking in the emerging field of digital cultural production, tied to socioeconomic differences. Based on interviews with YouTubers in Hong Kong, this study examines how class background shapes young vloggers’ career paths and future aspirations. The findings reveal their divergent class-inflected orientations towards the common tensions between (1) platform productivity and creative autonomy, (2) elite evaluation and mass rating and (3) career planning and an uncertain vlogging future. Shifting the focus to the nexus between class inequality and the platform creative economy, this article provides a nuanced account of digital creative work amid platform precarity and uncertainty.

Community Nursing Practice in Hypertension Management in China: Qualitative Analysis Using a Bourdieusian Framework.

This study explores the practices of Chinese community nurses in hypertension management, using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice to understand how their routines are shaped by sociocultural and institutional forces, along with their professional dispositions. A qualitative descriptive study was conducted in Shenzhen, China, between March and June 2024, and is reported following the COREQ guidelines. Eighteen nurses, each with at least 1 year of full-time experience in hypertension care within the local community healthcare system, were recruited from a participant pool established through prior research. Face-to-face individual semistructured interviews were conducted using a structured interview protocol, and data were analyzed through thematic analysis. Community nurses face tensions between traditional health beliefs and modern hypertension care, as well as institutional pressures that prioritize efficiency over personalized care. Power imbalances, particularly the authority of doctors, complicate their role. However, nurses adapt their care strategies through embodied practices, balancing clinical standards with patient needs. Community nurses are not mere enforcers of guidelines but adaptive professionals who navigate complex sociocultural norms, institutional demands, and power dynamics in hypertension care. This study underscores the necessity for flexible, culturally sensitive practices to improve public health outcomes.

Standing between the elite and street fields: Young people from affluent communities dealing with drugs

Sociology has a rich tradition studying ‘elite’ and ‘street’ social spaces, but rarely considers spaces between these fields and the social actors within them. This article fills that gap by examining the life stories of affluent Oslo youth engaged in illegal drug dealing. Participants had access to economic, social, and cultural capital in both elite and street social space. Making money in legitimate and illegitimate ways kept participants relatively marginal in both spaces. Having social networks among street-oriented peers and among elites facilitated drug dealing but also allowed them an exit from drug crimes when needed. They were educated and often employed, but also had high levels of drug and street cultural competence. This left them relatively estranged from their affluent background milieu leading to persistence in drug dealing. I argue that illegal drug markets among the affluent can be viewed as an in-between social space, that ‘elite’ or ‘street’ youth are likely best conceptualized as existing on a sociocultural spectrum between fields and provide a Bourdieusian framework to study social actors who stand between fields and the impact this may have on their lives.

Psychological capital and social class: A capital approach to understanding positive psychological states and their role in explaining social inequalities.

Psychological capital (PsyCap) is a multidimensional concept entailing hope, self-efficacy, optimism, and resilience. This paper argues that it can be considered a form of "capital" explaining social inequality. We test whether PsyCap can be integrated into the Bourdieusian capital framework by assessing its relationship with social, economic, and cultural capital. We also identify different types of social positions based on the volume and composition of psychological, economic, cultural, and social capital. We use cross-sectional data from the European Social Survey of 2012 (N = 35,313 respondents; 29 countries). To test the associations with the Bourdieusian capital types, we calculated multilevel spearman rank correlations and performed confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Latent Class Analysis identified different types of social positions. We found positive weak correlations between PsyCap and the indicators of cultural capital (r ≤ .14) and positive moderate correlations with the indicators of economic and social capital (r ≤ .24). The results of the CFA showed that the fit of the 4-capital model was superior to that of the 3-capital model. We identified six types of social positions: two deprived types (with overall low capital levels); two well-off types (with overall high capital levels) and two types with high psychological and social capital in combination with varying levels of cultural and economic capital. Including PsyCap in the Bourdieusian capital framework acknowledges the power of positive psychological states regarding processes of social mobility and social inequality on the one hand and calls for understanding PsyCap as a social and group-level phenomenon on the other hand. As such, integrating PsyCap into the Bourdieusian framework can help to address the longstanding issue of understanding the relationship between social and individual differences in the study of social inequalities.

Using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to explore higher education decision-making for working class women on an access to higher education course

Despite the increasing number of non-traditional students entering higher education (HE) in England, HE choices remain stratified by social class. Mature working class students are a target group of the widening participation policy, yet little attention has been given to their HE choices and decision-making. Through narrative inquiry, this study uses a creative method alongside focus groups and semi-structured interviews, and contributes a class perspective to the HE decision-making for 13 women on an Access to HE course. It links sociological theory to adult education, through a Bourdieusian framework. It evidences structural constraints and perceptions of belonging that impeded choices. A sense of place and feelings of fit (habitus) were significant for destination decisions. However, Access to HE course teachers were positively influential in helping students challenge embedded habitual ways of thinking and practice and in raising self-efficacy. The findings offer explanations as to why participation rates may be increasing but not widening enough. It illuminates how social class differences (intersected by age and gender) are crucial to understanding HE decision-making and places a much-needed focus on mature students to the widening participation and social mobility agenda.

Bringing English Back in School Education: English in Government Schools of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh

In the immediate aftermath of Indian Independence in 1947, there was a palpable attempt to replace English with Hindi and other Indian languages to unleash the processes of decolonisation. English was castigated as the language of the British Empire and was seen to be the basis of power and privilege for a handful of English-educated elites. A new nation-state thought it imperative to replace English with other languages which ultimately led to language-based reorganisation of Indian states. Subsequently, there was the replacement of English with Indian languages as mediums of instruction at different levels of education. Such a demand was hugely supported by a large number of Indian intelligentsia. However, six to seven decades down the line, there appears to be a reversal of earlier language politics as governments in various states of India are bringing English back as an aspirational language. This article attempts to understand the context of such a reversal. It also analyses ideological constructions of linguistic reality and its hold on popular perception. Ideologically constructed realities of language become a concrete, tangible force to reckon with. The article explores the renewed interest and urgency in learning English, using the frameworks of language ideology and the Bourdieusian framework of ‘language as a praxis’. Following Hilary Janks, the article underlines the significance of providing critical access to English by historicising and denaturalising its prevalence as one of the major contact languages at the international level.

Girls’ education and the cultural capital of Pakistan’s urban middle class

This qualitative study employs a Bourdieusian framework to explore how urban middle-class parents in Pakistan support their daughters’ education while transmitting cultural capital. Parents emphasize talim-o-tarbiyat, referring to education and nurturing. I argue that, owing to the availability of educational resources and the recognition of the cultural capital conferred by Western qualifications, middle-class, educated urban parents choose Western education as talim. Additionally, Tarbiyat motivates their aspirations for their daughter’s education with specific cognitive references, notably Ashraaf values. Through boundary work and concerted cultivation, they reproduce cultural capital, influencing career choices and networks. Nevertheless, educated working women, experiencing a transformation of their habitus, foster new cognitive and social structures for themselves and their daughters. The study identifies desirable cultural capital, suggesting future research on exploring the conversion strategies of educated women’s capital by considering diverse sociocultural factors that intersect with gender dynamics within both private and public spheres.

Maintaining the gap: women’s early career experiences of entry into the UK graduate labour market

ABSTRACT Gender inequality in the workplace remains a persistent issue that impacts upon women from their first point of entry into the labour market. In this paper, we explore the experiences, of 20 women in the UK as they take their initial steps onto the career ladder upon graduation. Adopting an interpretive methodology that uses a Bourdieusian framework based on habitus, capital, and field, we highlight that women continue to face structural and individual barriers that influence, and in many cases limit, available career opportunities. By intersecting gender with social class and ethnicity, intra-gender differences are identified that demonstrate the deep-seated nature of disadvantage faced by working class and ethnic minority female graduates in securing employment in comparison to their white, middle-class peers. We conclude by recommending that careers support and guidance should be introduced earlier in the education system to raise aspirations and challenge the perpetuation of gender inequality.

Upward track mobility into academic upper secondary education: Effects of challenging parental expectations, immigrant origin, and older siblings on students' educational choices

This study examines the social-cultural challenges of upward track mobility from vocational to academic tracking at the transition to upper secondary education in Germany. Within the highly stratified German education system, these challenges include habitual alienation from the family and milieu of origin. Using a Bourdieusian framework and data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we examine the effect of these challenges on the choices for academic upper secondary education by addressing ambivalent parental expectations regarding social upward mobility and habitual loyalty to the family. The study explores how an immigrant origin and older siblings shape perceptions of these expectations and associated challenges, and thus influence the educational choices at the transition to upper secondary education.Linear probability models (N 2866) show that ambivalent parental expectations hinder the choice for academic upper secondary education. This effect was stronger for nonimmigrant students. Older siblings reduce this negative influence for both immigrant and non-immigrant students. We extend previous literature on educational choices of immigrant and non-immigrant youth by highlighting that ambivalent parental expectations may be a barrier to upward track mobility, moderated by older siblings.

‘Go away and make a big thing of yourself somewhere else’: precarious mobilities and the uses of international capital in Irish academia

The article interrogates the ‘mobility imperative’ and its impact on precarious academics. Drawing on 40 biographic interviews with academics with experience of long-term precarity in Irish higher education, and using a Bourdieusian framework, we identify the specific conditions, uses and impacts of international mobility for these workers. This method offers a unique retrospective advantage for an analysis of the utility of international capital for a cohort of workers typically excluded from studies of international mobility. Among the specific obstacles we identify which are faced by precarious academics in the accumulation and conversion of international capital are the lack of or compromised initial social capital; the dubious value of international capital in Irish academia, especially when associated with precarity; and the difficulty for workers to construct acceptable career scripts when both precarity and mobility have led them off-script. We suggest that the ability to accumulate and convert usable forms of international capital while working abroad is in part predetermined by prior struggles in the national field.

English-medium instruction (EMI) as the great (un)equaliser: experiences of former EMI students in Turkey

ABSTRACT English-medium instruction (EMI) has gained traction in Turkey in recent decades. However, strict English proficiency requirements at EMI universities pose a problem for many students, whose English skills are much below the level required for EMI. These challenges cause some students to drop out of EMI and lead to an elite appropriation of EMI universities, thus perpetuating already existing inequities in Turkish higher education and society at large. However, little is known about barriers to EMI education. Understanding student experiences in this pipeline is important to shed light on how EMI contributes to social inequities. This study uses a Bourdieusian framework and a phenomenological design to explore the experiences of students who dropped out of a Turkish EMI university. Data were collected through 90-minute semi-structured interviews with five former EMI students. The results indicated that while the participants leveraged several forms of capital throughout their time at the focal EMI university, the mismatch between the capital possessed by the participants and that expected and endorsed by the EMI university alienated the participants, leading them to drop out eventually. The discussion includes implications for EMI policy and suggestions for context-driven EMI implementation.

Queer vulnerability and disaster situations

<abstract> <p>The appropriateness of branding certain disaster events as a natural disaster continues to be academically debated, given that few disasters are solely the result of uncontrollable forces of nature, and are instead anthropogenic in their creation, or exacerbated by the relationship humans have with actual and potential hazards. Therefore, this socially constructed nature of disasters also makes groups that are marginalized within society, such as queer people, more vulnerable to these disasters. Utilizing a Bourdieusian framework, the field of disaster preparedness, management, and recovery is examined for queer vulnerability, which is deconstructed here as a product of global and local cultures, in their distribution of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital away from queer people. The concepts of habitus and subsidiary concepts of ethos and doxa are deployed to understand the ingrained ways of doing and being that perpetuate discrimination against queer individuals through said inequitable distributions of capital. It is argued that the field is privileged for heteronormative lives, thus leading to heteronormative assumptions and actions that further marginalize queer experiences before, during, and after disasters during disasters. In light of this, we call for a more social justice informed approach to disaster risk reduction and relief, in which heteronormativity is consciously decentered to ensure all groups are kept safe from disasters, which can arguably never be natural.</p> </abstract>

A longitudinal study on content learning of EMI students in Vietnam from Bourdieusian perspectives

Abstract English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has increased rapidly. This study adopts a Bourdieusian framework to investigate two research questions. First, it examines whether there is a change in the content learning of EMI business students over time. Second, it explores the connection between students’ social milieus and their academic performance in an EMI tertiary context. The study collects GPA scores and background survey data from EMI and Vietnamese-medium instruction (VMI) students over a two-year period. The findings reveal that EMI students experience a greater decline in learning when transitioning from year 3 to year 4, compared to VMI students. Additionally, students with higher levels of cultural capital, as measured by English entry grades and English private tuition time, experience a drop in their academic performance. From a Bourdieusian perspective, the EMI group lacks the necessary form of capital to reproduce their class privilege in relation to the VMI cohort over time. Theoretically, the study reinforces the notion that EMI serves as a mechanism of cultural reproduction that aligns with the unequal distribution of resources. Empirically, it contributes to the understanding of EMI’s impacts, and its implications for policy implementation in Vietnam and similar contexts.

With a little help from my family and friends: social class and contextual variations in the role of personal networks in students’ higher education plans

This article analyses the influence of family and friends on students’ higher education plans. Using a Bourdieusian framework, it examines social class and contextual influences on both the structure of students’ networks and the content of interactions within them. These are shown to be dependent on the dispositions and capitals of both the students and the members of those networks. Relying on data from a questionnaire circulated among 1,645 French lycée students, the article shows the existence of significant social class differences in the frequency and nature of students’ interactions about higher education with various types of family members and friends. It also highlights that these differences are subject to contextual variations, with students from the same social background interacting differently with their personal networks about their higher education plans depending on the school they attend and the track in which they are enrolled.

Children’s and adults’ language habitus and practices: Exploring harmonious bilingual experiences in an Australian immigration context

ABSTRACT This study explores the language habitus and practices in one Vietnamese immigrant family in Melbourne. It contributes to research on family language policy in multicultural contexts. Using a Bourdieusian framework to explore the interrelationships between language beliefs, practices and management in a nuanced way, the article discusses how the children’s and adults’ language beliefs are situated in their lived experiences as a result of their participation in the different social fields of family, school, and the workplace. The article then further examines the “structuring” feature of the habitus through an exploration of the children’s agency in family language policy in two aspects: their manifestation of their agency as well as how their habitus and their accumulated capital shape their language practices. Findings point to the shared multilingual habitus between the grandmother, mother and the two children and children’s agency in family language practices and management. The data analysis and theoretical discussions suggest that Bourdieu’s concepts are useful and nuanced lenses to investigate family language policy and are complementary to Spolsky’s seminal theoretical framework of family language policy.

Non-binary embodiment and bodily discomfort: Body as social signum

Transgender embodiment and transgender-related bodily discomfort have been discussed primarily from a medical perspective that downplays the role of society in shaping one’s orientation towards the body. Drawing on qualitative data on the everyday lives of non-binary individuals, the article analyses the phenomenon of transgender bodily discomfort or bodily dysphoria using a Bourdieusian framework. The data show that bodily discomfort arises in relation to the bodily parts, characteristics and processes that are most heavily invested as being the parts that supposedly tell the ‘truth’ about one’s gender, and in relation to the bodily hexis that is socially recognised as being indicative of one’s gender. The analysis shows that the embodied socially dominant schemes of perception and classifications on which a binary body typology is based contribute to the rise of transgender-related bodily discomfort. Thus, despite the bodily discomfort being individually manifested and experienced, it is (also) the socially embodied – the social body – that reaches out through the discomfort of a socialised body.

Precarity in Higher Education: Perspectives From The 1.5 Generation in Israel

ABSTRACT We examined perceptions of precarity in higher education by conducting interviews with a cohort of academics in Israel. The participants were 1.5 generation immigrants who were born in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and then moved to Israel as children or teenagers with their family, typically in the 1990s. Using a narrative research approach, we examined the personal perceptions of 43 academics employed at colleges and universities in Israel. Despite differences in their employment status and contract conditions, our findings made clear that all the academics in our cohort had experienced employment precarity. Using a Bourdieusian framework, we attribute Israeli academic precarity to a deficiency in the cultural and social capital necessary for establishing relevance. Although they had been relatively successful in integrating into Israeli society, and had decades of living within it, our interviewees from all types of academic institutions reported feelings and experiences of extreme precarity. This precarity was ascribed by interviewees to the structure of the Israeli higher education market, which is characterized by an unstable, hyper-competitive, and neoliberal environment, leaving minority groups employed within it particularly vulnerable.

On the relentless labour of deconstructing domination logics: The case of decolonial critical accounting research in South America

Eight years after the publication of our article on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, this reflexive commentary responds to a recent critique by M. Gómez-Villegas and C. Larrinaga, which claims our study is characterized by a colonial and Anglo-Euro-centric bias, as is found in other critical accounting research. While the two authors criticize our use of a Bourdieusian framework to investigate a technology, participatory budgeting, born and implemented in a region of the Global South, we point to the relevance of using Bourdieu’s critical sociology to think of emancipation, even more so as European thinking is constitutive of Latin American thinking. We extend some of Gómez-Villegas and Larrinaga’s comments to question more broadly the conditions under which critical accounting research and research at large are being produced. Welcoming the diffusion of decolonial perspectives in critical accounting research, we lastly invite all critical researchers to remain alert to the pervasiveness and relentless renewal of capitalist, colonial, and masculine domination logics – including in decolonial research itself.

Dominated Cosmopolitanism: Consumer Habitus Dynamics among Low-Resource Migrants

Abstract Cosmopolitanism is often cast as an elite cultural orientation and as a privileged disposition to an increasingly globalized marketplace, instigated by, and lived through, mobility. But how does cosmopolitanism evolve among consumers at intersectional subordinate positions of power? This article analyzes the emergence of cosmopolitanism through a 9 year longitudinal extended case study of female migrants with low levels of resources. Through the deployment of a Bourdieusian framework, cosmopolitanism is theorized to evolve through processes set in motion by the experience of mismatch and subsequent alignment between new social contexts and existing socialized dispositions (hysteresis). The experience of hysteresis caused by mobility can lead to a habitus with traits of cosmopolitanism. The emergence of a cosmopolitan habitus can result in a sense of emancipation, but it also engenders new subordinate positions within intersectional systems of power. The outcome of this process is labeled dominated cosmopolitanism, representing a more nuanced version of cosmopolitanism that incorporates various systems of power. The analysis has implications for acculturation studies in consumption contexts characterized by low-resource endowments and provides new insights into the processual nature of the constitution of social systems of power.