Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron |
Reproduction in education, society and culture. |
| Tr. By R. Nice. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. 1977 [1970] |
I have retranslated some of the key phrases
(follow the links for the text)
"Système d'enseignement" was translated by Nice as "Educational System" which makes sense given the colloquial use for "éducation" that has made it synonymous with "schooling." It is the case that this use also is common in France (e.g. the ministry in charge of schools is called "Ministère de l'Education Nationale"). But B&P do not write "système d'éducation", they write about "enseignement" which is precisely used almost solely to refer to something adults do in schools (teachers are referred to as "enseignants." B&P do write about "éducation" in passing and the index to the book points to a passage where there a "définition" is offered. But they distinguish, though mostly implicitly between "éducation scolaire" and other forms of "éducation." this is clearest when they quote Husserl for a passage that directly echoes what I would now summarize as "classical cultural anthropology" on the absolute character of early enculturation.
All pedagogic action is, objectively, symbolic violence insofar as it is the imposition of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary power. (p. 5)
The selection of meaning which objectively defines a group's or a class's culture as a symbolic system is arbitrary insofar as the structure and functions of that culture cannot be deduced from any universal principle, whether physical, biological or spiritual, not being linked by any sort of internal relation to 'the nature of things' or any 'human nature'. (p. 8)
on arbitrariness in the social sciences
Insofar as it is the arbitrary imposition of a cultural arbitrary ..., [pedagogical action] entails pedagogical work, a process of inculcation which must last long enough to produce a durable training, i.e. a habitus, the product of internalization of the principles of a cultural arbitrary capable of perpetuating itself after [pedagogical action] has ceased and thereby perpetuating in practices the principles of the internalized arbitrary. (p. 31)
Given that it explicitly raises the question of its own legitimacy [...] every ES [institutionalized education system] must produce and reproduce, by the means proper to the institution, the institutional conditions for misrecognition (méconnaissance) of the symbolic violence which it exerts, i.e., recognition (reconnaissance) of its legitimacy as a pedagogic institution. (p. 61)