Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron

Reproduction in education, society and culture.

Tr. By R. Nice. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. 1977 [1970]

2. PEDAGOGIC AUTHORITY ...

2.1 As an arbitrary power of imposition which, by the very fact that it is misrecognized as such, finds itself objectively recognized as legitimate authority, PAu, power of symbolic violence that manifests itself under the form of a legitimate right of imposition, reinforces the arbitrary power which is its foundation and which it hides

2.1.1. Power relations are the basis not only of PA but also of the misrecognition of the truth about PA, a misrecognition which amounts to recognition of the legitimacy of PA and, as such, is the condition for the exercise of PA.

2.1.1.1. Power relations determine a PA's characteristic mode of imposition, defined as the system of the means required for the imposition of a cultural arbitrary and for the concealment of the twofold arbitrariness of the imposition, i.e. as a historical combination of the instruments of symbolic violence and the instruments of concealment (i.e. legitimation) of that violence.

2.1.1.2. In any given social formation, the agencies which objectively lay claim to the legitimate exercise of a power of symbolic imposition and, in so doing, tend to claim the monopoly on legitimacy, necessarily enter into relations of competition, i.e. power relations and symbolic relations whose structure expresses in its own logic the state of the balance of power between the groups or classes.

2.1.2. Insofar as the relation of pedagogic communication within which PA is carried on presupposes PAu in order to be set up, it is not reducible to a pure and simple relation of communication.

2.1.2.1. Insofar as every PA that is exerted commands a PAu from the outset, the relation of pedagogic communication owes its specific characteristics to the fact that it is entirely dispensed from the necessity of producing the conditions for its own establishment and perpetuation.

2.1.2.2. Because every PA that is exerted commands by definition a PAu, the pedagogic transmitters are from the outset designated as fit to transmit that which they transmit, hence entitled to impose its reception and test its inculcation by means of socially approved or guaranteed sanctions.

2.1.2.3. Because every PA that is exerted commands by definition a PAu, the pedagogic receivers are disposed from the outset to recognize the legitimacy of the information transmitted and the PAu of the pedagogic transmitters, hence to receive and internalize the message.

2.1.2.4. In any given social formation, the specifically symbolic force of the sanctions, physical or symbolic, positive or negative, juridically guaranteed or not, which ensure, strengthen and lastingly consecrate the effect of a PA, is greater the more the groups or classes to which they are applied are disposed to recognize the PAu which imposes them.

2.1.3. In any given social formation the legitimate PA, i.e. the PA endowed with the dominant legitimacy, is nothing other than the 'p arbitrary imposition of the dominant cultural arbitrary insofar as it is misrecognized in its objective truth as the dominant PA and the imposition of the dominant culture (by 1.1.3 and 2.1 )

2.2. Insofar as it is invested with a PAu, PA tends to produce misrecognition of the objective truth of cultural arbitrariness because, being recognized as a legitimate agency of imposition, it tends to produce recognition of the cultural arbitrary it inculcates as legitimate culture.

2.2.1. Insofar as every PA that is exerted commands a PAu from the outset, the relation of pedagogic communication within which PA is carried on tends to produce the legitimacy of what it transmits, by designating what it transmits - by the mere fact of transmitting it legitimately - as worthy of transmission, as opposed to what it does not transmit.

2.2.2. In any given social formation, legitimate culture, i.e. the culture endowed with the dominant legitimacy, is nothing other than the dominant cultural arbitrary insofar as it is misrecognized in its objective truth as a cultural arbitrary and as the dominant cultural arbitrary (by 1.2.3 and 2. 2 )

2.3. Every agency (agent or institution) exerting a PA commands PAu only in its capacity as the mandated representative of the groups or classes whose cultural arbitrary it imposes in accordance with a mode of imposition defined by that arbitrary, i.e. as the delegated holder of the right to exercise symbolic violence.

2.3.1. ~ A pedagogic agency commands the PAu enabling it to legitimate the cultural arbitrary that it inculcates, only within the limits laid down by that cultural arbitrary, i.e. to the extent that both in its mode of, imposing (the legitimate mode) and in its delimitation of what it imposes, those entitled to impose it (the legitimate educators) and those on whom it is imposed (the legitimate addressees), it reproduces the fundamental principles of the cultural arbitrary that a group or class produces as worthy of reproduction, both by its very existence and by the fact of delegating to an agency the authority required in order to reproduce it.

2.3.1.1. The delegation of the right of symbolic violence which establishes the PAu of a pedagogic agency is always a limited delegation; i.e. the delegation to a pedagogic agency of such authority as it requires in order to inculcate a cultural arbitrary legitimately, in accordance with the mode of imposition defined by that arbitrary, entails the impossibility for that agency of freely defining the mode of imposition, the content imposed and the public on which it imposes it (the principle of the limited autonomy of pedagogic agencies).

2.3.1.2. In any given social formation the sanctions, material or symbolic, positive or negative, juridically guaranteed or not, through which PAu is expressed, and which ensure, strengthen and lastingly consecrate the effect of a PA, are more likely to be recognized as legitimate, i.e. have greater symbolic force (by 2.1.2.4), when they are applied to groups or classes for whom these sanctions are more likely to be confirmed by the sanctions of the market on which the economic and social value of the products of the different PAs is determined (the reality principle or law of the market).

2.3.1.3. The more directly a pedagogic agency reproduces, in the arbitrary content that it inculcates, the cultural arbitrary of the group or class which delegates to it its PAu, the less need it has to affirm and justify its own legitimacy.

2.3.2. Insofar as the success of any PA is a function of the degree to which the receivers recognize the PAu of the pedagogic agency and the degree to which they have mastered the cultural code used in pedagogic communication. the success of any given PA in any given social formation is a function of the system of relations between the cultural ' arbitrary imposed by that PA, the dominant cultural arbitrary in that social formation, and the cultural arbitrary inculcated by the earliest phase of upbringing within the groups or classes from which those undergoing the PA originate (by 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 2.2.2 and 2.3).

2.3.2.1. In any given social formation, the differential success of the, dominant PA as between the groups or classes is a function of (1) the pedagogic ethos proper to a group or class, i.e. the system of dispositions towards that PA and the agency exerting it, defined as the product of the internalization of (a) the value which the dominant PA confers by its sanctions on the products of the different family PAs and (b) the value which, by their objective sanctions, the different social markets confer on the products of the dominant PA according to the group or class from which they come; and (2) cultural capital, i.e. the cultural goods transmitted by the different family PAs, whose value qua cultural capital varies with the distance between the cultural arbitrary imposed by the dominant PA and the cultural arbitrary inculcated by the family PA within the different groups or classes (by 2.2.2, 2.3.1.2 and 2.3.2).

2.3.3. Insofar as it derives its PAu from a delegation of authority, PA lends to produce in those who undergo it the relation which members of a group or class have to their culture, i.e. misrecognition of the objective truth of that culture as a cultural arbitrary (ethnocentrism).

2.3.3.1. In any given social formation, the system of PAs, insofar as it is subject to the effect of domination by the dominant PA, tends to reproduce, both in the dominant and in the dominated classes, misrecognition of the truth of the legitimate culture as the dominant cultural arbitrary, whose reproduction contributes towards reproducing the power relations (by 1.3.1).