Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) was a French sociologist who made major contributions to understanding how education reproduces social inequality. His concepts of capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic), habitus, and field are central to sociology and are especially useful when analysing education.
Unlike functionalists, who argue education is meritocratic, Bourdieu believed schools advantage middle-class students by valuing their cultural background. Education therefore reproduces class inequalities instead of overcoming them.
Bourdieu’s Key Concepts
1. Forms of Capital
Bourdieu argued that students come to school with different amounts of “capital” – resources that can be converted into educational success.
- Economic capital: Money, property, material resources (e.g. ability to afford private tutors, books, or elite schools).
- Cultural capital: Knowledge, skills, tastes, manners, language, and values that are recognised as legitimate by the education system. Middle-class children are more likely to:
- Use the “elaborated code” of language (Bernstein).
- Be familiar with high culture (art, classical music, literature).
- Have parents who value education and know how the system works.
- Social capital: Networks of contacts and relationships. For example, middle-class parents may know teachers, governors, or employers.
- Symbolic capital: The prestige and recognition gained from having the “right” cultural and social background.
Schools often misrecognise middle-class culture as superior or “natural,” which advantages middle-class students and disadvantages working-class students.
2. Habitus
Habitus refers to the deep-seated values, tastes, and dispositions that individuals develop through socialisation. It shapes what people see as possible, desirable, or realistic.
- Middle-class children are socialised into a habitus that aligns with the expectations of the education system: confidence, ambition, abstract thinking.
- Working-class children may develop a habitus that values practical skills, immediate gratification, or solidarity with peers, which clashes with school culture.
- This mismatch means working-class students often feel “fish out of water” in middle-class dominated schools and universities.
3. Field
A field is a social arena with its own rules, hierarchies, and struggles. Education is one such field.
- Success in the educational field depends on the amount and type of capital students possess.
- Middle-class students arrive with capital that matches the field, so they succeed more easily.
- Working-class students lack the valued forms of capital, so they face disadvantage.
Bourdieu on Education and Social Reproduction
Bourdieu argued education plays a central role in the reproduction of inequality:
- Legitimising Middle-Class Culture
- Schools treat middle-class culture as the standard (e.g. formal language, knowledge of literature, middle-class manners).
- Working-class culture is often devalued or stigmatised.
- The Illusion of Meritocracy
- Education claims to reward talent and effort, but in reality, it rewards possession of middle-class cultural capital.
- This creates what Bourdieu called symbolic violence: the working class are made to feel their failure is their own fault, rather than the result of structural disadvantage.
- Credentialism
- Schools and universities award qualifications that act as “tickets” to jobs and status.
- But access to these credentials is unequal because middle-class students are more likely to succeed.
- This reinforces class divisions across generations.
Bourdieu Applied to A Level Sociology
Explaining Class Differences in Achievement
Bourdieu helps explain why middle-class students outperform working-class students:
- They have more economic capital (resources).
- Their cultural capital matches what schools value.
- Their habitus aligns with the school’s expectations.
- Their parents often have social capital (knowing how to navigate the system).
This is consistent with statistics showing that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to get top GCSE grades or attend elite universities.
School Processes
His ideas link to the internal processes studied in sociology:
- Teacher labelling: Middle-class pupils are seen as more able because their behaviour and language match teachers’ expectations.
- Setting and streaming: Working-class students are often placed in lower sets, reinforcing inequality.
- Parental involvement: Middle-class parents use their social and cultural capital to influence schools (e.g. supporting homework, pushing for better sets).
Key Studies Influenced by Bourdieu
- Diane Reay (1998): Found that middle-class mothers use cultural capital to help children succeed, for example through reading and educational activities.
- Sullivan (2001): Surveyed pupils and found cultural capital (e.g. reading habits, vocabulary, cultural participation) partly explained middle-class success in exams.
- Archer et al. (2010): Working-class girls constructed “hyper-heterosexual feminine identities” to gain symbolic capital from peers, but this conflicted with school values.
These studies show how Bourdieu’s concepts remain relevant in analysing education today.
Strengths of Bourdieu’s Approach
- Powerful critique of meritocracy: Shows how education reproduces inequality under the guise of fairness.
- Holistic framework: Links together class, culture, and identity in a way other theories do not.
- Influence: Inspired huge amounts of research into cultural capital, habitus, and class identity.
- Explains class gap in education: Useful for understanding why working-class students underperform despite intelligence or effort.
Limitations of Bourdieu’s Approach
- Deterministic: Sometimes criticised for implying working-class students are doomed to fail. Paul Willis’s Learning to Labour showed that working-class “lads” resisted school, even if unsuccessfully.
- Underestimates agency: Some working-class pupils succeed despite lacking cultural capital, especially with supportive teachers or personal motivation.
- Difficult to measure cultural capital: Researchers like Sullivan tried, but it’s not always clear how to operationalise Bourdieu’s abstract concepts.
- Changes over time: Today, girls (including many working-class girls) often outperform boys, which Bourdieu’s original work did not predict.
- Diversity: Bourdieu focuses mainly on class; feminists and critical race theorists argue he neglects gender and ethnicity.
Comparing Bourdieu to Other Theories
- Functionalists (e.g. Durkheim, Parsons): See education as meritocratic. Bourdieu disagrees, arguing it legitimises inequality.
- Marxists (e.g. Althusser, Bowles & Gintis): Also see education as reproducing capitalism. Bourdieu adds the cultural dimension (not just economic).
- Critical theorists (Freire, Giroux, Illich): Emphasise resistance and alternatives. Bourdieu is more pessimistic, focusing on reproduction.
- Feminists: Emphasise gender inequalities; Bourdieu mostly focuses on class.
Conclusion
Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital, habitus and field provide a powerful lens for understanding education. He showed how schools reward middle-class culture while making working-class students feel inferior. Education therefore reproduces inequality across generations, despite appearing fair.
For A level Sociology, Bourdieu is essential for explaining class differences in achievement and evaluating functionalist and meritocratic perspectives. However, his work is sometimes criticised for being too deterministic and for neglecting other factors like gender and ethnicity.
Overall, Bourdieu remains one of the most influential sociologists of education, and his ideas are still widely used in contemporary research.
You can hear me discuss the work of Bourdieu and education in the following video. Important note: Since recording this, realised Bourdieu is influenced by Marxism, but not really a Marxist. Lots of influences in his work, including Weber, and often in contemporary sociology seen as being his own approach altogether.