Bourdieusian Framework Research Articles

Honourable mobility or shameless entitlement? Habitus and graduate employment

This article explores the contrasting predispositions of a group of working-class and middle-class undergraduates to using nepotism to gain advantage in the labour market. Drawing upon a Bourdieusian framework, it is argued that the middle-class students, whose habitus was aligned to the field, were more likely to express a willingness to utilise whatever networks they could to secure a ‘foot in the door’. Meanwhile, the working-class students, who were more insecure about the legitimacy of their participation within a middle-class field, expressed a commitment to a form of honour which ruled out using contacts on the grounds that it was morally unacceptable. They discussed a desire to ‘prove themselves’ which is arguably symptomatic of a deeply ingrained reliance on meritocracy. I explore how this may arise due to their habitus having developed within a dominated position in society where respectability is crucial to generating feelings of self-worth and value.

A new political economy of youth reprised: rejoinder to France and Threadgold

ABSTRACTIn a previous issue of this journal, France and Threadgold [2015. “Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.” Journal of Youth Studies doi:10.1080/13676261.2015.1098779] claim that they ‘strongly believe that a political economy perspective remains vital for understanding macro-structural power’ (8), yet they reject key aspects of the version I recommended in an earlier issue of this journal [Côté. J. E. 2014a.“Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543]. They also present a Bourdieusian framework, asserting that it provides a better understanding of the effects of political and the economic forces on the lives of young people. In this article, I show how their rejection of the political-economy-of-youth perspective is based on their misunderstandings of some of the fundamental concepts of that perspective, as well as their misrepresentations of what I recommend to the youth studies community concerning that perspective. Consequently, although their Bourdieusian framework may be useful in illuminating certain aspects of the problem, their attempt to promote their framework as a better approach to the political economy of youth is based on unfounded claims. I use their errors to illustrate several metatheoretical principles that can help researchers to be less imperialistic in their claims, and I offer an analysis of how this dispute reflects the current fragmented nature of the field of youth studies.

A reflection on the opportunities and challenges associated with teaching the sociology of employability.

This discussion piece addresses the opportunities and challenges that producing and delivering an employability-related course poses, when that course is taught on a programme situated within a critical discipline (sociology). It addresses the conflict between neoliberal discourses on employability and critical responses to this within sociological approaches to the issue. It does this by using a Bourdieusian (1979; 1986; 1990) framework. I conclude the paper by reflecting upon how these two, seemingly intractable, positions can both be drawn upon by students and the institution.

The involvement of migrant mothers in their children’s education: cultural capital and transnational class processes

This paper analyses the kinds of capital, practices and investments that are implicated in the participation of migrant mothers in the educational careers of their children, drawing on a Bourdieusian framework. We present findings of a study of Muslim Iraqi mothers with school-aged children in Australia, based on 47 interviews with 25 participants. The study identifies different modes of involvement in children’s education and connects these to mothers’ cultural and social capital. Involvement, and its effectiveness, is analysed through the analytical categories of (i) high capital-high involvement; (ii) low capital-high involvement; and (iii) low capital-minimal direct involvement. The paper contributes to the theorisation of family–school relations in the context of migration, and develops a more nuanced perspective for studying social class positioning and repositioning.

Taking on Bourdieu’s ‘destiny effect’: theorising the development and sustainability of a socially just second-chance schooling initiative using a Bourdieusian framework

This article aims to theorise a storyline account of a collaborative three-year action research project into schooling re-engagement using a Bourdieusian framework. In the article we discuss how we (two teachers and a social worker) developed an alternative senior secondary school that re-engaged a sizable minority of marginalised young people back into formalised learning and consider how this school became a significant and sustainable educational alternative. Our work during this developmental period drew us into community-based activism enacting socially just curricular and pedagogical experiments. Through networked political action for schooling justice in concert with critical friends (our university partners), the marginalised young people we worked with and supportive regional youth stakeholders, we reconstructed our professional habitus as professionals into a more enabling rendering and strived to proffer through our relational, pedagogical and curricular work with students more of a transformative habitus. Our curricular and activist work inside the community extended the field of schooling relations into a more socially just orientation. This more enabling community field merged with our schooling field and enabled us to source political capital engendering secure, recurrent school funding and a purpose-built schooling facility. We claim that the market logics of schooling significantly influenced our beginning enrolment growth trajectory, and discuss how these logics compromised our ability to break through Bourdieu’s notion of the ‘destiny effect’. Since its inception in 2003, the Second Chance Community College has offered a comprehensive senior secondary schooling programme for more than 1000 young people. Throughout its 12-year history, the majority of students have gone on to secure work, apprenticeships and tertiary study but only 10% of students have successfully completed their final year of schooling.

Elite cricket coach education: a Bourdieusian analysis

The social structures within coach education have been largely unexplored, undiscussed, and treated as unproblematic in contributing to coach learning, both in research and practice. The study used semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 11 elite cricket coaches to gather their perceptions of an elite coach education programme. In particular, this research attempted a more nuanced critical inquiry into the impact of culture on coach learning, habitus on knowledge production and the extent to which capital structures practice within the field of cricket coach education. Data analysis followed abductive reasoning, combining inductive thematic analyses of the data, with a deductive abstraction of these themes within a Bourdieusian framework to provide a level of explanation to the data. The findings present coach education as a complex social field in which coaches were active social beings in the (re)production of coaching knowledge. The culture of cricket was found to perpetuate a powerful doxic system that highlighted the tensions and conflict between an accepted model of coach education with a singular and prescribed body of knowledge and a strong underlying sporting culture and individuals hierarchically placed within it. This data further highlighted how coach education contributes to the (re)production of power within the field of cricket coaching.

Political Capital, Everyday Politics and Moral Obligations: Understanding the Political Strategies of Various Elites and the Poor in Kyrgyzstan

Using the Bourdieusian framework to analyse the nature of social stratification in rural Kyrgyzstan, this article examines how local politics is strategised by different groups in the social field. The article suggests two modifications to the Bourdieusian framework to reflect better the nature of local politics. First, despite lacking significant capital holdings, poor groups undertake everyday resistance and mediated politics. Second, intellectual and traditional elites engage in the politics of ‘doing the right thing’, motivated by a sense of moral obligation. The article provides a critical challenge to the concept of clan and elite-led politics which is often used to explain events in Central Asia.

“Stumbling on the Heels of My Blog”: Career, Forms of Capital, and Strategies in the (Sub)Field of Fashion Blogging

In this study I examine fashion blogging as a subfield of the field of fashion media by using a Bourdieusian theoretical framework. After identifying the steps of the “career” of bloggers, my aim is to highlight the cultural, economic, and social resources (forms of capital) that bloggers use to access the field, and the strategies they mobilize to shape their relations with other agents within it. The empirical terrain which is investigated to answer these questions is the Italian fashion blogosphere; thirty-four in-depth interviews with (mainly female) fashion bloggers and six with key informants (fashion journalists and website editors) were collected between 2011 and 2014.Moreover, a more general aim is to question common-sense interpretations (blogs as a revolutionary tool in fashion communication and as a new fashion marketing frontier) to give a normalized picture of fashion blogging as a progressively autonomous social field, governed by its own laws. Through an in-depth analysis of the Italian case this article seeks to stimulate an international discussion over other national fields of blog production.

A level playing ‘field’? A Bourdieusian analysis of the career aspirations of further education students on sports courses

There is currently a distinct dearth of research into how sports students' career aspirations are formed during their post-compulsory education. This article, based on an ethnographic study of sport students in tertiary education, draws on data collected from two first-year cohorts (n = 34) on two different courses at a further education college in England. The study draws on ethnographic observations, and semi-structured group interviews, to examine in-depth the contrasting occupational perspectives emergent within these two groups of mainly working-class students, and how specific cultural practices affect students' career aspirations. Utilising a Bourdieusian framework, the paper analyses the internalised, often latent cultural practices that impact upon these students' diverse career aspirations. The hitherto under-researched dimension of inter-habitus interaction and also the application of doxa are outlined. The article reveals how the two student cohorts are situated within a complex field of relations, where struggles for legitimisation, academic accomplishment and numerous forms of lucrative capital become habituated. The study offers salient Bourdieusian-inspired insights into the career aspirations of these predominantly working-class students and the ways in which certain educational practices contribute to the production and reproduction of class inequalities.

Reconstructing Urban Politics with a Bourdieusian Framework: The Case of Local Low-Income Housing Policy

This research aimed to reconstruct a local urban politics and develop a meso–micro-level model of urban politics through a case study, drawing on a Bourdieusian relational framework. To this end, it investigated the case of local low-income housing policy — inclusionary zoning — in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. It historicized the path of the local low-income policy issue through document analysis and qualitative media content analysis. Through multiple analyses, the study revealed that urban politics consists of complex interlinkages among stakeholders with shared values or interests from different social domains, created in order to dominate the policy issue. The study further investigated, on the basis of Bourdieu's concepts of capital and habitus, what elicited different political strategies from key community leaders.

Educational outcomes across the generational and gender divide: the rural family habitus of Pakistani families living in poverty

Education for all as a global agenda has particular repercussions for those living in rural poverty. By adopting a Bourdieusian framework to analyse interview data collected from fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in 10 rural Punjabi households, we expose the intersections of education, gender, poverty and rurality. The concept of a rural family habitus focuses attention on the collective, relational and dispositional worlds of such families. Three dimensions are used to analyse reproduction and transformation in each narrative set: intergenerational educational dynamics; on-going gender dynamics; and, social dynamics within the rural field. The findings challenge the stereotyping and assumed homogeneity of rural families whose gender cultures and positive educational dispositions are diverse and complex. The gendered histories of parental education, their aspirations, and their social status in the rural field intersect with the changing gender relations which result from schooling, and the increasing differentiation between educated and uneducated rural families.

The choice of the necessary: class, tastes and lifestyles

Purpose– Our attitudes, values and tastes are shaped by our position in social space. At least, that was the argument Pierre Bourdieu set out in his seminal work,La Distinction. The purpose of this paper is to consider Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction and his argument that working-class families exhibit cultural attitudes and tastes for social necessity.Design/methodology/approach– Attitudinal data relating to social necessity are taken from a national social survey of the British population. The results provide a rich source of data for exploring classed attitudes towards necessity in contemporary Britain.Findings– Bourdieu's original claims for working-class “choice of the necessary” and working-class “taste for necessity” are based on his observations grounded in social survey evidence drawn from 1960s French society. Analysis of contemporary British social survey and attitudinal data also reveals sharp contours and differences in attitudes and tastes according to class fractions. These are evident in classed tastes and preferences for food, clothes, the home and social life.Social implications– Within the Bourdieusian theoretical framework, we understand that the tastes of necessity are preferences that arise as adaptations to deprivation of necessary goods and services.La Distinctionand Bourdieu's approach to unmasking inequalities and structures in social space continue to be relevant in contemporary Britain. More generally, study findings add to the growing evidence that casts some doubt on current arguments concerning “individualisation”, claiming that social class has ceased to be significant in modern societies.Originality/value– This paper sheds fresh light on the empirical validity and continuing theoretical relevance of Bourdieu's work examining the role of social necessity in shaping working-class culture. Bourdieu argues that the real principle of our preferences is taste and for working-class families, this is a virtue made of necessity.

Relational trust: Outline of a Bourdieusian theory of interpersonal trust

While the cognitive, behavioural and emotional aspects of trust are widely investigated within trust research, the relational character of trust remains underdeveloped. Nonetheless, many social scientific theories of trust underscore that trust is fundamentally a relational phenomenon. This article presents a theoretical investigation of the relational characteristics of interpersonal trust within Pierre Bourdieu's relational social theory. The analysis pursues the constitution of interpersonal trust within the dual temporal dynamics of the social. ‘Habitus’, linked to diachronous time, describes the development of familiarity and the experience with justifications for trust. ‘The practical sense’, linked to synchronous time, describes the situated constitution of perception and understanding from which trust emerges as the aligning of interaction and meaning. Together, these constitute the process of trusting as an anticipation of forthcoming events which is linked both to experience and to potentials inscribed in the situation. By introducing the Bourdieusian framework in the analysis of interpersonal trust, important conceptual linkages emerge between aspects of trust otherwise treated separately in trust research.

Whose Education Matters More? Mothers’ and Fathers’ Education and the Cultural Participation of Adolescents

This article examines the effects of parental educational levels on the art/heritage and pop/rock participation of adolescents. We use a subset of adolescents from the survey ‘Cultural Participation in Flanders 2003–2004’ (N = 1030) to test the relative effects of the educational levels of the mother and father. Using diagonal reference models, we find that the parent with the highest educational level – regardless of whether it is the father or mother – has the largest influence on the cultural participation of their children, which can be interpreted as a status maximization effect. However, we also find that a lower educated mother still has an influence on art and heritage participation and a lower educated father still has an influence on pop and rock participation. These results highlight the need to reassess the influence of the mother in the Bourdieusian framework. Furthermore, they have important implications for the conceptualization and operationalization of the social status position of families.

Clothing norms as markers of status in a hospital setting: A Bourdieusian analysis

This article uses a Bourdieusian framework to understand the importance of clothing norms for symbolizing and reproducing social, as well as professional, hierarchy in hospitals. Using data from participant observation, it examines how a complex yet informal dress code has emerged at a community hospital in the Northeastern United States, in a setting where very few formal guidelines exist on how to dress. By conceptualizing professionals as holders of various types of capital (economic, cultural, and symbolic), this article expands previous research which considered clothing only as a marker of professional identity. The findings demonstrate (1) how clothing norms are used in subtle, but purposeful, ways to reflect varying degrees of cultural and economic capital and (2) how these complex norms also reflect professional boundaries in medical authority (symbolic capital), which is important during critical moments where clothing can quickly signal who can take control. The discussion borrows Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field to explain why subordinates subscribe to these clothing norms, in the absence of a formal organizational dress code.

Strategies and tactics in social space: The case of Serbia

The aim of this article is to bring together quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to examine, within a broadly Bourdieusian theoretical framework, connections between positions in social space and strategies agents deploy in their everyday life. The data are derived from a study of social structure in today’s Serbia, combining survey and interviews with selected respondents. Strategies are conceptualized as a continuum ranging from a more sustained and cumulative, or ‘strategic’, pole to the unsystematic, ephemeral ‘tactical’ pole, as suggested by Michel de Certeau. On the basis of interview data, four types of life strategies are identified (individualist reactive, individualist proactive, collectivist reactive, and collectivist proactive). These strategies are presented through their generic practices and the typical habitus of the agents, along with individual portraits as illustrations. In conclusion, some theoretical implications are derived from data analysis, including departures from Bourdieu’s model.

Career paths and hierarchies in the pure pole of the literary field: The case of contemporary poetry

The present article uses contemporary Francophone poetry to see how positions are distributed at the pure pole of the literary field. We first draw the space of positions in poetry, before offering powerful methodological methods to analyze artistic careers—that is, sequence analysis that we combine with logit models. We show that, in contrast to the intuition of Bourdieu (1996) in The Rules of Art, poetry is not characterized by anarchy but, instead, is a very structured social space wherein recognition is consensual, as well as hierarchized. We then show that careers at the pure pole are long, progressively cumulative and irregular. These results refine previous studies where slow accumulation of reputation corresponded to linear, if not regular, careers (e.g., Giuffre, 1999). We also discusses cumulative advantage theory (e.g., Menger, 2009), as well as status-based models of hierarchies (e.g., Podolny, 2005), so as to offer a usable model of objectivizing artists’ positions in their field. We thus build on Bourdieu and his followers, who have offered insights but little systemic investigation of the organization of the pure pole, whereas it plays a key conceptual role in the sociology of literature and, indeed, in the Bourdieusian framework.

The experiences of long-term unemployed young adults in the South West of England: some new insights

In this paper we explore the experiences of three long-term unemployed young adults from different backgrounds in the 18–24 age range. The data comprise three interviews conducted over an 18-month period with seven of the original 19 participants in the research. At the time of first interview none of the young adults had been in education, employment or training for six months. Drawing upon a Bourdieusian framework, we demonstrate that differential access to economic, social and cultural resources significantly influenced, not only what they were able to reasonably contemplate but also what they were able to achieve. We question some commonly held assumptions about young people and their orientations, and the efficacy of economic and educational policies designed to increase employment, reduce inequality and ‘meet the needs’ of the unemployed. We claim that new insights and understandings of youth unemployment and transition can result from a broader, more holistic theorisation that fully represents the experiences and understandings of all the young adults that are being affected. Notwithstanding this, we indicate the need for research to increase understanding and provide a strong, robust and theoretically informed evidence base for policymakers and those concerned with the interests of young unemployed adults.

Class, Culture and Politics: On the Relevance of a Bourdieusian Concept of Class in Political Sociology

Even though contemporary discussions of class have moved forward towards recognizing a multidimensional concept of class, empirical analyses tend to focus on cultural practices in a rather narrow sense, that is, as practices of cultural consumption or practices of education. As a result, discussions within political sociology have not yet utilized the merits of a multidimensional conception of class. In light of this, the article suggests a comprehensive Bourdieusian framework for class analysis, integrating culture as both a structural phenomenon co-constitutive of class and as symbolic practice. Further, the article explores this theoretical framework in a multiple correspondence analysis of a Danish survey, demonstrating how class and political practices are indeed homologous. However, the analysis also points at several elements of field autonomy, and the concluding discussion therefore suggests the need for further studies.

Apostasy versus legitimacy: Relational dynamics and routes to resource acquisition in entrepreneurial ventures

This article explores the relational dynamics of legitimation within a professional service venture context, using a Bourdieusian framework to elucidate the struggles for capital and legitimacy that characterise the venture development process. Two profiles of individual business owners who renounce or adhere to established norms of the professional field are identified: apostate and traditional. Small accounting ventures may benefit from improved access to resources if they concentrate on fitting in with prevailing small firm professional logics, eschewing logics from outside the focal field associated with apostates. A model of legitimacy is developed that accounts for the efficacy of institutional and strategic modes of legitimacy relative to the maturity of the field and objectification of its social formations. We propose that entrepreneurial habitus mediates field-level conditions and capital formations that, when combined, create symbolic capital and resource acquisition possibilities.