SOCIOLOGICAL FUTURES

‘Bourdieu: The next generation is a wonderful, exhilarating read, full of innovative ideas and new ways
of thinking about perennial social concerns from social mobility to migration. Its wide-ranging,
fascinating insights into how Bourdieu’s thinking can be developed for the 21st century breathe
fresh life into established social theories. It is a “must-read” not only for those trying to make sense

Bourdieu: The Next Generation

of Bourdieu but for everyone interested in wider philosophical and political issues of inequality,
identity and the role of the state.’
Diane Reay, Professor of Education, Cambridge University, UK

This book will give a unique insight into how a new generation of Bourdieusian researchers apply
Bourdieu to contemporary issues. It will provide a discussion of the working mechanisms of thinking
through and/or with Bourdieu when analysing data. In each chapter, authors discuss and reflect
Bourdieu:
The Next Generation
upon their own research and the ways in which they put Bourdieu to work. The aim of this book is
not just to provide examples of the development of Bourdieusian research, but for each author to
reflect on the ways in which they came across Bourdieu’s work, why it speaks to them (including
a reflexive consideration of their own background) and the way in which it is thus useful in their
thinking. Many of the authors were introduced to Bourdieu’s works after his death. The research
problems the individual authors tackle are contextualised in a different time and space to the one The development of Bourdieu’s intellectual
Bourdieu occupied when he was developing his conceptual framework. This book will demonstrate
how his concepts can be applied as ‘thinking tools’ to understand contemporary social reality.
heritage in contemporary UK sociology
Throughout Bourdieu’s career, he argued that sociologists need to create an epistemological break,
to abandon our common sense – or as much as we can – and to formulate findings from our results.
In essence, we are putting Bourdieu to work to provide a structural constructivist approach to social
reality anchored through empirical reflexivity.

Jenny Thatcher has recently completed her PhD at the University of East London. She is a co-
founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Nicola Ingram is a Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at Lancaster University. Nicola is also
a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group and co-convenor of the BSA
Education Study Group.

Ciaran Burke and Jessie Abrahams

Edited by Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram,
Ciaran Burke is a Lecturer at Plymouth University and author of Culture, Capitals and Graduate Futures:
Degrees of class. He is a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Jessie Abrahams is a PhD student at Cardiff University. Her thesis is focused on the effect of the
increased university tuition fees on young peoples’ ‘aspirations’. She is also a co-convenor of the
BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Sociology/Social Theory/Bourdieu SOCIOLOGICAL FUTURES

Cover image: Shutterstock

www.routledge.com Edited by Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram,

Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats Ciaran Burke and Jessie Abrahams
‘Bourdieu: The next generation is a wonderful, exhilarating read, full of innovative
ideas and new ways of thinking about perennial social concerns from social
mobility to migration. Its wide-ranging, fascinating insights into how Bourdieu’s
thinking can be developed for the 21st century breathe fresh life into established
social theories. It is a “must-read” not only for those trying to make sense of
Bourdieu but for everyone interested in wider philosophical and political issues
of inequality, identity and the role of the state.’
—Diane Reay, Professor of Education, Cambridge University, UK

‘This book is a truly refreshing and accessible account of Bourdieu’s work; it

breaks with the traditional jargon filled sociological work of the past whilst still
managing to discuss highly complex ideas. The authors each strike a delicate
balance between discussing research, theory and personal experience. I would
recommend this book to all students with an interest in inequality and Bourdieusian
sociology.’
—Annabel Wilson, PhD Student, Cardiff University, UK
Bourdieu:
The Next Generation

This book will give a unique insight into how a new generation of Bourdieusian
researchers apply Bourdieu to contemporary issues. It will provide a discussion
of the working mechanisms of thinking through and/or with Bourdieu when
analysing data. In each chapter, authors discuss and reflect upon their own research
and the ways in which they put Bourdieu to work. The aim of this book is not
just to provide examples of the development of Bourdieusian research, but for
each author to reflect on the ways in which they came across Bourdieu’s work,
why it speaks to them (including a reflexive consideration of their own back-
ground) and the way in which it is thus useful in their thinking. Many of the authors
were introduced to Bourdieu’s works after his death. The research problems the
individual authors tackle are contextualised in a different time and space to
the one Bourdieu occupied when he was developing his conceptual framework.
This book will demonstrate how his concepts can be applied as ‘thinking tools’
to understand contemporary social reality. Throughout Bourdieu’s career, he
argued that sociologists need to create an epistemological break, to abandon our
common sense – or as much as we can – and to formulate findings from our results.
In essence, we are putting Bourdieu to work to provide a structural constructivist
approach to social reality anchored through empirical reflexivity.

Jenny Thatcher has recently completed her PhD at the University of East London.
She is a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Nicola Ingram is a Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at Lancaster

University. Nicola is also a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu
Study Group and co-convenor of the BSA Education Study Group.
Ciaran Burke is a Lecturer at Plymouth University and author of Culture, Capitals
and Graduate Futures: Degrees of class. He is a co-founder and co-convenor of
the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Jessie Abrahams is a PhD student at Cardiff University. Her thesis is focused

on the effect of the increased university tuition fees on young peoples’
‘aspirations’. She is also a co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.
Sociological Futures
Series Editors: Eileen Green, John Horne,
Caroline Oliver, Louise Ryan

Sociological Futures aims to be a flagship series for new and innovative theories,
methods and approaches to sociological issues and debates and ‘the social’ in the
twenty-first century. This series of monographs and edited collections was inspired
by the vibrant wealth of British Sociological Association (BSA) symposia on a
wide variety of sociological themes. Edited by a team of experienced sociological
researchers, and supported by the BSA, it covers a wide range of topics related
to sociology and sociological research and will feature contemporary work that
is theoretically and methodologically innovative, has local or global reach, as well
as work that engages or reengages with classic debates in sociology, bringing new
perspectives to important and relevant topics.
The BSA is the professional association for sociologists and sociological research
in the United Kingdom, with an extensive network of members, study groups and
forums, and a dynamic programme of events. The Association engages with topics
ranging from auto/biography to youth, climate change to violence against women,
alcohol to sport and Bourdieu to Weber. This book series represents the finest fruits
of sociological enquiry, for a global audience, and offers a publication outlet for
sociologists at all career and publishing stages, from well-established to emerging
sociologists, BSA or non-BSA members, from all parts of the world.

An End to the Crisis in Empirical Sociology?

Edited by Linda McKie and Louise Ryan

Bourdieu: The Next Generation

The development of Bourdieu’s intellectual heritage in
contemporary UK sociology
Edited by Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram, Ciaran Burke and Jessie Abrahams

Forthcoming:

Drinking Dilemmas
Space, culture and identity
Edited by Thomas Thurnell-Read
Bourdieu:
The Next Generation

The development of Bourdieu’s

intellectual heritage in
contemporary UK sociology

Edited by Jenny Thatcher,

Nicola Ingram, Ciaran Burke
and Jessie Abrahams
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram, Ciaran Burke and Jessie Abrahams
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial
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in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bourdieu – the next generation: the development of Bourdieu’s
intellectual heritage in contemporary UK sociology/edited by
Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram, Ciaran Burke and Jessica Abrahams.
pages cm
1. Bourdieu, Pierre, 1930–2002. 2. Sociology – Great Britain. 3. Sociology
– Philosophy. I. Thatcher, Jenny.
HM479.B68B676 2015
301.0941 – c23
2015021684

ISBN: 978-1-138-91046-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-69341-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Times
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
This book is dedicated to our mothers,
Annette Valerie Thatcher, Mary Hughes (nee O’Hara),
Rita Burke and Shelly Abrahams.
Contents

List of tables xi
Acknowledgements xii
Notes on contributors xiv
Foreword xvi
DEREK ROBBINS

1 Introduction: the development of Bourdieu’s intellectual

heritage in UK sociology 1
CIARAN BURKE, JENNY THATCHER, NICOLA INGRAM AND
JESSIE ABRAHAMS

2 Bourdieu’s theory of practice: maintaining the role of capital 8

CIARAN BURKE

3 Narrative, ethnography and class inequality: taking Bourdieu

into a British council estate 25
LISA MCKENZIE

4 Re-interpreting Bourdieu, belonging and Black identities:

exploring ‘Black’ cultural capital among Black Caribbean
youth in London 37
DERRON O. WALLACE

5 ‘It’s like if you don’t go to Uni you fail in life’: the relationship
between girls’ educational choices and the forms of capital 55
TAMSIN BOWERS-BROWN

6 Using Bourdieusian scholarship to understand the body:

habitus, hexis and embodied cultural capital 73
LINDSEY GARRATT
x Contents

7 Migrating habitus: a comparative case study of Polish and

South African migrants in the UK 88
JENNY THATCHER AND KRISTOFFER HALVORSRUD

8 The limits of capital gains: using Bourdieu to understand

social mobility into elite occupations 107
SAM FRIEDMAN

9 Unresolved reflections: Bourdieu, haunting and struggling

with ghosts 123
KIRSTY MORRIN

10 Stepping outside of oneself: how a cleft-habitus can lead to

greater reflexivity through occupying ‘the third space’ 140
NICOLA INGRAM AND JESSIE ABRAHAMS

11 Conclusion: Bourdieu – the next generation 157

JESSIE ABRAHAMS, NICOLA INGRAM, JENNY THATCHER AND
CIARAN BURKE

Index 165
Tables

8.1 Capitals by origin in elite occupations 111

8.2 Regression of income for all in elite occupations 113
10.1 Habitus interruptions typology 148
Acknowledgements

We would first of all like to thank all our contributors for engaging in debate with
us over the years and for putting these discussions into chapters for this book. We
appreciate their openness about their own journeys to and with Bourdieu, and look
forward to future encounters. On our way to producing this collection we have
been very much supported by Derek Robbins and we appreciate his encouragement
and advice, not to mention that he is always willing to be called upon to speak at
our events. The British Sociological Association supported us in establishing
the Bourdieu Study Group, from which this project stems, and we would like to
thank them for their ongoing and invaluable assistance. Finally, we want to thank
everyone who engages with the Bourdieu Study Group and our lively debates.

Jenny: Thank you to my mother for introducing me to the concept of cultural

capital, my father for beginning my journey with social theory through the
introduction to the works of Karl Marx, and to Professor Derek Robbins for helping
me to continue on this social theory journey through his insights into the origins
of Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework. I would also like to thank my partner,
Kristoffer, and my sister, Shona, for their patience and support.

Nicola: I want to say thank you to Gordon Ingram for introducing me to the ideas
of Pierre Bourdieu; my sons, Faolán and Comghall, for making me laugh through
their developing sociological imagination; and my parents, Mary Hughes (nee
O’Hara) and Philip Hughes, for teaching me to despise injustice and to care about
people.

Ciaran: I would like to say thank you to Matt Wood for introducing me to Bourdieu
and for encouraging me to engage with the theory, and to my wife, Sydney, for
her constant support and keen editorial eye. I would also like to thank my fellow
co-convenors; this book is an example of the community of scholars that has
developed over the last few years and was made possible by the hard work and
commitment you have all shown. Finally, I would like to thank Nathan Emmerich,
an early instigator of what was to become the Bourdieu Study Group and a critical
friend.
 Acknowledgements xiii

Jessie: Thank you to Dr Will Atkinson for introducing me to the work of Pierre
Bourdieu through his Social Class module and nurturing my fascination with the
thinker. Thanks to Professor David James for his continual caring and supportive
supervision, which is enabling me to take my understanding of Bourdieu to new
depths through providing a space for me to feel. Thank you to the founding
members of the study group: Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram and Ciaran Burke
for welcoming me into the community. Finally, I want to acknowledge the support
of my mother Shelly Abrahams and my partner Leee Mckenna as they come on
this Bourdieusian journey with me.
Notes on contributors

Jessie Abrahams is one of the co-convenors of the Bourdieu Study Group. Jessie
is a PhD student at Cardiff University. Her thesis is focused on the effect of
the increased university tuition fees on young peoples’ ‘aspirations’. She has
been researching in the area of class and education for a number of years now
and is also part of the Paired Peers research team. Paired Peers is a six-year
Leverhulme Trust-funded project exploring the impact of class, gender and
institution on a cohort of young people as they transition to, through and from
university.
Tamsin Bowers-Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Sheffield
Hallam University, specialising in the sociology of education. Her main areas
of interest are in educational inequalities and in particular the impact of social
class on educational experiences and the role of policy in shaping educational
practices. Her doctorate explored how girls ‘do’ education, using concepts from
Bourdieu and Foucault to theoretically analyse girls’ achievement and hopes
for the future.
Ciaran Burke is a Lecturer at Plymouth University and author of Culture, Capitals
and Graduate Futures: Degrees of class. His research focuses on classed
inequalities with a particular interest in graduate employment trajectories. He
is a co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.
Sam Friedman is Assistant Professor in Sociology at London School of
Economics. He has published widely on class, culture and social mobility, and
is the author of Comedy and Distinction: The cultural currency of a ‘good’
sense of humour (Routledge, 2014). He is also a comedy critic and the publisher
of Fest, the largest magazine covering the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Lindsey Garratt is a post-doctoral Research Associate with the Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity based at the
University of Manchester and University of Glasgow. She previously completed
her PhD as part of the Trinity Immigration Initiative in Trinity College,
University of Dublin, and was funded by the Department of Children and Youth
Affairs, Republic of Ireland.
 Contributors xv

Kristoffer Halvorsrud is a Researcher for the Knowledge Centre for Education

(The Research Council of Norway). He completed his PhD at the University
of Nottingham in 2014. His PhD explored South African migrants who have
arrived in the UK in the post-apartheid era, with a focus on their sense of
belonging. He is also a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Citizenship
Study Group.
Nicola Ingram is a Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at Lancaster
University. She has published widely on classed and gendered inequalities in
education. Nicola is co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group and the
BSA Education Study Group.
Lisa Mckenzie is a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and
author of Getting By (Policy Press, 2015). Her primary research interests are
around the stigmatisation of working-class neighbourhoods. Through her
research and activism Lisa works to challenge negative stereotypes of the poor.
She is also the co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Activism Forum and
an elected member of the BSA Trustee Board.
Kirsty Morrin is a PhD student at the University of Manchester. Her doctoral
research focuses on UK educational policy reform, more specifically the
introduction of academies and the increasing preference of ‘entrepreneurship
education’ in working class communities. In her work she considers inter-
sections of class, aspiration, social mobility, entrepreneurship and inequality.
Jenny Thatcher has recently completed her PhD, applying Bourdieu to a case
study of Polish migration and education, at the University of East London. She
is a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group and
member of the Early Career Researcher editorial board for The Sociological
Review.
Derron Wallace is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brandeis University and Teachers
College, Columbia University. He recently received his PhD in Sociology of
Education at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Marshall and Gates
Cambridge Scholar.
Foreword
Derek Robbins

A.H. Halsey and professional sociology

In 2004, A.H. Halsey (1923–2014) published his A History of Sociology in Britain:
Science, Literature and Society (Halsey, 2004). Chapter 4 offered an account
of ‘British Post-war Sociologists’, a first version of which had been published in
the European Journal of Sociology in 1982 (Halsey, 1982). Halsey begins by
imagining what an American social scientist might have observed in respect of
the condition of the social sciences in Britain after the Second World War. At the
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the visitor’s eye

might have been caught by about a dozen students of sociology, similar in

age but of a style and outlook very different from that of their Oxford
contemporaries. They took their degrees, and busied themselves around
Houghton Street with a novel aspiration. They wanted to become professional
sociologists.
(Halsey, 2004, p.70)

Supposing that this imaginary observation occurred at about 1950, Halsey

proceeds to recall his encounter at Nuffield College, Oxford 15 years later (i.e.,
c.1965) with Raymond Aron, who was visiting from Paris. In an exchange about
the condition of British sociology, Halsey reports that Aron commented: ‘The
trouble is that British sociology is essentially an attempt to make intellectual sense
of the political problems of the Labour Party’ (Halsey, 2004, p.70). A further 15
years later (i.e. in c.1980), Ernest Gellner suggested that Halsey should write an
account of what happened to ‘what turned out to be the first group of career
sociologists in Britain’ (Halsey, 2004, p.70). According to Halsey, the questions
that Gellner wanted him to attempt to answer were sociological or socio-historical:
‘What had been their political and intellectual concerns? What formed their
unprecedented and unlikely occupational ambition? And what happened to them
and their intentions?’ (Halsey, 2004, p.70).
Halsey knew that Gellner was prompting him to write an account of those who
had graduated with him in sociology at ‘“the School” in the early 1950s’ (Halsey,
2004, p.70). Besides himself, Halsey listed 12 graduates between 1950 and 1952
 Foreword xvii

who went on to become professors in departments of sociology in British

universities. As he puts it, his article/chapter was about ‘an LSE group that became
a significant part of the sociological establishment by the mid-1960s’ (Halsey,
2004, p.71). Halsey tried to characterise the group. His first comment is that ‘most
were provincials: provincial in social origin, provincial in political preoccupation,
and provincial in their early jobs’ (Halsey, 2004, p.72). He proceeded to elaborate,
offering a series of rather cryptic assessments: ‘The ten natives were born in the
slump years between the Wars on the periphery of English society’ (Halsey, 2004,
p.72); ‘Most, if not all, had ‘won the scholarship’. There was only one woman
(Olive Banks). There were no ‘“public” school boys among them. They went to
their grammar schools’ (Halsey, 2004, p.73); ‘Few, if any, of them had any notion
while at school of going on to a university’ (Halsey, 2004, p.73); ‘None of the
group was active in the student union or LSE Labour club politics’ (Halsey, 2004,
p.75); and ‘They all read Max Weber’s two essays on Science and Politics as
vocations and chose the former for themselves while in no way abandoning their
political enthusiasms’ (Halsey, 2004, p.75).
Halsey explained the aspirations of the cohort of students by reference to the
influence of David Glass and Edward Shils. The first was committed to the analysis
and eradication of social inequality while the second ‘presented classical European
sociology to his students in an American voice which simply assumed that
undergraduates would become graduate students and subsequently professionals’
(Halsey, 2004, p.78). Halsey presents this as a dual influence, which combined,
for the group, to reconcile political dispositions and professional aspirations. As
Halsey summarises: ‘Ambition seemed therefore to fit both their political outlook
and their personal intellectual abilities’ (Halsey, 2004, p.76). In the 1960s, 28
new university departments of sociology were created in the UK. Opportunities
matched aspirations for the LSE cohort. Halsey proceeded to make some
comments on the correlation between the social backgrounds of his contem-
poraries and their intellectual affiliations. Some of his generalisations seem rooted
in personal autobiography. He contends, for instance, that ‘the LSE post-war
sociologists were committed to a socialism that had no need for Marxism and no
time for communism precisely because it was so deeply rooted in working-class
provincialism’ (Halsey, 2004, p.84). He concludes that ‘the work of the LSE group
in the 1950s added significantly to knowledge of the changing social structure
of Britain’ (Halsey, 2004, p.87). He argues that this work had three main charac-
teristics. It was, first, ‘a sociological expression of autobiographical experience –
a projection of the country they had learned in their families, schools, work places,
and local communities’ (Halsey, 2004, p.87). Second, as Aron had suggested, it
was ‘a sociology of the programme of Labour Party reform’ (Halsey, 2004, p.87),
and, third, ‘it was the assimilation of international sociology and its application
to the understanding of British society’ (Halsey, 2004, p.87).
Underpinning these three characteristics was one so fundamental that Halsey
took it for granted. His account of the LSE group is redolent of a tacit acquiescence
in a particular conception of the social function of academics or, especially,
xviii Derek Robbins

professional sociologists, which is never questioned sociologically. Halsey

operated throughout his career with a model of society that supposed the function
of the professional sociologist is to provide ‘knowledge of the changing structure
of Britain’ generated within academic institutions that are ring-fenced, or
themselves protected from the identified symptoms of change. In spite of his ‘left-
wing’ political allegiance, his model of society was conservative. Whether or not
it is strictly true, as he claims, that the ‘LSE group’ had all read Weber’s essays
on science and politics as vocations, it is certainly the case that he attempted to
keep the two spheres distinct in his practice. It was as a professional sociologist
that he advised Anthony Crosland, the Labour Secretary of State for Education,
on the introduction of comprehensive schools in the 1960s, and that, for many
years, he edited Social Trends, which endeavoured to provide social facts for the
guidance of policy-makers. The nature of his stance can be illustrated by
reference to the analyses of his contemporary, the social historian Harold Perkin
(1926–2004). Perkin followed his account of The Origins of Modern English
Society, 1780–1880 (1969) with a sequel, published in 1989 as The Rise of
Professional Society. England since 1880. This, in turn, was followed in 1996 by
The Third Revolution: Professional Elites in the Modern World. In The Rise of
Professional Society, Perkin represented the period between 1880 and 1914 in
England as ‘the zenith of class society’. Perkin’s interpretation of the historical
period from 1910 when there were two general elections and 1926, which was
the year of the General Strike, is that English society was in the process of choosing
between a structure that would sustain the class conflicts of the end of the previous
century and one that would reach an accommodation between these class rival-
ries in generating a new social consensus. He called the new social consensus
‘corporatism’, which, he claimed, was the ‘institutional vehicle’ of professional
society. The establishment of the Welfare State was, for Perkin, indicative of the
emergence in the post-1945 period of both a ‘corporate state’ and a ‘corporate
society’. He claimed that ‘Between 1945 and the early 1970s professional society
reached a plateau of attainment’ (Perkin, 1989, p.405), but he also realised that
within the same period there were the seeds of decay: ‘the professional ideal split
into two rival camps which then began to attack each other’ (Perkin, 1989, p.437).
The split was an opposition between ‘private’ and ‘public’ ideals. A key focus of
disagreement was in relation to ‘equality’. On the one hand, the public sector
professionals advocated an equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth throughout
the population. On the other hand, the private sector managerialists were in favour
of equal opportunities for all based on merit. This latter programme would not
secure the equal distribution of income promised by the former. Perkin’s final
chapter was entitled ‘The backlash against professional society’. What he
perceived was not so much a reaction against professional society but, rather,
a domination, which was becoming entrenched, of the private sector over the
public sector. He observed the collapse of the ‘Keynesian-Beveridgean consensus’
(Perkin, 1989, p.474) and identified the growing influence of ‘free market
ideology’ emanating from the Institute of Economic Affairs suggesting economic
 Foreword xix

remedies the Conservatives proceeded to apply ‘when they won office, on a

minority of the popular vote, in 1979’ (Perkin, 1989, p.474)1.
This was an immanent analysis of the context within which Halsey undertook
his social research. Halsey and Martin Trow began in 1963 the study that was to
be published in 1971 as The British Academics. The Report of the Committee on
Higher Education of 1963 (the ‘Robbins Report’) contained an appendix (III)
entitled ‘Teachers in higher education’, produced by Sir Claus Moser, which
provided a statistical analysis of the profession at the time. Halsey and Trow set
themselves the task of taking this enquiry further ‘in order to provide a sociological
portrait of the academic professions, describing and analysing their collective self-
conceptions in relation to the programme of institutional expansion in which the
Robbins Report would involve them’ (Halsey & Trow, 1971, p.26). The Robbins
Report inaugurated an expansion in student numbers in UK higher education but,
in Perkin’s terms, it made its recommendations on the basis of ‘private sector’
ideals. What has come to be known as the ‘Robbins principle’ was precisely one
of equality of opportunity – that, as Perkin summarises it, ‘everyone who was
qualified and wished to enter higher education should be provided with a place’
(Perkin, 1989, p.452). The question Halsey and Trow asked themselves at the
outset of their research was, ‘How would academic men in Britain adapt
themselves and their institutions to a period of expansion and redefinition of higher
education?’ (Halsey & Trow, 1971, p.25). In other words, their problematic
presupposed the structural functionalist necessity of the existence of a class of
academic professionals. The account of their findings in The British Academics
reinforces this presupposition. They begin with an a priori definition of the British
university – ‘It could be described as an organisation for community where the
community is that of scholars’ (Halsey & Trow, 1971, p.28) – and they analyse
the characteristics of this predefined group of ‘scholars’ on the assumption that
they share a common social identity as professionals. They introduce their findings
on the political attitudes of this professional group in Chapter 15 by summarising
the cumulative effect of their previous discussions in the following way: ‘We have
described the academic professions in Britain as having a distinctive class (Chapter
9) and status (Chapter 10) position which has evolved out of changes in the social
and institutional circumstances of intellectual work in the course of modernisation’
(Halsey & Trow, 1971, p.399).
Thirty new ‘polytechnics’ were established in 1969/70. The British Academics
included an annex that considered the situation of the Colleges of Advanced
Technology in the process of receiving university charters, but the emergence of
the public sector of higher education escaped the attention of Halsey and Trow.
Halsey endeavoured to remedy this deficiency in his Decline of Donnish Dominion.
The British Academic Professionals in the Twentieth Century, published in 1992.
This new book was based on ‘three surveys of the British senior common rooms2
in 1964, 1976, and 1989’ (Halsey, 1992, vii). Whereas The British Academics
examined the attitudes of staff in post towards the proposed increase of student
numbers, Decline of Donnish Dominion attempted to analyse the views of staff
xx Derek Robbins

at historical moments during the process of institutional expansion. Writing in 1992,

Halsey reported that the total number of students in British higher education
approached one million and that 55 per cent of these were in polytechnics and
colleges, 9 per cent in the Open University and 36 per cent in the universities
(Halsey, 1992, p.3). In 1971, Halsey and Trow had specified that they chose
to analyse the academic profession even though they ‘could have tackled the
problem of the changing role of the intellectual in modern society’ (Halsey & Trow,
1971, p.25). They argued that their consideration of the profession would
inevitably answer questions raised in respect of the alternative question. In
responding to the expanded university system, Halsey, in 1992, fatally persisted
in continuing his analysis of the profession, failing to acknowledge the new situation
demanded that the alternative question should now become dominant. He was
ideologically sympathetic to the move towards mass participation in higher
education but, in the end, he was not willing to accept that a democratisation of
social knowledge was a necessary corollary of such a movement. In his conclusion,
he makes fun of Noel Annan’s representation of the ‘golden age of the don’ (Halsey,
1992, p.267), and he recognises the programme of expansion of the 1960s ‘assuaged
the guilt of exclusion of the mass of working-class compatriots’ (Halsey, 1992,
p.267) by giving a select minority of that mass (the ‘LSE group’) unprecedented
access to political influence, but he is unable to offer a creative response to the
passing of that historical moment. He offers, instead, a litany of elements in the
decline of the academic profession: ‘So the prestige of academic people in the eyes
of both the politician and the populace has plummeted’ (Halsey, 1992, p.268); ‘Dons
themselves have largely ceased to recommend the academic succession to their
own students’ (Halsey, 1992, p.269) and ‘They [dons] see themselves as an
occupational group losing its long-established privileges of tenure and self-
government’ (Halsey, 1992, p.269). The ‘drive towards expansion’ undertaken by
government action has been at the expense of academic values and institutional
autonomy. Halsey implies that expansion without commensurate funding has
realised deliberate government intentions to silence independent thought. Halsey
still hopes for an alternative development, for ‘an enlarged and diverse British
system of higher education’ (Halsey, 1992, p.270), which would give ‘first priority
to universal access for 16- to 19-year-olds to a wide range of relevant training for
tomorrow’s economy’ (Halsey, 1992, p.270); would ‘make a reality of citizenship
through the various forms of l’education permanente’ (Halsey, 1992, p.270) and
would also make ‘a place for scholarship and science insulated from the market-
place with respect to both worldly rewards and practical curricula’ (Halsey, 1992,
p.270). In short, Halsey can only contemplate an ideal system of mass higher
education, which preserves the rights of a minority to remain in monastic isolation,
cultivating science.
We have seen that Halsey reproduced his 1982 article on the ‘LSE group’ as
Chapter 4 of his A History of Sociology in Britain, published in 2004. The chapter
has a high profile in the historical account of the rise of sociology as a discipline
and of professional sociologists. It follows a chapter that, understandably, gives
 Foreword xxi

an account of the British ‘founding fathers’ at the LSE, but the post-1960s narrative
is excessively conditioned by the pursuit of the national diffusion of ‘the LSE
group’ and its thinking. In spite of his awareness of the proportionate weighting
of polytechnic/new university staff within the British system in the last quarter
of the twentieth century, there is a huge blind spot in his analysis of the state of
sociology within society in that period. His comments on more than half of the
population of British sociologists are based on a letter of November 9, 2000, which
he received from Frank Webster as part of his response to Halsey’s 2001 survey.
Webster was Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham from 1999
to 2000, having been a member of staff at Oxford Polytechnic/Oxford Brookes
University for the previous 20 years. Halsey devotes five paragraphs to a
summary of Webster’s letter. He derives from Webster three characteristics of the
polytechnic/new university sector – the emphasis of the modular degree structure,
the almost exclusive concentration on teaching before 1992 and its subsequent
degradation relative to market-oriented research and ‘the struggle over feminism’
(Halsey, 2004, p.130). Clearly, for Halsey, the rise of the polytechnics/new
universities consolidated the ‘great betrayal’ of the academic profession. Appendix
1 of A History of Sociology in Britain lists by name 296 professors who were sur-
veyed in 2001 and on whose responses the book’s evaluation of the contemporary
situation was based. Of these, by my count, 28 were currently employed in new
universities. In his historical survey of the ‘Years of Uncertainty 1976–2000’
(Chapter 7), Halsey concluded that, paradoxically, tertiary education expanded in
the 1990s under the Conservative government. The consequence of this expan-
sion was that ‘The number of students of sociology more than doubled and some
staff in the ex-polytechnics were awarded the prized title of professor’ (Halsey,
2004, p.144). There is no awareness that many of the polytechnics/new univers-
ities resisted ideologically the adoption of the career hierarchy practised in the
traditional universities. Halsey’s survey was skewed precisely because relatively
few of the new institutions had, by 2001, chosen to establish a professoriate. Rather
than understand the different understanding of professional practice in the new
institutions and the consequentially different personnel policies, Halsey chose
patronisingly to suppose that a few staff in ex-polytechnics were now measuring
up to the stringent standards defined in the dominant institutions of the system.
Halsey made no reference to the work of the Council for National Academic
Awards, which, in the 1970s, validated sociology degree courses in the poly-
technics and, in doing so, scrutinised the credentials of the teaching staff. In short,
Halsey tacitly consigned polytechnics to fulfilling a ‘further education’ role, and
the near exclusion of polytechnic staff from his 2001 survey meant he was able
to produce evidence for the maintenance of the existing elite system and to write
a history of British sociology that eliminated the contributions of at least half of
the British sociologists at the end of the twentieth century. Halsey’s superstructure
of representation, constructed on a prejudiced foundation, continues to legitimise
the prevailing hierarchy of social knowledge and institutions in contemporary
British society.
xxii Derek Robbins

Pierre Bourdieu and the craft of the sociologist

Compare and contrast the work of A.H. Halsey with that of Pierre Bourdieu
(1930–2002). Let us take the three characteristics of ‘the LSE group’ identified
by Halsey. First, like ‘the LSE group’ (although not, in this instance, like Halsey
himself), Bourdieu was a provincial. His progression from a local, provincial lycée
(in Pau, in the Béarn, in South-West France) to the École Normale Supérieure in
Paris can be equated with the progression in the same years in England of ‘the
LSE group’ from provincial grammar schools to the London School of Economics.
It could also be said that his rootedness in provincial, even peasant, values rendered
the influence of Marxist thought as unnecessary for Bourdieu as for the majority
of ‘the LSE group’. Second, Bourdieu’s sociological work always reinforced an
ideological position that was ‘left of centre’, although it was never identified with
the platform of a political party. Third, Bourdieu was responsible, particularly in
the 1970s when he was editor of the Le Sens commun series for Éditions de Minuit,
for commissioning translations of foreign texts such as, for instance, many of the
works of Ernst Cassirer.
These similarities, however, are superficial when placed in relation to the
dissimilarities in respect of professional aspiration. Although the attitudes of
the members of ‘the LSE group’ were shaped by their social backgrounds, the
implication of Halsey’s account is that they were all primarily dedicated to
establishing the discipline of sociology and of giving it institutional substance.
Their prior experiences may have been formative but their aspirations caused them
to anonymise their pasts and neutralise their values in the interest of scientific
objectivity. By contrast, Bourdieu was not interested in the consolidation of
sociology nor of academic position as such. In his early article entitled ‘Célibat
et condition paysanne’ [celibacy and the peasant condition] (Bourdieu, 1962), he
deliberately attempted to analyse the situations of his contemporaries in his native
Béarn so as to test the validity of scientific objectivity in comparison with his
recollection of lived experience. His intention was to deploy objectivity to disclose
the nature of primary experience rather than to cultivate scientific detachment.
Whereas the tradition of British sociology imbibed by ‘the LSE group’ was
empirical, Bourdieu’s intellectual formation was in philosophy and, specifically,
in epistemology, and, even more specifically, in rationalist epistemology that
challenged the assumptions of empiricism. Combined with his interest in
phenomenology and ontology, this meant Bourdieu had no inclination to suppress
the values of his background in the interest of securing professional achievement
but, rather, to carry out research that would constantly juxtapose the perceptions
of analysts with those of the subjects of their analyses. Socially and politically,
he had no wish to be thought to be a ‘transfuge’, someone whose education would
cause him to betray his origins. Although he was explicit in an interview of 1985
that, in his student days, he ‘never really got into the existentialist mood’
(Bourdieu, 1990, p.5), he certainly shared Sartre’s conviction that ‘existence
precedes essence’ and the corollary of that conviction as famously illustrated by
 Foreword xxiii

Sartre through an account of the behaviour of a waiter (Sartre, 1943, p.95) that
the adoption of a professional role was an instance of ‘mauvaise foi’ [bad faith],
militating against existential authenticity. Bourdieu disagreed with Sartre in as
much as Sartre supposed identity construction is possible in situations of absolute
freedom. The fundamental emphasis of Bourdieu’s development of the concept
of ‘habitus’ was that identity construction occurs in situations constrained by
inter-generationally transmitted characteristics and objective circumstances.
Typically, Bourdieu argued against Sartre by suggesting that the emphasis
of freedom of the existentialists was a product of the social conditions of
Resistance opposition to Nazi occupation. In other words, Bourdieu enacted the
differentiation of his position from that of Sartre in a critique that suggested
Sartre’s constructed philosophical position was historically contingent rather than
absolute.3 Throughout his career, Bourdieu was tenacious in seeking to preserve
allegiance to his social origins. There was a constant mistrust of professionalism,
which he endeavoured to accommodate by defining his task as a sociologist by
reference to those origins rather than to predefined professional requirements.
Bourdieu was a career researcher whose researches were dictated by his social
and political commitments rather than by any desire to achieve social and academic
‘distinction’ as such. His earliest research in Algeria was a consequence of his
abhorrence of the intervention there of the French army of which he was initially
a reluctant, conscripted member. He worked with indigenous Algerians in order
to help them to develop a social organisation for a new, independent state, which
would correspond with their desires and inclinations. Back in France in the
early 1960s, he used his position as secretary to Raymond Aron’s research group
to direct a series of projects that exposed the extent to which popular culture was
educationally and culturally repressed. As Professor of Sociology at the Sorbonne
since 1955, Aron had, among many activities, been largely responsible for the
establishment of sociology as an undergraduate degree subject, and had also
introduced a French translation of Weber’s lectures on science and politics as
vocations.4 Bourdieu did not participate in the institutionalisation of sociology and,
unlike ‘the LSE group’, would have opposed the kind of separation of science and
politics proposed by Weber and supported by Aron. It was logically consistent that
Aron, as we have seen, should have commented adversely that British sociology
was too identified with Labour Party politics, and it was also logically consistent
that he should endeavour to distinguish his sympathy with the needs of students
during the ‘May Events’ of 1968 from his attempt to analyse scientifically the
condition of the higher education system. Aron wanted to encourage government
to introduce administrative changes, whereas Bourdieu wanted to give those
excluded from higher educational opportunity a voice in shaping its future.5
After the ‘May Events’ of 1968, Bourdieu took control of Aron’s research
group, as the Centre de Sociologie Européenne (CSE). Bourdieu did not associate
himself with the experiment in higher education at Vincennes introduced by
the government in response to the student unrest. His collaborator in the research
group in the 1960s – Jean-Claude Passeron – became Head of the Department of
xxiv Derek Robbins

Sociology at Vincennes, but Bourdieu remained a Director of Studies at the Ecole

des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Bourdieu was committed to the primacy
of research determined by a conjunction between social problems and the
epistemologically reflexive dispositions of researchers rather than to the
consolidation of disciplinary discourses and their institutional embodiments. He
attempted to institutionalise a research methodology as a counter-cultural project
in opposition to the top-down orientation of the dominant institutions of higher
education. The CSE group cohered as a consequence of shared social origins and,
under Bourdieu’s leadership, as a consequence of a collective articulation of
philosophy.6 Unlike ‘the LSE group’, the CSE group cohered as one of committed
practitioners rather than as one of aspiring professionals. Tom Bottomore
recognised this in his fulsome celebration of the activity of the group in his
foreword to the English translation of La reproduction (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1970) as Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1977). There was a sense of regret on Bottomore’s part that the impetus of the
CSE was not realisable in the context of the new University of Sussex, where he
was a professor.
To use one of Bourdieu’s concepts, the account given by Halsey of the attitude
of ‘the LSE group’ to foreign traditions of sociology suggested that it turned to
these traditions so as to acquire ‘cultural capital’, to lend respectability or
legitimacy to home-grown thought. There may have been an element of this also
in the way in which Bourdieu sponsored translations of foreign works for
publication in the Le Sens commun collection under his direction. There were at
least two essential differences, however. First, Bourdieu supported translations of
works in a range of disciplines rather than within an established sociological canon.
Second, his editorial strategy involved the revision of some previous works and
the creative appropriation of others. His support for editions of the collected works
of Durkheim and Mauss (both edited by a member of CSE, Viktor Karady), for
instance, was, in the first case, to attempt to retrieve the essentially empirical thrust
of Durkheim’s work from the distortions effected by his ‘post-Durkheimian’
disciples (Fauconnet, Davy, Bouglé), and, in the second case, to rescue the work
of Mauss from the interpretation offered in an earlier edition produced by Lévi-
Strauss. Bourdieu also supported the translation into French of many texts by Ernst
Casssirer. This coincided with his own work on a translation of a key text of one
of Cassirer’s disciples – Erwin Panofsky – (Bourdieu, 1967) and with Bourdieu’s
shift from a ‘structuralist’ to a ‘post-structuralist’ methodology as evidenced by
his references to Cassirer in two key articles that register that shift – ‘Structuralism
and Theory of Sociological Knowledge’ (Bourdieu, 1968) and ‘Sur le pouvoir
symbolique’ [on symbolic power] (1977). In short, Bourdieu’s attitude towards
foreign texts was neither eclectic nor deferential. He turned to them so as to
generate the conceptual equipment he thought he needed to consider the social
problems that concerned him. Bourdieu incorporated these texts. They were not
primarily commodities to be purchased to raise his profile in the market of
concepts.
 Foreword xxv

I have said twice that Bourdieu did not court professional position or reputation
as such. Of course, he was ambitious and had a family to support. My contention,
however, is that he retained control of his aspirations, regarding his achievements
as means towards the fulfilment of his fundamental aim to reduce inequality and
foster socio-political participation. After the publication of La distinction in 1979,
some of his followers thought the text disparaged working-class culture and
anticipated Bourdieu’s own acquisition of ‘distinction’ in his appointment shortly
afterwards to the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. Almost at the same
time, Bourdieu revised his conception of ‘cultural capital’, now distinguishing
between ‘incorporated’, ‘objectivated’ and ‘instituted’ capitals (Bourdieu, 1979).
He had come to accept that our social, political and cultural choices are not
exclusively the consequences of our personal adjustments of our received habitus
but that the objects of our choices contain embodied meanings and values
independent of our production. Nevertheless, he remained committed to the view
that we have the capacity to deploy these objective systems of meaning to satisfy
our personal aims, especially if we subject them to scrutiny. This explains the
impetus for the publication, in 1984, of Homo Academicus (Bourdieu, 1984). At
the moment when Bourdieu was allowing the a priori status of the Collège de
France to accrete, as ‘instituted’ capital to his personal, ‘incorporated’ capital, he
published an article that articulated the relations between forms of capital and also
assembled a book that demonstrated the professional power of academic man is
not intrinsic but is analysable sociologically in terms of the conversion of
accumulated capital from different social contexts. Bourdieu was trying to show
that his professional status had nothing to do with maintaining ‘donnish dominion’
except in so far as it might enable him to contribute to the decline of that dominion
and the advancement of the interests of the underprivileged. Bourdieu’s turn
towards direct socio-political action in the last decade of his life is indicative of
this strategy.

The next generation

It has been a pleasure to be associated with the work of the Bourdieu Study Group
of the British Sociological Association since before its inception in 2012. It was
the self-generated creation of doctoral students and early career researchers in
British higher education institutions, and it has remained true to that orientation.
From the beginning it set itself a dual task – to provide a forum for the discussion
and understanding of Bourdieu’s work and also to provide workshops where the
relevance of his concepts in relation to ongoing research projects could be
considered. The members of the group were drawn together by a common sense
of affinity with Bourdieu’s integration of theory and practice in responding to
social problems. The attachment to Bourdieu’s work arose out of a sense of the
comparability between his and their lived experiences, social positions and socio-
political convictions. There has never been any sense that the work of Bourdieu
has casually been taken ‘off the peg’ simply to legitimise their work.
xxvi Derek Robbins

The work of the Bourdieu Study Group derives from autobiographical origins,
has a disposition towards radical politics and, by definition through its
responsiveness to the work of Bourdieu, has turned towards a foreign intellectual
tradition for guidance. In these respects it shares the same characteristics as ‘the
LSE group’ of the 1950s. However, its attitudes are in sympathy with those of
Bourdieu’s ‘CSE group’ in that they are determined their work should have an
impact within society. They want to earn a living wage and they have their personal
ambitions, but they are not driven by the pursuit of academic distinction. To date
they have exploited social media to communicate their ideas and discussions
widely. They are well aware that their desire for political engagement necessitates
a questioning of the validity of the status of the tradition of sociological
knowledge as transmitted traditionally in liberal institutions of higher education.
One of their early workshops was dedicated to consideration of ‘Bourdieu and
Public Sociology’. The group was aware that new technologies enable the existing
relationship between academics and the public to be revolutionised. They help to
actualise Bourdieu’s conviction that sociologists need to situate themselves
reflexively within society rather than suppose they inhabit a sphere within which
to generate detached analyses.
This collection of essays written by members of the group is welcome because
it will facilitate discussion of the form of sociological work as well as its content.
It is an exercise in the practice of the ‘trade’ of the sociologist, to adopt the title
of the handbook for researchers Bourdieu published with collaborators in 1968
(Bourdieu, Chamboredon & Passeron, 1968). Bourdieu would have welcomed this
extension of his legacy. He concluded his posthumous self-analysis with the
following words about his own work:

Nothing would make me more happy than to have succeeded in enabling some
of my readers, both men and women, to recognize their own experiences,
difficulties, problems, sufferings, etc in mine, and that they should derive from
this realist identification, which is completely different from an exalted
imagination, the means to act and live a little bit better what they live
and do.
(Bourdieu, 2004, p.142)

These essays suggest that he would have been gratified by the responses of the
authors. In turn, the work of the group should have the same effect on its readers.

Notes
1 For further discussion of Perkin, see my ‘Business and Management Education and
the Rise of Entrepreneurial Society in England, 1945–1992’, which was written in 1992
and subsequently collected as Part II, Chapter 12 of Robbins, 2006, pp.297–322.
2 As a member of staff of a polytechnic/new university since 1970, I have never
encountered a senior common room.
3 See Bourdieu and Passeron, 1967.
 Foreword xxvii

4 See Aron, 1959.

5 For further discussion, see my ‘Social Theory and Politics: Aron, Bourdieu and
Passeron, and the Events of May 1968’ in Susen and Turner, eds, 2011, pp.301–327.
6 I have discussed this further in my contribution to Susen and Turner, 2014, pp.265–91.

References
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pp.32–136.
Bourdieu, P. 1967. Postface to E. Panofsky. Architecture gothique et pensée scolastique
(tr. P. Bourdieu). Paris: Éd. de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. 1968. Structuralism and theory of sociological knowledge. Social Research.
XXXV, 4.
Bourdieu, P. 1979. La Distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement. Paris: Les Éditions de
Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Sur le pouvoir symbolique. Annales. 3, pp.405–411.
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Homo academicus. Paris: Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. In other words. Essays towards a reflexive sociology. Oxford: Polity
Press.
Bourdieu, P. 2004. Esquisse pour une auto-analyse. Paris: Raisons d’Agir.
Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.-C. 1967. Sociology and philosophy in France since 1945: death
and resurrection of a philosophy without subject. Social Research. XXXIV, 1,
pp.162–212.
Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.-C. 1970. La reproduction. Eléments pour une théorie du système
d’enseignement. Paris: Ed de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.-C. 1977. Reproduction in education, society and culture.
London-Beverley Hills: Sage.
Bourdieu, P., Chamboredon, J.-C. & Passeron, J.-C. 1968. Le métier de sociologue. Paris:
Mouton-Bordas.
Halsey, A.H. 1982. Provincials and professionals: the British post-war sociologists.
European Journal of Sociology. 23, pp.150–75.
Halsey, A.H. 1992. Decline of donnish dominion. The British academic professionals in
the twentieth century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Halsey, A.H. 2004. A history of sociology in Britain. Science, literature, and society.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Halsey, A.H. & Trow, M. 1971. The British academics. London: Faber & Faber.
Perkin, H. 1989. The rise of professional society. England since 1880. London & New
York: Routledge.
Robbins, D.M. 2006. On Bourdieu, education and society. Oxford: Bardwell Press.
Sartre, J.-P. 1943. L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Gallimard.
Susen, S. & Turner, B. 2011. The legacy of Pierre Bourdieu. Critical essays. London/
Delhi/New York: Anthem Press.
Susen, S. & Turner, B. 2014. The spirit of Luc Boltanski. Essays on the ‘pragmatic sociology
of critique’. London/New York: Anthem Press.
Chapter 1

Introduction
The development of Bourdieu’s
intellectual heritage in UK sociology
Ciaran Burke, Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram,
and Jessie Abrahams

This book serves as recognition of a growing and diverse range of scholars brought
together through the British Sociological Association’s (BSA) Bourdieu Study
Group. From its establishment in 2012, the group’s central aim has been to
critically extend and consider the application of Bourdieusian social theory into
contemporary research. This is achieved through bringing together researchers
from different areas of inquiry and stages of career to foster an academic
community. The contributors to this book have been active in the establishment
of this network and the facilitation of critical discussion.
Our central aim as editors is to consider and demonstrate the ways in which
Bourdieu’s intellectual heritage is being developed in UK sociology through the
work of a new generation of Bourdieusian scholars. It reflects on the use of
Bourdieusian theory in interrogating social realities in a contemporary context. It
is clear that there has been a disruption in the sociological imagination of a new
generation of researchers, whose engagement with Bourdieu’s thinking may not
be embedded within a historical context when utilising his concepts. Indeed, the
contributors to this book are not initiated in the same philosophical orientations
that previous generations of scholars, including Bourdieu, would have been. Many
will have been initiated into understanding and working with Bourdieu second
hand through the work of established UK scholars such as Diane Reay and Derek
Robbins. We show that this disruption can mean his concepts are taken forward
and re-appropriated in creative ways, allowing us to move beyond the habitual
use of habitus as previously discussed by Diane Reay (2004). Heeding Nash’s
advice that ‘borrowing the emperor’s clothes can leave one looking very naked’
(1999, p.172), this book is not concerned with reifying the man but rather putting
Bourdieu to work. In this spirit, we unashamedly celebrate the use of Bourdieu’s
thinking tools in ways in which he, himself, did not use, including migration,
‘race’/ethnicity and gender. In addition, we address the practical and theoretical
limitations within Bourdieusian social theory and demonstrate ways forward
through revisiting concepts and applying them in a different formation, such as
the directive features of capital, and the benefits of thinking with Bourdieu
alongside other theories and theorists including Foucault, Hall, Fanon, Archer,
2 Burke, Thatcher, Ingram, and Abrahams

Butler, Burawoy, Bhabha, De Beauvoir, Derrida, Goldthorpe, Gilroy, Lahire,

Puwar, Reay, Robbins, Savage, Skeggs, as well as many more.

Theory of practice
A central theme of the research within this book and indeed a guiding principle of
critical sociology, a lot of which is Bourdieusian, is one of social justice and
equality. In order to meet this charge we feel it would be beneficial to some of our
audience to provide a brief summation of Bourdieu’s central thinking tools,
discussing how and why they were used in practice. Bourdieu’s work was formed
in the context of the competing perspectives of Structuralism, advocated by theorists
such as Claude Levi-Strauss, and Phenomenology with Maurice Merleau-Ponty
as one of its central figures. Each of these perspectives afforded a great deal of
power to either structure or agency, respectively, and therefore could not adequate-
ly account for social change nor social reproduction. This can be understood as
the starting point for Bourdieu’s theoretical project and the problem that was to
be addressed: the interpenetrative relationship between structure and agency.
While it is not our intention to provide an inventory of the various concepts
Bourdieu developed and used, it is beneficial to consider the central thinking tools,
which for many of the contributors served as the point of departure for their own
work, namely habitus, capital and field. The habitus can be understood as norms,
values and dispositions inculcated via the family, education and to a lesser extent
the environment. The habitus is perhaps the most contested and critiqued concept
within Bourdieu’s toolbox, often being charged with removing the element of
choice from the human experience and returning us to the iron cage (Archer, 2007;
Jenkins, 2002). In part, this is a justified critique as a common reference from
Bourdieu when describing habitus is ‘systems of durable, transposable
dispositions’ (1977, p.72, emphasis in original). Indeed, dispositions formed in
an early period of an individual’s life that are seen as both durable and
transposable do not provide a great deal of room for agency. However, for
Bourdieu it is not so much that the habitus is void of choice but rather the range
of choices and attitudes will be influenced by social structures leading him to also
define the habitus as ‘a socialized subjectivity’ (1992, p.126).
In addition to habitus, the concept of capital is central to Bourdieu’s project.
Capital can be understood as particular resources that individuals have access to,
which can be invested or exchanged for goods – tangible and otherwise. These
resources largely fall into one of three forms of capital; economic, social and
cultural. Alongside capitals being seen as resources for investment and exchange,
levels of particular capitals are used to locate an individual’s position within a
social hierarchy or a social space. The position within social space an individual
occupies will affect objective issues such as life chances and experiences but
position will also affect levels of aspirations and expectations, what Bourdieu refers
to as the ‘field of the possibles’ (1984, p.110). The final concept we wish to focus
on is field. The concept of field can be read as an active and dynamic site in which
 Introduction 3

habitus and capital interact. Thompson (2008) points out that the term Bourdieu
used in French for field was le champ, meaning battlefield, rather than le pre,
which, on the other hand, offered images of a calm and conciliatory environment.
As such, field should be understood as a site of competition and aggression in
which an individual or group is required to negotiate, and their ability to
manoeuvre within a particular field will be influenced by habitus and capital.
Bourdieu’s theory of practice, based on an attempt to bridge structure and agency,
operates through an interpenetrative relationship between these three concepts.
In schematic form this has been expressed [(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice
(1984, p.101). It is this theory of practice that has been assimilated into a significant
amount of British sociology through the constant translation of Bourdieu’s work
and the steady application from what we see as first generation anglophile
researchers.

Structure of the book

Rather than this book being demarcated by stringent themes, in conflict with the
bridging principles of Bourdieu’s thinking tools, the chapters explore individual
researchers’ application of elements of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework and
concepts to diverse empirical studies. The various studies investigate many issues
Bourdieu himself directly addressed, such as social mobility, social class and
political transformations. However, although there are some similarities with the
original issues Bourdieu chose to study, many of the empirical investigations in
this book have been conducted in a different economic and political context to
that of the 1960s when Bourdieu was first developing his concepts. As such, each
researcher in their own way shows the enduring and continuing relevance of
Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts and the possibilities of adapting them to recently
occurring conditions as well as newly-arising concerns. This has required that
each researcher adopts Bourdieu’s reflexive approach to Sociology. This was
not only so the researcher reflects on why they chose the particular topic they did,
but must also consider what it was that initially drew them towards the work of
Pierre Bourdieu. These reflective accounts help to illustrate one of the book’s
central purposes – that of a whole new generation of researchers’ attraction to the
work of Bourdieu. This, in some way, has meant that each author has exposed
themselves by recounting childhood memories and structural conditions that
led them to Bourdieu. Sam Friedman in Chapter 8 perhaps sums up what many
new scholars think when they first encounter Bourdieu: ‘My mental tussles with
the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu began long before I actually knew who he was.’
Throughout the years of hosting Bourdieu-related events, the collective narrative
– from particularly postgraduate students – is the sense of euphoria when first
encountering the work of Bourdieu and being able to make sense of the world
through theory often when students have felt a sense of frustration with the
persisting gaps in explanations of the social world in the work of other grand
theorists.
4 Burke, Thatcher, Ingram, and Abrahams

This book consists of nine chapters based on empirical case studies covering
many research interests. Although each chapter was written by individual
researchers drawing on their own research data, there is a unique flow between
the chapters. We see how Bourdieu’s concepts are put into practice in diverse
studies, yet each of these studies complements the others. We see often-similar
results in which Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts produce explanations across the
various case studies.
In Chapter 2, Ciaran Burke reflects on the tendency for the concept of habitus
to be the primary focus of research, relegating capital and field to secondary
conceptual tools. In his chapter, he demonstrates the directive influence capitals
have over individual and group trajectories. In a further unpacking of empirical
findings on the role of class on graduate employment trajectories, Burke charts
the socially mobilising effect access to particular capitals can provide. In addition,
Burke illustrates the consequences when particular forms of capital are spent and
the implications for future trajectories, now that a level of mobility has been
experienced.
Lisa Mckenzie in Chapter 3 acknowledges the difficulty of reading original
Bourdieusian texts, particularly for students. Yet despite this, Bourdieu’s
conceptualisations of different capitals, and especially the relational aspect of
economic and cultural capital when it came to understanding social class, made
Mckenzie pursue Bourdieu’s work further and apply it to her own research.
Mckenzie uses Bourdieu in ethnographically mapping the economic disadvantage
on a British council estate. She reveals the symbolic violence that residents
undergo as they are de-valued and stigmatised in wider society due to their ‘lack’
of the accumulation of particular forms of capital. However, she shows how these
residents re-define their own value system by acquiring different forms of capitals
that are highly valued on their estate.
In Chapter 4, Derron Wallace provides a critical discussion on ‘Black’ cultural
capital. Wallace demonstrates the multi-faceted forms of ‘Black’ cultural capital
that Black Caribbean youth in London draw upon to counter social stigma and
formulate their own definitions of ‘success’. Wallace uses Bourdieu to go beyond
intersectionality and considers the relationship between ‘Black’ cultural capital
and gender to demonstrate the fluid and relational character of ‘Black’ cultural
capitals in the formation of social hierarchies between Black ethnic groups.
Tamsin Bowers-Brown highlights the importance of putting theory into practice
in Chapter 5. One of Bourdieu’s main emphases on his theoretical framework was
that it was not simply reified, but that researchers should demonstrate the relevance
of his concepts through empirical inquiry. Bowers-Brown does just this through
her exploration of constructions of ‘achievement’ within secondary education and
the choices girls make about the educational pathways they pursue. Bowers-Brown
also draws on another of Bourdieu’s central positions – that of researchers’
reflexivity. She reflects on her own politics and feminism as influencing the
decision she made to study gender and education by looking specifically at girls’
educational choices.
 Introduction 5

Lindsey Garratt in Chapter 6 discusses the opportunities and benefits of using

Bourdieusian social theory when researching the body, in particular habitus, hexis
and embodied cultural capital. Garratt reflects on the limitations of previous
approaches to the body, post-modernism and post-structuralism – arguing that
these approaches largely produce a Cartesian dualism, which favours mind over
body. Through embodied cultural capital, Garratt demonstrates the effectiveness
of adopting Bourdieu’s structural constructivist approach when thinking about the
body.
Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud, in Chapter 7, trace the early
developments of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus back to the empirical work he did
in Algeria when he looked at how the Kabyle adapted to the political and social
transformations occurring in their society. Emphasising the origins of the
conceptual developments, they apply Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capitals
to a comparative case study of South African and Polish migrants in the UK.
They argue the relevance of the comparison is that both sets of migrants also
experienced large structural political transformations with the fall of apartheid
and communism, respectively. By doing this, Thatcher and Halvorsrud show the
continuing relevance of Bourdieu’s concepts by applying them to the study of
individuals migrating from two societies that have been in transition in the last
25 years.
In Chapter 8, Sam Friedman’s reflexivity offers insight into why a whole new
generation of scholars are attracted to the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Friedman’s
recollections of childhood confusion and bewilderment about why some people
were accepted into a middle-class social circle, while others were not despite their
economic capital, gets to the very heart of the importance of cultural capital to
the middle classes in British society. It also reveals another element of Bourdieu’s
attraction – that of ‘discovering’ his work for the first time and experiencing a
sense of excitement when things that had once confused him about society
suddenly all started to make sense. Friedman’s chapter draws on the results from
the BBC Great British Class Survey (GBCS) as well as qualitative interviews to
illustrate intra-occupational disadvantage and how those from working-class
backgrounds experience a ‘class ceiling’ despite relative social mobility.
Kirsty Morrin in Chapter 9 reflects on her working-class upbringing and the
industrial past of the Northern town where she was raised. Morrin speaks about
how she immediately felt some biographical affinity with Bourdieu and that
through Bourdieusian insights of habitus-field disjuncture she has been able to
understand why she did not quite ‘fit-in’ during her first year at an elite university.
Upon returning home after her degree, Morrin’s sociological training meant that
when she heard about an Academy opening in her town and being the first high
school to become one that specialised in ‘entrepreneurship’, she instantly wanted
to research what was happening to her home town. Through a Bourdieusian
framework, she contests the so-called ‘lack of aspiration’ or ‘poverty as a cultural
facet’ discourse that was used to establish the school.
6 Burke, Thatcher, Ingram, and Abrahams

Finally, Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams in Chapter 10 draw on Bourdieu’s

concept of ‘cleft habitus’, discussing the painful yet creative experience of living
life within multiple yet incommensurate social fields. Similar to earlier chapters,
Ingram and Abrahams emphasise the negotiation processes an agent has to undergo
in order to adapt or resist the transformation of their habitus when they feel the
pull of different field structures at once. They chart the range of possibilities of
habitus interruptions in which the outcome in some cases may be production of
a ‘third space’. In turn, Ingram and Abrahams argue that the occupation of this
‘third space’ by the working class student can lead to greater reflexivity.

Conclusion
As this edited collection brings together a new generation of Bourdieusians in
the early stages of their careers, it is perhaps important to give a few thoughts
on why Bourdieu’s theoretical framework has become so popular with a new
generation of sociologists. Bourdieu’s work explored sociologically fundamental
philosophical and political issues – such as the nature of personal identity and the
nature of the State. This may be attractive to a new generation that wants to think
sociologically but is not committed to organising a career within the circumscribed
field of professional sociology as currently practised.
Many of the authors of this book have come from non-‘traditional’ educational
pathways. Furthermore, all of the authors are concerned with inequalities and social
justice. This will mean that many may be critical of the way academic sociology
is currently practised. In The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, Gouldner (1970)
argued that universities were becoming increasingly bureaucratised and individuals
were being subordinated and pressured to conform to the status quo of their
established authority. He said that sociology was going to become more reflexive
in the future and that being a reflexive sociologist necessitated not surrendering
to those who control the distribution of knowledge. A sociologist’s job was to
assist people in their struggles to understand the society and culture of which they
are a part. Academic sociology must not simply be for those who wish to escape
the world that will inevitably penetrate the university (Gouldner, 1970). This
philosophy is very much at the heart of Bourdieu’s own thinking on academia
and sociology. In the last years of Bourdieu’s life, he was committed to reflexivity.
As Robbins states:

The coherence of Bourdieu’s work derived from the fact that he never allowed
himself to think that his own practices were formally anything other than those
he observed. Bourdieu’s anthropological, sociological or cultural analyses
became increasingly inseparable from his analyses of the social or institutional
contexts in which they were generated. To ignore this is to expose Bourdieu’s
work to a slow death by academic exploitation.
(2007, p.91)
 Introduction 7

The attraction of Bourdieu is that his concepts demand sociologists to be reflexive

not only in the issues they are analysing, but also on their own situations. This is
a central theme running through every chapter in this book.
To end with, it is important to acknowledge the problematic ways in which
Bourdieu’s theoretical framework has been applied due to his increasing
popularity. Anyone employing Bourdieu’s concepts must have an understanding
of the origins and early developments of these concepts in order not to reify them.
Bourdieu asserted that his concepts must be employed reflexively and also
recognised the socio-historical contingency of his concepts (Robbins, 2005). By
a new generation of researchers applying these past conceptualisations reflexively
to present situations, we have shown how Bourdieu’s theory is still relevant to
contemporary issues.

References
Archer, M.S. 2007. Making our way through the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. London:
Routledge and Kegan & Paul.
Bourdieu, P. 1992. The purpose of reflexive sociology (The Chicago Workshop). In:
Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (eds) An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge:
Polity Press, pp.61–217.
Gouldner, A. 1970. The coming crisis of Western sociology. New York: Basic Books.
Jenkins, R. 2002. Pierre Bourdieu: revised edition. London: Routledge.
Nash, R. 1999. Bourdieu, ‘habitus’, and educational research: is it all worth the candle?
British Journal of Sociology of Education. 20(2), pp.175–187.
Reay, D. 2004. It’s all becoming a habitus: beyond the habitual use of habitus in educational
research. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 25(4), pp.431–444.
Robbins, D. 2005. The origins, early development and status of Bourdieu’s concepts of
‘cultural capital’. The British Journal of Sociology. 56(1), pp.13–30.
Robbins, D. 2007. Sociology as reflexive science: on Bourdieu’s project. Theory, Culture
and Society. 24(5), pp.77–98.
Thompson, P. 2008. Field. In: Grenfell, M. (ed.) Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. Durham,
UK: Acumen, pp.67–81.
Chapter 2

Bourdieu’s theory of practice

Maintaining the role of capital
Ciaran Burke

Bourdieu, in a rare moment of clarity, provided a schematic for his logic of

practice: ‘[(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice’ (1984, p.101). This formula has
been the foundation for the application of Bourdieusian social theory in the years
since; however, within the schematic and from Bourdieu’s extensive ‘tool box’,
capital and field appear to have taken a back seat to habitus. Diane Reay (2004)
argues that there is a habitual use of habitus, and this overuse is certainly to the
detriment of the latter concepts. Within this chapter, the case for the application
of capital will be made.
There are two objectives within this chapter: first, it will demonstrate the
malleability of Bourdieu’s thinking tools, a feature that both led me to
Bourdieusian sociology and has allowed me to continue applying it to different
and new empirical settings by discussing the different forms of capital and the
manifestations these capitals may take within a research project. Capital is not
fixed nor determined but relational; drawing from processes within an empirical
research project concerned with the role of class on graduate employment
trajectories, I will discuss how I operationalised and measured capital in an
empirical study based in Northern Ireland. Second, through considering how
capitals are ‘invested’ and the consequences of the ‘devaluation’ of some forms
of capital, I will demonstrate how the application of capital allowed me to chart
an individual’s employment trajectory and offered both a more thorough and a
dynamic understanding of their life history.

Theory of practice: concepts

Bourdieu’s theory of practice can be read as part reaction and part compromise
to the rigid determinism of Structuralism, most notably attributed to Levi-Strauss
at that time, and the firmament agency advocated by Phenomenology, particularly
Merleau-Ponty. Indeed, it has been Bourdieu’s structural constructivist position
that has allowed me and fellow young researchers to apply a pragmatic position
to the relationship between structure and agency in the face of late modernity’s
growing influence in the academy and wider understandings concerning the
malleable nature of social space. Bourdieu’s attempt to occupy the middle ground
 Bourdieu’s theory of practice 9

and present an interpenetrative account of structure and agency was aided by a

number of ‘thinking tools’. Bourdieu’s particular toolbox included both multi-
function and single purpose items and the occasional extension; however, the three
central tools were habitus, capital and field.
Habitus, at its most fundamental definition, can be understood as norms, values
and dispositions. They are formed and directed by a number of different
influences; however, according to Bourdieu (1977), the family and the education
system are the two most influential forces, followed by environment and peer
groups. The habitus is seen to direct pre-reflexive actions, often referred to as the
‘feel for the game’ (1990, p.66). While the habitus is unique to each individual,
in order to assist empirical research, a group habitus is a permissible term (Nash,
1999). The extrapolation of habitus is further legitimised through the argument
that individuals from similar backgrounds/locations will have been exposed to a
similar environment, leading to an increased chance that their habitus will be
similar (Bourdieu, 2002). Thatcher and Halvorsrud, in Chapter 7, make an
interesting argument that habitus is also nationally, historically and politically
bounded in their comparative case study of South African and Polish migrants.
Capital, as a partner to habitus, is understood to also direct certain pre-reflexive
actions, namely aspirations and expectation – or what Bourdieu refers to as ‘the
field of the possibles’ (1984, p.110, emphasis in original). Bourdieu (2004) was
anxious for his readers to move beyond a literal economic understanding of capital,
so his three main forms of (relational) capital are economic, social and cultural.
The nuance and relational outcome of capitals’ interaction with each other has
been demonstrated by Sam Friedman’s (Chapter 8) discussion on the disparity
between those occupying the same economic position and the likelihood of social
mobility based on their accumulation of cultural capital.
Pinpointing levels/forms of capital allow us to plot individuals’ positions in
social space. Through creating a map of social space, we can begin to see patterns
and demarcate areas in which large numbers of individuals share a similar position,
leading to the formation of social groups based on similar levels of capital and
attitudes. Crossley (2008) reminds us that similar positions in social space do not
necessarily lead to individuals sharing experiences and attitudes; however, as is
the case with habitus, a similar position within social space is more likely to foster
complementary life chances and attitudes between individuals. As capital
influences attitudes, we can then assume certain class attitudes. Sam Friedman,
in Chapter 8, draws on the Great British Class Survey and shows the disparity
between those occupying the same economic position and their chances of social
mobility based on their accumulation of cultural capital. For Bourdieu (2004),
it was capital that removed the element of chance from the games we play; it
‘decides’ the path not taken. In addition to being used as a descriptive tool,
indicating position within social space and directing the field of the possible, capital
should also be read as a tangible entity, one that can quite literally be exchanged
for goods and services.
10 Ciaran Burke

The final concept within Bourdieu’s triad is field. Field is often seen as merely
the context or setting in which habitus and capital interact. While field provides
an environment for both habitus and capital, it is not reliant on their patronage
for legitimisation. Rather, field progresses along its own trajectory, often requiring
groups and individuals to reconfigure their own actions in light of an altered field.
This is captured nicely in Chapter 10 of this book as Ingram and Abrahams discuss
the way in which a cleft-habitus can be reconciled during the process of social
mobility despite individuals occupying multiple and incommensurate fields.
Bourdieu provides an – albeit misleadingly – simplistic but concise account of
how these three conceptual tools operate: ‘[(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice’
(1984, p.101). Habitus and capital interact together within a dynamic context,
engendering practice or strategic agency. Bourdieu’s theory of practice has enjoyed
both a sustained and wide application within UK sociology, including (higher)
educational research (Reay et al., 2005; Ingram, 2009; Bradley et al., 2013), socio-
cultural identity (Savage, 2000; Crompton & Scott, 2005), labour experiences
(Hebson, 2009; Atkinson, 2010;) and many more paths of research. While the
academy has certainly benefited from the inclusion of Bourdieusian theory into
so many areas of enquiry, there are issues related to the frequency in its use, often
leading to the concept being referenced rather than applied. Reay (2004) discusses
the habitual use of habitus within British Sociology. The key problem is that, as
Bourdieu is increasingly the ‘go to’ theorist, his concepts are used without the
necessary theoretical consideration or empirical reflection required for a rich and
nuanced conceptual tool such as habitus, resulting in an under-theorised position.
An additional issue connected to the habitual use of habitus is that the other
key thinking tools within Bourdieu’s triad are ignored or considered secondary
to the habitus. Bourdieu’s schematic presents a model of practice where habitus
and capital have an equal role in directing practice; however, the majority of
research focuses on habitus rather than on the directive role of capital. The
preoccupation with habitus can be demonstrated through the critical reception
Bourdieusian social theory has received. The common charge against Bourdieu
and, therefore, against advocates of Bourdieusian social theory is one of structural
determinism. The march back towards the iron cage is articulated through the
concept of structured and pre-reflexive dispositions, reproduced and directed via
the habitus (DiMaggio, 1979; Jenkins, 2002; Archer, 2007). The central barrier
to an appreciation of agency and acceptance of reflexivity is understood to come
from the habitus.
In reaction to such criticism, a number of Bourdieusian ‘modernisers’ (Sayer,
2005; Adams, 2006; Elder-Vass, 2007; Atkinson, 2010) have attempted to provide
a clearer agentic element within Bourdieu’s theory of practice; however, my point
is further demonstrated as these various attempts still primarily focus on the
habitus. According to Bourdieu (1992), in times of crisis and significant change,
the habitus can become rational. Adams takes this idea as his starting position,
suggesting that, as society becomes more liquid, characterised by the constant dis-
embedding of the familiar, ‘crises’ will become a feature of everyday life. As the
 Bourdieu’s theory of practice 11

environment becomes more rational and reflexive, it will inform the habitus,
leading to a stronger reflexive element. Similarly, Sayer advocates for a model of
practice in which mundane reflexivity works alongside habitus, operationalised
through the ‘recognition of the close relationships between dispositions and
conscious deliberation’ (2005, p.50–51).
This durable fixation on a re-modelled habitus again begs the question about
Bourdieu’s remaining conceptual tools – especially capital, due to where it sits
within Bourdieu’s schematic. For Bourdieu, both habitus and capital are pre-
disposed to reproduce themselves; they direct individuals to occupy certain
positions within social space and carry particular attitudes, and, in turn, these
individuals form the environment influencing the next generation’s habitus and
capital. Changing or breaking the habitus is possible; Bourdieu (1992, p.133)
comments that a significant change in environment can alter the habitus, but he
immediately tempers his argument suggesting that entering such an environment
is highly unlikely due to the habitus itself. A similar position towards capital can
be argued. As capital directs our ‘field of the possibles’, it limits individuals’ ability
to venture into new terrain, and, due to the durable nature of doxa – a set of values
shared among the dominant groups, which are often see as legitimate – and the
reproductive apparatus employed by the dominant group to secure their position,
the buying power of most capital will remain fixed. However, the multi-faceted
and relational character of capital combined with its contextual currency suggests
that capital may provide a more likely defence against some of the charges of
structural determinism and, therefore, requires as close an inspection and
appreciation as has been primarily given to habitus.

Empirical introduction
The empirical research that forms a portion of this chapter (Burke, 2015) used
capital(s) both as a descriptive device, to plot respondents’ position within social
space, and a generative concept of practice, considering the directive influence of
capital alongside/with habitus. The emergence and development of post-
industrialisation (Bell, 1973) is characterised by a knowledge economy; the new
leaders within this economy are the technical elite – typically university educated.
The previous form of social stratification, based on peerage and nepotism, is
replaced by one demarcated allegedly by effort and merit, ushering in large-scale
opportunities for social mobility via education. As a result of the meritocratic
narrative within post-industrialisation, perpetuated by successive government
policies (DfES, 2003; Cabinet Office, 2011), there has been a significant rise in
participation in higher education. Heath et al. (2013) report that 47 per cent of
18–30-year-olds are registered in university, which has necessarily led to an
increase in the level of graduates; the ONS (2013) reports that 38 per cent of the
UK population are graduates. In contrast to the dominant meritocratic discourse,
as the level of graduates in the UK has steadily risen, so too has the level of
graduate underemployment (Purcell et al., 2013). In the context of increased
12 Ciaran Burke

participation driven by the desire to become socially mobile, this research – based
on qualitative interviews with 27 university graduates stratified by gender, class
and institution attended (pre-1992 institution [Southern] and post-1992 institution
[Northern]) – examined which graduates enter the graduate labour market and what
variables are required to make this transition. In particular, the research examined
the role of class on graduate employment trajectories.

Measuring capital
An immediate requirement for this research was to categorise respondents into
classed groups. Coming from a Bourdieusian position and extending previous
research examining higher educational trajectories toward graduate employment
pathways (Brown & Scase, 1994; Brown & Hesketh, 2004), this research adopted
a binary classed model of dominant and dominated – or working and middle class.
Stemming from heuristic necessity, respondents’ class position was initially
measured using the NS-SEC self-classification questionnaire, a quantitative
measurement of class based on employment offering a class hierarchy divided into
three groups; higher managerial/professional occupations, intermediate occupa-
tions and routine/manual occupations. This form of class measurement is not
particularly Bourdieusian; however, as Archer (2003) has previously argued, a
crude model or base-line of socio-economic status is a legitimate starting point
when measuring social class. In addition to the NS-SEC, Bourdieu’s capitals were
employed to provide a fuller picture of respondents’ position within social space
based on relational capitals rather than solely economic status.

Economic capital
Economic capital, access to financial resources, is perhaps the most straightforward
type to discuss and measure. Among the respondents, a spectrum of economic
capital appeared. It was quite clear that a number of the respondents had access
to a considerable amount of money. This financial fluidity was apparent of John
(middle class); John had commented in his first interview that his family were
comparatively ‘broke’. When I more fully investigated this matter, it transpired
that he meant this statement in relation to the upper-class families with whom his
parents socialised. He explained that, in effect, they were quite comfortable:

Well, I guess, you’re not really poor, like, but you earn lower middle class
money, really.

In contrast, there were a number of respondents who displayed signs of not

being as well off, possessing quite low levels of economic capital. This factor was
evident within Nikki’s (working class) biography. She commented on the factions
within her grammar school year and where she understood herself to be:
 Bourdieu’s theory of practice 13

The rich girls would be over here [. . .] That whole money thing in [grammar
school], that did my head in [. . .] I hadn’t really experienced that before.
I kinda realised that I wasn’t in that league.

She discussed the ‘rich girls’ who were in her grammar school, which points to
a low level of economic capital on her part, as she did not belong to their group.
It was these comments and others like them that led me to label respondents as
having lower or higher levels of economic capital, a level of economic capital
that can be used to further an individual’s position or reproduce a position of
power.

Social capital
The second form of capital I considered was social capital. The central concept
concerning social capital is a network of social contacts – who you know and how
you use your contacts to your advantage. There were respondents such as Katie
(middle class) who displayed high levels of social capital, seen through her having
sustained social contact with influential individuals and her ability to utilise these
contacts to her advantage. Katie explained that her father’s close friend is the head
of the firm where she now works; he gave her advice and explained how to
manoeuvre successfully within this particular market:

I’ve always been told by the likes of my Dad, who was in the [firm] until
recently, and his friends – he has a lot of friends who went higher than him.
His best friend is [General Manager] – he said, ‘Listen, get your degree under
you. If you can do it now, get it under you and have it there. It helps to have
a degree so you can promote whilst [working].’ He always said, ‘If you want
to promote and go places, get the degree under you now, and, you know, see
how – keep it there. You’ll have it. It’ll save you later on.’

Katie appeared to use this advice, as this path is loosely how both her educational
and subsequent employment trajectory progressed. It is not enough to have
contacts; high social capital is based on being able to use them. In a sense, social
capital was operationalised as being ‘high’ when individuals were able to use that
capital to progress in a particular field and increase or reproduce their life chances.
This same understanding is also how I defined low social capital. There were a
number of respondents such as Fergal (working class) who had a large number
of social contacts; however, his social contacts only aided him in his lateral
progression, accessing other low status jobs. On graduating from university, Fergal
was a cleaner. He explained how he found that job:

I knew someone who knew the boss. They told me that I should go and ask.
I was hired on the spot. It was a family-run business.
14 Ciaran Burke

Later in his biography, Fergal discusses being made redundant from his position
in a bookshop. After unsuccessfully looking for other forms of employment and
spending some time on benefits, he returned to the same bookshop. Again, this
movement was through social contacts, as he explained:

[I] ended up getting my old one back at [bookshop] through sheer nepotism.

Again we see how the measurement of social capital goes beyond simply having
social contacts; it is how they can be used. Fergal had a number of different social
contacts upon whom he could call to find employment; however, each of these
positions were low status, non-graduate jobs, which suggests quite a low level of
social capital. It was through observing not just the level of contacts but how they
were used that allowed me to understand whether a respondent had high or low
levels of social capital measured on the transferable character or ‘buying potential’
of this form of social capital.

Cultural capital
The final form of capital that concerned my research was cultural capital. This
capital is perhaps the most difficult form to appreciate, as it is a sense of
understanding and belonging to situations connected to a social class group; it
is the most challenging to measure. The manner in which cultural capital is
understood seems to be that individuals either possess cultural capital or they do
not. The danger is in how a researcher defines or decides what is high culture and
what is low culture. Bradley (2014) has recently charged the Great British Class
Survey (Savage et al., 2013) of relying on highly selective cultural class markers.
When attempting to measure or appreciate levels of cultural capital, I considered
within what form of environment – linked to a particular level of social class – a
respondent is comfortable. Does the respondent display qualities that would be
typically linked to a level of social class? Can these qualities be effectively used
to advance their position? Crucially, I would temper or reassess the displays of
comfort and qualities presented by respondents through a sense of where they do
not belong. As opposed to me deciding what was of cultural worth and what was
not, I was interested in observing and measuring the level of absence of cultural
capital – not fitting in to a certain environment and seeing a socio-economic group
as ‘other’. This approach was influenced by Scott’s (2002) comments suggesting
that, within a classed society such as the United Kingdom, while individuals may
find it difficult to present their own class identity, they will be aware of class
differences. Essentially, an individual’s strongest grasp on class is created
through difference and where they feel they belong. In Chapter 3, Lisa Mckenzie
talks about the alienation working-class women living on a council estate
experienced from the outside community and how their working-class culture was
mocked and stigmatised as possessing lesser value by wider society. Yet, the
 Bourdieu’s theory of practice 15

council estate became a site of belonging for these women, who ascribed value
to working class practices and culture.
In terms of my own respondents who possess high cultural capital, this level
was understood through displays of being comfortable in a middle-class
environment, demonstrating qualities akin to a middle-class identity, displaying
cultural artefacts and seeing ‘lower’ or working-class environments as ‘other’. As
with social capital, these qualities needed to be utilised in a successful manner.
Hannah (middle class) demonstrated a number of these qualities. She was quite
comfortable within middle-class environments such as grammar school and
university. She commented:

When I started going to my grammar school, I knew I was in the right place.

and:

I met so many people when I was in university [. . .] we were so similar and

so friendly, and we went through so much together.

Equally, Hannah recognised herself as being quite cultured – often more

cultured than others. She felt ‘out of place’ within a working-class environment,
as she explained:

When I worked at the [local cinema] box office, it was a sort of call centre-y
type thing. I didn’t fit in there.

The only position in which she felt uncomfortable was a typical working-class
job. It was this feeling of ‘being a fish out of water’ that pointed to some
respondents’ high level of cultural capital. Similarly, respondents who displayed
lower levels of cultural capital within a hierarchy of capital were understood through
displays of being comfortable within a working-class environment, demonstrating
a sense of understanding middle class as ‘other’ and being uncomfortable and unable
to successfully move within a middle-class environment. Catherine (working class)
displayed a number of these qualities. Throughout her life history, she would
present herself as being with elite or middle class individuals, but, at the same time,
she was never one of them. She recalled her time at school:

[I] hung out with the very top fliers. My best friend – she was a deputy head
girl and captain of the hockey team.

The way this comment is phrased suggests that she was not one of the ‘top fliers’.
Similarly, when discussing her extended family, she says:

They’re the ones who went to university in Oxford and live all around the
world and, you know, are cultured.
16 Ciaran Burke

Catherine also constantly displayed a sense of understanding the middle classes

as ‘other’; it almost appeared to be a novelty to her. Catherine is a junior solicitor.
She describes her colleagues as simply ‘La de da’ and the various law formals
and socials she attends as ‘Highfalutin’ la de da’.
It is through understanding middle-class individuals and middle-class activities
as being something else – something removed from her identity – that Catherine
comments on it in such a fashion, suggesting another form of cultural capital.
Catherine also commented that she feels more at ease or comfortable within what
could be understood as a working-class environment. She explained that she has,
essentially, two social groups: one of childhood friends and people she met through
working part-time in bars and restaurants during her degree, and the other of
individuals she met during her time studying for the LPC and through working
at a solicitor’s office. She explained that there was a difference in how she felt
when she was socialising within each group:

[Older friends] don’t care as much. They do things for shits and giggles, while
professional people – it is trying to get ahead.

I pushed her more on this idea in our final interview. I asked her in which group
she felt more at ease, and she explained she felt more comfortable within the
working-class social group:

I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s a stress, but you’re always a wee bit worried
about saying something wrong. Whenever you’re with the bar friends, if
someone takes offence, it’s like, “wise up to yourself” and it’s fine, so – not
that I would say it’s more stressful, but I’m definitely more myself around
my bar friends.

It was through these sorts of comments and displays of comfort and ease provided
that allowed me to identify respondents as having lower or higher levels of cultural
capital.
For the purposes of my research, each individual’s social class was appreciated
and classified through the composite of preliminary NS-SEC classifications, family
background, self-classification and a thematic/theoretical interpretation of their life
histories. In an effort to appreciate Bourdieu’s (2004) three forms of capital, it
was necessary to go beyond the simple NS-SEC classification. For example,
through the NS-SEC, Catherine was defined as being middle class; however,
through appreciating family background, social capital and, as discussed, cultural
capital, I was able to create a fuller understanding of her social class and,
subsequently, define her as being a working-class respondent.

Using capital to understand trajectories

The findings of this study have been discussed at length elsewhere (Burke, 2015).
In general, a binary class model was observed; middle-class graduates equipped
 Bourdieu’s theory of practice 17

with a habitus complementary to the tacit relations of the graduate labour market
and high levels of capital were able to successfully negotiate the graduate labour
market. In contrast, their working-class counterparts were largely unable to make
the transition from higher education to graduate employment, often settling long-
term for non-graduate jobs – again, directed by habitus and capital. This study
reflected an extension of patterns previously presented concerning the role of
habitus and capital on higher educational trajectories (Reay et al., 2005), youth
transitions to work (Hodkinson, 1998) and the general labour market (Atkinson,
2010). In addition, it provided a closer Bourdieusian analysis of findings that
mirrored previous graduate employment research (Brown & Scase, 1994; Brown
& Hesketh, 2004; Smetherham, 2006).
While the research findings presented a general binary classed system of
privilege and reproduction, there were a number of conceptual groups that existed,
to various degrees, outside of the larger binary model. One such group was the
converted working class; this group was categorised as working class but had also
successfully made the transition from higher education to graduate employment.
For the majority of their life histories, the converted working class fitted quite
neatly into the general working-class model. Members of this conceptual group
presented weak levels of strategy, practical mastery and low levels of aspiration
and expectation, leading to a socially reproduced dominated position within social
space.
A number of themes present within the group can be demonstrated through
Catherine’s life history. Catherine, who is now a junior solicitor, presented a
durable level of weak strategies. During the educational phase of her life history,
she displayed quite a poor and limited understanding of the educational market,
which can be seen through the difficulty she experienced in ‘choosing’ a univer-
sity at which to read for her degree:

I think there are about 20 colleges in England that you can do the LPC in,
so, even then, it was which one do you choose. I can’t even be bothered going
through which one is the best, which one looks good on the C.V. There’s one
in Northern Ireland, go to the Northern Ireland. [Southern] was probably just
laziness, sheer laziness. That’s why I went there.

Understanding the rules of the game is a central component of successfully

navigating the field. Catherine did not know how to properly choose a university;
she opted for the ‘easy’ choice. Following her into employment, her weak level
of employment strategy could be placed through her linear understanding of the
exchange between education and employment, arguing, for example, that History
graduates can only teach History. Catherine provided quite superficial and
unreflective accounts of her employment trajectory. Even when pushed, her only
account for becoming a lawyer was based on a television programme she watched
as an adolescent. In addition, Catherine, through her superficial knowledge,
displayed an inability to understand the market. She would often talk about Law
18 Ciaran Burke

and Medicine but offered no specifics; she could present no in-depth knowledge,
even in her own field. Catherine’s educational strategies often failed; when at
university, she opted into a work experience programme offered by her university
– Southern. It was eventually seen to be a moot point, as no Northern Irish
employers recognise it as a qualification of any merit. She explained:

[Southern] did a, uh, Work Experience Award. I ended up doing that, which
I thought was going to look good on the C.V., but no one really understands
it because it’s only a new thing [. . .] Trying to explain it to employers, it’s
like, right okay.

Catherine equally displayed weak employment strategies when discussing what

she would do if she was not successful in applying for the Legal Institute. Catherine
was not successful in her first attempt to get into the Legal Institute, and, until it
was time to apply again, she worked in the hospitality industry:

[N]o, I worked in a hotel restaurant for a summer season. I did the Institute
exam and I was like 97th on the waiting list, and it was like another year to
re-sit it [. . .] If I had not got in after the third time, I would have given up
and just done hospitality, but I wouldn’t have wanted to.

Catherine’s position points to a weak level of employment strategy. If she was

unable to get into the Legal Institute, she would simply stay in a low status industry
that she did not enjoy. It suggests that she did not know how to use her degree in
the employment market other than traditional applications; therefore, she was
willing to settle for a low status position.
As was the case with the other members of the converted working class group,
Catherine was able to use a one-time exchange of a specific form of capital in
order to find a graduate position (Burke, 2015). While the particular form of capital
differed between members of this group, Catherine’s specific capital was
social/familial. When Law graduates enter the Legal Institute, they must find both
a firm to take them on as an apprentice and what is known as a ‘Master’. Catherine
explained that her sister was solely responsible for finding her a firm that would
take her. She commented:

Where I’m working now is just the solicitors in the town. To be honest, I’m
only there because my sister works in the local bank. She would be their
contact there.

Catherine further discussed the interview she sat for her job:

It was like, ‘Ack, [Catherine], how’re you doing?’ It was like we were old
friends just because he knew my sister. That’s why I got the job, but it wasn’t
really an interview because the decision had already been made before I came
in that I was getting it because who I was.
 Bourdieu’s theory of practice 19

This experience is a one-time use of capital – the social capital she enjoys from
the relationship with her sister can only be exchanged with this one firm, as they
use her sister’s bank and her sister, by chance, is their contact. The capital cannot
be used for promotion or to move to another firm. Catherine did not suggest that
she could use her sister’s connection again. The importance of her sister is shown
in the phrase, ‘I’m only there because my sister’; unless she had her sister’s
contacts, she would not be where she is now.
Catherine’s entry into a graduate profession, via her limited capital, encouraged
an equally limited form of employment strategy. Catherine explained that, now
she is in the firm, she is trying to make herself as useful as possible in the hope
of being kept on after she qualifies:

I’m trying to make myself indispensable to [the law firm], so they’ll know
what they’re missing or whatever.

By the time of the follow-up interview, Catherine had successfully sat her
qualifying exams. She explained that she intends to stay in the firm where she
worked during her time in the Legal Institute. This continuation suggests a return
to her previous low levels of expectation, as she commented in relation to her
classmate who wants to eventually become a judge:

I’d rather – this is going to sound awful – but I’d rather be a mediocre average
solicitor [laughs] than waste, in my opinion, two years of your life. She seems
happy enough. That’s her plan. She wants to be a judge one day. She’s going
places [. . .] I’m not – if they offered it to me I wouldn’t say no, but I’m quite
happy just being a solicitor for the rest of my life.

Similarly, Catherine displayed a weak understanding of the employment market;

she explained that she did not fully understand the extent of professional
opportunities afforded to her:

[I]t’s only after I started to get into it, I realised that there’s so much more
you can do after being a solicitor.

Catherine’s working-class habitus and levels of capital, essentially low or

ineffective, have reproduced her position within social space. Influenced by the
family, school and the general environment, Catherine’s educational and
employment trajectories have demonstrated a durable level of weak strategy. She,
like other members of her conceptual group, displayed a low level of practical
mastery or feel for the game. Additionally, while she aspired to be a solicitor, she
has no alternative plan, or strategy, other than a linear progression from university
to the professional institute to a solicitor’s office. While her field of the possibles
had been extended to include the legal profession, if this could not be realised,
they reverted back to their previous form as indicated by her willingness to settle
20 Ciaran Burke

for working in hospitality in the eventuality of not being admitted to the Institute.
What changed, however, was her capital – or, more specifically, the buying power
of capital she already owned.
I have suggested members of the converted working class were able to take
advantage of a one-time exchange of specific capital within a specific context to
secure a graduate job. Capital is understood to influence or offer ‘the field of the
possibles’ (Bourdieu, 1984), but capital is also, in a sense, tangible and can be
overtly exchanged. With Catherine, we can see that she possesses – in contrast to
her relatively low and under-resourced forms of capital – a level of social capital
that is ‘context rich’.
Subsequent to their ‘transaction’, members of the converted working class began
to demonstrate higher levels of aspirations and expectations and also relatively
stronger strategies. Once Catherine had successfully gained a position in the
solicitor’s office, she set about making herself indispensable to the running of the
office, often performing tasks that were not necessarily her responsibility.
Similarly, Atkinson (2010) discusses what he terms ‘social space travellers’ – the
upwardly mobile working-class respondents from his study. One of the influences,
he suggests, behind this particular cohort of students becoming upwardly mobile
is their higher levels of capital in relation to his working class/dominated cohort.
Quite unlike Atkinson’s social space travellers, however, members of the
converted working class appeared to revert or return to their previous low levels
of aspiration and expectation and demonstrate weak or poor employment strategies.
This reversion can be appreciated through Catherine’s comments that she would
prefer to remain ‘just a solicitor’ and that – even now, having been employed full
time in a law firm and having graduated with her professional qualification – she
does not fully understand the various avenues the legal profession covers.
This issue could be understood as a ‘Pygmalion Dilemma’. In George Bernard
Shaw’s (1912/2003) classic play, Pygmalion, a young lower-class woman, Eliza
Doolittle, is brought into high society and ‘educated’ on areas such as the ‘proper’
manner to address a person, ‘correct’ pronunciation and ‘good’ posture. There is,
however, a particular ‘flaw’ or self-destruct button within her ‘new’ identity. When
Miss Doolittle is reunited with her father, a lower-class individual with whom
she shares a background, she reverts back to her previous tone, meter and stance;
she is brought back into her habitus’ previous form. In a sense, this return is
what has happened – or stands to happen – with this cohort of graduates. The
context-specific form of capital allowed them to break or alter their position in
social space and their habitus’ previous character. The context-specific capital
created a new environment that provided a degree of mobility within the social
space and, as such, the strategies and aspirations demonstrated were synony-
mous with an individual who resides within a higher position in the social space
than the converted working class previously had. The context-specific capital was
also time sensitive; it could normally only be used on one occasion and, once it
was exchanged, it no longer stood out from the respondents’ general low levels
of capital.
 Bourdieu’s theory of practice 21

It was clear that Catherine did not generally enjoy high levels of social capital,
and this job was the only occurrence where she was able to use social capital in
a successful way. Similar to Eliza Doolittle, when met with their previous levels
of capital – one could say ‘normal’ levels of capital – this group reverted back to
previous dispositions and aspirations. Once the capital ‘left’ or stopped being
influential, the attitudes presented and the actions carried out were not enough
to reproduce or secure their apparently socially mobile trajectory. Catherine is
currently in graduate employment; however, she demonstrates a sense of
discomfort within this field and, with regard to promotion or climbing the ladder,
many of the converted working class do not know how to achieve. In contrast to
the general middle-class group, they appear unable to continue to be socially
mobile.
The concept of the ‘Pygmalion Dilemma’ shares a number of features with
Atkinson’s (2012) ‘Icarus effect’. Here, Atkinson discusses the effects of the
meritocratic discourses within the knowledge economy and the push (via media,
politics and specific individuals) for people to work harder in order to achieve
increased life chances. The direct result for Atkinson’s sample was two
respondents with low levels of self-confidence, who had both left education after
GCSEs, entering higher education as mature students. These respondents demon-
strated an increased level of aspirations; however, relatively early in their
university careers, both respondents withdrew from university due to lack of fit
with the institutional ethos or pressures from outside life becoming increasingly
incongruent with the demands of higher education. Atkinson’s main point is that,
while the respondents presented increased self-confidence and a desire to enter
higher education, contrary to the attitudes required for social reproduction, they
soon, due to lack of necessary dispositions and capitals, return or fall back to their
previous dominated position within social space.
It is clear that the Icarus effect and Pygmalion Dilemma are complementary;
however, in addition to providing an account of an individual’s trajectories, the
Pygmalion Dilemma shows the generative effect of capital and provides a closer
account of the genesis of respondents’ return to their previous position. In the spirit
of this book and in the guise to ensure the durability of a Bourdieusian school of
thought within UK sociology, these concepts are not mutually exclusive. The
context specificity of the Pygmalion Dilemma could lend itself to being one
approach to accounting for a more general Icarus Effect.

Conclusion
This chapter points to the importance or influence of capital. The purpose of
Bourdieu’s schematic for practice was to highlight the function or presence of
each of these conceptual tools; habitus, capital and field. In my research, capital
was used to provide an accurate and relational picture of respondents’ positions
within social space. For the converted working class, the role of capital accounts
for the – albeit transitory – change in trajectory. The longevity or durability of
22 Ciaran Burke

the habitus within this group is quite clear from my findings; once the capital is
spent, it is their durable habitus that returns their practice to its previous form,
but an understanding of their life history requires an examination of both concepts.
Without this limited exchange of capital, members of the converted working class
would most likely still be in non-graduate employment and further reinforce the
‘traditional’ picture of social reproduction. The over-use of habitus is much more
than a sinistrodextral leaning from the presentation of Bourdieu’s schema of
practice but is, rather, from a durable focus on the concept both from Bourdieu’s
supports and critics. It is safe to say that the contributors to the present book
celebrate and welcome the continued application of Bourdieusian social theory
within expanding research areas; however, as this chapter has demonstrated, capital
can be generative and needs to be fully considered when examining trajectories
and not seen as something that merely adds to the influence of habitus.

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Chapter 3

Narrative, ethnography
and class inequality
Taking Bourdieu into a
British council estate
Lisa Mckenzie

The work of Pierre Bourdieu is not easy; in actual fact, that may be an under-
statement. It can appear to be near impossible to read and make sense of if you
are an undergraduate student, or even a postgraduate student, lecturer in sociology
or anyone else. I came across Bourdieu’s seminal work Distinction: A Social
Critique of the Judgment of Taste for the first time as an undergraduate student,
and was confronted by the first line:

Sociology is rarely more akin to psychoanalysis than when it confronts an

object like taste, one of the most vital stakes in the struggles fought in the
field of the dominant class and the field of cultural production.
(1986, p.11)

I was simultaneously both terrified and intrigued, reading this after a third-year
lecture in contemporary social theory, and became interested in this ‘French
guy’ who thought that inequality is both cultural and economic. I was fascinated
by his critique of how people were viewed and known through their activities,
what they wore, the music they enjoyed, the food they liked to eat and the pro-
grammes they watched on television. It seemed to me this ‘French guy’ was
arguing that these cultural practices, tastes and likes were not arbitrary; they had
meaning, but they were also judged. What I took from that early reading of
Bourdieu was social class and cultural pursuits had values attached to them, and
it was the tastes of the middle and upper classes that were always valued above
those of the working class. I understood how class could be easy to read on the
body, the way you walked, talked and the clothes you wore, but also through
practice; what a person does, where they go and what they enjoy in life. This made
sense to me; I was a mature undergraduate student, a mother, living on a council
estate and working class. I instantly recognised what this meant, and how it was
directly connected to my life and to those who lived in my community. Until
that point the main focus through the sociology lectures in understanding and
critiquing social class had been linked to employment and earnings, a very
traditional way of thinking about class. I was instantly inspired, and I understood
what it was like to be judged on my accent, where I lived and the clothes I wore.
26 Lisa Mckenzie

I delved into Distinction further and realised I was entering a strange world, with
language I was struggling to understand.
When confronted with this very difficult language, and a turn of phrase that
initially appeared illegible to me, I was annoyed. This was yet another high
academic piece of work, written by an academic locked in his ivory tower and
had no relationship to the world that every day people, like me, lived in. My initial
reaction was that it made me feel inadequate and angry (and actually still does
when I read academic work similar to this); especially when that work is
supposedly speaking to matters of inequality, unfairness, poverty and the dangers
of elitism. This type of writing still has the ability to make me want to tear out
my red hair, and to be honest it is not the way I would want to write and get my
research, the work that I do, out into the public. However, as I negotiated my way
around the work of Bourdieu and because I was inspired by it, I began to
understand more about the man behind the difficult prose and became inspired by
his work and by Bourdieu himself.
Pierre Bourdieu wanted his work to be used; he understood his theoretical
philosophy as tools, and worked with them through social examination of the
world. In the previous chapter, Ciaran Burke outlined how Bourdieu’s concepts
can act as a tool box for sociologists conducting empirical research. That is exactly
how I have used his work; the theories laid out in the many books and articles I
have read have all been drawn upon and applied. Furthermore, I have read the
work of many others who also apply Bourdieu’s theoretical framework in similar
ways to mine. This is why I advocate the work of a French sociologist who writes
in such a way that it makes me angry! It is applicable because I make the theory
work for me and it helps me to explain the subtleties, the complexities and the
painful experiences of class inequality. Consequently, from the beginning of my
relationship with Bourdieu, I vehemently believed and subscribed to his idea that

The task of sociology . . . is to uncover the most profoundly buried structures

of the various social worlds [and the] relations of power and the relations of
meanings between groups and classes.
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.7)

This was my first understanding of Bourdieu and this is how I put him to work
in my own research in a council estate in Nottingham. How far away from each
other do those things seem; the upper echelons of French academia, philosophy
and society, to a council estate in a very dreary and brutal inner-city place in the
East Midlands of the United Kingdom.

Bev Skeggs and respectability

I cannot take full credit for understanding and working with Bourdieu’s theories,
which relate to taste, culture and value. To be truthful I was struggling with the
raw theory in Bourdieu’s books. It wasn’t until I came across Bev Skeggs’ (1997)
 Narrative, ethnography and class inequality 27

work, Formations of Class and Gender – an ethnographic study set in the North
West of England during the 1990s – that things became clearer. It was Skeggs’
work that brought to life the tools, the theories and the meanings behind the work
of Bourdieu for me. Her work illustrates the type of injustice I was struggling to
make sense of in my own life, and then in the research with working-class women
on a Nottingham council estate.
What Skeggs did with this work was nothing short of genius to me. Formations
of Class and Gender became my bible throughout my PhD, and since. Skeggs
showed through her research with working-class women in the north west of
England that these women were never ‘good enough’; they felt ‘deficit’. Conse-
quently, some of the women in Skeggs’ study placed importance in trying to
accumulate middle-class cultural capital. They felt this was their only means of
improving their working-class positions – to be different from whom they were.
Similar findings are discussed in Chapter 5 by Tamsin Bowers-Brown, in her
research on teenage girls’ academic trajectories in the East Midlands region of
England. Skeggs’ study put the concept of ‘respectability’ at the heart of working-
class women’s lives, and she demonstrated that being and doing working-class
culture was never ‘good enough’. What Skeggs’ work presented to us in the 1990s,
and has been showing us ever since, is that this type of distinction in taste, practice
and class is central to injustice within the politics of aspiration.
Using Bourdieu shows class is a lived experience – what we ‘do’ and ‘like’ is
judged with harshness, and often without rationality. Consequently, sections of
society are being forced to dis-identify with their working classness, their culture,
in order to ‘self improve’. The women in Skeggs’ study try to adopt middle-class
culture through ways of dressing and speaking. However, they are always aware
that they can never ‘do middle class right’ (Skeggs, 1997, p.82). They are aware
that they get it ‘wrong’ and they feel shame about their social position (ibid., p.88).
This concept of distinction taken from Bourdieu and the process of ‘de-valuing’
people through culture is central to Skeggs’ work. I used it, and continue to put
this at the heart of my own work exploring working-class communities and council
estates in the United Kingdom.

A conceptual framework of Bourdieu’s symbolic

economy
Bourdieu’s theory of practice has been extremely important in academic work that
critiques social class hierarchies, as have critiques produced by academics from
working-class backgrounds. This work resonates with those of us who understand
and have felt first hand the pain of snobbery, and being in a place where we feel
uncomfortable because of our class position. Bourdieu’s theory of practice, place
and identity has allowed us to contextualise and examine new ways of investigating
identity, social space and behaviour. Using this theory in my own work on St Ann’s
council estate in Nottingham, I show how working-class people have been
de-valued over time because of their class position, the place where they live, but
28 Lisa Mckenzie

also because of what has been called (in policy terms) ‘welfare sub-culture’
(Skeggs, 2004). The New Labour Government introduced this phrase through the
social exclusion discourse during their first term in government in 1997. However,
the ‘righting’ of the ‘bad culture’ of the working class supposedly leading to ‘bad
behaviour’, has been the objective of successive governments and institutions for
many decades (Welshman, 2007). Consecutive governments, at least since the
1970s, have used the rhetoric of the ‘deficit’ model of working-class people. For
example, Thatcher’s Conservative government during the 1980s introduced the
term ‘underclass’. Tony Blair, the former prime minister, and his New Labour
government employed the rhetoric of ‘social exclusion’ through their introduction
of ‘social exclusion’ units. Recently, Prime Minister David Cameron has applied
the discourse of ‘Broken Britain’. These are all attempts to justify and implement
harsh prescriptive solutions, with a particular focus upon all that is ‘lacking’ in
the people of ‘poor’ neighbourhoods. Bourdieu’s theory of practice can provide
a way of thinking about the rich complexity of poor working-class life in the UK,
as opposed to the discourse of ‘lack’ coming from mainstream, government and
media dialogue. It allows us to engage in arguments that traditionally academics
and lobbyists on the left of the political spectrum have found difficult to partici-
pate in. Through this theory, we can understand behaviour and ways of being,
and recognise cultures within council estates and other poor communities. The
theory of practice enables us to engage and debate seemingly ‘problematic’
behaviours, which have often developed as ways of being and dealing with the
harshness of daily lives on council estates, as well as the wider discourses of taste,
legitimacy and ‘acceptable’ citizenship. Bourdieu’s theory of practice helps us
untangle how poor neighbourhoods are often experienced and enacted through
local practices, both positively and negatively. By doing this, I expose the realities
of stigma and stereotype.
Using Bourdieu’s theoretical tools to explain injustice, which is based on capital
movements through social space, provides a bridge for the dialectical relationship
of culture and the economy. Bourdieu (1977) argues that space is structured by
the distribution of the various forms of capital. These capitals are capable of giving
strength, power and profit to their owners. Bourdieu (1977) then uses the concept
of habitus, which is the internal organising mechanism that intertwines social
relations with the possession, accumulation and exchange of the different capitals.
From this framework we can see how power and ‘value’ are distributed within
an abstract structure. It is also possible to use this framework to understand the
agency of those whose positions are not valued because they ‘lack’ access to the
various forms of capital that Bourdieu suggests are required within and across a
social field.
This framework also shows that class formation can be dynamic, as different
capitals are acquired, negotiated and exchanged in different fields, but also within
different ‘games’ (Bourdieu, 1986, pp.213–219). Within a social field there may
be many different ‘games’ being played, and therefore capital has different values
within these various situations. I argue, based on my own research, that a council
 Narrative, ethnography and class inequality 29

estate or poor neighbourhood is a ‘game’ within a field, and therefore the values
of the resources within that ‘game’ cannot be known unless the value system at
work is decoded (1986, pp.211–214).

Bourdieu the ethnographer

Bourdieu understood that in order to decode ‘the game’, in-depth study was
required. Pierre Bourdieu was a philosopher, a social theorist, but also a hands-
on researcher. During the early years of his academic career, Bourdieu spent many
years as an ethnographer, living with and researching the Kabyle community in
Algeria (Bourdieu, 1962). Consequently, his theoretical model of value, practice,
space, symbolic violence and the accumulation and movement of capital, was
grounded in ethnographic mapping and critical theory. Bourdieu used the example
of the economic field within traditional Kabyle societies, arguing that there are
two different ‘games’ being played within this one particular field. Women were
allowed to tell the economic truth, while men were held at a point of honour. A
man could not ask for a price or date when goods might be paid for; however,
women among each other could ask the price of something, as well as ask when
she would be paid for her work or services (1998, pp.99–100). Bourdieu’s key
argument was that this value system is based on a symbolic exchange of honour,
which excludes women as they cannot become a person of honour, and thus allows
them to act differently within the economic field (1998, p.99). Bourdieu’s
understanding of how practices translate into meanings initially may seem
confusing. However, through his outline of the Kabyles’ economic practices,
we are able to analyse how different groups enact different practices within the
same field. This analysis and critique has been central in my own work relating
to class, belonging and community. What Bourdieu’s theory of practice helps
us to understand is how practice grows within communities organically, while
identifying what resources are ‘valued’ and work within their systems of
exchange. It also shows what is not attainable for a particular group, and the ways
in which they may act differently in order to compensate for what they do not
have. Consequently, this critique lends itself to how power works in social space
and who is ‘valued’ in society. I argue that Bourdieu’s theoretical framework has
become central in understanding social class divisions and inequalities in
contemporary British society.

The importance of value and value systems

Value, who is valued, and who is de-valued is at the centre of my research. This
extends to the physical space that working class people inhabit and I have
investigated the consequences of de-valuing people, but also the spaces where they
live. This is where the social exclusion discourse might be useful, showing how
social capital is being undervalued and destroyed through the actions of the market,
rather than the actions of the residents.
30 Lisa Mckenzie

Networks and engagement located in neighbourhood culture was often practiced

through representation, how people who lived on the estates represented
themselves within. When I asked people on the estate ‘to tell me about themselves’,
they often replied with ‘I’m typical St Ann’s’. This identification of who you are
and the neighbourhood you live in was common, and I consequently called this
identification ‘being St Ann’s’. ‘Being St Ann’s’ is a term that explains how the
residents recognised themselves and each other through ways of dressing,
speaking and acting; this is part of a local culture and code showing you belong.
Most of the women wore a lot of gold jewellery. Big Creole earrings, and
expensive branded sports wear and trainers are important. The women on the estate
spoke in local dialect, a mixture of local Nottingham and a Jamaican patois; these
were the symbolic resources of value within the neighbourhood, and were sought
after. The women felt a real sense of injustice that they were constantly
‘disrespected’ by those on the outside. However, it seemed that conformity – not
wearing the big gold earrings, not wearing their hair in particular ways and not
speaking in a locally-influenced Jamaican patois – was never considered in order
to ‘not stand out’, and ‘be respectable’. Sam Friedman in Chapter 8 writes about
how working-class people experiencing social mobility symbolically retain their
working classness by not conforming to middle-class established norms, such as
ways of dressing and speaking – even though this would make them ‘fit’ into the
new fields they inhabit.
One of my participants, Tanya, told me one day that she could not understand
why ‘on the telly’ when someone was supposed to be ‘common’ they were
represented by wearing big, gold hooped earrings. The women I spoke to in St
Ann’s told me they wore big, gold hooped earrings, and liked them. One of the
young mothers in St Ann’s told me she knew that some people would call her a
‘chav’ because of the amount of gold she wore. She also spoke about how she
had been followed around shops being mistaken for a shoplifter. She thought this
was because of the way she looked and dressed: ‘too much gold, tracksuit and
trainers, black baby in the pram.’
The way the women appeared, dressed, acted, how they spoke and how they
decorated their homes, was often referred to by them as ‘their taste’. They liked
the way they dressed, particularly wearing a lot of gold jewellery, and did not
seem to care whether ‘others thought they were common’. However they also knew
that these cultural markers had two values, one on the inside of St Ann’s, and one
on the outside. Therefore, ‘being St Ann’s’ was a way that the women could feel
‘of value’ in and around the estate. Other people also valued them and their taste;
it gave them respite from ‘being looked down on’ from the outside.
The resources that are valued within a council estate are only of use-value to
those who live there, and therefore can never be legitimated or capitalised upon
because they have no exchange value outside of that specific location. It is the
resources that become legitimate capital through their exchange value that can be
traded within the wider social field, and it is those resources the poor communities
do not have access to. They are restricted from appropriating them, which also
 Narrative, ethnography and class inequality 31

restricts their social mobility and disadvantages them. Therefore, Bourdieu’s model
of capital exchange can expose the mechanisms of how power works to advantage
some groups, while disadvantaging others. However, a more flexible approach to
capital accumulation is needed so that we can recognise a resource as legitimate,
not because it has profit through exchange, but because it has use to the holder.
What Bourdieu’s symbolic economy also shows us is that, by examining value
systems on the outside of the dominant value system, as Bourdieu did in Algeria,
we can understand how and what is of value within those communities, and also
what actions are necessary by individuals to become a person of value within that
system.

Taking Bourdieu into the council estate: capital

legitimation and accumulation
The concepts regarding capital and capital accumulation have been key in my work
of council estates, and in understanding how value works. In ‘Distinction’ (1986,
pp.53–54, 99–101), Bourdieu identifies four different types of capital, and it is
the accumulation of these capitals that determines the inclusion or exclusion from
society: cultural, economic, social and symbolic. Economic capital includes
income, wealth, financial inheritance and monetary assets. Cultural capital can
exist in three forms: in an embodied state that is in the form of long-lasting
dispositions of the mind and body, for example ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’;
in the objectified state in the form of cultural goods; and in the institutionalised
state such as educational qualifications. Bourdieu defines cultural capital as high
culture: that is, culture that has been legitimated through a middle-class
acknowledgment (1986, p.51). Bourdieu also recognises symbolic capital, which
is a value that is not recognised as such. Prestige and positive recognition, for
example, operate as symbolic capital because they mean nothing in themselves,
but depend upon people believing that someone possesses these qualities and
values them. Finally there is social capital: resources based on connections and
group membership; this is capital with value through relationships (1986,
pp.10–12).
Bourdieu et al. (1999) explain the process of the negative naming of the places
where the poor live through his concept of reified social space. Bourdieu argues
that reified social space has been attributed different values, defined by the
‘distribution of agents and the distribution of goods in social space’ (1999, p.125).
The result of this reification of physical space means there becomes a concentration
of the ‘rarest goods and their owners in certain sites of physical space’ (ibid.,
p.125), while in other physical spaces there becomes an over-representation of
the poorest and disadvantaged groups, as in St Ann’s. This physical space becomes
a reified social space; it has meanings for those who live in it and for those who
do not. Bourdieu argues that both spaces, wealthy and poor, have positive or
negative stigmatising properties, which attach themselves to the people who
live in, work in and occupy them. What this means, according to Bourdieu et al.
32 Lisa Mckenzie

(1999), is that there becomes ‘a silent call to order’ through which the ‘appropriated
or reified physical space’ is one of the mediations in which social structures
gradually convert into mental structures, and into systems of preference and
meaning (ibid., p.126).
This is where Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can work in a way to explain
how an individual becomes part of a recognised group, as in a class distinction,
but also bridges the conceptual gap between what actions take place and the
importance of the context in which a social group may find itself, while also
allowing for diversity within that social group. Bourdieu alerts us to the space
of everyday life in all its complexity and how it is lived. This space is full of
bodies, experiences and social relations. It is dynamic and moves from one possi-
bility to another, adapting as it moves (Bourdieu, 1986, pp.170–178). The habitus
is a system of dispositions, a system we might describe as a person’s character,
or even their temperament. This framework also has the ability to produce or
originate a relational disposition; it is dynamic and it aligns embodied actions
with social locations. However, Bourdieu warns us that life is not only about
possibilities; it is also about predictability (1977, pp.110–111). Therefore, the
system of habitus is also constrained, normalised and has a pattern. Bourdieu
suggests the habitus is the internal organising mechanism entwined within social
relations and expressed through the possession, accumulation and exchange of the
different capitals, giving varying amounts of value to those in whom it is embodied
(1986, p.171). Therefore, social differences and inequalities become observable,
as the habitus is the product of those divisions as well as the space that reproduces
those social divisions through power and the accumulation and exchange of the
mechanism of the capitals. In order to understand class, and cultural relations of
the many groups within society, the concept of habitus allows us to consider
language, ideas and practices, in addition to power relations and resources
(Bourdieu, 1977, p.112).
Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is important in his analysis of social identity and
also the process by which individuals and groups identify themselves. It has been
important to my research in understanding how class is a lived and embodied
experience. In order to understand the ways in which the social can be incorporated
into the self through the habitus, we need to consider a number of theoretical
effects. Chris Haylett (2003) argued that the most important of these is to say ‘that
class cannot be reified as an actor but is a matter of the embodied social practice’
as this varies, changes and unfolds as a cultural space (p.62). This, argues Haylett,
is a very different understanding of class to the empiricist, aggregate-position
approaches and the economic capitalist system approaches, she argues tend to
diminish consequences for working-class people. These are important argu-
ments when trying to understand the difficulties of measuring working-class social
or collective action. As capitalism takes on different forms, it also changes class
practices. Consequently, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus allows us to examine the
ways identities, cultures, practices and classes are constructed through wider and
relational space. Bourdieu’s aim is primarily to show the deep entrenchment of
 Narrative, ethnography and class inequality 33

arbitrary social hierarchies upon the body, but praxis orientation does not
necessarily rule out ideas of agency and change. It seems what is at stake then
is not so much the idea that habitus forecloses a dynamic account of agency, but
rather how agency and change are conceptualised. This is an important argument
because, when individuals and groups – and especially those from poor neigh-
bourhoods and low social class positions such as the people who were part of my
research in Nottingham – engage in social practices, social networks, cultural
practices and ideas that are not recognised and therefore misunderstood by the
wider population, these practices are either invisible, or of no value, or are deemed
as having negative connotations for those involved. Their agency is not recognised
because their capital is misrecognised.

Does symbolic and cultural capital equal value?

Bourdieu is inclined to understand the valued capital within a society as inherently
belonging to the middle class, legitimated through middle-class values and the
economic sphere (1986, p.50). This is the process that happens when capitals can
be exchanged and traded up into the open market. Bourdieu always uses education
and, in particular, higher education as ways of demonstrating this (1986, p.55).
For Bourdieu, it is only the cultural capital of the middle classes that is legitimised
this way. Bourdieu is accurate in his assessment of this process, in particular when
considering the economic field; it tends to always resign those who cannot take
part in this process as of little or no ‘value’. Not to possess symbolic capital from
your cultural and economic capital, as Lawler (2008) argues, is to fail in ‘the
games’ of judgement, aesthetics, knowledge and cultural competence (p.128).
However, there is value within poor communities. Poor communities, in the
absence of the legitimated capital and value system, create their own value systems,
as Bourdieu acknowledges in his work Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977)
and Practical Reason (1998). Alternative value systems can run alongside the
legitimate system, or in opposition, turning the social ‘norms’ of wider society
on their head, but are often a hybrid version of all. Although alternative value
systems are recognised by Bourdieu, he has been accused of leaving little room
in his conceptual framework to consider the scope for recognising working-class
identities and cultures that exist as positive in spite of economic inequality (Lawler,
2005, p.120). Bourdieu argues this point in Distinction (1986), through a
discussion of ‘taste’ and class. He argues that ‘taste’ belongs to the middle class,
as they are further away from necessity and therefore have choices. This doubles
freedom, because the middle class use ‘taste’ to ‘exhibit their objective distance
from necessity’ (1986, p.55). He goes on to argue that, as distance from necessity
grows, lifestyle becomes the product of what Weber calls a ‘stylization of life’
(Bourdieu, 1986, p.55). Bourdieu then turns his attention to the legitimation of
certain lifestyles and ‘taste’, which then become the inevitable difference of a
practical affirmation (1986, p.56).
34 Lisa Mckenzie

However, what Bourdieu is most concerned with is how those who regard
themselves as the ‘possessors of legitimate capital’ fear above all else ‘the
sacrilegious reuniting of tastes which taste dictates shall be separated’ (1986, p.56).
It is not that Bourdieu believes poor people have no or little value, but instead he
demonstrates how the symbolic economy works against granting recognition and
value to the poor. This is an important argument, especially to Bourdieu’s critics,
who often accuse him of having ‘a theory of reproduction’ rather than practice;
these accusations usually centre on determinism, and restriction (Giroux, 1983,
p.95). However, Bourdieu’s concern is to uncover the logic of practices that
perpetuate power relations and inequalities.
A way of demonstrating this is to show that working-class and middle-class
cultural capitals are not equal but different. The difference working-class people
display is ‘made into inequality’ through symbolic violence. For example, in order
to examine a particular cultural capital, it needs to be analysed in relation to other
capitals within that field, but also within ‘the game’. Skeggs (1997) also
demonstrates how Bourdieu’s theory of practice can be used to analyse femininity,
which can be seen as a legitimate form of cultural capital. However, this is only
so when it is analysed through a version of middle-class femininity, which is
associated with ‘morality’, and only then in comparison to working-class
femininity and masculinity in general. What Skeggs (1997) is demonstrating is
exactly what Bourdieu (1998) argues: that symbolic violence is bestowed on those
who do not have access to legitimate capital. They then struggle for legitimate
capital. However, Bourdieu also argues that

people are not fools; they are much less bizarre or deluded than we would
spontaneously believe precisely because they have internalised, through a
protracted and multisided process of conditioning, the objective choices they
face.
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.130)

If working-class people in the UK have had their social positions denigrated, and
their access to legitimate capital has been restricted, it is suggested here that there
has been a ‘resistance’ to this positioning, even though it may not be understood
or recognised.
The work of Pierre Bourdieu has been extremely important in my journey from
an access course in a further education college to a researcher in the London School
of Economics. His work has helped me to understand my own class position, but
also some of the snobbery and stigmatisation I have experienced during this
journey. However, Bourdieu’s theoretical tools have also guided me through my
own research process and continue to be central in my work, which I like to think
is exposing inequality, unfairness and injustice. Through the use of Bourdieu’s
theory of capital accumulation we can understand how the poorest sections of
our society are often named and known as people of little ‘value’, and the
neighbourhoods they live in have come to represent the ‘chaos’ and ‘lawlessness’
 Narrative, ethnography and class inequality 35

of Britain’s ‘underclass’ through a de-valuing process that is connected to practice,

and predominantly through the legitimation of cultural resources connected to
middle-class lifestyles. My ethnographic research unravels the complexity of the
inequalities, particularly within poor inner-city neighbourhoods in the UK, by
examining closely the relationships between the class system, cultural capital and
the valuing and de-valuing processes of institutional legitimation. I have argued
that, over time, working-class people have become devalued not just within
political discourse, but also within their own communities. They have been
positioned as people of little ‘value’. Their communities are often referred to as
‘sink estates’, their ‘deficient’ culture being passed on from one ‘deficient’
generation to another. Morrin in Chapter 9 also speaks about the rhetoric of
working-class ‘deficiency’ as produced through policy discourse, while Wallace
in Chapter 4 critiques the extension of the ‘deficiency’ model to Black com-
munities. I have shown that the devaluing process has led to shifts in how working-
class people want to represent themselves in order to protect their own profiles
from further devaluing. Working classes do not only understand their class
identity or social position through their economic position, but also by the way
they are viewed, represented and understood by those on the outside of their
communities. Within this chapter, I have used Bourdieu’s theory of practice
in my analysis of social identity and in the process in which individuals and
groups identify themselves. The concept of habitus allows us to examine the way
that identities, cultures, practices and classes are constructed through wider and
relational space.
Bourdieu’s metaphor of symbolic economy helps us to understand the behaviour
of those who live in poor neighbourhoods through recognition of the context. It
is through the symbolic economy that we can understand how power works within
social structures. It is Bourdieu’s metaphor of capital that can provide not only
a framework for understanding power, but also exchange in the reproduction of
inequality. The metaphor of space has a similar explanatory value for under-
standing movement through social space and restrictions on it. The metaphors that
Bourdieu provides us with of spaces and places enable an understanding of the
distribution and allocation of resources and, as Skeggs has argued, for ‘people to
be framed’ (1997, p.12). There is a real complexity around working-class identity
in contemporary Britain, with little understanding shown in mainstream discourse.
Specifically, there are misunderstandings of working-class ways of life that may
be simultaneously positive and negative for those who embody them.
Therefore, what this chapter has done is to explain how important it is to
contextualise practices within poor working-class communities. By doing this, we
can see what the community values are, and we are able to examine that particular
value system against that of the dominant value system. Through this we can see
not only what the community considers valuable, but also what is not available
within that community and, therefore, how the individuals within the neighbour-
hood, but also the neighbourhood as a collective, might compensate for what they
have no access to.
36 Lisa Mckenzie

References
Bourdieu, P. 1962. The Algerians. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: a critique of the social judgement of taste. London:
Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. 1998. Practical reason. Cambridge: Polity.
Bourdieu, P. et al. 1999. The weight of the world: social suffering in contemporary society.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge: Polity.
Haylett, C. 2003. Culture, class and urban policy: reconsidering equality. Antipode. 35(1),
pp.55–73.
Giroux, H. 1983. Rationality, reproduction, and resistance: toward a critical theory of
schooling.” In: McNall, S. (ed.) Current Perspectives in Social Theory, vol. 4.
Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, pp.85–118.
Lawler, S. 2005. Disgusted subjects: the making of middle-class identities. The Sociological
Review. 53(3), pp.429–446.
Lawler, S. 2008. Identity: sociological perspectives. Cambridge: Polity.
Skeggs, B. 1997. Formations of class and gender. London: Sage.
Skeggs, B. 2004. Class, self, culture. London: Routledge.
Welshman, J. 2007. Underclass: a history of the excluded. London: Continuum Inter-
national.
Chapter 4

Re-interpreting Bourdieu,
belonging and Black identities
Exploring ‘Black’ cultural capital among
Black Caribbean youth in London
Derron O. Wallace

Introduction
It has been a vivid pleasure, though at times unsettling, to think about the relevance
of ‘race’ and ethnicity in Bourdieu’s scholarship. For much of the last five years,
I have pondered questions such as: was ‘race’ simply understated or entirely
unacknowledged by Bourdieu? Was Bourdieu at all concerned with racial
domination? To what extent was ‘race’ a mappable coordinate on Bourdieu’s
theoretical radar? How can critical conceptions of ‘race’ enrich understandings
of Bourdieu’s work? Is the study of ‘race’ an imposition on Bourdieu’s scholarship,
an invitation to innovation or an important extension? Rummaging through
Bourdieu’s translated works, I have searched for hints to a class-rich set of
analytics on ‘race’ and racialisation – or an antidote to rigid ‘race’-or-class binaries
in sociological scholarship. My entree into the study of ‘race’ and Bourdieu,
however, was never a quest to undo the analytical primacy of class. Instead, I
envisaged it as an attempt to discern how class is ‘raced’, or to question whether
experiences of the working and middle classes differ according to ‘race’.
Questions about the unequal, ‘raced’ experiences of social class surfaced during
my first year in university. My roommate and I were second-generation working-
class teens raised in politically conscious families in different parts of New York.
For both of us, social class was not a vapoury abstraction – it was an influential
rubric that constrained the choices in our lives, particularly in wealthy, elite
institutions. Within the confines of our dorm room, we often derided our middle-
and upper-class peers, particularly the ones who ‘wore’ their class privileges daily
– girls who wore long-sleeved Ralph Lauren shirts with popped collars, necklaces
with two scores of 10-millimetre freshwater pearls and suede Ugg boots with
sheepskin to warm their feet; boys who donned Birkenstock clogs, Ray Ban
sunglasses and two Abercrombie and Fitch shirts at a time with all collars raised.
Nothing incited rage in us quite like classmates who declined support from the
university’s ‘free’ writing tutors because their parents or paid tutors at home could
‘do better’.
The overwhelming class angst that united my roommate and me initially divided
us eventually, as we realised that we often encountered our class positionality in
38 Derron O. Wallace

contrasting ways. By the end of our first term it became clear that despite our
shared class heritage, whiteness functioned as a resource for him, and blackness
often served as a liability for me. Truth be told, it was my roommate who first
brought these racialised class distinctions to my attention. It occurred to him, and
eventually to me, that at our predominantly white institution, where the majority
of our peers were upper class and middle class, ‘race’ influenced the expression
and reception of our working class identities.
I wish I could say that I had the theoretical clarity as a first-year university
student to name the race and class conundrums I encountered. However,
Bourdieu’s penetrating scrutiny of contemporary class arrangements afforded me
the relevant language to think about racialised taste and style distinctions across
and within class groups. The quest to understand ‘race’ and its relationship to
Bourdieu’s conceptual toolkit became a key feature of my doctoral training.
Throughout that time, I have found that analyses of ‘race’ and ethnicity in
Bourdieu’s work are sparse (Rollock, 2012; Rollock et al., 2011; Reay et al., 2005;
Reay, 2004b). In fact, analytical treatments of ‘race’ and ethnicity in Bourdieu’s
theory of practice are likely to be economical. While classic pieces such as
Distinction (1993) represented France as ethnically undifferentiated (Bennett et
al., 2009), works such as The Algerians (1962) and Weight of the World (2003)
shed some light on Bourdieu’s sensitivity to ethnicity, migration and displacement
as social factors that complicate class hierarchies. Yet even within the above
mentioned works, Bourdieu’s class consciousness is ‘race light’ at best.

Bourdieu’s building blocks for a ‘raced’ class

analysis
Despite the fact that Bourdieu’s work has not consistently addressed ‘race’ and
ethnicity, his theoretical concepts have long been used to interpret the experiences
and outcomes of racial, ethnic and class minorities (Rollock, 2007; Reay et al.,
2005; Reay, 2004a; Carter, 2003). One such concept is cultural capital, which
Bourdieu defines as ‘instruments for the appropriation of symbolic wealth
socially designated as worthy of being sought and possessed’ (Bourdieu, 1977,
p.488). The ‘instruments’ or resources Bourdieu refers to include cultural cues,
social styles, schemes of expression, acquired bodies of knowledge, (re)presenta-
tion styles, manners of speaking, consumption practices and patterns (van de
Werfhorst, 2010; Moore, 2008; Silva, 2005; Yosso, 2005; Reay, 2004b).
Despite Bourdieu’s specific definition and clarifying commentary, cultural
capital is at times deployed in ways that promote deficit views of racial and class
minorities. To be clear, deficit perspectives frame racial and class minorities based
on what they ‘lack’. A more balanced reading in keeping with Bourdieu’s
proposition focuses not only on the fact that the skills, tastes and styles of racial
and class minorities are often not legitimated, but how the limited symbolic
recognition accorded them in the white middle-class mainstream is based on
 Bourdieu and Black identities 39

asymmetrical power relations – ones that are often racialised. In this chapter,
I offer what I deem an asset-based reading of cultural capital: ‘Black’ cultural
capital. ‘Black’ cultural capital is a generative interpretation that considers the
resources that matter in dominant and non-dominant settings. It sees power
arrangements as producing structures of suffering that can limit the conversion of
‘Black’ cultural capital into economic capital, depending on the national context
and social fields within it (Lizardo, 2010; Bourdieu, 1999).
Bourdieu’s key notion of cultural capital has been expanded to mitigate his
failure to more thoroughly account for ‘race’ and ethnicity in the classed
experiences of disadvantaged groups. Stanford sociologist Prudence Carter, for
example, extends Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital by examining the varied
cultural practices and valid resources low-income African American youth draw
upon in schools and social organisations in her much celebrated ethnography,
Keepin’ It Real (2005). Based on a 10-month-long community-based ethno-
graphic study of 62 low-income African American and Latino youth, ages 13 to
20, in Yonkers, New York, Carter (2003) argues that valuable, desired resources
abound among low-income, minority youth as well, not only among a mainly
white, middle-class majority. Conventional perspectives, Carter explains, suggest
that cultural capital abounds among some communities, but is absent, or at the
very least deficient, among others (Yosso, 2005). Carter (2005) therefore argues
that conventional interpretations of cultural capital ignore non-dominant forms of
cultural capital, and in so doing promote deficit perspectives of what the poor and
working classes lack in their negotiation of inter-group class relations. She suggests
that the appreciations, tastes, styles and coded expressions of urban African
American youth – which she refers to as ‘Black’ cultural capital – afford cache,
recognition and ultimately power, within their local, social contexts. In a similar
way with class as reference point, Lisa Mckenzie in the previous chapter, as well
as Kirsty Morrin in Chapter 9, both critique the ‘deficit’ view of working-class
people as supposedly ‘lacking’ in cultural capital and/or aspirations. Mckenzie
argues that the working-class community she studied in Nottingham inverts their
so-called ‘lack’ by ascribing value to their own working-class culture within and
across their own communities.
Building on the scholarship of Pierre Bourdieu, this chapter further develops
Prudence Carter’s (2003) notion of ‘Black’ cultural capital and highlights the social
status hierarchies among Black ethnics in a London state school as understood by
Black Caribbean youth. I wish to make the case here that there is no singular,
clearly delineated ‘Black’ cultural capital to which all Black ethnics subscribe
universally. Each Black ethnic group (be they African, African American, Black
Caribbean or Black British) possesses distinct cultural capital sets, rendering
‘Black’ cultural capital dynamic and diverse. I offer empirical attention to the
‘Black’ cultural capital assortments among Black Caribbean youth in order to
underscore the view that Black cultural capital is, in fact, a set of fluid, stratified
resources that vary according to social fields.
40 Derron O. Wallace

Defining ‘Black’ in Black cultural capital: finding

value in variability and the vernacular
Carter (2005) contends that there are two core forms of cultural capital at play in
the lives of her participants: dominant and non-dominant cultural capital. She
defines dominant cultural capital in keeping with Bourdieu’s original rendition of
cultural capital – that is cultural knowledge, specialised skills and distinct practices
inherited and invoked by privileged classes to maintain high status and reproduce
power in mainstream society. ‘Non-dominant’ cultural capital, on the other hand,
refers to the cultural resources lower status groups convert to capital to manage
their social status within their local communities (Carter, 2003). Those who
operationalise dominant cultural capital in home and social contexts experience
cumulative advantage in schools (Lareau, 2011; 2000), whereas those who draw
on non-dominant cultural capital greatly or exclusively develop and experience
an oppositional culture in schools (Ogbu, 1988; 1978; 1974).
Giving particular credence to the non-dominant forms of capital, Carter (2003)
explores the ways in which ‘speech codes, dress styles, musical preferences and
other attributes framed as ‘black’’ (Carter, 2003, p.139) are used as symbolic forms
of recognition for individual cultural status positioning and group cohesion.
‘Black’ cultural capital, she maintains, is but one form in a range of non-dominant
cultural capitals based on the performances, preferences and ultimately, power
that local youth label and legitimise as ‘Black’. She argues that African American
youth in urban contexts possess tastes, styles, knowledge and ways of being
(capital, in essence) that are valuable in local networks and desirable by their
minority peers and, increasingly, by the white majority as well (Warikoo, 2011;
Thomas, 2007).
The Black in ‘Black’ cultural capital is based on entrenched racialised
worldviews youth possess, and is mediated by ethnicity, nationality and locality.
As originally conceived, ‘Black’ cultural capital is a porous construct that
influences the position and power of Black youth in peer group hierarchies. The
concept speaks to the fluid and ambiguous ways in which some racial, cultural or
economic minorities produce and perform Black identities. In a racialised class
order, ‘Black’ cultural capitals are the resources with which youth in stigmatised
positions or stigmatised settings procure power to alter perceptions of self and
society. As will be empirically illustrated throughout this chapter, ‘Black’ cultural
capital requires moving beyond ethno-national identification schemes to
performative scripts popularly recognised as ‘Black’. ‘Black’ cultural capital is
therefore part of the everyday ‘social curriculum’ necessary for offsetting, at least
in imagination, the hidden injuries – material, social, psychological – of inner-
city schooling (Anyon, 1997).
The ‘Black’ cultural capital to which Carter (2003) refers is arguably, within
the confines of her research, African American cultural capital as noted through
the specific linguistic currency, musical preferences and coded expressions her
research participants employ. But what about the function of ‘Black’ cultural
 Bourdieu and Black identities 41

capital among Black Caribbeans – particularly those outside the US? This chapter
illustrates that ‘Black’ cultural capital is not exclusive to African Americans.
Furthermore, ‘Black’ cultural capital as expressed by African Americans is not
exactly the same for Black Caribbeans. The participants in this study shed light
on the locally developed, Caribbean inflections of non-legitimised cultural capital
and its prominence in dominant non-dominant places. ‘Black’ cultural capital does
not necessarily inspire an oppositional stance to white, middle-class authority and
academic achievement. Instead, ‘Black’ cultural capital spotlights the relational
and ethnic resources used to celebrate an authentic ‘Black identity’. To this end,
‘Black’ cultural capital is a contextual heuristic for non-dominant cultural capital
based on salient, local meanings.
To her credit, Carter concedes that ‘[c]onceivably, other ethnic groups racially
identified as “Black” possess their own cultural capital portfolio’ (Carter, 2003,
p.151). Yet, to date there are no clear empirical examples of this beyond the
African American community, particularly for Black Caribbeans. More empirical
evidence is needed to show how ‘Black’ cultural capital applies to other Black
ethnics, such as Black Caribbeans and Black Africans and how it is performed
differently across local geographies. Such studies may suggest that not all types
of ‘Black’ cultural capital are valued and desired equally among Black ethnics
and even the white majority. The ethnographic research showcased in this chapter
reveals that some forms of ‘Black’ cultural capital are more dominant than others,
given their global reputation and rising popularity (Thomas, 2007; Hall, 1997;
1996). ‘Black’ cultural capital is therefore neither singular nor static, but instead,
its character is multidimensional and its value, contextual.
It is also worth noting at this juncture that ‘Black’ cultural capital is not limited
to a particular social class. Put plainly, ‘Black’ cultural capital is not solely the
preserve of poor and working-class Blacks; Black middle-class youth also invoke
multiple, complex iterations of ‘Black’ cultural capital – a perspective altogether
missing from the existing literature. Whereas Carter (2005) focuses on low-income
African American youths’ expressions of ‘Black’ cultural capital, my research
indicates that working-class and middle-class Caribbean youth also draw on
‘Black’ cultural capital in an attempt to legitimise their status as racial ‘others’ in
an inner-city context. It is arguably a response to the historically marginal position
of Blacks in British society – a weight often shouldered by Blacks in Britain
irrespective of middle-class privilege (Vincent et al., 2012). ‘Black’ cultural capital
is therefore a set of resources working class and middle class Black Caribbean
youth deploy to make meaning of Black identities, forge networks of belonging
and counter their marginal status, given Britain’s racialised power relations.
In the remaining sections, I showcase the validity of ‘Black’ cultural capital
among second-generation Black Caribbean teenagers. After outlining the sample
and methods of the study, I make two core arguments: first, local contexts matter
– they shape dynamic expressions of ‘Black’ cultural capital even across ethnic
groups; and second, in academic and social spheres, ‘Black’ cultural capital is
crucial for proving authenticity. The chapter empirically illustrates that while the
42 Derron O. Wallace

specific expressions of ‘Black’ cultural capital among Black Caribbeans in London

are not exactly the same as African Americans in New York (as described by
Carter), the instrumental aims of ‘Black’ cultural capital are often the same: to
garner higher status and social recognition.

Sample and methods: contextualising the study on

Black identities and migration
This chapter focuses on data from in-depth interviews with second-generation
Black Caribbean boys and girls from a state secondary school in South London.
Findings showcased in this chapter come from a larger 14-month ethnographic
study investigating the national, political and cultural factors that position Black
Caribbean youth as ‘high achievers’ in New York relative to African Americans,
and ‘underachievers’ in London compared to Black Africans. The focal
participants discussed in this chapter include 15 boys and 15 girls between the
ages of 14 and 16. Students were initially recruited for this study through letters
sent to the parents of children in years 10 and 11 who were registered as Black
Caribbean on their school records. In an attempt to develop a more fine-grained
understanding of second-generation Black Caribbean youth in London, participants
were identified using screening questionnaires, which solicited preliminary
information about their class background and generational status. Of the 382
students who completed the survey, the 115 second-generation Black Caribbean
students were invited to participate in focus group interviews. Thirty of those
second-generation Black Caribbean young people who completed focus group
interviews completed one-on-one interviews. Pseudonyms are used throughout this
chapter to ensure the protection and anonymity of the study’s participants.
An analysis of the interview sample examined in this chapter indicates that 13
participants were from Black middle-class families (as determined by parents’
university completion and professional ranking), and 17 were from working-class
families. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted over a seven-
month period from 2012 to 2013 in homes, classrooms and social venues across
South London. The duration of interviews varied between 55 minutes and 85
minutes, though on average interviews lasted for 65 minutes. These individual
interviews explored participants’ educational experiences in state schools,
perceptions of racial and ethnic relations in school and society and constructions
of social and learner identities, among other factors. Given the scope and required
length of this chapter, I use the remaining sections to focus on students’ beliefs
about their aspirations, authenticity, and ‘appropriate’ behaviours as Black
Caribbean youth.
The participants discussed in this chapter are year 10 and 11 students at Newton
Secondary School in South London, a large, historically white state comprehen-
sive. Though Newton Secondary and the surrounding area have traditionally served
the white working classes, there has been a marked increase in the number of Black
Caribbeans and Black Africans living in the area over the past 20 years. The school
 Bourdieu and Black identities 43

remains predominantly white (50.5 per cent), but is diversifying at a fast rate, as
noted by greater enrolment of minority ethnic students in the last five years. Racial
and minority ethnic groups constitute 46.2 per cent of the student body, with
students of Caribbean origin forming the largest subset of this population. The
recent shift in the demographics in the school and community makes Newton an
intriguing site for cultural analysis because in many respects it is reflective of the
mixed racial make-up of most inner-city schools in London (Reynolds, 2013;
Warikoo, 2011; Reay et al., 2007).

‘Black’ cultural capital among Caribbean youth in

local settings
The data provided suggest that ‘Black’ cultural capital is a locally determined
resource that affects relational and affective bonds among Black Caribbean young
people. In a context where some second-generation Black Caribbean youth may
locate themselves as being in the nation but not of it, the locality can become the
centre in which belonging is negotiated and Black identities, real and imagined,
are celebrated. It is within local milieus that counter-discourses emerge that
challenge historic structures of exclusion. To this end, the local deployment of
‘Black’ cultural capital is not merely a theoretical extension, but represents the
economies of value in which historically non-legitimised practices and styles are
promoted and preferred in social settings. ‘Black’ cultural capital arguably serves
to re-value participants’ de-valued Black identities among their peers based on
locally understood styles and expressions. Findings suggest that it is within the
locality that some Black Caribbean young people redeem the power of ‘Black’
cultural capital undermined in the nation. Odain, a working-class year 10 pupil
of Jamaican descent whose mother works as a cleaner, explained on several
occasions what being Black meant to him and how such definitions are locally
formulated. The following is his most gripping description:

Being Black is about having power, respect, you get me? . . . yeah, it means
having power, may be not with the teachers, but definitely with friends. So
many people want to be Black or to be like us, especially on the social scene.
With my mates in school or on the street, it’s the best thing to be, unless the
FEDs (police) are around. Black Caribbean people have a lot of culture – we
set the trend ‘round here, you feel me fam? I can talk like a Jamaican, know
some Marcus Garvey, listen to Stylo-G and grime [Britain’s fusion of hip
hop and reggae] . . . that’s what young people value . . . being for real . . .
that’s money on the street . . . [But] in school, in the cafeteria, on the football
field, it is important. Being Caribbean makes me proud of who I am . . . I am
Black and I might not be British, but at least I know where I come from.

Odain’s claim that the linguistic expressions, musical tastes along with related
styles often labelled ‘Black’ are prized symbols of differentiation in local settings
44 Derron O. Wallace

and peer networks is not at all uncommon among the findings. Complementing
Odain’s point of view, Keith, a middle-class year 10 pupil also of Jamaican
heritage, contends that the value attributed to the styles and tastes of Black youth
are high in his local community because of the number of Black Caribbean and
Black African young people in his school and neighbourhood. He maintained:

I’m proud to be Black and to have roots inside and outside this country . . .
When you’re in a school or a place where you have a good number of Black
people, I think it makes it a bit easier for people to understand how and why
I talk the way I talk, with slang or patois or the kind of music I listen to
sometimes . . . or even the type of dancing that I like . . . while teachers and
older people in general may not like it, you get a lot of respect from people,
especially young people. They know they can’t mess about – that you have
culture. Some people think their culture and background is boring, but nobody
thinks being Black Caribbean or Black African is boring. You get me?

Another working-class year 10 student, Cashmere, whose parents hail from

Guyana and now work as carers in London, also explained that in some instances
being Black accords her considerable power in her local multi-ethnic peer groups
at Newton, which is not easily transferred to all settings. She argued:

It’s a funny thing because the way I talk, the kind of music I listen to, and
even what I know about the latest about what’s going on in Guyana and about
Black people here, my friends know that I’m a real Black person, know what
I mean? I don’t have to beg it . . . they know I am not fake. British society
still looks down on Black people, but our school, and in our community, Black
people have a lot of power. It’s kind of a weird contradiction, but it makes
sense. I’m Black and my Indian friends and white friends from Newton try
to talk like me sometimes or listen to my music. None of us ever try to talk
like Indians or geezars, unless we’re busting joke . . . When I go visit family
in Liverpool or my father’s friend in Glasgow, slangs and dress codes
don’t mean the same as they do in London . . . they don’t have the same
power . . .

For Odain, Keith and Cashmere, the power and value of ‘Black’ cultural capital
is bound to context and the actors in it. It is about forging paths of belonging in
local geographies, even if constrained to do so in the nation writ large. Among
their peers in London, the musical, interactional and communication styles of Black
Caribbean young people is of high significance, while in some settings they may
be subordinated or pathologised as simply being ethnic or youth expressions. As
Odain suggests, the cultural resources he draws upon are not about highbrow
aesthetic culture, but are instead based on a set of symbolic codes imbued with
meaning and value by Black youth (even in multi-racial coalitions) in local
settings. ‘Black’ cultural capital is arguably the resource set Black Caribbean youth
 Bourdieu and Black identities 45

such as Odain, Keith and Cashmere deploy to move beyond cultural identification
to ‘authentic’ racial representations. It is based on locally situated performances
of Black identities as ‘real’ representations of blackness. To this end, the practices
associated with ‘Black’ cultural capital, as understood by participants such as
Odain and Cashmere, represent an accomplishment that reflects personal and
projected identities (Alexander, 1996).
Not surprisingly, Odain, Keith and Cashmere are not alone in representing
‘authentic’ ‘Black’ expressions as valued resources. During a one-on-one interview
with Cory, a year 10 middle-class male of Jamaican descent, he suggested that
being Black was about ‘acting Black’, about performance, not simply phenotype.
The extract that follows sheds light on the complex interplay of ‘race’, ethnicity
and performativity to negotiate Black identities and iterations of ‘Black’ cultural
capital.

DERRON: What do you mean by ‘act[ing] Black’?

CORY: Oh (He chuckled, then paused), you know, I can just be myself, use my
culture, just talk normal. I don’t need to sound posh or talk about British
things. You see what I mean? No need to be on my ps-and-qs. I can just be
a Caribbean lad from South London.
DERRON: I understand but if someone else is not a Caribbean lad from South
London, does it mean they can’t ‘act Black’?
CORY: Oh no. It’s about knowing where you come from, you know? It’s about
showing respect for a Black culture – Caribbean, African, or whatever. If
you’re Nigerian, or can act or talk like a Nigerian, people will know you’re
a Black person with a strong culture. If you’re Black American and you listen
to hip hop or whatever, that can get you attention too. Even white people can
act black, you know [what I] mean. It’s hard to do, but I guess it can happen
if they really learn how we talk and relate to one another . . . what gets you
real recognition is based on how popular and cool that culture is. It all depends
on where you are, or as my mother would say, ‘which part yuh deh.’
DERRON: Tell me more. What do you mean by it’s about where you are?
CORY: Well, you can’t be Jamaican acting like a Black American in South London.
People will laugh at you ‘cause they know you’re beggin’ it. That won’t get
you any credit. That’s what happens to white British [people] when they try
to act Black . . . You get more credit if you connect with your own black
culture and [if] it’s popular or expected in the places where you are. Jamaica
and Nigeria are popular. If you’re the only one from, I don’t know, Botswana
or Djibouti, even though you’re African, you won’t get much cred for those
cultures.

Cory, Odain and a host of their peers suggest there is a set of resources that
enables camaraderie among their peers in inner-city social contexts. These include,
but are not limited to, musical tastes, communication codes and knowledge of
cultural history. These resources enable them to relate to their peers, improve their
46 Derron O. Wallace

social status and promote senses of belonging. For Black Caribbean youth in a
South London context, these are the expressions of ‘Black’ cultural capital. What
is peculiar about Cory’s claims are the ways in which his perceptions of what
constitutes ‘acting Black’ is not contingent on a single, universally understood
Black identity, but instead his perceptions of what ‘Black’ means gives heed to
the particularities of locality, ethnicity, nationality and performativity (Thomas,
2007; Butler, 1993; Hall, 1993). To this end, Black identities, and the value
attributed to them, is dynamically articulated and richly understood. Cory
emphasises that although the communication and interaction styles among Black
ethnics at Newton Secondary may differ according to ethnicity, such expressions
of ‘Black’ cultural capital are creative, racialised cultural responses that can
counter the on-going symbolic violence marginalised young people experience in
schools and society. In essence, while illustrations of ‘Black’ cultural capital vary
across Black ethnic groups, Cory points out that they are all locally understood
as necessarily generative ‘Black’ expressions.
Cory further suggests that while there are multiple Black identities and cultural
capital collections, ‘Black’ cultural capital assortments are differentially valued.
This arguably creates hierarchies of popularity or economies of value that influence
the recognition and volume of ‘Black’ cultural capital(s) deployed in local contexts.
Displaying the tastes, linguistic currencies, and cultural knowledge of Djibouti
and Botswana, he reasons, may verify one’s cultural authenticity as an African,
but may not earn power and prestige among peers in a local South London context,
where there are not as many immigrants from these two countries as there are
from Ghana and Nigeria. Deploying the musical tastes, language and cultural ways
of being of Nigeria or Jamaica, however, by virtue of the size of their immigrant
populations and international reputations can constitute more legitimate forms of
‘Black’ cultural capital (Thomas, 2007). This suggests that among Black ethnics,
and even among Black Africans, social status stratification persists. ‘Black’ cultural
capital becomes the resource for scaling hierarchies of legitimacy and securing
high social status positions.
Cory argues that ‘Black’ cultural capital can be acquired by white British youth.
For low-status whites in London such as white working-class youth, many of
whom are stigmatised and stereotyped (Stahl, 2012; Ingram, 2011; Reay, 2004b;
Willis, 1977), they can learn to recognise and utilise ‘Black’ cultural capital,
especially through their friendship networks with Black Caribbeans and Black
Africans. Cory’s claim is in keeping with scholarship on black–white peer relations
in London. Based on his ethnographic study of Black and white youth in South
London estates, Back (1996) argues that given rates of intermarriage and
residential mixing black–white friendships are commonplace and in some instance
result in improved racial and cultural literacy (Winddance Twine, 1999; 1996).
In this context, ‘Black’ cultural capital is recognisable and desired by the white
majority, whether working classes or those with ‘white’ middle-class cultural
markers (Winddance Twine, 2004; Carter, 2003). White working-class youth could
conceivably draw on the musical preferences, linguistic codes and interactional
 Bourdieu and Black identities 47

modes (handshakes and other salutation gestures) recognised as ‘Black’ as an

expression of cross-racial and cultural competence.
Cory and Odain’s responses suggest that ‘Black’ cultural capital is, at its core,
a relational resource recognised in local communities that is useful for altering
lower-status position or maintaining high status in peer groups. ‘Black’ cultural
capital, as expressed by Cory, Odain and scores of other Black Caribbean youth
in South London, shapes relational dynamics and changes the power structures
of peer networks. Participants suggest that much of the social recognition and peer
power that ‘Black’ cultural capital has garnered is based on local geographies and
groups. To this end, local context matters for the consideration and interpretation
of ‘Black’ cultural capital.

Begging it or being it: acts, art and the pursuit

of Black authenticity?
Although it is conceivable that ‘Black’ cultural capital may be acquired by and
ascribed to Blacks and non-Blacks, proving authenticity in peer networks is a much
more challenging exercise. The discursive construction of authenticity constitutes
an attempt to police performances and practices classified as ‘Black’. Approval
of racial or ethnic authenticity is often based on a set of desired cultural markers
(aesthetics, accent, attitude, behaviours, etc.), although the terms and conditions
of authenticity shift according to social groups. Authenticity is necessary for the
classification of in-groups and out-groups and the establishment of permanent or
stable group affiliations.
Claire Alexander considers the politics of authenticity in her ethnography, The
Art of Being Black (1996). She suggests that Black ethnics draw upon ‘signs and
symbols of belongingness’ to defend their racial and ethnic authenticity
(Alexander, 1996, p.2). She argues that in some instances ‘being black’ is as much
a discursive accomplishment as it is a locally situated performance for cultural
production and social positioning. Based on in depth interviews and close
observations of 15 second-generation Afro-Caribbean and Black African men in
East London, Alexander (1996) suggests that the ‘art of being black’ is based on
the valuable cultural production of inner-city Black youth: speech styles, dress
codes and the political ‘know-how’ needed to navigate inner-city spaces. They
become examples of, but not sole representations of, ‘blackness’ as a broad
interpretative resource. These everyday expressive ‘art forms’ underscore the
importance of racial authenticity and cultural exclusivity that are messy but
meaningful. The locally contingent expressions to which Alexander (1996) refers
are arguably ‘Black’ cultural capital.
As in Carter’s (2005) study, Alexander (1996) claims that acknowledgement
of ‘cultural authenticity’ is dependent upon appropriate representation of ‘Black’
identity, as marked by phenotype and locally recognised cultural practices. She
reasons:
48 Derron O. Wallace

Any perceived inappropriacy was immediately cast as an aspersion on the

individual’s ‘racial’ (or, indeed, gender or class) identity. ‘Being black’ was,
then, at once fluid and transiently rigid.
(Alexander, 1996, p.194)

Young black men, she points, draw on speech styles, dress codes, and other popular
‘Black’ expressions, as locally determined, to verify their racial identities. These
are some of the resources with which they justify their position in local social
spaces, build bonds with peer networks and create counter-narratives of
affirmation, given the dominant pejorative perspectives on Black masculinities in
British society (Wright et al., 1998; Sewell 1997). Furthermore, in academic
contexts where Black Caribbean pupils experience negative perceptions, speech
styles, dress codes and related expressions of ‘Black’ cultural capital arguably
provides them a sense of belonging and esteem needed to re-position their status
in schools. In this section, I unpack notions of ‘belonging’ and ‘begging’ blackness,
to shed light on the complexities and contradictions of ‘race’, class and ethnicity
in urban schools.
For Black Caribbean adolescents at Newton, ‘Black’ cultural capital functioned
to celebrate and verify Black authenticity across racial boundaries. Akilah, a year
11 middle-class student-athlete explained the distinction between an occasional
use of cultural markers popularly recognised as ‘Black’ and the consistent usage
of these symbolic markers as a way of life. Consider the following extract from
her interview.

AKILAH: . . . ‘acting Black’ is a funny thing because some people can turn it on
or turn it off, pick it up and put it down. When you turn off the accent or
slang you learned at school in order to be cool, that’s one thing, which is
what my white and Indian friends do a lot. But when you have to turn off the
way you normally are at home – your accent, your music, your being, it is
hurtful . . . it’s just wrong. It’s like you’re being told that how you operate
doesn’t belong in some places. That’s why when I’m outside of class, I have
to check some people because they want the benefits of acting Black’ but
none of the responsibility.
DERRON: Who do you check and how do you check them?
AKILAH: I check any of my friends or people I see around who try to ‘act Black’.
I’m like, you can act Black, yeah, but you can’t be real. They [are] begging
it, but they can’t really be it, you know what I mean?
DERRON: Tell me more about how you check your peers.
AKILAH: I mean, that’s easy. You simply tell them what you think. A lot of my
friends will say: ‘Yo, why you beggin’ it for?’ Or, if you think someone has
gone too far, you can say, ‘You takin’ the mic. fam.’ And sometimes you
have to say that to Black people, but a lot of times I have to say that to my
white and Indian friends . . . they can come close to the line, but they really
shouldn’t cross it.
 Bourdieu and Black identities 49

Efforts across racial boundaries to invoke the signs and symbols recognised as
‘Black’ are not at all new (Gilroy, 2013; Hall, 1996; Fanon, 1986). As Akilah
mentioned, pupils from a variety of backgrounds deploy ‘Black’ tastes, styles and
expressions to make sense of their social location – and more importantly to
develop power within them. The extracts from Akilah’s interview speak to the
ways in which Black expressions are portable in ways that Black identities
sometimes are not. Black cultural capital is then understood as both an essence
and a positioning (Hall, 1990). Akilah suggests that the development of racial and
ethnic boundaries is necessary for the demarcation of in-groups and out-groups,
for drawing distinctions between ascribed versus acquired identities. Other
participants reinforce the significance of establishing symbolic limitations to the
use of ‘Black’ cultural capital, and point to the ways in which such power
resources, as Carter (2003) considers them, are policed during day-to-day lived
experiences, particularly in social settings. Kayla, another Black middle-class
student-leader in year 10 suggested:

I mean, everyone can speak with a Jamaican-type British accent with a South
London slang . . . everyone wants to show that they not racists and have
friends beyond their race, but it’s important for people to know their place.
Not because I listen to One Direction [an all-male British band] or rock music
or sometimes call my white friends geezer, or do anything else that people
would associate with white British culture, doesn’t mean that I am white.
Likewise, not because whites listen to Stylo-G [a Jamaican reggae artist] and
can say things like ‘dem ting’ and zeen’, doesn’t mean they should think
they’re down [use her index and middle fingers to mimic quotation marks].
We are all different.

Jamie, a year 10 working-class student of Antiguan heritage explained:

If everyone gets to ‘act Black’, then who’s really Black? You have to have
a way to separate the real from the fake, and if you’re real like me, it’s your
job to make sure people who are just acting just to get in, know that they are
fake, really fake . . .

Such contestations about the meanings and authenticity of practices frequently

signalled as ‘Black’ are salient for some Black Caribbean youth. It is important
to note, however, that the tensions around black authenticity are not solely about
the arbitrary maintenance of distinctions between Black and non-Black youth in
social settings, but about the preservation of the resources Black youth have for
recognition and affirmation. Gregory, a year 10 football player of Jamaican and
Trinidadian background argued:

When I talk street in class, or talk like I do at home with English and
Caribbean slang, I automatically get looked down on . . . I can’t really be
50 Derron O. Wallace

myself. When I am on the street or heading home, I realise that who I am

and how I speak is valuable. You just can’t be too posh outside when
you are talking to young people. A lot of older teachers don’t know how
to do this, but I do. I can connect with other Caribbean and African boys
quick . . . and that’s cause of how I speak.

Joseph, another year 11 student who was born in Britain but identifies as Jamaican,
explained:

A lot of time, I feel down in class. It’s like me and my Caribbean mates don’t
do so well, and it’s obvious. I crack jokes and fool around, but I really want
to do well . . . It’s hard not to look down on yourself when you think other
people are looking down on you . . . Outside of school, I can be the man in
charge. How I talk, how I dress, make[s] me feel better about myself because
that matters outside of school . . . I wish it mattered inside school too.

To Gregory and Joseph, ‘Black’ cultural capital arguably represents counter-

cultural forms of reaffirmation enacted in non-dominant spaces that stand in
opposition to the micro-aggressions experienced in dominant spaces. It is perhaps
an attempt to un-do and re-do domination – to reposition Black cultural
expressions as locally dominant even in a political context that deems them
marginal to the nation. The recognised value of ‘Black’ cultural capital speaks to
the formidable influence of Britain’s black communities to shape networks of
power to which even non-Black pupils seek to subscribe. The need to take ‘Black’
expressions, practices and tastes (‘Black’ cultural capital) seriously is underscored
by Gilroy (1992) in There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, in which he reasons:

The culture and politics of black America and the Caribbean have become
the raw materials for creative processes which redefine what it means to be
black, adapting it to distinctly British experiences and meanings.
(Gilroy, 1992, p.154)

Gregory, Joseph, Akilah and other Black Caribbean participants suggest that such
rich understandings of ‘race’ generally, and Black identities specifically, can prove
profitable for identifying more complex iterations of non-dominant cultural capital.

Conclusion
‘Black’ cultural capital, as defined by Prudence Carter (2003), is an important
extension of Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital. It is a contemporary species of
non-dominant cultural capital that stands as profound criticism to the subjugation
of ‘race’ in twenty-first-century analyses of social class. In this chapter, I offer a
brief empirical analysis of the nuanced and complicated ways in which Black
Caribbean young people’s practices, preferences and performances that are
 Bourdieu and Black identities 51

typically labelled as ‘Black’ function as valid and valuable resources in social

settings. I offer two core arguments about ‘Black’ cultural capital. First, in local
economies of value, Black cultural capital bears formative influence that results
in recognition or, in cases of demonstrated authenticity, respect. Second, Black
Caribbean pupils establish symbolic boundaries to police and preserve ‘Black’
cultural capital – distinguishing between efforts to ‘act Black’ versus being Black.
Although the scope of this chapter does not permit the divulgence of as much
details as would be preferred, I close by highlighting important points to consider
for further extension of ‘Black’ cultural capital.
I am mindful that ‘Black’ cultural capital, as framed in this chapter, can serve
both as symbolic constraint and symbolic resource. It can be simultaneously
empowering and disempowering. Arguably, the definitions and forms of blackness
youth celebrate in local urban contexts are problematic because they often
represent ‘Black’ identity and expressions as informal and colloquial. However,
such definitions and representations of blackness are not fixed; they are locally
determined and specific to the South London context within which the participants
reside. It is nonetheless conceivable that a range of other expressions and
experiences may be defined as Black in suburban and rural settings. More empirical
studies are needed that consider the changing meanings of ‘Black’ cultural capital
across different regional and national contexts – particularly in nation-states where
there are multiple competing definitions of Blackness such as in South Africa and
Brazil. In a later chapter, Thatcher and Halvorsrud illustrate the intersection
between ‘race’ and class for white Polish and South African migrants living in
the UK, and this provides an interesting contrast to consideration of ‘Black’
cultural capital. They argue that both sets of migrants in their study are reflexive
about the ‘racial’ hierarchies that exist in Western societies and, in turn, attempt
to draw on their ‘whiteness’ as a way to facilitate their ‘acceptance’ into a new,
predominantly ‘white’, host society. Yet, their migrant status and differing social
class backgrounds come into play as some of them are seen as ‘not white enough’
as they do not possess ‘white middle class’ cultural capital, which is highly valued
in British society. This offers possibilities for the extension of the notion of
racialised forms of capital and also highlights the complexity of multiple
intersections of definition categories.
Despite efforts made in this chapter to attend to the intersection of ‘race’,
ethnicity and class, other categories of identification should also be carefully
considered. In the lived experiences of Black Caribbean young people, ‘race’,
ethnicity and class are not discrete factors that operate in isolation from gender,
generational background and sexuality. An intersectional analysis can yield richer
understandings of Black cultural capital, especially their gendered and generational
dimensions. For one, the ways in which Black boys display ‘Black’ cultural capital
can differ from the ways in which girls do. What is more, the degrees to which
second-generation Black middle-class girls utilise ‘Black’ cultural capital can
perhaps vary from first or second-generation working-class girls. Future research
should infuse an intersectional approach in order to explore the relevance of
52 Derron O. Wallace

‘Black’ cultural capital to different constituencies, including non-Black groups as

well (e.g. white working-class boys).
Although there are communities of scholars for whom the extension of cultural
capital to consider ‘race’ and ethnicity more significantly may be an unbearable
stretch of Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, the impact of globalisation and the
influence of immigrant communities on the UK require that twenty-first-century
exegeses of Bourdieu’s oeuvre examine ‘race’ and ethnicity more closely (Gilroy,
2012; Pears, 2012) if its relevance is to endure and expand. Furthermore, because
interpretations of Bourdieu’s scholarship have been used to promote perspectives
of Black youth as lacking cultural capital, more scholarship is needed that show
Black youth are not deficient of cultural capital; they often possess different
cultural capital sets that prove meaningful for navigating their local social settings.
Whether their use of ‘Black’ cultural capital is valuable in mainstream society
and privileged fields of power suggests much more about the unequal social
structures Black Caribbean youth negotiate than it says about the youth themselves.

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Chapter 5

‘It’s like if you don’t go

to Uni you fail in life’
The relationship between girls’
educational choices, habitus
and the forms of capital
Tamsin Bowers-Brown

Introduction
I first encountered the work of Pierre Bourdieu at night school where I was
undertaking an A-level in Sociology. The classroom was an escape from the tedium
of working for an agency on temporary contracts. I was already heavily influenced
by politics and in particular the politics of social class and I had fortuitously ended
up in a Sociology class as there were insufficient enrolments to the Politics class
I had intended to take. Learning about educational inequality on this course was
where I first heard the name Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu’s concepts, in particular
the forms of capital and later habitus and field spoke to many of the feelings of
unrest I had about my own class position, but they also helped me to think more
deeply about the social class inequalities about which I was already so passionate
about highlighting and tackling.
My early career as a research associate involved writing research reports for
government agencies that were not expected to be theorised. When I came to
undertake research for my doctoral study, theory was something that I initially
found daunting despite understanding its importance. Although I was aware of
Bourdieu’s concepts I had never read any of his original work, rather I had used
introductory texts and had found journal articles written by Diane Reay to be
interesting and accessible. With Reay’s work in mind, I was concerned about
inaccurately aligning my research with theoretical perspectives that seemed
appropriate merely because they have traditionally been linked with the subject
of educational choice-making. Reay (2004, p.432) argues that habitus has been
used as an ‘intellectual hairspray, bestowing gravitas without doing any theoretical
work’. Ciaran Burke, in Chapter 2, argues that the overuse of habitus has
sometimes meant the neglect of Bourdieu’s other concepts such as capital and
field. It is also important to remember that Bourdieu’s concepts are relational and
cannot be isolated from each other. Furthermore, Butin argues: ‘we have embraced
theory (for theory’s sake) to the detriment of actually engaging with theory as
lived practice’ (Butin, 2006, p.372). This occurs particularly when theory is not
used beyond description; for example, Reay argues that Bourdieu seeks to
56 Tamsin Bowers-Brown

implement ‘habitus as a conceptual tool’ (2004, p.439); in this sense she argues
that the misuse of habitus manifests itself when ‘habitus is assumed or appropriated
rather than put into practice in research accounts’ (Reay, 2004, p.440).
Operationalising the concepts would involve showing how the empirical research
could be understood through these concepts. The theory-practice relationship for
sociologists is one of Mckenzie’s main arguments in Chapter 3. May argues that
social researchers understand the social world and give it meaning by admitting
‘the inevitability of the relationship between theory and data’ (2011, p.44). In fact,
as I began to read Bourdieu’s original texts alongside the introductory texts
analysing his work, I became unable to see anything without thinking about the
relationship between theory and everyday practices. I found that Bourdieu’s
concepts were extremely relevant in helping to elucidate how the girls in my study
made their educational choices and how they experienced secondary education,
the core foci of my research.

Background to the study

In this chapter I present some of the findings from the case study secondary school
where I conducted my doctoral research (to ensure anonymity it will be known
by the pseudonym Greenlea Comprehensive). The research participants were girls
in year groups 8–13 as well as staff from the senior leadership team. The focus
of the study was how girls ‘do’ education, their perspectives on achievement and
the choices they make about their educational pathways.
It was a political decision to focus my research on girls rather than all pupils
within the case study school. There has been an emphasis in policy on the ‘under-
achieving boy’ in recent years, which has led to a binary positioning of girls as
the success of the UK education system. Girls’ overarching success has resulted
in a justification of the individualisation of the curriculum that feeds into a larger
defence of a market-driven education system. For example, in the UK, ‘feminist
research has highlighted how girls, because of their apparent educational success
and their propensity for hard work, are instrumentalised as “ideal” neoliberal
subjects’ (Shain, 2013, np). Girls are seen to be fulfilling their role as ‘good pupils’
who through hard work are able to achieve what the education system requires
of them; this generalisation raises several concerns both in relation to expectation
and a lack of understanding about the intersectional inequalities that lie beneath
the overarching headlines proclaiming girls’ success. In addition to educational
success, McRobbie emphasises the requirement placed on girls to have a ‘life-
plan’, something she argues is a ‘modality of constraint’ that results in individuals
being ‘compelled to be the kind of subject who can make the right choices’ and,
thus, ‘new lines and demarcations are drawn between those subjects who are
judged responsive to the regime of personal responsibility, and those who fail
miserably’ (2009, p.19). The focus of my research, in looking at how girls ‘do’
education, involved asking my participants about their educational choices and
hopes for the future. Admittedly, this could be perceived as fuelling the ‘life-plan
 Girls’ educational choices and capital 57

discourse’, although this was not my intention. I had concerns that my questions
would reflect an assumption that successful girls should be ‘the embodiment of
neoliberal values: adept at change, engaged in a discourse of choice, and highly
versatile’ (Pomerantz et al., 2013, p.190). In reassuring the girls that they were
not expected to ‘know’ the answers, I hoped to diminish the neo-liberal
expectations identified by Allen (2013, np), who warns of the dangers of an
emphasis on personal aspiration, labelling it a ‘powerful rhetoric’. Allen’s (2013,
np) concern is that this rhetoric is ‘increasingly understood through the lens of
individual pathologies and deficits’; where certain decisions are judged against
others as ‘worthy’, or alternatively of lacking value. The progression of the ‘deficit’
model in the public narrative is discussed later by Kirsty Morrin (Chapter 9) in
the context of her study into an entrepreneurial academy. I was concerned about
using Bourdieu’s forms of capital to a study of working-class girls supposedly
‘lacking’ the accumulation of specific capitals. Although I could see how the issues
my participants discussed were associated with the possession of capitals, I had
no desire to judge the choices that my participants had made and did not want to
place certain choices in a ‘deficit position’. After talking this through with other
academics I began to understand that Bourdieu’s ideas would help me to
demonstrate the dominant norms indicating a pre-existing hierarchy that positions
some choices as ‘worthy’ or symbolically powerful while others are undervalued.
A similar approach can be seen through Burke’s attempt (Chapter 2) to ‘measure’
his respondents’ forms of capital in a relational sense in the context of their
place/influence within a pre-existing hierarchy. As Bourdieu (1990) argues, the
universalism of symbolic power is achieved by making people believe or accept
its legitimacy; the education system plays a part in this process. The perpetuation
or reproduction of symbolic power is compounded by those with greater levels
of economic and cultural capital who are ultimately in possession of a symbolic
capital that enables them to ‘reinforce the power relations which constitute the
structure of the social space’ (1990, p.135). In highlighting that these hierarchies
exist rather than taking them for granted, I was beginning to take a Bourdieusian
approach to my research, which would help me to ‘make explicit the forms of
misrecognised symbolic power that underpin the implicit logic of practice,
expectations and relations of those operating in these fields’ (Deer, 2008, p.122).
My discussion of girls’ choices is explored using a Bourdieusian framework
(Bourdieu, 2006; 2000; 1984; 1977), operationalising the ideas of habitus, field
and the forms of capital. These concepts were useful to this study because they
consider both the individual (through habitus) and the educational institution
(through the concept of field), alongside the values that are placed on different
knowledge (capitals and symbolic violence) both strategically in relation to
government policy as well as at a micro level within the school. I undertook my
research in a state-funded English comprehensive secondary school for pupils aged
11–18. The academically oriented curriculum was most valued as it provided a
clear pathway into the school’s sixth-form for post-compulsory education (age
16–18). There was an expectation that progression to higher education would
58 Tamsin Bowers-Brown

follow. The research methods I used were predominantly qualitative and

incorporated: focus groups (with 42 pupils), open-ended survey questions (160
respondents), Facebook messages with nine pupils, eight semi-structured
interviews with staff, observation of 16 interviews and guidance sessions for
post-16 careers and education and three workshops with sixth-form pupils. In this
chapter I demonstrate the utility of habitus and the forms of capital to
understanding my research. Specifically, how the forms of capital the girls
possessed contributed to how they ‘play the game’ and how they negotiated entry
to the post-16 opportunities that they perceived to be within their grasp.

Educational value
As Burke has previously noted in Chapter 2, through the emergence and
development of post-industrialisation the UK economy has moved from one based
on hard skills and labour to soft skills and knowledge. As a result, the academic
trajectory is that which carries the most prestige in the English education system;
schools are judged accordingly on their GCSE pass rate. The governmental
Department for Education places particular emphasis on the importance of pupils
achieving GCSE grades A*–C in the subjects of Maths and English. The
academic trajectory is associated with particular forms of knowledge that are
historically located and favour those with corresponding capitals that can be
converted into academic success: ‘To a given volume of inherited capital there
corresponds a band of more or less equally probable trajectories leading to more
or less equivalent positions’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p.110). The capitals Bourdieu
identifies as corresponding with academic success are economic, cultural and
social. Bourdieu (1977, p.87) argues the ‘habitus acquired in the family underlies
the structuring of school experiences’; consequently, those pupils whose habitus
is congruent with the educational field and who have inculcated the valued forms
of capitals through the home environment are recognised and rewarded by the
education system. As Webb et al. clarify, ‘schools are really disposed to serving
the interests of children who have already had access to the kind of values and
environment which the school system promotes, at least partly through the
discourses that it employs’ (2002, p.122). The discourse employed at Greenlea
Comprehensive was one that emphasised measurement of attainment in relation
to Ofsted’s 1 expected levels of pupil progress. Progress is calculated by predicting
what a pupil is thought to be capable of on the basis of their test results in Year
6 (age 10/11). These predictions are then presented to pupils in the form of target
grades. At an individual level, pupils are monitored to ensure that their progression
does not deviate from the linear and upward progression associated with their
predicted attainment. The participation in this attainment discourse both by the
teachers and pupils alike ensures its perpetuation. It is important to recognise that
Bourdieu sees this participation as linked to an ‘effect of power’ rather than an
act of ‘voluntary servitude’ (Bourdieu, 1996). He argues that the durable effects
of the social order have established these dominating processes and therefore the
 Girls’ educational choices and capital 59

complicity is not a ‘conscious, deliberate act’. For the teaching staff and pupils
at Greenlea Comprehensive School, the adherence to ‘the rules of the game’ was
not disputed. For Bourdieu, this management of the field is achieved through what
can be seen as a ‘compromise formation’, that is:

One can equally say that agents take advantage of the possibilities offered by
a field to express and satisfy their drives and their desires, in some cases their
neurosis, or that fields use the agents’ drives by forcing them to subject or
sublimate themselves in order to adapt to their structures and to the ends that
are immanent within them.
(2000, p.165)

Indeed, the ordering of the social world through such processes is maintained by
the dominant groups for whom the validation of the system is demonstrated
through its reciprocity. For those who are ‘vertically partitioned’ and sit within
the upper echelons of the ‘individualising pyramid’, its maintenance requires
nothing more than a group of people who benefit from the ‘legitimation of social
hierarchies’ (Foucault, 1977, p.152). Bourdieu asserts that this is because the
‘cognitive and political symbolic struggles over knowledge and recognition’ are
inseparable and therefore people will accept the ‘principles of social reality most
favourable to his or her social being’ (2000, p.87). In a school where girls’
overarching achievement is above the national average, the complicity in
maintaining the hierarchy would seem logical.

Habitus and the forms of capital

Bourdieu explains that ‘academic capital’ is the ‘guaranteed product of the
combined effects of cultural transmission by the family and cultural transmission
by the school (the efficiency of which depends on the amount of cultural capital
directly inherited from the family)’ (1984, p.23). Therefore, those whose cultural
capital has been appropriated through their home environment are in an
advantageous educational position. The validation of inherited cultural capital by
the education system is a contributory factor to the reproduction of social positions.
As Bathmaker et al. affirm, the knowledge of how to ‘play the game’ forms part
of the habitus, which means some students ‘appear to have a more internalised or
taken-for-granted orientation to the mobilisation of capitals’ (2013, p.730). The
difference in possession of capitals, Bourdieu argues, is what distinguishes the
‘conditions of existence’ between the different social classes:

The primary differences, those which distinguish the major classes of

conditions of existence, derive from the overall volume of capital, understood
as the set of actually usable resources and powers-economic capital, cultural
capital and also social capital.
(1984, p.114)
60 Tamsin Bowers-Brown

Implementing a curriculum that has been created through a top-down approach

is likely therefore to exacerbate rather than reduce inequalities as the curriculum
reflects the values of the capitals inherent in ensuring the perpetuation of the
existing order. Indeed, this is evidenced in the failure of different administrations
to close the attainment gap at each key stage between children in receipt of free
school meals and those who are not (DfE, 2013).
The projected attainment for each pupil in the case study school was determined
in part by their prior attainment at Key Stage two (their test results on leaving
primary education at the age of 11). This was nuanced by the school through
judgements about the types of qualifications for which pupils were seen to be most
suited; although the school offered vocational alternatives, these were not seen to
be for all pupils. Staff at the school stated that they were trying to move away
from the idea that vocational courses were the route for those pupils who were
not as academically capable. However, it was evident this was a deeply ingrained
perspective that would be difficult to change. Parental and teacher complicity in
ensuring the ‘appropriate route’ was pursued appeared to be classed and gendered.
This is where Bourdieu’s concepts began to elucidate my findings as the social
capital networks that the pupils discussed highlighted how aware the pupils were
of their options and which were most favourable to their ‘ways of being’.

Decision-making processes, habitus and the power

of capitals
Although staff at the school played a key role in determining which study routes
pupils considered, pupils also expressed their preferences for the options they
thought would be most appropriate. Consistent with other research findings, my
research indicated that decision-making influences were never isolated. For
example, Winterton and Irwin (2012, p.859) note ‘the significance of family
educational backgrounds, parents’ expectations, academic identity, school and
institutional influences and friends and peer influences in the shaping of young
people’s expectations’. Furthermore, Greenbank and Hepworth demonstrate that
pupils are knowledgeable about the advice available and use it as appropriate to
them: ‘Students make decisions about careers within a complex set of relationships
or “networks” made up of parents, relatives, friends, professionals (i.e. teachers,
lecturers and careers advisers) and other people they come into contact with’ (2008,
p.34). These networks represent forms of social capital that may be utilised in the
career decision-making process. For instance, networks may be used to obtain
information and advice; or they may provide access to job opportunities. The pupils
at Greenlea Comprehensive demonstrated localised social capital networks were
used to gather information that would help them make their choices:

‘I have based my options on the career choice I have made. I have a family
member who has experienced this career, therefore they have influenced me
the most.’
 Girls’ educational choices and capital 61

‘My brother is working in a garage and I’m interested in the job.’

‘I listened to someone in the family that does a job in the area that I am
interested in.’
(Survey responses)

The responses reflect what Ball and Vincent term ‘hot-knowledge’, that is,
information gathered from ‘“the grapevine”, a particular manifestation of social
networks, and one which clearly arises from the private realm in order to address
the public arena’ (2005, p.378). Hot-knowledge comes from personal experience
and local networks whereas ‘cold-knowledge’ is ‘official’ and ‘constructed
specifically for public dissemination’ (2005, p.380). Meszaros et al. argue that
young people, despite becoming more independent, ‘continue to depend heavily
on parents in the area of career development’ (2009, p.392). This can be
problematic when parents rely on their localised or ‘hot-knowledge’ to support
their children. As Raty et al. (2006, p.5) noted, the advice parents give can indeed
be stratified, their research indicated that: ‘parental evaluation of school subjects
contains elements of social distinctions in terms of social position and gender’.
This was reflected by a member of the senior leadership team, who recognised
that parental guidance was sometimes ill-informed:

Some are very aware what’s out there and maybe they’re involved in it or
other options or some who don’t realise what the school offers or don’t take
an active part so they’re very . . . not narrow-minded, that’s the wrong term,
but very . . . only see one direction. Or you see other parents that they left
school at 16 and they’re doing alright for themselves, so there’s not that much
importance on education.
(Mr Brownlee, Head of Year)

The accepting of the familiar, or making choices because of their familiarity,

is linked with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and field. Bourdieu believes that the
habitus is what reproduces social positions: ‘it adjusts itself to a probable future
which it anticipates and helps to bring about because it reads it directly in the
present of the presumed world’ (1990b, p.64). This then leads choices to be made
that incline ‘agents to cut their coats according to their cloth, and so to become
the accomplices of the processes that tend to make the probable a reality’ (1990b,
p.65). The influence of family friends or siblings demonstrated that social capital
networks or a reliance on hot-knowledge can restrict choices to careers that
are easily accessible or understood; this may result in positive outcomes for the
pupils but it may also mean that certain choices are not considered. As Jenkins
simplifies:

Pupils whose familial socialisation bestows upon them the appropriate level
of cultural capital – both more of it and the and the “right kind” – will
necessarily achieve more academically than those whose relationship to the
62 Tamsin Bowers-Brown

cultural arbitrary is more distant. The habitus of the subordinated class(es)

will, in generating an acceptance of the system’s legitimacy, reinforce their
disadvantage by inhibiting their demands for access to the higher reaches of
education by defining it as not for the likes of us.
(2002, p.112)

Although there was impetus within the school to encourage pupils to consider
progressing to university, it was also clear that decisions about pupil suitability
to pursue certain courses were made by teaching staff. Indeed, the limitation placed
on pupils’ expected trajectories occurs on entry to the school in the form of their
prior achievement. As there is a notable difference in attainment levels based on
stratification, social-class differences can be perpetuated by the cap that limits
pupils’ learning on the basis of what is expected of them.
The responses from the pupils demonstrated the importance of capitals and
reinforced the value of what it is to have ownership of them. This possession of
capitals and its localised nature complies with Archer’s work. In using Bourdieu’s
conceptual framework, Archer et al. (2007, p.167) demonstrate that ‘social and
educational inequalities are understood as contextually produced (within and across
social fields) through interactions between the “habitus” and forms of resource or
“capital” (economic, social, cultural and symbolic),’ that is ‘[(habitus) (capital)]
+ field = practice’ (Bourdieu,1984, p.101). Whereas the participants in Archer et
al.’s research had capitals that were seen to be deficient in relation to what
constituted educational value, the pupils who participated in my focus groups
demonstrated that they had the ‘the capital that is associated with scholarliness
and academic achievement’ (Archer et al., 2007, p.167).
Despite identifying several sources of information available to them in decision-
making, the key person the girls turned to for guidance in the choices they made
was their mother. One of the survey respondents indicated her trust in her mother’s
judgement of her ability:

My mum influences me as I am very close to her and she helps me make

decisions like this. She knows my ability so she gives me advice on what she
thinks would be the best for me. She leads me in the right direction.

This clearly demonstrates how Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) concept of social
reproduction can ensue; particularly where inaccurate judgements are made about
a pupil’s capability. For example, Raty et al. state that ‘parents’ education relates
to the trust they place on their child’s educational potential’ (2006, p.5). Social
reproduction could be further compounded when a pupil has limited access to other
sources of advice. Reay writes that ‘the skills and competencies developed both
inside and outside of the labour market generate powerful reproductive tendencies
that shape the relationship between class groupings and education’ (2005, p.112).
This relationship between the reproductive nature of familial advice for future
opportunities was reflected in my research findings:
 Girls’ educational choices and capital 63

Because I’ve got like family that have maybe done some of the things that
I’d quite like to do, so they can help me. So if I pick a subject I know that
I’ve got help for that subject from my family. I’ve picked the subject because
I like it, but I know that like I’ve got family that can help me.
(Year 9 respondent, focus group)

Family was also discussed as a motivating factor with girls making reference
to ‘making my parents proud’, which sometimes was associated with competition
in relation to other family members. Where siblings or cousins had been to
university or taken a certain subject, some pupils felt it was their responsibility
to ‘keep up’ with their relatives. This supports the notion of a ‘familial habitus’,
which Reay et al. refer to as ‘the deeply ingrained systems of perspectives,
experiences and predispositions family members share’ (2005, p.61). Zara, a Year
13 pupil, indicated that this desire to do well educationally was linked to a family
expectation that children should do better than their parents had. These comments
seemed to reflect Bourdieu’s belief that habitus can indeed be practically
transformed: ‘a fraction of the class will deviate from the trajectory most common
for the class as a whole and follow the (higher or lower) trajectory which was
most probable for members of another class’ (1984, p.111). For Zara this was
achieved in part by a change in circumstances and associated capital accumulation:

I think because those two (my parents), because we were in quite a lot of
poverty when I was younger, I mean serious poverty, that I think they don’t
want me to go through that, the same and now we’ve climbed up the ladder
a bit, they don’t want me to start off like they did basically.
(Zara, Year 13)

Zara’s story demonstrated that her parents valued education, studying at night
school to improve their own prospects and in order to move to what Zara identified
as a ‘better area’. Family was also an indirect influence in that they motivated
pupils ‘not to be like them’; there was also discussion about ‘going to university’
as an achievement to make family members proud. These discussions were linked
with social class background; for example, Penelope, a Year 13 student when I
first interviewed her, sent me a Facebook message having completed her first year
at university. She explained:

Without sounding like a sob story, I have been aware of the struggles involved
with raising a family and paying bills since I can remember and I have hope
that I can change the course of my life. This is what makes me do things I
might be wary of, such as, taking the step to go to university and move into
halls.
(Penelope, sent as first year undergraduate).

A number of the pupils fell into the ‘first generation HE applicant’ category (a
target group identified by the Sutton Trust). Rather than feeling ‘disadvantaged’
64 Tamsin Bowers-Brown

at being the first in the family to go to higher education, the pupils in the focus
group discussed how it took the pressure off them in relation to their hopes for
the future as they did not feel a burden of expectation from their family. These
girls were independent and knowledgeable; they had already shown a commitment
to their learning by opting to attend what they thought was a prestigious sixth-
form rather than progressing to a local ‘college that was less academic’. Were
they not as knowledgeable about the potential routes that they could pursue, the
girls could have been inclined to pursue options that were known to them in their
immediate sphere of influence. The expanded higher education system, although
still stratified, may have contributed to what Bourdieu (1977, p.78) terms a
‘different mode of generation’. The girls’ expectations demonstrate the change in
the ‘conditions of existence’ between generations in relation to educational
opportunity and in particular what is deemed to be ‘impossible, possible and
probable’. Nonetheless, higher education is not an opportunity that can be deemed
as ‘probable’, and the structural factors the girls discuss indicate it is a possibility
that requires planning and careful consideration.
Within our discussion, university application was something the girls casually
mentioned, although it was clearly a topic with which they were preoccupied. The
girls’ discussion indicated that they understood there was a need to demonstrate
more than academic success in order to gain a place at university. They felt that
they had the academic capital required to progress to higher education but they
were acutely aware that they would need to fabricate the cultural capital the UCAS
application form would require them to demonstrate. Although the girls understood
educational capital was not enough for them to ‘play the game’, their ideas about
what could enable them to secure a place demonstrated that they were not entirely
aware of what was valued. Knowing how to ‘play the game’, or understanding
the illusio, is important when the other forms of capital could be considered as
deficient in relation to the dominant academic discourse; however, this too requires
an understanding of what is valued. The girls stated that they had no ‘noteworthy’
credentials, and they were clearly aware that this was something required and
therefore were attempting to ‘play the game’. This supports Bathmaker et al.’s
findings, which suggest that ‘some middle-class students have an internalised
understanding of the game and play it well without actively considering the
mechanisms of their own operations while others operate in a more intentional
way’ (2013, p.730). The girls within my focus group knew the system was flawed
in that it only viewed certain activities as ‘noteworthy’, but they were prepared
to ‘imitate’ what was required for the purposes of the UCAS personal statement
in an ‘intentional’ way, because they maintained a ‘belief in the absolute value
of the stake (a university place) and therefore concealed a collusion which
reproduced the illusio’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p.250):

CHARLOTTE: And personal statements, three weeks today our first draft has . . .
got to be in.
NATALIE: What?
 Girls’ educational choices and capital 65

CHARLOTTE: That’s what Mrs Kay says.

KATIE: Oh gosh.
NATALIE: I don’t know what I want to do. I’ve got no hobbies, I’ve got no life.
CHARLOTTE: Yeah, you need to have a load of extracurricular activities, I don’t
do anything. I’ve got no hobbies.
KATIE: I’m going to say I do volleyball, badminton and ice-skating.
NATALIE: I might just like start a canoeing club and just go canoeing for a day and
then I can say I’ve done it.
CHARLOTTE: Once I’ve finished school I don’t want to go home and have to learn
some other skill, I just want to go and watch telly and let my brain just go
numb.
NATALIE: Could you imagine though if you had all these like extra-curriculums
after sixth form, I think I’d like drive myself into a grave.
KATIE: I put on my CV that I do ice-skating lessons and it’s still not got me a job!
. . . a pro or something and I do all this and I write my own articles and they’re
still not accepting me.
CHARLOTTE: I’ve got no credit worthy like background really.
KATIE: I don’t think I’ve even got time for a job at the moment.
NATALIE: I have, I’m hoping that might wangle me into uni having a job now, I’ve
got nowt (sic) else to write on my personal statement.

The discussion demonstrated that there was a superficial understanding of what

a university application should include and also that they knew they did not possess
the experiences that would be looked upon favourably. The girls clearly understood
there was a game to be played and they joked about fabricating experiences or
extra-curricular activities they felt would be viewed in a positive light. Even were
they to do so, these fabricated experiences would not necessarily reflect the
internalised understandings highlighted by Bathmaker et al. (2014), in part because
their view of what would be valued was not necessarily congruent with the
requirements of a university. Charlotte wrote a personal statement and although
she claimed to have no ‘credit worthy’ background she began a BA in Politics
and Sociology at a Russell Group University the following September. Charlotte’s
academic success and her ability to ‘play the game’ in an intentional way enabled
her to achieve what was required. However, the application process is an example
of how the judgement of capitals can be used to ‘reinforce the power relations
which constitute the structure of the social space’ (Bourdieu,1990a, p.135). The
acceptance of this process as a legitimate way to determine who will be capable
of achieving educational success misrecognises those who do not possess the
required capitals or who do not understand how to play the game.

University as the only valued option

Of particular concern to the participants was the feeling that even if they had made
a choice it may not be viewed as ‘the right choice’, or indeed that it would be
66 Tamsin Bowers-Brown

viewed as inferior by society as well as by teachers. Byrom and Lightfoot discuss

how the massification of higher education has resulted in those who choose
not to progress to university as being ‘othered’ or ‘discursively constructed as
abnormal’ (2013, p.817). The discussions about applications to university high-
lighted these factors further; inevitably more so by sixth-formers who demonstrated
some anger at the situation. There were a number of discussions that indicated
students were planning to go to university because they did not feel there was a
viable or respected alternative; or at least not one that had been discussed with
them. Simultaneously, the emphasis on A-levels and higher education as the
esteemed option reinforced the lack of parity between vocational and academic
qualifications; the distinction and hierarchies of knowledge was an issue that
emerged in the focus group findings frequently. At Greenlea Comprehensive, the
girls in the study felt that the over-emphasis on progression to university placed
all other choices in a deficit position, and indeed if they did not go to university
they would feel regret:

I think you put pressure on yourself more than like anywhere else, because
you get told about it all the time that you end up, part of you, that you think,
“Oh I’ve got to go to university,” and if I don’t then I’m not doing well and
I don’t know, it’s like I feel like I’m missing out if I don’t go to uni.
(Year 11, Focus Group respondent)

Pupil responses demonstrated that there is a perceived status attached to

A-levels as being appropriate for those pupils who are ‘clever’. Therefore the
emphasis to continue in education may have been targeted at those who were seen
as ‘likely candidates’ for A-level and then university. A discussion of these routes
with a member of the senior leadership team demonstrated that the school valued
the partnership with a local college that gave pupils the option of studying
vocational courses one day per week but that once pupils were on their ‘pathway’,
be it vocational or academic, their future was then seen to continue along either
of these routes. One teacher discussed this as a pupil responsibility, that they often
maintained this route because it felt familiar and comfortable. This reflects
Bourdieu’s concept of social reproduction, which is in part related to the habitus
whereby ‘conditions of existence which, in imposing different definitions of the
impossible, the possible and the probable, cause one group to experience as natural
or reasonable practices or aspirations which another group finds unthinkable or
scandalous, and vice versa’ (1977, p.78). The links with familial advice on career
routes reflected both social reproduction and the associated use of social capital
networks.
As with the undergraduates in the Paired Peers research, pupils at Greenlea
Comprehensive school showed similar knowledge of ‘how to play the game’:
‘certain students ensure their advantage through the development of capitals
and put themselves in the best position to win the game’ (Bathmaker et al.,
2013, p.730). Advice had been sought from a variety of sources, but one pupil
 Girls’ educational choices and capital 67

demonstrated the importance to her in personally seeking out how she could meet
the requirements of the institution to which she intended to apply:

University prospectuses will provide the most information for subjects to

choose for our course! School try . . . but with so many students sometimes
you’re better being independent and finding out for yourself. I want to do
Law at (local pre-1992 institution) and currently have a conditional offer. For
my choices I looked at what the universities look for subject wise and what
will help me at uni. That’s the best advice I could give anyone!
(Year 13, survey respondent)

Where pupils did not have the information they required, they were advised by
the school to seek out this information from other sources. The lack of capitals
that some students have in relation to knowing about the career options and
associated routes to get there means that they rely on their academic capital
acquired through the school to research their options independently. Byrom and
Lightfoot (2013, p.817) describe this as the ‘emerging secondary habitus’ that has
been inculcated through their school rather than home experiences.

I don’t know anyone else who’s done the course that I’m doing or anything
similar and in class they’re not really focussing on helping you with the
decisions of uni, they’re focussing on getting you to pass A-Level, so no one
really talks about it, except for them to say, ‘Go and look at uni, go and see
what courses they do,’ so I just did that. Just went on websites and things,
because it was sort of left up to you to read about things and decide whether
you’d like it and could do it. It took me a long time to find a course that I
thought would be suitable to me, tried to find one with no exams, which I
did.
(Penelope Cash, Year 13, interview)

The school perspective on advice was that all Year 11 pupils undertake an
interview to discuss their post-16 options, and the intention was to start guidance
earlier. However, the influence of the family in educational choices demonstrated
how pupils were able to use different forms of capital in order to gather an
understanding about the subject area or the career options associated with those
choices. The combination of advice available to young people whether about
university or other post-16 options, from informed sources or anecdotal
conversations, appears always to be partial. The idea then that pupils can make
rational decisions is flawed from the outset because the premise of the decision
may be based on inaccurate or prejudiced advice. The pupils recognise this and
some seek solutions by undertaking the research they feel is required to inform
their decisions. However, for others there is an apparent frustration in being guided
into routes they feel duty bound to pursue regardless of whether or not it will help
them achieve the future to which they aspire.
68 Tamsin Bowers-Brown

Economic capital
Three of the participants in the sixth-form focus group, who had identified
themselves as working class, discussed the importance of having paid employment
as they did not have the economic capital to go to university without this
reassurance. Katie indicated that she was thinking strategically about undertaking
work that would enable her to progress through university that would allow her
an alternative career if she did not reach her educational goals. Although this
showed thoughtfulness, it also demonstrated the lack of confidence and
uncertainties about university, perhaps reflecting her unfamiliarity with the ‘field’
of higher education and her fear of debt. The fear of debt was something Charlotte
felt could be compounded if the wrong decision was made:

I don’t know whether to go to university, I want to go, but I don’t know what
I want to do, because I don’t know what I want to be when I’m older. So I
don’t know if I want to get the debt.
(Charlotte, Year 12)

Although Charlotte discussed taking a year out to work, she completed her
A-levels and was successful in her application to a Russell Group university.
Katie’s solution was to have a ‘back-up’ in case she was unsuccessful in her
academic studies; she stated:

I want to get trained in something else if all else fails, like nails or something
it’s a one day course that I can do it. I just want to earn because I just feel
like if, going to uni with no money, I just feel like I can’t go.

In the same way that Davies’ research found girls’ talk demonstrated that ‘girls’
discussions tended to prioritise rapport and a sense of group solidarity’(2005,
p.214), Katie’s peers did not question her ‘back-up’; rather, they demonstrated
that they too would need to earn before or alongside studying at university. The
issue of financial security also arose in the survey responses where pupils stated
that this is what they hoped for in the future:

Secure job being able to pay off any debt. Family life. No worries financially.
In a stable, well earning career.

The concern with financial issues perhaps reflected the age of austerity in which
these pupils were considering their futures and therefore practical matters were
of as much importance as specific aspirations. For some pupils, particularly those
who had identified themselves as working class, there was a measured discussion
of the potential benefits and problems of progressing to university. However, for
other pupils there was no choice other than university worth considering. Baker
found that for some young women, university was an ‘inevitable path’ that
was a ‘natural progression for them, unquestioned and normalised’ (2010, p.7).
 Girls’ educational choices and capital 69

This is supported by Bradley et al., whose typologies of decision making include

the ‘taken for granted pathway: going to university is seen as normal, majority in
family has a degree, siblings are already at university, most people at school are
going’ (2013, p.3). Although progression to university for some pupils was seen
to be ‘taken for granted’, it was not always associated with having prior familial
experience of higher education. There were several pupils who wanted to create
a ‘better future’ for themselves; this was positioned by what they felt their parents
had achieved:

I think I’ve got a couple of friends that are only going because of their parents,
but I’ve also got a lot of friends that are going just because, I think it’s a
trend, I don’t know, I think it’s becoming a trend anyway, more than, ‘Oh
I’ll go because I want this sort of job,’ whereas I’m going because I definitely
want a better future than what my parents had.’
(Zara, Year 13)

This desire for upward social mobility, ‘Where I want to be, and hopefully higher
up’ (survey respondent), was seen to be achievable through education.
The findings concur with other research that suggests a multitude of influences
contribute to pupils making a choice about their progression to university. As
concluded by Bornholt et al., a better understanding of choice behaviour
illuminates that a ‘general model of personal and social factors explains diverse
pathways to higher education’ (2004, p.226). This supports the socio-ecological
approach to choice behaviours that integrates these decisions in circumstances,
not necessarily of the students’ choosing, which support and constrain realisation
of student aspirations. This too is relatable to Bourdieu’s assertion that
demonstrates the constraints of self-expectation that can be associated with socio-
economic circumstances.

Conclusion
Bourdieu’s concepts helped me to think about how the research participants’
expectations and experiences were intertwined. Their social capital networks or
who they knew was a crucial part in information gathering about the choices they
perceived to be possible. The success many of the girls achieved at Greenlea
Comprehensive can be associated with their understanding of how to ‘play the
game’. They understood that they needed to develop themselves in relation to their
studies as well as their extra-curricular activities or cultural capital. This
transcended the academic and vocational pathways and the participants on both
routes saw the value of undertaking related activities that would enhance their
understanding of their intended post-16 pathways. I was concerned that there was
evidence that the reliance on social capital networks meant there was a disparity
in the quality and types of information advice and guidance (IAG) the girls
received. The reliance on the mother as a source of advice clearly demonstrated
70 Tamsin Bowers-Brown

the potential for social reproduction. The social capital networks the pupils had
meant that for some pupils considerations about their future career paths were
limited to ‘what was known’ by those within their immediate social networks;
these networks were often localised to family and family friends. The influence
of the school was seen to be of secondary importance to pupils who valued
maternal advice above all other sources of information. These findings reflect Ball
and Vincent’s (2005) concept of ‘hot-knowledge’ accrued from informal networks
and the less-valued ‘cold-knowledge’ that comes from official sources. The links
therefore between habitus and field and in particular the social, cultural and
economic capitals that the girls possess played an important role both in how they
perceived their futures and the choices that they made – yet they did not always
determine their futures. As Hodkinson found, there is a ‘reflexive relationship
between positions, dispositions, practices and relations’ (1998, p.102). The pupils
in my research study demonstrated that there was likelihood towards social
reproduction associated with social capital networks in choice making and the
levels of cultural capital they possessed, but that there was also a counter argument
whereby the research participants demonstrated reflexivity and an understanding
of the rules of the game and therefore used this knowledge to deliberately work
against what may have been predicted for them.
My research has demonstrated that the ‘successful girl’ label needs to be
understood in relation to the socio-economic context of the school. Where the field
of the local community reflects the aspirations of the educational institution the
school is able to employ techniques that mould the ‘docile bodies’ of its pupils
and inculcate a scholarly habitus. The school accepts its responsibility through
doing what it feels is necessary for pupils to achieve the levels of progress as
defined by Ofsted; this in turn ensures that the school maintains its pedagogic
authority. In a school where many pupils perceive their futures involving
application to university, it appeared that specific individual advice needed to be
tailored more carefully. Individual guidance was seen to be provided at too late
a stage and some pupils felt they lacked the advice they needed. This is of concern
particularly in relation to the likelihood of social reproduction given that the pupils’
main source of advice was their mother.
Educational success requires an acceptance of the rules of the game and
therefore pupils can perpetuate the symbolically violent practices without realising
their complicity or because they do not perceive an alternative. The sixth-form
girls at Greenlea Comprehensive acknowledged the need to construct a UCAS
personal statement that reflected more than academic success and they colluded
in this process so they could stay in the game. This ultimately ‘reproduced the
illusio’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p.250).
As Bourdieu (1998, p.21) argues, ‘familiarity prevents us from seeing
everything that is concealed in the apparently purely technical acts achieved by
the school institution’. The familiarity with tests, target grades and expected
achievement formed part of the girls’ scholarly habitus, which enabled them to
participate in the practice of occupying a ‘good pupil’ subject position.
 Girls’ educational choices and capital 71

Using Bourdieu’s concepts enabled me to question the practices of the school

and education policy more broadly. They helped me to think about the wider
societal issues that mean education alone cannot negate inequality. The value of
the stake needs to be seen by the pupils as either possible or probable in order for
them to want to play the game, otherwise its practices are experienced as
symbolically violent.

Note
1 Ofsted is the government’s education inspectorate.

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Chapter 6

Using Bourdieusian scholarship

to understand the body
Habitus, hexis and embodied
cultural capital
Lindsey Garratt

In 2008 I walked into my first fieldwork site. I had begun my doctoral work two
months previously as part of a larger project called the Trinity Immigration
Initiative [TII], whose remit was to examine immigration to the Republic of Ireland
[hereafter Ireland]. TII had six work package streams and my work came under
the project focusing on children, youth and community relations, the aim of which
was to gain a child-centred perspective of how children, aged seven to 12 years,
experienced diversity. We chose to examine these dynamics within seven primary
schools in Dublin’s North inner city, as this locality is historically the poorest part
of the city and of the state and had seen a sharp rise in immigration in the previous
10 years (Curry et al., 2011). Taking a grounded research approach (Glaser &
Strauss, 2008 [1967]) we gathered data from seven schools over a six-month period
interviewing 343 children, 10 teachers and gathering hundreds of hours of
observation. From this dataset I focused on the experiences of the youngest boys
from seven to nine years of age and completed a second round of fieldwork with
one class group a year after the initial data collection period.
The beginning of fieldwork is always a nervous but exciting time, and this
feeling was compounded by conducting fieldwork in primary schools. One’s first
encounter with a school playground, as a fieldwork site, is an intense sensory
experience. Beyond being exposed to the January elements the collective voice
of hundreds of children shouting, laughing, crying, calling, praising and chastising
each other is at once a collection of individual voices but also a singular roar.
Immersed on all sides by sound the researcher must also watch their step or risk
wandering into a game of football, block a chaser as they tear after their target
and when trying to retreat to a quiet corner disturb a small group who have gathered
to be in each other’s confidence. At this point it is easy to fall into the trap that
this collective is the perfect example of how the adult world should follow the
example of children and leave divisions behind. But one is not yet sensitised to
the invisible boundaries at play in play. Far from an equitable paradise this is a
world of status, reputation, speculation and fluctuating friendship circles, where
racism is woven within encounters and peer interactions (Curry et al., 2011).
These initial sensory impressions have some value though, as they emphasise
how physical and embodied children’s worlds are. The body soon came to be
74 Lindsey Garratt

central to my study of racism and masculinities. I contend elsewhere that the body
is both an object of value, which is assessed and denigrated, but also the site of
habitual processes of misrecognition and apperception, which sustains but also
disguises racism (Garratt, 2012; forthcoming – a). In my analysis, young boys’
evaluation of each other was rooted within habitual schemas of perception based
on racist and gendered conceptions of whom can be said to ‘authentically’ enact
locally-validated notions of hegemonic masculinity (Garratt, forthcoming – b). To
make this argument I have drawn on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, specifically the
concepts of habitus, the bodily hexis of habitus and Bourdieu’s philosophical
influences within phenomenology. Bourdieu (1990a) pays considerable attention
to how the body is moulded by society and read as a sign within symbolic systems.
In a Bourdieusian approach the body plays a significant role in signifying one’s
status and belonging within fields; it is therefore a form of capital and especially
a form of cultural capital, as one’s deportment, demeanour, accent and tastes in
adornment are linked to one’s social origins and experiences. I focus specifically
on the body as a site of value but this connects with the arguments made by
Wallace in his Chapter (4) on Black cultural capital, which is arguably a form of
cultural capital that is founded on embodiment. For Bourdieu (1990a) these
schemas of the body are the hexis of habitus; one’s accumulated matrix of
perceptions and dispositions. In my research, the way in which young boys’ bodies
were shaped through hexis and the appearance of their phenomenological bodies
had considerable symbolic exchange value within their field of play (Garratt,
2012). Moreover, the way in which peers judged each other was rooted within
somatic schemas of perception inculcated in their habitus. Hence, Bourdieu’s
(1990a) work gave me the framework to understand the role of the body as both
an object that is perceived but also as the medium of this perception. I will consider
the concepts of hexis, embodied cultural capital and the body as the medium of
perception in the second half of this chapter, but the path to conceptualising my
findings in this manner and engaging with these concepts was not a direct one.
While I had some previous exposure to Bourdieu’s work, due to the grounded
method of this project, I opted to review the vast immigration and racism literature
after the first round of data collection, as this work initially appeared to have
analysed the body in depth. However, within the review process I soon came up
against a central problem; namely, the body seemed to be brought back into
theorisation simply to eradicate it further. Action did not happen through the body,
but rather in spite of it as something to be overcome rather than the seat of practice.
When comparing this literature to the data, it did not chime with my observations.
In light of this, the aim of this chapter is to lead the reader through some of the
main perspectives of the body in the racialisation and gender theories to argue
these perspectives are underpinned by existentialism and Cartesian dualism
that thwarts the researcher’s ability to meaningfully analyse the body. I will finish
this chapter by contending that Bourdieu’s work and his influences within
phenomenology provide a more fruitful way to recast the body as central to practice
by providing the tools to unpick the tight interweaving of racism from perception.
 Using Bourdieusian scholarship 75

Hence this chapter is designed, not as an exhaustive account of how Bourdieu

theorises the body,1 but rather to argue for the greater analytic ability of a
Bourdieusian approach in contrast to the dominant discursive perspective that
prevails within the fields of racial and ethnic studies, especially in relation to
gender.

Racialisation
Contemporary biology no longer uses the concept of ‘race’ and within the social
sciences a significant corpus of work argues human characteristics or phenotypes
are only given meaning through a process of racialisation. While there is tension
in the consistency of meaning and use of the term ‘racialization’ (Barot & Bird,
2001), Murji and Solomos argue it has become ‘a core concept in the analysis
of racial phenomena, particularly to signal the processes by which ideas about
“race” are constructed, come to be regarded as meaningful, and are acted upon’
(2005, p.1). Back and Solomos argue the concept has been fundamental in moving
the debate beyond the ontological certainty of ‘race’ to perhaps the more
important question of ‘why certain racialised subjectivities become a feature of
social relations at particular points in time and in particular geographical spaces?’
(2000, p.20). To engage with this question, many authors have drawn on the work
of Foucault (1975), especially his concepts of governmentality and bio-power.
Foucault argues that once discursive categories of normality are developed, its
antonym is created; the deviant, pervert, hysteric and psychotic are formed. State
racism in this context is understood as the elimination of the so-called ‘deviant’,
whether ‘deviant’ people or behaviour, as a threat to the vitality of the nation. It
is a ‘racism that a society will practice on itself, against its own elements, against
its own products: it is an internal racism . . . that of constant purification . . . one
of the fundamental dimensions of social normalisation’ (1978, p.55). ‘Rationality’2
in this context is analysed not as a way to undermine racism but as a causal factor
in its development and protraction. A number of theorists have analysed the
connection between modernity and racism. Goldberg (1994) argues modernity
shifted the conceptual order to regard people as ‘rational individuals’ rather than
the subjects of God, and where there is a rational agent there is an irrational one,
a rational society an irrational one, both of which have generally been understood
as pre-modern and largely non-Western (Said, 1995 [1978]). Indeed, Hall (1997)
contends the classification of people in this way has generally lead to the reduction
of the cultures of ‘black’ peoples to nature, through essentialising seemingly
‘natural’ characteristics, such as irrationality, idleness and immaturity. In this
context a rational state must protect itself from the ‘irrational’ both internally and
externally through immigration.
There is little doubt this is a powerful theoretical position linked to a framework
with strong explanatory power. Indeed, in my data, countries other than Ireland
were often categorised as pre-modern and inferior. The bodies of migrant origin
boys, especially those of African and South Asian origin, were also victims of
76 Lindsey Garratt

debasing rumours and jokes that served to position the majority group as superior
in comparison (Garratt, 2012). However, while the racialisation literature has
importantly highlighted how the linguistic semiotic convention creates deviance
and designates ‘others’, this argument is made purely through an abstracted
discussion of language and labelling. Here the analytic value of the body is simply
through its discursive categorisation. Why the body is judged is addressed, but
not how; how is judgement operationalised and what do categorises mean for the
individuals in practice? From a Bourdieusian perspective, our practice is rooted
within our habitus, which is the inherited, embodied, predisposed but also
adaptable ways individuals have of reading, understanding and interpreting the
fields and societies in which they live (see the introductory chapter of this book
for further elaboration of Bourdieu’s theory of practice). While Bourdieu (2000)
also puts considerable importance on how people are judged for their bodies, in
his analysis this is linked to the wider system of capital accumulation in which a
person’s habitus is enacted through somatisation. The concept of bodily hexis
focuses on how the body is not a fixed entity but is partially constructed by the
medium of the habitus. Within a discursive approach this analysis is precluded,
as a distinction is made between the self and one’s body, which is a legacy of the
existential philosophical tradition in which it is rooted (Sartre, 1969).

Philosophy and the body

For existentialism the body is understood as a natural and conservative force,
which must be risen above in order to achieve enlightenment (De Beauvoir, 1972
[1946]). In this tradition the body is subordinated to the mind and reduced to a
vessel to contain the self or, as many critics argue, it is treated as a machine to
house the ghost of the mind or spirit (Ryle, 1949). This metaphor is commonly
used to describe the Cartesian perspective, the generally accepted root of
mind/body duality. In Mediations, first published in 1641, Descartes searches for
a point of certainty on which scholarship can build from. After doubting
everything in the external world including the existence of his body, he decides
he cannot doubt that he is always thinking, thus his famous dictum ‘cogito ergo
sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’ (Sorell, 2000). If the body can be doubted but not
the mind, and still be, the essence of who he is must be located in a disembodied
mind. Recent empirical literature within whiteness studies and some work within
masculinities questions if disembodiment in a pure sense is possible. A growing
body of work has argued structurally dominant groups gain much of their status
through being defined as disembodied, but this is in fact an embodied identity, as
‘rationality’ is only maintained as long as one can embody certain, often classed,
demeanours (Hughey, 2010; Vincent, 2006), or in Bourdieu’s (1990a) terms, have
an appropriate bodily hexis with a high exchange value within fields. A
disembodied identity, then, is not due to anyone rising above their body; rather,
it is facilitated by somatisation but remains hidden from public consciousness.
The impact of this finding, that ‘disembodiment’ is only facilitated through
 Using Bourdieusian scholarship 77

embodiment, has had very little impact within the wider canon of literature in
comparison to the legacy of Cartesian thought, especially within gender studies.

Gender and the body

In my work I contend racism and hegemonic masculinities mutually construct
each other, but the former is obscured by the latter through habitual schemas of
perception that prevents racist behaviour being labelled as such by both perpe-
trator and victim (Garratt, 2012). Marginalisation of minority boys tended to
be dismissed with the platitude that ‘boys will be boys’, an assumption that all
bullying was somehow equal opportunities even though migrant origin boys were
persistently picked on for their appearance and for how they used their bodies in
sports and games over and above those from the majority group. This ridicule
was particularly painful for them, as has been observed by many commentators;
to be overtly linked to the body is to be feminised, as in many respects the flesh
in contemporary society is female and an identity associated with the body
feminine (Grosz, 1994).
Within the wider gender studies literature, the attempt to understand the body
has created considerable tension, which has been fundamental to the field’s
development. Early work focused on detaching the idea of ‘sex roles’ from nature
and the body. To achieve this, early theorists accepted a duality between mind
and body. For instance, De Beauvoir (1972) argued that biological bodily differ-
ences exist but have no relevance, as they derive their meaning from larger society
and the cultures men and women live in. However, this neat sex/gender division
began to be revised largely through the work of three distinct areas of feminism;
materialist, ethnomethodological and poststructuralist, who argued from divergent
perspectives that the sex/gender distinction had not gone far enough, as biological
‘sex’ had largely been ignored and existed simply as a ‘natural base’ onto which
gender is painted (Kessler & McKenna, 1978). The body came back into the
debate, but as a target for further deconstruction and as a foil for analysis of agency
and structure.
It is on this point of agency that Butler (1990) based her work Gender Trouble.
Butler argues that bodies ‘cannot be said to have a significant existence prior to
the mark of their gender’ (1990, p.8). For her, sex, sexuality and gender are brought
into existence through action and she uses Derrida’s concept of iteration as
evidence that social norms are inherently unstable and repetition a sign of ‘consti-
tutive instability’ (Stoller, 2009). However, her reiterative performative agency
can only succeed if an ontological core to gender located in the body can be
dismantled. To do this she focuses her analysis on heterosexual hegemony and
draws on Foucault’s (1978) work on sexuality to contend that gender is not created
by sex but is discursive and constructed through gender. For Chambers (2007),
however, Butler’s heavy reliance on Foucault ultimately undoes her argument.
He highlights that Butler misreads Foucault’s work as he does not argue ‘sex does
not exist’ but rather contends that ‘sex in itself’ does not exist; causality reasoning
78 Lindsey Garratt

cannot be established, as if sex in itself cannot exist neither can desire nor gender.
Therefore, one cannot be the spark point of another, but all must exist together.
Ultimately then this thesis is inconsistent in its theorisation of the body, as its
narrow focus on sexuality relies on a causality argument that cannot be sustained.
Furthermore, this limited focus on sexuality in relation to the body reveals a
paradox in this work and the wider empirical research, as there is an attempt to
deconstruct the body through biological sex and sexuality but this is done through
a subordination of the body to linguistic abstraction (Tyler, 1991; Benhabib, 1995a;
1995b; Fraser, 1995; Rottenberg, 2003). Hence, while this corpus of work is
successful in showing structural indeterminacy, instead of bringing the body back
into analysis this literature appears to have subjugated it more. These approaches
critique the use of embodiment to ‘other’ certain populations; however, they im-
plicitly support a rationalised perspective of the world as they only see embodiment
as inhibiting. Hence, rationality, which elsewhere has been heavily critiqued as
the origin of racism, is implicitly reproduced by the very tools of this dissection.
Indeed, what if we see the body not as an impediment to who we are, something
to be transcended in order to achieve enlightenment or to achieve equality, but
rather a fundamental aspect of ourselves?
My observation of the school playground and what I have termed the ‘child
world’3 of the school made it clear that identity was firmly rooted within the body.
Not only was the body used by children to designate insiders from outsiders,
friends from strangers, it imbued all aspects of their exchanges. Young boys
described in detail the physicality required to interact with their peers; they
compared the growth, shape and skill of their bodies to each other to determine
their ‘boyishness’. Moreover, I found the ease with which they could move within
the field, feel comfortable playing sports, games and move through their local area
(or where perceived by their peers as comfortable) had a big impact on their status
within their class group (Garratt, 2012). When I did my initial review of the
literature I found the work detailed could not take into account these practices.
So I went in search of an approach through which it was possible to consider
agency, not through the transcendence of the body, but as a capacity of it.

Beyond dualism: habit and habitus

While the theoretical perspectives of gender studies and racialisation are largely
underpinned by an existentialist perspective, Bourdieu’s work is rooted in phe-
nomenology, which seeks to analyse how the subjective consciousness is
structured by its relationship to phenomena and the conceptualisation of know-
ledge (Elliot, 2004). One of the crucial differences in this philosophical tradition
is in the role of the body. Phenomenologists such as Ryle (1949) have set out to
break down dualism by contending Descartes takes for granted the separate-
ness of the mind from the body without a full examination. For instance, he takes
the convention of using different languages to explain ‘mental’ and ‘matter’
as evidence for their discrete existences but he does not doubt everything as he
 Using Bourdieusian scholarship 79

neglects to question the convention of these languages. Indeed, Cartesian thought

begins by predetermining that intelligence cannot be embodied but must exist
separately to the body, ‘when they witness intelligent behaviour they believe that
they are seeing two things: intelligence and behaviour’ (Crossley, 2001, p.40).
Ryle (1949) argues that the same thing is counted twice and therefore the very
essence of Cartesian thought; that intelligence, emotions, consciousness and
perception are located within an inner theatre of the mind is based on a categorical
error. In contrast he contends this process is far from discrete but fundamentally
linked to our perception of the outside world understood through our bodies. For
instance, the bodily processes experienced in emotions are fairly similar for many
positive and negative states, but it is the nature of the outside event that triggered
them that gives them meaning; emotions are not purely introspective in a Cartesian
sense but are intimately connected to the social. Ryle (1949) extends this argument
to contend that if emotions are partially constructed by experience and outside
forces, so are the very structures of thought, consciousness and perception as these
states can only be experienced indirectly. For instance, we can perceive objects
and subjects but we cannot perceive perception or be conscious of consciousness
without using some construct from our relationship with the outside world such
as language, images or emotions to represent them. Consciousness and perception
then are a ‘sensuous relationship to the external world’ (Crossley, 2001, p.47)
where an inward inspection always takes an outward turn. From this perspective,
Descartes would never have been able to think intelligently without a connection
to the outside world experienced through the body.
Meaningful action and intelligence then do not exist in a separate realm of the
mind and Merleau-Ponty (1965; 1962) reiterates many of the same points Ryle
makes in his deconstruction of the immaterial mind, but also examines and
critiques the mechanistic view of the body. He does this through a detailed critique
of behaviourism. For Merleau-Ponty (1965; 1962) the human organism is both
material and simultaneously more than the sum of its parts. Our relationship with
any environment then cannot be simply understood as an objective factor
impinging upon a person, as any effect of the environment derives its meaning
through the way a person perceives it:

It is as false to place ourselves in society as an object amongst objects, as it

is to place society in ourselves as an object of thought, and in both cases the
mistake lies in treating the social as an object. We must return to the social
with which we are in contact by the mere fact of existing, and which we carry
about inseparably with us before any objectification.
(Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p.362)

Indeed, the phenomenological tradition endeavours to decentre the subject/object

divide and show the way objects are perceived and our development as perceptual
subjects is rooted in our ‘being-in-the-world’, fundamentally developed from
the interaction our body has with the environment, described as ‘body-subject’
80 Lindsey Garratt

(Crossley, 2001, p.89). For Merleau-Ponty (1965) intelligence is an embodied

‘know how’; it is the ability to move within an environment and simply fit without
conscious effort. This does not mean there is anything natural or pre-social about
this; it is a learned ability but it has been incorporated within the logic of the body
as a habit to such an extent that it seems natural. Bourdieu’s development of the
concept of habitus is therefore foreshadowed by Merleau-Ponty, but Bourdieu
moves this perspective beyond simply an outline of habit by linking it to forms
of power and the wider structures of society.
If Bourdieu’s corpus of work could be naively distilled, perhaps a succinct
description would be that nothing in the social world is fundamental and
inevitable but our habitus makes them so. In Pascalian Meditations he defines
habitus as ‘a system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past
experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations,
and actions’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p.86–87). It serves as a somatised lens from which
a person’s knowledge and experiences are understood through, developed by,
but not restricted to one’s family, class position, gender, religion and ethnicity.
However, objective factors do not produce actors uniformly, but the possibilities
presented are combined to produce one’s own unique yet predisposed habitus.
Therefore, while people from similar backgrounds do not act in accordance with
a set of rules, they may have general similarities and strategic behaviours at
the level of the habitus, as the structures of society influence the possibilities
presented for them to combine. In the context of the charges of structural deter-
minism Bourdieu received, as discussed by Burke in Chapter 2, the concept of
habitus is at pains to offer a third way between the objective and the subjective.
Bourdieu contends this is a false dichotomy, which thwarts the researcher’s ability
to adequately understand the social world and produce knowledge with epistem-
ological authority. Here the concept of habitus is woven within the wider system
of distribution; it describes not only how individuals meaningfully engage with
society as the concept of habit describes, but links this form of action with struc-
tures of inequality – this is best exemplified in his analysis of field.
For Bourdieu (1990), structures are a combination of social fields and
institutions. Social fields are specific contexts in which people act, for instance
one acts differently in the educational field than one would in a sporting field, as
each has its own particular habitus or logic. This is expressed through the ability
of individuals to act appropriately without propositional thought, but instead
through the embodiment of a logic specific to the field. Burkitt argues Bourdieu
‘seeks to emphasize how this type of learning, which affects men and women’s
perception of their bodies and selves, does not occur at the cognitive level but at
the bodily level’ (Burkitt, 1999, p.88). To demonstrate this, in his 1978 essay Sport
and Social Class, Bourdieu draws on the heightened example of sport to argue
that one’s embodied feel for the game links the structure of the field to the specific
behaviours or practices of the individuals within them. In this approach the central
concepts of field and habitus are bound together in the body, as an individual
or groups’ ‘practical belief’ in the game is a state of the body, ‘instilled by the
 Using Bourdieusian scholarship 81

childhood learning that treats the body as a living memory pad’ (Bourdieu, 1990,
p.68). Yet for an individual to participate and be interested in a field one’s habitus
must be developed in relation to the resources and rewards within it; otherwise
they would not be recognised or valued as capitals (see Mckenzie’s Chapter 3 for
more on the recognition of capitals within fields). To be committed to a field,
then, the learned must be conflated with the natural, what is constructed disappears
into ‘anamnesis’, a ‘familiarity gained by the reappropriation of a knowledge
(connaissance) that is both possessed and lost from the beginning’ (Bourdieu, 2001,
p.55). The constructed nature of the field, habitus and capitals disappear and are
understood as inevitable and inherently valuable instead of arbitrary. For Bourdieu,
then, the illusio of the field gives capitals their meaning. The illusio is defined as

[t]he fact of being in the game, of being invested in the game, of taking the
game seriously. Illusio is the fact of being caught up in and by the game
. . . That is what I meant in speaking of interest: games which matter to you
are important and interesting because they have been imposed and introduced
in your mind, in your body, in a form called the feel for the game.
(Bourdieu, 1998, p.76–77)

The body here is at the centre of action; it is one’s filter for perception in the
phenomenological tradition but also connects us to fields, making what could be
considered arbitrary phenomena important for our self-worth. If action is recast
as a combination of mindful action and embodied intelligence (Crossley, 2001)
with meaningful practice not reliant on an abstracted propositional view of
intelligence before it is undertaken,4 mindful behaviour can be recast as ‘a feel
for the game’, something that is learned but forgotten, which feels natural,
inevitable and obvious. This reconfiguration has real consequences for how we
understand racism.
If we reconsider what can be termed as racist, as not necessarily reliant on a
conscious rational intention to be racist (Song, 2014), but rather as a form of
practice and habitual perception, the insidiousness and pervasiveness of racism is
more easily revealed. Within my work the marginalisation of migrant origin boys
was rarely understood as racist by either perpetrator or victim, but instead recast
as something that everyone just knew, something that felt natural and obvious;
where minority boys were simply not really ‘Irish’ nor could they be considered
as tough and masculine as those from the local area (Garratt, 2012). Racist ideas
of who could be perceived as authentically Irish and masculine also affected
those with phenotypical bodily differences more readily than those from other
migrant groups. Indeed, Bourdieu (2001) argues symbolic domination is par-
ticularly dangerous when there are phenotypical bodily differences to hook onto.
In Masculine Domination he contends the body is viewed through a ‘social
programme of perception’, which highlights certain features of the body and denies
others, which in turn shapes the legitimate expression, habits and hexis of the body
(Krais, 2006). Here presumed difference is linked to the body as an object, but
82 Lindsey Garratt

perception embedded in the habitus to view difference even when it may not be
present. Hence, this is the most insidious form of social construction, as
arbitrariness is completely hidden through the use of material body difference to
justify and naturalise it. While all social structures gain power through being
defined as inevitable or the way things must be (Gramsci, 1995), by using a
Bourdieusian approach racism and sexism can be seen as the epitome of this, as
they link to conceptions of ‘naturalness’ more successfully than other structures
especially in their intersection, leading to their production and reproduction
through the habitus (Fowler, 2003). Racism, like gender, can be thought of as the
embodiment of doxa, the ‘somatization of the social relations of domination’
(Bourdieu, 2001, p.23) manifested and maintained in day-to-day interactions, or
what Bourdieu refers to as a circular causality of observation, somatisation and
naturalisation:

Because the social principle of vision constructs anatomical difference and

because this anatomical difference becomes the basis and apparently natural
justification of the social vision which founds it, there is thus a relationship
of circular causality which confines thought within the self-evidence of
relations of domination.
(1984, p.11)

Hence, while racism may exist as the evaluation of another as ‘inferior’, this
evaluation is also embodied; therefore, what is perceived is circularly constructed
to expect difference even when no material differential exists. In my data this was
the evaluation of minority boys as not as good at football or tough as other boys.
Indeed in his more direct dealings with the physical body, Bourdieu also provides
a way to understand how the body is evaluated as an object in the field in his
concept of embodied cultural capital or bodily hexis.

Embodied cultural capital

For Bourdieu (1984), illusio allows capitals to be misrecognised as innately
valuable. Bourdieu (1984) identifies five inter-related capitals specific to each field;
the first four, economic, political, social and cultural capital, are said to be
accumulated and exchanged within specific fields in order to achieve the fifth,
symbolic capital, i.e. prestige, honour and social worth. Conversely, though, the
possession of symbolic capital legitimates actors’ possession of other forms of
capital, giving them a cylindrical or dialectic relationship. For Bourdieu and
Wacquant (1992) the attainment and maintenance of capital is the primary concern
for those within fields as the amount of capital one has determines one’s place
within it and therefore the power one has. The possession of capitals though is
not open to everyone as they are controlled and limited by organisations and those
who are already rich in capital; therefore, the richer in capital you are, the more
 Using Bourdieusian scholarship 83

ability you have to regulate the field for your benefit. Thus, Bourdieu (1984) argues
those in positions of power within a field have an interest in maintaining an
orthodoxy that justifies and naturalises the dominant groups’ claim of symbolic
capital. However, the possession and exchange of capital does not take place from
a position of rational choice but is somatised and expressed through the body.
The concept of cultural capital most obviously illuminates this. Bourdieu (1984)
contends cultural capital is manifested in three specific forms; embodied,
objectified and institutionalised. Embodied cultural capital is the bodily hexis of
a person’s habitus, which is strongly related to one’s origins; for instance it is the
accent one develops, the manners one employs in social situations, the way one
presents oneself to the world through dress, deportment and the tastes one develops
and exploits. The body is therefore not a fixed entity but is partially constructed
by the medium of the habitus:

It follows that the body is the most indisputable materialization of class taste,
which manifests itself in several ways. It does this first in the seemingly most
natural features of the body, the dimensions (volume, height, weight) and
shapes (round or square, stiff or supple, straight or curved) of its visible forms,
which express in countless ways a whole relation to the body, i.e., a way of
treating it, caring for it, feeding it, maintaining it, which reveals the deepest
dispositions of the habitus.
(Bourdieu, 1984, p.190)

Moreover, fields have appearance and disposition norms that reflect the interests
of the dominant group richest in capital within that field. The bodily hexis of
habitus then can either facilitate or constrain actors as they interact within social
fields, as capital accumulation is enabled by one’s ability to be ‘a fish in water’,
as the apparent ease with which one moves through it will designate you as
someone who belongs, understands the field and does not question its values
(Bourdieu, 1977). If one’s body is too big, small, weak, strong, or if one dresses
inappropriately or does not control the movements of one’s body to fit with
accepted demeanours, it will be more difficult to blend in and be accepted in the
field or even gain access to it in the first place. Chris Shilling (2003) has used
Bourdieu’s concept of embodied cultural capital to conceptualise the body as a
bearer of value in contemporary society; he does this by pushing the notion of
embodied cultural capital beyond the cultural realm and conceptualising it as
‘physical capital’. He uses this concept to describe the ways in which the body
can be constructed and moulded to signify power, status and value within social
fields. Shilling (2005) explicitly states what Bourdieu alludes to, which is that the
body has an important bearing on one’s life chances within certain fields and for
one’s accumulation of resources. Moreover, he contends dominant groups have
a greater ability to define their bodies and lifestyle norms as superior and worthy
of reward, while the bodies of ‘others’ are devalued and have a lower exchange
84 Lindsey Garratt

value within fields controlled by the dominant group. Indeed, for Bourdieu (2001),
norms in interactions and tastes within social fields reflect those associated with
the dominant group and become naturalised as the ‘rational’ way of doing things.
The implication of this is that those already powerful are more easily able to
integrate these standards within their bodies and have more incentive to do so as
they value the capitals on offer. In consequence, the bodies they craft and the
attributes they validate become misrecognised as one’s natural talents and
dispositions, and it is this misrecognition that allows them to justify their position
and legitimise their power, as their bodies signal their ‘moral’ superiority to others.
Hence, Bourdieu’s (1984) famous claim that the symbolic does not stand outside
of hierarchy but is woven within it, as the symbolic justifies certain groups’ claim
that they are worthy of power and have the natural right to dominate.

Conclusion
While at a surface level Bourdieu’s analysis of embodied cultural capital can
be accused of similarities to other notions of how the body is denigrated, it
fundamentally differs as he deals with what it is to both have a body that is judged,
and simultaneously somatises this judgement in our being in the world. Bourdieu’s
work helps us locate where racism resides in habitual perception and how this is
constructed, perpetuated and linked to resources and rewards. Embodiment then
is not simply something that demeans ‘other’ groups; but it is our state of exist-
ence in the world and the means by which we come to know what the world is.
When the body is the target for debasement, then, the impact of this goes further
in a Bourdieusian approach, as the body is not a peripheral aspect of ourselves,
it is who we are. It also helps us to differentiate the impact of racism. In my
research the body was always the target of debasement, however differences in
skin colour added another layer of domination to this process, as phenotypical
differences where used to further justify marginalisation as something evident and
inevitable. While this is not to say that racism can only be perpetrated on ‘black’
peoples by ‘white’ peoples, it is to argue that not all racial practices are equivalent
in their impact5 (Song, 2014). The impact of racism goes further in a Bourdieusian
account, as debasing one’s body does not aim at the surface of ourselves but
penetrates to our core (also see Fanon, 1982 [1952]). While the literature in
racialisation and gender studies has usefully analysed the body as an object of
value and deconstructed rationality, the solution offered in these approaches seems
to be to transcend the body; which is impossible. In light of this an anti-racism
strategy that shows how we are all embodied but highlights how structures of
power problematise embodiment for some people more than others seems a better
approach to take.6 Through Bourdieu, we gain the tools to directly deal with the
body in ethnic and racial studies, without slipping into essentialising notions of
the body or of racism. Perhaps with a nuanced use of the concepts of habit, habitus
and hexis we can finally exorcise the ghost from the machine.
 Using Bourdieusian scholarship 85

Notes
1 For a thorough review please see the work of Nick Crossley and Chris Shilling.
2 As defined by the enlightenment tradition.
3 Spaces in which children’s attention was primarily on their peers in lieu of adult
supervision and control.
4 Which presupposes that any act or perception is only intelligent if it is thought about
or reflected upon propositionally. If this were true, however, any thought would be
infinitely regressional, as not only would the act have to be reflected on, but the
reflection itself and then that reflection and so forth.
5 Racism of course must also be understood in the wider global history of power relations
between ‘black’ and ‘white’ peoples.
6 Indeed this also brings into question how racism can be tackled and whether
consciousness raising strategies are effective if they do not tap into the habitual root
of prejudice.

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Chapter 7

Migrating habitus
A comparative case study of Polish
and South African migrants in the UK
Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

Introduction
As two people who have both experienced migration to different societies – one
from Norway to the UK and the other in the opposite direction – we have first-
hand experience of the insecurities and internalised struggles that can occur
when encountering unfamiliar fields. As researchers of migration we are aware
that our habitus is in some way nationally and culturally bounded. We are reflexive
of the negotiations that occur when we draw upon our own capital possession in
new environments to legitimise our belonging. For us, Bourdieu’s theorisation
of habitus has aided us in understanding both how we position ourselves within
these new fields as well as the challenges we face when encountering the un-
familiar and making decisions on whether to adapt to or resist our new host
societies. By extension, we are reflexive and critical of the host societal mechan-
isms of exclusion that impose perceived social ‘hierarchies’ among its population,
in particular the ways in which we might be automatically put in a privileged
position compared to ‘non-white’ migrants and ethnic minorities simply due to
our ‘whiteness’.
The concept of habitus can be read as an attempt on Bourdieu’s part to enable
a sociological account that facilitated understanding of the complex and
multifaceted interplay between actors and structures. That is, habitus can be
interpreted as the learned dispositions actors acquire while growing up, or those
practices and cultural competences that give actors a sense of the position they
occupy in social space. Although habitus is a learned process, the majority of
people tend most of the time to perceive themselves and their own social world
and circles as the ‘natural order of things’, which is taken more or less for granted.
This is a process of the reproduction of actors’ social position. In this respect, the
concept of habitus is a useful analytical tool, which facilitates an exploration of
the way in which socio-economic inequalities are reproduced through the
‘thoughtlessness’ of habits and daily routines, enabling people to act without
having to think and reflect on every move that they make (Bourdieu, 1977).
We suggest that situations whereby actors have experienced a socio-political
transformation in their own society as well as undertaken migration from their
 Migrating habitus 89

societal order to another one, are both examples of situations in which individuals’
habitus will be put to the test with regard to its durability and capability of
withstanding external pressures. Derek Robbins (2005a; 2005b) argues Bourdieu’s
concepts must be embarked upon reflexively by acknowledging the origins of the
concepts’ development. Bourdieu wanted his concepts to be applied and extended
to produce new social understandings. The experiences of migrants and the prior
situation from their original countries – as reflected in the internalisations of their
habitus – relate back to the issues Bourdieu was working on when he was looking
at the social organisation of the Kabyle tribe in Algeria. Bourdieu and Sayad (1964)
reasoned that the prior structure of culture was somehow internalised in the frame
of thinking of the people who migrated or moved from one societal structure to
another within Algeria. It is also worth noting that Algeria was experiencing
political transformations caused by colonial repression and the war of national
liberalisation. Silverstein (2004) argues that this process of uprooting has con-
tinued to inform the historical consciousness of the Kabyle diaspora. Of particular
interest to Bourdieu was the Kabyle’s rootedness in agricultural practices and the
disruptions caused by the influx of capitalism. The Kabyle possessed a ‘structural
nostalgia’ (Silverstein, 2004, p.556). The structural transformations that occurred
in Algeria unsettled the Kabyle’s symbolic system in which they experienced a
process of hysteresis because of habitus-field disjuncture. Due to misrecognition,
the Kabyle’s doxa – meaning their pre-reflexive, intuitive knowledge – was locked
in a cycle of reproduction in which they re-enacted their own practices and social
norms during the transition.
Thus, Bourdieu’s development of his conceptual framework was constructed
under a study that displays many associations to our own investigation. We explore
the processes of adaptation of a set of migrants coming from different political
socio-economic and social-cultural systems that have undergone dramatic
transformations in the last 25 years. Bourdieu’s (2008) concept of a divided or
cleft habitus here becomes useful, as it refers specifically to the mechanisms of
the mind-sets of individuals who have experienced a considerable disjuncture
between their present circumstances and the world in which these individuals were
originally raised and socialised. Sam Friedman in Chapter 8, as well as Nicola
Ingram and Jessie Abrahams in Chapter 10, discuss how agents experience a cleft
habitus as they undergo social mobility. Their case studies offer examples of a
habitus that has to constantly be negotiated with itself as the agents take on multiple
identities in which they interweave between their working-class background and
their present middle-class environments. Kirsty Morrin in Chapter 9 also discusses
habitus-field disjuncture and the hysteresis experienced by educationally
‘successful’ working-class students at an entrepreneurial state secondary school
academy. Morrin argues that this disjuncture can lead to heightened awareness
and reflexivity of an agent’s environment. We argue the result of this disjuncture
can vary according to the specific situation, but may include emotions such as
confusion and despair and countermeasures such as mobilisation (see Bourdieu,
1988; 1979). As Bourdieu understood habitus as a robust state of mind that would
90 Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

not necessarily change overnight, ‘[w]e can always say that individuals make
choices, as long as we do not forget that they do not choose the principals [i.e.
the habitus] of these choices’ (cited in Wacquant, 1989, p.45).
This chapter applies the framework of habitus to the comparative case study
of ‘white’ Polish and predominantly ‘white’ South African migrants living in the
UK. The comparative case study will convey the different values and attitudes
both sets of migrants assign toward ‘whiteness’ and social class in the host society
and the influence of their home societal structures in shaping their views. Although
South African and Polish migrants come from two societies with different
orientations, the common applicability for the study of the migrants’ habitus is
brought into play by the fact that both societies have collapsed and have been in
transition during the last 25 years. Both groups have had the concepts of class
and stratum in their society challenged. Yet, the previous structures of their
respective home societies are shown to still have considerable influence for both
migrant groups. While the South African apartheid state’s authoritarian and
hierarchical racist societal structures perpetuated ‘racial’ inequalities for the
reproduction of white-only domination, Poland’s Soviet communist state denied
the existence of stratification, intentionally shaping industrial working classes not
to be ‘class-conscious’.
We will first briefly outline the comparative features of the South African and
Polish societies as shaped by socio-political and cultural transformations. This will
provide the backdrop against which we will combine our individual materials from
our respective qualitative interview studies in the UK with the two migrant groups
and demonstrate the comparative value of these two studies. By revealing the
comparative insights of the interview material relating to ‘whiteness’ and social
class of the South African and Polish migrants, we argue that a comparison
between migrants from two different societal backgrounds demonstrates the
continuing relevance of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus in understanding migrants’
transnational consciousness as well as their ‘assimilation’ into British society.

The formation of the migrants’ habitus

This section will briefly situate the past structures that influenced the migrants’
habitus in the sense that previous structures from the ‘exporting’ societies (South
Africa and Poland) can become embodied and affect the strategies of adaptation
in the ‘importing’ society (the UK). Although it is around 25 years since apartheid
was dismantled in South Africa and communism collapsed in Poland, all the
participants from the two migrant groups were born under these respective regimes,
as were many of their parents. Bourdieu (1958) pointed out that when there is a
sudden rupture in the social organisation of a social unit, the habitus can often
take time to readjust and ‘catch up’ to these changes. Burawoy and Verdery explain
that ‘[w]hen we speak of transition, we think of a process connecting the past to
the future. What we discover, however, are theories of transition often committed
to some pregiven future or rooted in an unyielding past’ (1999, p.4).
 Migrating habitus 91

With reference to South Africa, the legacy of the ‘white’ apartheid regime
cannot be ignored when trying to understand the habitus of ‘white’ South Africans.
As ‘racial’/ethnic groups were physically and mentally segregated by being
confined to different geographical and social spaces, these divisions permeated
everyday life in apartheid South Africa between 1948 and 1994.1 Although the
‘white’ apartheid rulers argued that this was a ‘natural’ arrangement that would
help ‘non-white’ communities develop ‘on their own terms’ without any
interference from the ‘white’ community, there was nothing ‘natural’ about this
arrangement (Steyn, 2001). It was by and large a construction on the part of the
‘white’ government, whereby ‘the state formalized the category of “white” and
classified those individuals who were light-skinned and straight-haired and had
European ancestors as “white”’ (MacDonald, 2012, p.61, inverted commas in
original). Despite the legacy of the apartheid past and the ‘racial’ injustices inflicted
upon ‘non-white’ people, the introduction of the first democratic elections in South
Africa in 1994 and the election of the African National Congress (ANC) into power
witnessed the post-apartheid state attempting to unify South Africans of all ‘racial’
and ethnic groups. This chapter will show the resilience of the ‘apartheid habitus’
that the interviewed ‘white’ South Africans were exposed to while growing up –
even to the extent that it might follow them for a long time into the post-apartheid
era and despite their relocation to the UK (Sallaz, 2010).
Similarly to South Africa, albeit with class as reference point rather than ‘race’,
Polish society has been profoundly affected by political engineering and top-down
decisions affecting ordinary people’s habitus. By 1946, Poland was under
Soviet military and political control and, two years later, Stalin had eliminated
the nationalist fringe groups within the communist party of the Soviet Bloc.
In Stalinist Poland, these transformations meant that the Soviet-backed Polish
United Workers’ Party would soon control all state institutions. In 1952, a new
constitution declared that industrial workers were to be the principal class in Polish
society in the newly-established Polish People’s Republic. This built the
foundations for a supposedly ‘classless’ society. However, social class still retained
its importance in subtler forms with the reproduction of the class system through
the cultural practices of the Polish intelligentsia (Lukowski & Zawadzki, 2006;
Prażmowska, 2011). Although a new space for the everyday practices and micro-
world of the people was created following the collapse of the state socialist political
and economic structures – with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 19892 – the previous
system continued to influence the emerging new structures as well as people’s
everyday lives. Burawoy and Verdery (1999) argue that the collapse of com-
munism did not eliminate the various legacies inherited from the socialist regime,
the main legacy of which was a cultural persistence of the elites. Drawing on
Bourdieu and Weber, Burawoy (1999) tells us how a world in which strategic
actors occupy a social space possessing different convertible capitals – such as
economic, social and cultural – created a cultural bourgeoisie intelligentsia under
communism. As such, in a post-communist capitalist society it is this cultural
92 Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

bourgeoisie who have used their cultural capital in pursuit of entrepreneurship to

monopolise the creation of economic capital.
In addition to accounting for how the South African and Polish societies
have been in transition, it is important to note that migration intersects with
different ‘regimes’ and is affected by global-level socioeconomic and political
transformations as part of wider global integration. The population of Central
and Eastern Europe that had once been isolated from the global market could
benefit from unrestricted travel after communism collapsed. EU accession in
2004 also gave Accession 8 countries,3 including Poland, EU citizenship and the
rights of permanent residence in Britain. Furthermore, the experienced structural
reform problems associated with rapid integration such as widespread economic
restructuring, privatisation and large flows of foreign direct investment – which
Poland underwent after the collapse of communism – brought with it a
redistribution and polarisation of income, increasing insecurity and unemployment
in the labour market as well as extensive cuts in public welfare in Poland. This
further encouraged migration out of Poland (Hardy, 2009, p.3). In South Africa,
the post-apartheid era, which commenced in 1994, also coincided with a time of
increased globalisation and international mobility. An increase in emigration from
South Africa, including to the UK, was further encouraged by the opening up of
borders as the authoritarian apartheid regime fell, and with the lifting of the
international sanctions that had been imposed upon South Africa and upheld during
apartheid (Nyamnjoh, 2006, Chapter 1).

Habitus: comparing Polish and South African

migrants in the UK
Having drawn out the distinctive as well as overlapping characteristics of the
transforming social structures in South Africa and Poland, we now explore the
data material from around 30 qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with each
migrant group, respectively. This builds on Thatcher’s comparative research in
London and Nottingham exploring Polish migrants’ educational aspirations and
school choice for their children, as well as Halvorsrud’s research on the sense of
belonging of mainly white South African migrants in the UK.

‘Whiteness’
Doing a comparative analysis from the interviews with ‘white’ South African and
Poles allows us to explore the impact of constructions of ‘race’/ethnicity upon the
participants’ identity. The interview findings presented below show that both
‘white’ South African and Polish migrants might draw upon their own ‘whiteness’
in their everyday socialisation patterns in British society as part of a strategy to
ensure their presumed assimilation into a ‘white’ majority context such as the UK.
It is shown that this finding can be somewhat related to both the South African
 Migrating habitus 93

and Polish contextual conditions. In the former case, because of the apartheid
policies of ‘whiteness’ and ‘racial’/ethnic segregation, while in the latter,
interestingly enough, the fact that the participants have not necessarily been overtly
exposed to considerations of ‘race’/ethnicity in Poland ushers in a sense of
insecurity and some level of self-enclosure as they encounter a more multicultural
setting especially in London.
For the Polish participants, their sense of ‘whiteness’ was often linked to broader
constructions of perceived cultural similarity between Polish society and that of
Britain and, in particular, Poland’s historical relationship with Europe.

It is easier to integrate when you are white because anywhere you will have
more or less the same background and even the holidays that we celebrate
together, and the way that you spend your life, what you are interested in,
how you spend your summer holidays or any sort of holidays, Christmas
or Easter – I think if you are white it’s easier to integrate because you have
more in common.
(Michelina, 42, Polish, teaching assistant)

McDowell (2009) argues that there is an implicit difference between the new
wave of EU economic migrants and previous post-war migration in a ‘white’ ethnic
majority society marked by ‘racial’ discrimination such as Britain. As such, this
new wave of migration is less visible; they are ‘white’ and have a European identity
and Christian heritage to draw upon. According to McDowell (2009), ‘whiteness’
can act as a signifier of privilege in the labour market even in ‘low-skilled’ jobs.
It must be remembered that being classified as ‘white’, in global terms, has secured
certain privileges due to the manner in which discourses of ‘whiteness’ have been
reproduced as an ‘invisible’ and taken-for-granted construction or ‘norm’ in
society, as opposed to the manner in which the identities of ‘racial’ and ethnic
minorities are construed as visible and ‘problematic’ (see Bonnett 2004; Dyer
1997).
Eade et al. (2007) found that one of the most significant methods of
classification for Polish migrants in London was the positioning of themselves in
a ‘racial’ and ethnic ‘hierarchy’ as ‘whites’ rather than Poles. Eade et al.’s (2007)
research revealed that 54 per cent believed their ‘whiteness’ to be an important
asset in British society in evading the ‘racial’ discrimination that ‘non-white’
migrants and ethnic minorities suffer. Poles drawing upon their ‘whiteness’ as a
way to counteract the discrimination faced in British society, was a similar finding
in our own research. Franciszka (37), for example, spoke about how her
‘whiteness’ was sometimes an advantage in British society: ‘Many times I was
thinking “oh thank god I’m white” so I don’t have too much troubles, for example
in my first home, the Jewish home, they were not accepting black people’.
Franciszka’s ‘whiteness’ was drawn upon as a way to counteract her down-ward
mobility she had experienced upon migration. Previous to her migration,
Franciszka had a high managerial role in the Polish health care system, but now
94 Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

she was working in the UK as a health care assistant in a nursing home on

minimum wage. Franciszka reflected upon her different experiences in the UK
when people had heard her Polish accent: ‘it is such a shame sometimes there is
a lot of Polish people and sometimes they don’t speak Polish on the street because
we don’t want to let them know we are Polish’. As such, she believed that her
‘whiteness’ was only an asset in British society until people became aware of her
‘Polishness’ and, hence, immigrant status, embodied through other forms such as
her accent.
Being classified as ‘Polish migrants’, they were likely to face the socially
constructed categorisation of ‘not yet “white” enough’ (Bukowczyk, 1996, p.31).
Take for example the case of Roza. Roza returned to university as a mature student
in the UK, attending one of the top institutions in the country and gaining a degree
in Sociology and Social Policy. Previous to this, she owned her own business.
Yet, she talks about how her ‘Polishness ‘ automatically results in native-born
Britons categorising her not only in terms of her immigrant status, but also in terms
of her presumed socio-economic position: ‘I came here and I’m an immigrant and
any time I open my mouth “Where are you from?” “Poland” “Oh, are you a
cleaner?” so this attitude is very much there’ (Roza, 33, Polish, legal and policy
advisor for people on low income).
Fox et al. (2012) examine how Eastern European migration has been ‘racialised’
in immigration policy and in the media. They argue that the nature of institutional
racism is incorporated into immigration policy by implying that ‘whiteness’
equates to inclusion in British society, securing Eastern European migrants
residence status based on the visa-free agreement of EU membership. This is in
sharp contrast to the tabloid media who focus on cultural differences, invoking a
foundation for ‘racial’ differentiation, thereby ensuring that Eastern European
migrants are excluded from the imagined ‘British nation’ in culturally racist ways
despite their ‘whiteness’.
It was found in this study that a ‘racialised’ discourse may be drawn upon as
a reaction to the racism Polish migrants experienced from the ‘white’ British
majority population, as a way to divert attention towards ‘non-white’ migrants
and ethnic minorities. This was particularly revealed when the Polish interviewees
had to engage with host societal institutions such as schools. A number of parents
excluded schools from consideration because they cited the predominant black
pupil intake of these schools. In a handful of cases, parents guestimated the
percentage of the black student body of the schools. The guestimates of black pupil
intake differed between participants, but were often in the 80–90 per cent mark.
In real terms, this was an overestimation when we looked at the actual school
statistics.4 Ryan (2010) and McDowell (2009) have suggested that the relatively
homogenous nature of Eastern European countries such as Poland and their relative
lack of previous encounters with non-Europeans may contribute to racist attitudes
towards ‘non-white’ people. Similarly, our research on ‘white’ South Africans
shows that they subscribed to the idea of a ‘racial hierarchy’ operating in British
society. Take the case of Zarah (21), a student at a high-ranking Russell Group
 Migrating habitus 95

university, whose parents had migrated to Britain with her in 1999. Despite living
in Britain for over 10 years, she still placed herself within the migrant category,
yet spoke about how her ‘whiteness’ was an advantage. The participant stated that
because of her ‘white’ skin colour, ‘I don’t feel like I look any different to other
people’, before adding that ‘I think if you’re not white, your colour immediately
gives you away’.
It is important to point out the disparities between groups of migrants and ethnic
minorities that might subscribe to the idea of ‘whiteness’ as a resource in Britain.
Derron Wallace in Chapter 4 is reflexive of the institutional racism that is
experienced by Black5 Caribbean adolescents in London. His description of
‘Black’ cultural capital as drawn upon by the adolescents offers an innovative
insight into how stigmatised groups can invert the dominant ‘white’ discourses
in British society. Wallace shows how the adolescents’ possession of ‘Black’
cultural capital offers a means of reaffirming and performing their opposition to
the everyday racism as experienced in the dominant spaces of wider British society.
In our own case study, the discrimination experienced by the Polish participants
in Britain made them realise that ‘whiteness’ as a ‘racial’ category did not operate
to every ‘white’ person’s advantage, as did ‘white’ South Africans. Both migrant
groups had to negotiate their inclusion as ‘white’ individuals who are ‘deserving’
of their inclusion in British society. The migrant status both sets of migrants had
attached to them is not necessarily revealed when they carry out their everyday
activities in British society. Being a ‘migrant’ is often impued with ‘racialised’
undertones and associated with being ‘non-white’ in tabloid media and the
mind-set of some. For members of both migrant groups – even for ‘white’ South
Africans among whom many spoke English as their first language – there was a
reported experience of some level of resentment and discrimination while
communicating in British society. This resentment was, as previously discussed
by Polish migrants, also attributed to their non-British ‘accents’. Thus, the migrants
were conscious that they might get ‘exposed’ as migrants in situations which
required communication:

I get quite self-conscious about it, cause I know I’ve got a strong accent . . .
there is a bit of a – I won’t say xenophobia, is not as bad as that – but it is a
bit embarrassing, I guess . . . when you ask someone for something and they,
y’know, you get the feeling that they couldn’t understand a word you just
said.
(Frederick, 35, ‘white’ South African, teacher)

Despite Frederick actually acquiring British citizenship by naturalisation, and

therefore no longer retaining an immigrant status officially speaking, he still felt
that his accent left him open to discrimination. He was also relatively high up in
the socio-economic ‘hierarchy’ in British society, having obtained two Bachelor
degrees and working as a teacher in London – although this did not seem to
96 Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

mediate the possibility of him getting exposed to some level of discrimination

because of his ‘South African accent’.
It should be considered the extent to which the ‘white’ South Africans
reproduced the segregatory logic during apartheid that justified separate spaces
for ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ people and permeated most aspects of South African
everyday life. The setting in which this would most appropriately be assessed in
British society is that of the global and multicultural city of London as a ‘super-
diverse’ environment (Vertovec, 2007) – as opposed to the self-enclosed spaces
that limited such diversity in ‘white-only’ spaces during the apartheid era in South
Africa. Considering informal practices such as socialisation patterns – rather than
simply the participants’ attitudes in isolation from their possible consequences –
speaks directly to the intended application of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. This
is illustrated in the following quote, in which the participant talks about how his
friendship group consisted of mainly ‘white’ South Africans from similar class
background:

If I’m going to be very brutally honest, the friends that I have over here – or
whilst in South Africa – almost all white. I wish it was another way, but it’s
not. I’ve asked myself many times of why this is the case, why I hang out
with them . . . what I mean to say is that race and background are not a
problem for me – if you’re cool I will hang out with you. But it frustrates
me and puzzles me that people I choose to hang out with – almost all the time
– are white South African and of the same background as me.
(Richard, 27, ‘white’ South African, freelance journalist)

As immigration and citizenship policies favour ‘white’ South Africans through

ancestry and socio-economic status, around 90 per cent of South Africans who
reside in the UK can be classified as ‘white’ (see Crawford, 2011) – as opposed
to less than 9 percent among the population in South Africa itself (Statistics South
Africa, 2012). Hence, some of the ‘white’ South African participants were quick
to point out that it is only ‘common sense’ that another ‘white’ South African is
easier to locate than a ‘non-white’ South African in the UK. However, this would
not fully explain why this research found that the majority of ‘white’ South
Africans interviewed did not socialise with British-born black and ethnic minorities
as well as black South Africans from the same social background, despite some
of these participants residing in the UK for over 20 years. It may be noteworthy
to bring in the example of Thulasizwe – a highly-educated black South African
working in the higher ranks of the civil service in Britain, who has been
disappointed by his encounters with ‘white’ South Africans in the UK:

Your white people here and your black people are like this [indicates
separation with his hands] . . . And again, it’s that apartheid system that’s
causing that. It is that thing that is still causing that here. You find here, [white
South Africans] doing their own thing, they are staying in certain areas. They
 Migrating habitus 97

are opening these bars and they’re calling them all sorts of names . . . there’s
a bar called Zulu Bar. And you, if you go – I’m a Zulu myself – and you
would think that if it’s called a Zulu Bar, then I would find other people like
myself. You go there, you find you are the only one of this pigmentation.
And people still look at you as if you are lost – you should be going
somewhere. Which would have been the case then [during the apartheid era].
(Thulasizwe, 59, black South African, civil servant for a
South African organisation in the UK)

Here we see that despite Thulasizwe’s class position, he still feels excluded by
‘white’ South Africans. This, to some extent, can be linked to the ‘racial’ divisions
that existed during the apartheid system. During the regime, the upper echelons
of society were ‘white’ – as they still mostly are today due to social reproduction.
This may explain Thulasizwe’s account of feeling like a fish out of water because
of the response he received from ‘white’ South Africans in upmarket bars aimed
at affluent South Africans. It is interesting that Thulasizwe’s description of his
life in South Africa was one of happiness and comfort – despite his relatively
underprivileged upbringing during apartheid – and that his justification for coming
to Britain centred around the experience of going abroad. On the other hand, the
majority of the ‘white’ South Africans interviewed for this research (who had come
from privileged upbringings) spoke of ‘fleeing’ from South Africa to escape
violence and affirmative action policies. By associating only with ‘white’ South
Africans, they build enclaves based on ethnic classifications over that of social
class – although we recognise social class is still very important to their friendship
formations.

A ‘classed’ habitus?
In spite of some marked similarities in the experiences of the two migrant groups,
the typical ‘classed’ circumstances for members of the respective groups reveal
some qualitative and interesting differences/tensions. It is revealed that the two
migrant groups benefit somewhat differently from the intersection of their
‘racialised’ and ‘classed’ dispositions while negotiating their inclusion in British
society.
Among both groups, it seemed important for the participants to establish that
they are ‘hard workers’ and are not claiming umemployment welfare while in the
UK. This language could be linked to their migration to a British society in which
neo-liberal undertones place considerable emphasis on the requirement that
migrants should work in order to be ‘deserving’ of their residence in the country.
However, we believe that particularly in the Polish case it is also relevant to trace
such discourse back to their former society when ruled under communism. Joanka
was a Polish participant from one of the poorest parts of Nottingham, with higher
than average rates of unemployment in the UK. Her husband was a building
labourer and she worked as a cleaner. Like many other Polish participants in the
98 Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

research, she spoke of how Polish people are ‘hard working’ and saw the
unemployment of her neighbours as a cultural rather than a structural issue. A
person’s work status was for Joanka linked to their ‘worth’, reputation and social
‘desirability’, in similarity to the majority of Polish participants:

I know my neighbours . . . no good family no working, they get only benefits

and want every time more, more, more, so jealous if we have something, but
we are really, really hard working. If I want to buy a car I need to be hard
working . . . That is why sometimes I don’t understand how he thinks. Don’t
want to go to work, what for? She has the same mother, no working. Nobody
give me, I need to go to work . . . But sometimes I speak – it’s a Polish shop
and this gentleman lives here for 30 years, he’s Polish but he lives here and
he said ‘Believe me, this is a no good family who live on benefits, from
grandfather, father, son, grandson’ they live only for benefits.
(Joanka, 36, Polish, cleaner)

Stenning (2005) tells us that when Poland fell under Soviet control, there was
much effort to produce a discursive construction of a socialist working class.
Within this discourse was ‘hard work’ and the political value attached to such
work. This construction was assisted by propaganda of the ‘hero worker’.
Particularly important to the discursive construction of the working class was
industrialisation and urbanisation, which was seen to produce an ‘urban’ working
class. Significantly, their status was established on their relationship to production.
Work status and workplace also constructed workers’ social lives. These workers
developed a new sense of identity, one that was collective. These large-scale
transformations and the creation of new social groups meant that working-class
communities became the cornerstone of the socialist regimes. From the conception
of a socialist working class, the political structure in socialist regimes necessitated
its own legitimation by constructing the working class as ‘moral’ (Stenning, 2005).
In the case of ‘white’ South Africans, a ‘hard working’ rhetoric also seemed
to have manifested itself. Although class never received the same attention as
‘race’/ethnicity during apartheid South Africa, a classed discourse can be seen in
the way in which ‘white’ South Africans take comfort in situating their
achievements in the UK within a ‘hard working’ ethic. This, they claim, has been
acquired as a consequence of the ‘tough’ conditions they grew up in. This discourse
fails to mention how conditions were generally much tougher for ‘non-white’
people during apartheid South Africa. Take for example Patrick (35), a wealthy
‘white’ South African entrepreneur with several businesses in the UK and dual
citizenship (British and South African). He acknowledges his parents were middle
class, but still believed he had to fight for everything he had in life:

I came here [to the UK] with no university education, with no contacts . . .
And I battled, I absolutely battled. But my motivation was there, and it was
to such a degree that nothing was gonna stop me . . . if you want it bad enough,
 Migrating habitus 99

you will be successful. That’s why I think a lot of South Africans have been
successful over here [in the UK], because in South Africa, if you don’t work,
you don’t eat.

Although many ‘white’ South Africans like Patrick could draw upon their ancestral
ties to gain citizenship in the UK, there were others who had to apply for
citizenship. Yet, members of both sets of ‘white’ South Africans showed
resentment towards the visa-free access granted to EU-migrants. These participants
would claim that, unlike EU-migrants, ‘white’ South Africans were supposedly
not claiming any welfare, but rather ‘contributing’ to British society:

[I]t irritates me that you see people coming in here [to the UK] . . . they can
live off the dole . . . it’s so much easier for other nationalities to come in when,
y’know, we [South Africans] have to work. Obviously we don’t mind
working. But we have to work and pay all this money to, y’know, apply for
citizenship or just to stay in the country.
(Cathy, 29, ‘white’ South African, travel agent)

When asked to give any concrete examples of the ‘other nationalities’ that she
was loosely referring to as ‘abusing’ the British welfare system, this participant
mentioned Poles in particular. Eastern European migrants such as Poles may be
particularly convenient targets, as the majority of them are working in lower-paid
employment (Fox et al., 2012). Some ‘white’ South Africans may buy into the
myth that because of the position many Eastern Europeans occupy in the British
labour market, they are not ‘contributing’ as much to the British economy as
themselves.
This example shows how perceived social ‘hierarchies’ can be inverted. While
Polish migrants used their ‘whiteness’ in an attempt to gain advantage in British
society against black and ethnic minority groups, they increasingly become aware
that they are excluded from the ‘white’ middle classes. In turn, they juxtapose
themselves against the ‘white’ unemployed working classes to ‘justify’ their
residence in Britain. Similarly, feeling disadvantaged by increasing anti-
immigration discourse in Britain and experiencing the discrimination of the points-
based immigration system, ‘white’ South Africans make a distinction between
themselves and other migrant groups – who have ‘benefitted’ from EU-citizenship
– as not ‘deserving’ of free migration movement due to language and cultural
differences as well as belonging to lower socio-economic categorisations.
What about ‘white’ South Africans who are situated in the lower echelons of
the British labour market themselves? Interestingly, the interview data indicated
that some ‘white’ South African migrants occupying lower socio-economic
positions engaged in the scapegoating of Eastern Europeans. These ‘white’ South
Africans are tending to buy into an imagined ‘hierarchy of nations’, emphasising
the British colonial/cultural connections of South Africa. The advantage of being
‘white’ South African in Britain would appear to be particularly important for those
100 Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

in lower class positions who have fewer other resources to draw upon than ‘white’
South Africans situated in higher-class positions. ‘White’ South Africans usually
escape the adverse representations that Eastern Europeans are subject to in political
and media rhetoric. Hence, ‘white’ South Africans in lower-class positions would
be especially interested in contributing to the stereotypical notions of Eastern
European migrants in order to perpetuate this form of discrimination, rather than
getting any distorted attention on themselves during a time of recession (see
Sveinsson and Gumuschian, 2008).
Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1986) three forms of capital – social, economic and
cultural – is helpful in investigating the Polish participants’ comprehension of
social class and divisions in British society. Moore (2008, p.102) tells us that
Bourdieu extends the sense in which these three different forms of capitals can
be used as part of a broader system of exchange in different fields. The possession,
or the accumulation, of the different capitals is what defines the habitus of various
social groups, in particular the acquisition of symbolic capital. We pointed out
earlier that one legacy of the Soviet communist ideology was that of a ‘classless
society’. Although many of the Polish participants in this study acknowledged the
existence of divisions during communism, they nevertheless pursued their
educational aspirations for their children in the UK without comprehending the
real structural barriers that they faced. A common narrative was that ‘as long as
you work hard, you can achieve anything’. Their knowledge of strategies, ‘playing
the game’ and drawing on their cultural capital highlighted intergenerational social
reproductions sometimes across several generations. Cultural capital refers to
several things, including educational qualifications and knowledge, social
confidence, assertiveness and possession of cultural goods. It can also exist in the
embodied state in which agents’ dispositions can give clues to their social
background (Bourdieu, 1986).
The interviews revealed that lack of sufficient economic capital inhibited the
pursuit of cultural and educational capital, placing their children at a disadvantage
within a system they considered to be ‘meritocratic’. The lingering ‘classless’
discourse also resulted in participants who were in a more advantaged socio-
economic position in Britain sometimes being more likely to complain about
‘disadvantages’. They were unable to position themselves within the social class
‘hierarchy’ operating in British society. Even those from the intelligentsia and
former Polish aristocracy would define themselves as ‘working class’. However,
there was also a widely held acknowledgement that divisions in both the home
and host societies could be predicated on an individual’s holding of cultural capital,
and that cultural capital to the Polish participants was sometimes seen as more
important than economic capital. This, in part, may explain their positive attitude
towards education.
Salomea from London was a third generation graduate from former Polish
aristocracy. She was in the top socio-economic positions as categorised by the
Standard Occupational Classification (2000). Despite both sides of her family
having their wealth and assets seized under communism, their cultural capital
 Migrating habitus 101

continued to be reproduced. Salomea was given private Spanish and French lessons
during the communist period. Salomea was able to reflect on her own social
reproduction, in which once her family’s wealth and title were taken away by the
Communist Party, her intergenerational transition of the former family’s social
positional advantage was transmitted through education:

Over here [UK] we’ve got a social circle, for example you belong to . . .
depending on how much money you’ve got, you live in the right area, you
send your children to the right school, it doesn’t really depend that much what
you represent with yourself intellectually, you need to be fun and so on, have
money and you will be accepted. Where I’ve been raised and brought up
[Poland], you know, my parents for example were with higher education, they
were intellectuals, they would have friends from similar intellectual circles,
next door you could have the richest guy in the world but if he was not
educated and he made his fortune in, I don’t know, plumbing gadgets, he
would not be accepted in that circle because the conversation with him apart
from the odd job would not be at a certain level.
(Salomea, 40, Polish, investment banker)

We can see how Salomea continues her intergenerational transmission of cultural

capital through her son who attends one of the top public selective junior schools
in the country and, despite being only 11 and a half years old, speaks English,
Polish and French fluently, as well as learning Italian, Latin and Spanish. When
Salomea was asked about the aspirations she has for her son, she said that he has
just taken a pre-selection exam securing a place at another top private secondary
school, which he will attend at 13 years of age.
Oliver and O’Reilly (2010) have explored migration to so-called ‘classless’
societies in which they applied a Bourdieusian framework. Looking at British
migration to Spain, they explored the ways in which class was articulated under
new conditions and the extent to which the migrants’ habitus re-established itself
upon encounters with new social fields. Narratives of different types of British
migrants in Spain often took on a derogatory discourse replicating social class
divisions in Britain. The reproduction of dominant cultural capital and distinctions
retained greater value, especially as economic status could be disguised or in
some cases seen as ‘irrelevant’. Working-class migrants were often positioned
as ‘uncultured’ Brits who were ‘ignorant’ of Spanish lifestyles and ‘unwilling’ to
learn. In a new setting that was considered so-called ‘egalitarian’, Oliver and
O’Reilly illustrated how Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital, habitus and
distinction reproduced social stratification. Of particular importance was the
process of distinction and the recognition of habitus. In the struggle for power in
new fields, the habitus helps to position others. As they state, ‘[a] habitus finds
similar habitus; one is thus attracted to those of one’s own class, to avoid feeling
like fish out of water’ (2010, p.22).
102 Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

Compare Salomea’s account to other participants’ lack of comprehension when

it came to knowing how to ‘play the game’ in terms of education. They believed
in ‘meritocracy’, stating that if their children really wanted to go to Oxford, for
example, they could. Lopez Rodriguez (2010) has suggested that Polish mothers’
‘meritocratic’ perspective could possibly be linked back to their own experience
of being at school both under the communist regime and in a time of transition.
Szelenyi (1982) argued that antagonism existed between classes or strata in Eastern
European state societies and that there was a class dichotomy between the working
class and intelligentsia. The intelligentsia was advantaged by their knowledge and
cultural resources; they understood how to ‘play the system’. The intelligentsia
would not recognise itself as a class and promoted the ideology of ‘classlessness’.
Yet, its interest in the social structure and system was a pre-condition for the
creation of a class consciousness (Szelenyi, 1982).
There were also variations in how ‘white’ South Africans from different social
class backgrounds viewed divisions in British society. Caroline left school at 15
in South Africa without any qualifications. She was currently working in a call
centre in a disadvantaged UK town. Like the lack of acknowledgement of social
class divisions expressed by the Polish migrants occupying lower socio-economic
positions, Caroline saw these divisions as ‘naturalised’ human behaviour despite
being excluded from certain sections of society herself:

Social class, yeah. I think there’s very much still cliques. In my office as such
anyway. Y’know, the people upstairs who are the managers and the directors,
they are still all cliquey. They’ll have their birthday parties together and they’ll
have their little do’s on their own and they’ll go lunching together or they’ll
go Christmas-shopping together. And we won’t be included on the first floor.
But, y’know, I think that’s people in general. I don’t think that’s a British or
South African thing. I think that’s just life, that’s humans. Y’know, if you
think that someone’s below you, you’re not gonna mingle with them. Simple
as, you’re gonna try and mix with your own.
(Caroline, 36, ‘white’ South African)

Compare this with Frederick. He is highly educated, works in a traditional middle-

class occupation and possesses a more legitimate form of cultural capital. He is
aware of and observes divisions every day in British society:

In the term of stereotype and et cetera, race et cetera . . . I think it works very
negatively on the pupils I teach, because they, many of them don’t see a future
for themselves, because they live in some high-rise tower block . . . their
brothers working in Sainsbury’s and, y’know, Rymans – got menial jobs. They
don’t understand becoming investment bankers or going to Oxford and
Cambridge and like that, whatever. And it’s not entirely their fault . . . society
has brought it.
(Frederick, 35, ‘white’ South African, teacher)
 Migrating habitus 103

It is telling that what Frederick is describing here would to many be divisions

based on social class. Yet, Frederick still brings ‘race’ into his narrative. By
looking at how both ‘white’ South African and Polish migrants in Britain perceive
issues of ‘race’ and social class, we have shown the importance of intersectionality.
Each society gave more importance to one form of social division over the other.
Yet, there has always been a cross-over between ‘race’ and social class that is
informing the participants’ views.

Conclusion
In this chapter, we have suggested that situations whereby actors have experienced
a socio-political transformation in their own society, as well as undertaken
migration from their societal order to another one, are both examples of situations
in which individuals’ habitus will be put to the test with regard to its durability
and capability of withstanding external pressures. Through the comparative case
study of ‘white’ South African and Polish migrants in the UK, we have shown
that the habitus is still historically specific and connected to a particular cultural,
political and economic context – that of migrants’ respective ‘home societies’.
When a country experiences an abrupt change of economic and political systems
such as with the collapse of communism (in the case of Poland) and the collapse
of apartheid (in the case of South Africa), the psychosocial cultural aspects of the
nation’s collective habitus takes some time to ‘catch up’ with these socio-structural
changes. Even when combined with the process of migration, the two sets of
migrants’ national habitus may remain relatively intact – although it is important
to acknowledge that the habitus may, of course, transform and adapt over time.
Through exploring two sets of migrants’ experiences of adaption using
Bourdieu, we have become more reflexive about how we deal with our everyday
encounters in our host societies. Actions that would seem logical to ourselves may
cause confusion and bemusement to others around us who are ‘naturalised’ into
the cultural norms of the host society. Our enduring norms – that we bring with
us as migrants – are used when mitigating ourselves, sometimes to frustrating ends.
In order to integrate, we find our opposition to the unfamiliar weakens over time
and our habitus slowly transcends, but never changes completely. As such, we
become strangers in our home societies while not being fully accepted as a ‘native’
in our host society. We also recognise that our ‘whiteness’ and high levels of
education mean that some ‘natives’ are more ‘accepting’ of us than of the
‘traditional’ post-colonial migrants who preceded a new wave of European
migration. There is always an awkward moment at the dinner party when the topic
of immigration comes up and people feel the need to turn to us in the respective
host societies and state ‘I don’t mean you’ – meaning that we somehow are more
‘tolerated’ than other types of migrants. For us, Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus
and capitals have aided in our understanding of not only our own position, but
also that of other migrants as outlined in this chapter.
104 Jenny Thatcher and Kristoffer Halvorsrud

Notes
1 Although the peace process was initiated in 1990, many scholars assert that apartheid
in South Africa did not come to a formal end before the first democratic elections in
1994 were being held (Neocosmos, 2006, p.20).
2 The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 saw the era of Soviet control over Eastern Europe
dismantle. A Solidarity-led coalition government had already been formally elected in
Poland in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. On the first of January 1990,
Poland was integrated into the international market through financial restructuration
agreements with the IMF (Swain & Swain, 2003).
3 In 2004, citizens of eight countries joined the EU (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary,
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia).
4 It should be noted that the longer Polish participants had been residing in Britain, the
less ‘racialised’ discourse was used and, in many cases, Polish participants were
reflexive and embarrassed of the racist views they first held when they came to Britain.
5 We have capitalised Black in the description of Wallace’s work. This subscribes to his
usage of Black as capitalised.

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Chapter 8

The limits of capital gains

Using Bourdieu to understand social
mobility into elite occupations
Sam Friedman

My mental tussles with the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu began long before I actually
knew who he was. In school my best friend was a boy called Kieran whose parents
came from a working-class coal mining family in South Wales. Kieran’s parents
had gone on to become successful ballroom dancers and later started a dance
school that expanded into a profitable chain. When Kieran and I were 14, his
parents decided to move the family from their modest new-build terrace on the
outskirts of Bristol into a large five-bed town house on my leafy road in the city
centre. But the thing that always perplexed me was that although Kieran’s family
had the money to move into my area, they never seemed comfortable in their new
social habitat. Dinner table conversations continually revealed frustrations with
unfriendly, uptight neighbours and their struggles to make a dance school work
in the local area.
Certainly, Kieran’s parents were different to everyone else on my street. They
had different accents, wore different clothes, decorated their home differently and
drove a different car. But at root Kieran’s parents were lovely, sociable people
who had done well and simply wanted to enjoy their upward mobility in a new
area with new friends. Yet because their cultural identity was rooted in their
working-class upbringing, their neighbours never fully accepted them. To me,
the cultural differences were exciting – my parents would never let me eat at
McDonalds, have TV on at the dinner table, or go on beach holidays to the Costa
Del Sol. What I came to realise, though, was that it was precisely these practices
that marked my friend’s parents out as different, as being less ‘sophisticated’, as
somehow having ‘bad’ taste. I even remember my Mum, normally a bastion of
liberal tolerance, struggling to conceal her revulsion as Kieran’s mum, Pam,
showed us around their new living room, complete with zebra-skin rug and
imitation crystal chandelier. Why did she continue to dodge Pam’s invitations to
the pub, I recall asking innocently one day: ‘It’s hard to explain, Sam, I just don’t
feel we have much in common . . .’
Now, as a teenager, this snobbery not only struck me as incredibly unfair but
it also made me acutely aware of the often shadowy role that culture plays in
marking out social class in Britain. It taught me that while nobody ever seems to
talk about social class (it was never once mentioned in relation to Kieran’s parents)
108 Sam Friedman

its influence is nonetheless everywhere we look – in the way we speak, in the way
we act, in what we like; in other words, in most of the things that we think of as
natural and take for granted.
A few years later, during the second year of my sociology degree at the
University of Edinburgh, I was introduced to Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). As I
read, adolescent memories flooded back. Bourdieu’s analysis resonated deeply.
It helped me make sense of my own biography – not just in terms of my friendship
with Kieran and his family but also regarding my own privilege, my own ‘natural’
cultural confidence, and my own easy passage through the education system
(compared to the struggles of many working-class friends).
Fast forward 10 years and the fascination with Bourdieusian social theory has
only deepened. My PhD, for example, sought to engage directly with Bourdieu’s
work on cultural consumption, examining comedy taste and sense of humour as
emerging sources of cultural capital (Friedman, 2014a). However, in this chapter,
I want to explore more recent work that has brought me back to the experiences
of people – such as Kieran’s parents – who experience upward mobility in
contemporary Britain.
The concept of social mobility has become one of the key motifs of the current
political era, with politicians of left and right now championing it as a core policy
objective (Payne, 2013). Yet most political debate and sociological research is
focused on rates of social mobility, conceived as the absolute or relative numbers
of those entering an occupational class different to that of their parents (Bukodi
et al., 2014; Milburn, 2013). To me, though, this emphasis on rates of occupational
entry obscures a pivotal dimension of social mobility; progress within occupational
groups. As the example of Kieran’s parents illustrates, the upwardly mobile may
well be successful in becoming professionals or entrepreneurs, but that doesn’t
necessarily mean they go on to achieve the highest levels of success, seniority or
prestige. Indeed, they may – like Kieran’s parents – continue to face powerful
barriers once they’ve arrived at their destination class.
This chapter attempts to address this question of intra-occupational disadvantage
by bringing together findings from two of my own research projects. In them, I
have attempted to move beyond social mobility as occupational ‘access’ and
instead provide a more Bourdieusian understanding of social mobility. The chapter
proceeds in three steps. First, I outline what I mean by a Bourdieusian approach
to social mobility and explain the way in which I draw upon Bourdieu’s main
thinking tools. Second, I seek to foreground the role that capitals play in structuring
a person’s ongoing mobility trajectory. Drawing on results from the BBC Great
British Class Survey (GBCS), I demonstrate that even when those from working-
class backgrounds enter elite occupations, they are less likely to accumulate the
same economic, cultural and social capital as those from privileged backgrounds.
In particular, I find that the mobile have considerably lower incomes, pointing
toward the kind of ‘glass ceiling’ normally associated with women and ethnic
minorities. Third, I aim to deepen this statistical analysis by using qualitative
interviews to explore the experience of social mobility. In particular, I probe the
 The limits of capital gains 109

social, cultural and emotional challenges the upwardly mobile face within elite
occupations and how this might prevent them from achieving the highest incomes
and seniority.

Bourdieu and social mobility

Although hugely influenced by Bourdieu, all of my work to date has stressed that
Bourdieu’s thinking needs renewal and extension, especially in light of historical
shifts that have taken place since his death (see Friedman, 2014a, pp.169–172). I
would also argue, alongside others (Bennett, 2007; Lawler, 1999), that social
mobility remained a rather undertheorised area of Bourdieu’s analysis. This view
is normally associated with a critique of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, which many
argue is almost antithetical to social mobility (Goldthorpe, 2007; De Landa, 2006;
King, 2000). It is certainly true that Bourdieu (1984, p.101) saw the dispositions
flowing from primary socialisation as so robust that in the vast majority of cases
the habitus stayed unified over the lifecourse, meaning those with strong initial
reserves of economic, social and cultural capital were statistically bound to
accumulate further and vice versa (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.133).
However, what many of Bourdieu’s detractors fail to recognise is that his
conception of social space was constructed along three dimensions – volume of
capital, composition of capital and ‘change in these properties over time’
(Bourdieu, 1984, p.114). Thus, he had a theoretical conception of social mobility
– albeit a somewhat limiting one – as a ‘band of more or less probable trajectories’
based on one’s ‘volume of inherited capital’. In this way, contrary to his critics,
Bourdieu acknowledged that the dispositional architecture of the habitus was subject
to change, according to both ‘new experiences’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p.161) and also
via conscious, intentional self-fashioning or pedagogic effort. Yet, he saw the nature
of this change as gradual and fundamentally limited by the childhood dispositions
that always act as the ‘scaffolding’ of habitus (Wacquant, 2013, p.6). In other words,
primary dispositions are ‘long-lasting; they tend to perpetuate, to reproduce
themselves, but they are not eternal’ (Bourdieu, 2005, p.45).
In later works (2004; 1999; 1998), though, Bourdieu did (briefly) acknowledge
that long-range mobility was more problematic for habitus. This was perhaps most
powerfully illustrated in his own reminiscences in a Sketch for a Self-Analysis
(2004). Raised by an uneducated postal worker and his wife, Bourdieu experienced
extraordinary long-range upward mobility that eventually took him to the Chair
of the prestigious Collège de France. However, the psychological price of this
movement, he argued, was a painful feeling of double isolation from the fields of
his origin and destination social class. At once the ‘self-made Parvenu’, forever
lacking the embodied cultural capital to successfully acculturate into elite circles,
Bourdieu also described an enduring disdain for a ‘success that [he] conceived as
a treachery’ of his roots (Bourdieu, 2004, p.109). In other work (1999, pp.508–13)
he developed this thinking further, noting that the limbo experienced by the
extreme upwardly mobile (like himself) had profound psychic implications.
110 Sam Friedman

Drawing on the psychoanalytic notion of ‘splitting of the self’ (Steinmetz, 2006;

Fourny, 2000), he noted that such hysteresis between habitus and field produced
a painfully fragmented self, a habitus clivé ‘torn by contradiction and internal
division’ (Bourdieu, 2004, p.161). Ingram and Abrahams further discuss the
concept of habitus clivé in relation to social mobility in Chapter 10, highlighting
the pain of this process for the socially mobile working classes as well as
examining the potentially creative aspects of habitus change. Considering the
disjuncture between habitus and field and the resulting hysteresis it can produce
allows social mobility to be unpicked as a concept that is neither straightforwardly
positive nor negative, as Morrin (Chapter 9) also shows in her work on unresolved
class hauntings that endure through the mobility process.
While this notion of habitus clivé is forcefully invoked in Bourdieu’s own self-
analysis, long-range social mobility remains a concept only fleetingly explored in
his empirical work. This was perhaps because its occurrence was relatively rare
in 1970s and 1980s France, and therefore instances like his own could be
interpreted as ‘exceptions that proved the rule’ in terms of the general stability of
the primary habitus. However, in contemporary Britain, successive nationally
representative studies (Bukodi et al., 2014; Bennett et al., 2008) indicate that long-
range social mobility is more commonplace.1 For some (Goldthorpe, 2007) this
is therefore a fatal blow to the concept of habitus, fundamentally problematising
its promise of a secure unity of dispositions over the lifecourse.
Yet, as noted in the introduction, conventional measures of social mobility tend
to focus on occupational ‘access’2 and fail to consider how the upwardly mobile
progress within occupations. Indeed it is here that I believe Bourdieu’s trilogy of
key concepts – capital, field and habitus – may be useful for providing a more
nuanced understanding of mobility trajectories. A focus on capital and field – as
I will shortly illustrate – allows us to see that even when the upwardly mobile do
enter elite occupational fields, they generally fail to accumulate the same stocks
of economic, cultural and social capital as those from privileged backgrounds.
Habitus then helps us to unpick some of the reasons why. Not only does the
durability of primary dispositions help to explain potentially debilitating feelings
of insecurity among the upwardly mobile, but it also suggests that the mobile may
be ambivalent about reaching ‘the top’ and often associate success with anxiety
over abandoning familial ties and class-cultural origins.

Uncovering the ‘class’ ceiling 3

The 2011 BBC Great British Class Survey (N =161,000) provides a unique data
set from which to begin a Bourdieusian analysis of social mobility. It provides
both detailed measures of cultural, social and economic capital and, while its self-
selecting sample resulted in substantial skews, the main groups that were
overrepresented are precisely those apposite for a more detailed examination of
upward social mobility: the occupationally successful. Thus, drawing on the
unusually large GBCS sample of respondents in elite4 NS-SEC 1 occupations
 The limits of capital gains 111

(N = 40,077), I begin my analysis by investigating whether stocks of capital differ

according to respondents’ social origins.5
Before doing this, though, it is briefly worth outlining the measurement of the
capitals that can be seen in contrast to Burke’s measurement of capital (Chapter
2) from a small-scale qualitative approach. In terms of cultural capital, I use
two measures. Following Savage et al.’s (2013) example, I first measure cultural
capital in terms of engagement with ‘legitimate culture’ (i.e., classical music,
attending stately homes, museums, art galleries, jazz, theatre, and French
restaurants).6 However, using a more conventional Bourdieusian (1984) frame,
I also look at cultural capital in terms of educational attainment – specifically
whether respondents have or have not attended university. In terms of social capital
I draw on questions based on the Lin position generator (Lin et al., 2001), which
asks whether the respondent knows someone socially in each of 34 occupations.
Each of these are scored with the widely validated Cambridge Social Interaction
and Stratification (CAMSIS) scale and the mean status score used as my measure
of social capital. For economic capital, I look at three measures assessing house-
hold income, household savings and house price.
Table 8.1 demonstrates how the capital scores of respondents in elite
occupations vary according to their social origin. This shows that stocks of cultural,
social and economic capital are all considerably higher among those from higher
professional and managerial backgrounds. Beginning with cultural capital, Table
8.1 shows that those from privileged backgrounds tend to engage more in highbrow

Table 8.1 Capitals by origin in elite occupations

Senior Lower Intermediate Manual Average all

managers managers and and in elite
and and technical never- occupations
traditional modern occupations worked
professions professions
Average income £71,090 £60,277 £56,955 £56,228 £63,834
Average savings £58,085 £45,574 £46,956 £44,558 £50,975
Average house value £243,883 £209,707 £211,894 £200,505 £223,545
Score on legitimate 14.3 13.5 13.1 12.7 13.7
cultural participation
Average score of contacts 55.1 53.2 51.0 49.5 53.3
Went to independent/ 33% 17% 9% 7% 22%
fee-paying school
Attended Oxford or 11% 8% 4% 4% 8%
Cambridge
Has undergraduate 87% 84% 77% 75% 83%
degree (or more)
N 16,841 12,200 7,079 3,959 40,077
112 Sam Friedman

culture and are more likely to have a degree than respondents who have been
upwardly socially mobile. It also illustrates that they are more likely to have
benefited from elite educational pathways, with a considerably higher proportion
educated privately and/or attending Oxford or Cambridge universities. In terms
of social capital they also have higher status social contacts. Finally, in terms of
economic capital, Table 8.1 illustrates that those intergenerationally stable in elite
occupations have on average £12,000 more in savings than their mobile
counterparts, their houses are worth at least £33,000 more on average and their
average incomes are between £11,000 and £15,000 higher.
Many of these differences in capitals point towards exactly the kind of
intergenerational transmission of advantage highlighted by Bourdieu (1986). For
example, parents in higher managerial and professional employment are likely to
have higher status contacts themselves, which in turn they can directly pass on to
their children. It is also probable they will transmit highbrow tastes, as well as
inculcating valuable cultural dispositions such as aesthetic ‘disinterestedness’
(Bourdieu, 1984). Similarly, it may be that the greater savings and more valuable
homes of the stable are the direct result of inheritance and/or informal ‘gifting’
of economic capital from parents who, because of their own occupational
position, have greater economic resources (Piketty, 2014).
Yet processes of transmission or inheritance cannot explain the considerable
differences in income demonstrated in Table 8.1. How, then, can we explain the
fact that within elite occupations the upwardly mobile earn significantly less than
those from intergenerationally stable backgrounds? In order to disentangle
potential sources of this income disparity, Table 8.2 shows the results of a series
of regressions of income among those in elite occupations.7 Model 1 in Table 8.2
shows a simple base model where household income is predicted by the
respondent’s education (more or less than an undergraduate degree, with
undergraduate degree the reference group), race/ethnicity (whites as reference
group), gender (men as reference group) and NS-SEC category (higher managers
as reference group), age, region (London and the Southeast vs the rest of the UK)
and whether or not they are living with a partner (single people as reference group).
All of these factors are clearly strongly associated with household income, and
serve as controls in the next three models: in other words, any further differences
by origin are above and beyond a ‘London effect’, age differences and differences
in educational qualifications. Adding the respondents’ class origin to the model
shows that origins strongly predict income even net of these controls; those whose
parents were not traditional professionals or higher managers have incomes
between £8178 and £10,760/year lower than otherwise-similar people in other
elite occupations.8
Next I add two types of elite schooling: having attended a private school, and
having attended Oxford or Cambridge, or one of the other Russell Group
universities. Both of these also strongly and substantively predict income;
respondents who attended private schools have on average £9,570 more income
than those who are otherwise similar but did not; those who attended Oxbridge
 The limits of capital gains 113

Table 8.2 Regression of income for all in elite occupations

Models 1 2 3 4
Education (vs undergraduate degree)
Postgraduate degree 4,645 4,140 3,017 768
A-levels or less education –8,367 –7,552 –4,997 –1,101
NS-SEC (vs 1.1)
Higher professionals (ns-sec 1.2) –19,337 –18,460 –18,231 –16,998
Lower managers (ns-sec 2) –23,440 –22,132 –21,673 –19,810
Age 117 143 158 –0
Partnered 17,549 17,546 17,892 16,930
Not white 256 138 –95 –14
Female –4,522 –4,658 –4,299 –6,338
Region (vs rest of UK)
London 23,302 22,391 20,498 16,927
Southeast 10,523 10,029 9,479 8,067
Parents (vs higher mgmt and trad. profs)
Modern prof. or lower mgmt –8,178 –6,517 –5,191
Technical or intermediate –10,721 –7,997 –4,863
Routine, semi-routine, never worked –10,760 –7,801 –3,164
University attended (versus all others)
Oxford or Cambridge 9,570 5,732
Any other Russell Group 4,412 2,470
Private/fee-paying school 9,507 6,795
Legitimate cultural participation 23,879
(cultural capital)
Mean of contacts’ scores (social capital) 77,323
Constant 69,475 73,564 54,550 3,599
N 38,973 38,973 38,973 38,973
r2 0.134 0.146 0.159 0.194
Adjusted r2 0.134 0.146 0.158 0.193
Source: The Great British Class Survey

have £9,507 more than those who attended non-Russell Group institutions. Further,
it appears that some of the advantage in earnings for those from senior
manager/traditional professional families operates through elite education: the
coefficients for coming from lower-status occupation households are each reduced
by around £1,500–£3,000 when education is added to the model.
In Model 4 in Table 8.2, measures of cultural and social capital (both
transformed to range from 0 to 1) are added. While origins and schooling are
clearly prior to current income, these capitals are associated both with current
status and origins, so it is not necessarily surprising that they have associations
with income. Nevertheless, the effects of social and cultural capital are striking.
Together they account for up to nearly half (£1,700–£4,650) of the income
advantage of those from privileged backgrounds.
114 Sam Friedman

What is important to emphasise, however, is that while the coefficients for origins
shrink substantially with addition of capital measures to the model, they do not by
any means disappear. This strongly implies that while some of the income disparity
we see may be the effect of cultural and social capitals, these capitals (or at least
our measures of them) do not explain the entire difference between the upwardly
mobile and the children of upper professionals and managers. There are still
considerable (nearly £3,200–£5,200) differences in annual household income by
origins, even when a slew of other factors are held constant.
Together these findings underline the importance of looking beyond ‘access’
in social mobility research. In particular, they illustrate that even when the
upwardly mobile are successful in entering elite fields they generally fail to achieve
the same levels of success (in terms of cultural, social and economic capital) as
those from more privileged backgrounds. Indeed, in terms of income, there is good
reason to believe that a powerful class ceiling exists for people from lower-status
occupational origins. Even when we control for schooling, education, age and
capital volume, we find these respondents have considerably lower incomes than
their higher-origin colleagues. If we are not willing to assume that people from
lower-status backgrounds simply work less hard, the case for lingering, unfair
disadvantage by class origin in the GBCS is strong.

The operation of cultural and social capital in

everyday life
While the GBCS certainly points towards a powerful class ceiling, quantitative
data can only provide limited insight into how this disadvantage actually plays
out in everyday life. It cannot elucidate, for example, whether the mobile actually
feel disadvantaged and uncomfortable in elite occupations, and/or whether they
may be somehow ambivalent about the illusio (Bourdieu, 1993, pp.72–73) that
dominates in the new occupational field they find themselves in. To tap these
dimensions of social mobility, I turn to data from a separate qualitative project I
conducted in 2012–2013 that specifically explored the subjective experience of
social mobility. The project consisted of 52 life history interviews with a stratified
sub-sample of mobile respondents drawn from the Cultural Capital and Social
Exclusion Project (CCSE) survey (N = 1745). Interviewees were sampled to
represent the contours of the representative survey sample – in terms of age,
gender, region, ethnicity and range of social mobility. Here, in order to deepen
the GBCS analysis, I focus on 25 interviews with respondents upwardly mobile
into elite NS-SEC 1 occupations.
These interviews largely corroborated the GBCS results concerning the capital
deficit of the upwardly mobile. However, they also acted to significantly nuance
the GBCS’s somewhat uni-dimensional measures of social and cultural capital.
In particular, they demonstrated the more dynamic, micro-interactional way in
which these resources actually functioned to generate advantages and disadvan-
tages in social life. Helen (39), for example, had been brought up in South London
 The limits of capital gains 115

and, after studying drama at university, had gone on to become a theatre director.
Although she had enjoyed significant success – running her own theatre aged 26
– Helen said she had spent ‘many unhappy years trying to be accepted by the
theatre elite’. She attributed much of this to the way that cultural markers of her
working-class background – her South-London accent, her large hooped earrings,
her choice of sports trainers – were judged by others in the industry. She recounted
a recent meeting with an agent:

And at one point he went, ‘I know a lot of producers; I can warn them that
although you sound brash and uneducated, you’ve actually got a lot to say
for yourself.’ And I was like – ‘Wow!’

Echoing the work of Lawler (1999) and Skeggs (1997), there was a sense here
that the dominantly upper middle class – ‘theatre world’ – had marked Helen as
‘other’, as displaying the wrong type of taste and the wrong type of femininity.
Moreover, Helen believed these unceasing judgments had had a direct effect on
her career trajectory:

Over the years a lot of people have tried to suggest that if I was to lose the
‘Chav’ earrings, or dress . . . I dunno . . . more appropriately, then I would
somehow get on better. But it’s just not me.

Karl, a 45-year-old engineering executive, was also acutely aware of his relative
lack of cultural capital and its effect on his occupational status. Karl had spent 10
years gradually progressing through middle management before being promoted
to a research and development team where the other staff were all graduates.
Initially, the manager refused to grant Karl’s promotion because he didn’t have
a degree, but eventually this was overruled. While Karl noted that he had now
established himself in this environment, he described an abiding insecurity about
his intellect:

KARL: Occasionally there’s the odd situation where if it’s about my work, that’s
fine, but you may be sat in a group and . . . I just don’t have the intellectual
clout or capacity to react at their level sometimes.
XX: What do you mean by ‘intellectual clout’?
KARL: I think it’s probably more me, I’m not sure they even think that. Like you
can get quite in-depth discussions on some quite technical aspects and it isn’t
accent, it’s the language I use. I’m very much a kind of ‘a spade is a spade’,
I don’t use big words. English has never been a particularly strong subject
of mine.

The accounts of Helen and Karl both demonstrate the more subtle ways that
cultural capital – in terms of legitimate clothing and language – operates as a
116 Sam Friedman

micro-political resource, shaping perceptions of one’s ‘appropriateness’ to fulfil

a role or their ‘intellectual capacity’ (Rivera, 2012). They also illustrate how these
kinds of cultural competencies are hard to simply acquire (Bourdieu, 1984,
pp.65–68). Helen and Brian do not see their clothing or language as a ‘choice’.
Instead they are essential to their sense of self. Indeed, they viewed purposive
attempts at adaptation as phoney, inauthentic. As Helen noted, ‘I could definitely
play the game more, change my voice, but it’s just not me. I’m never going to
be in that club’. Similarly in Chapter 3 Mckenzie spoke of her participants’
construction of self through their clothing and jewellery. For the women on the
Nottingham council estate where Mckenzie conducted her ethnography, they were
aware that their ‘big gold hoop earrings’ made them a target for middle-class
mockery in wider media discourse. Yet, in the same way that legitimate clothing
and language operates as a micro-political resource of ‘appropriation’ into
middle-class society for those conforming to the norms of social mobility, the dress
style of the women living on the council estate allowed them to occupy a site of
resistance to middle-class values.
Interviews were also useful in demonstrating the interplay between different
capitals and the way they often overlapped to generate cumulative advantages and
disadvantages. Cerin (50, fiction writer), for example, described how her enduring
sense of cultural inferiority had affected her ability to ‘network’:

I don’t have a lot of confidence so when it comes to networking in the writing

world, I’m not very good at it. I tend to feel a bit gauche with a lot of things,
when we’re talking about socialising or eating habits . . . And god knows why,
but I still feel the inclination to defer to people who speak with RP accents.
Language lets me down. I’m not as articulate as I’d like to be.

Brian, a 38-year-old lawyer, explained a similar interaction between the cultural

and the social in his work. In one telling example he compared his continuing
fear of ‘etiquette’ at his firm’s ‘formal work dinners’ with the ‘ease’ of more
privileged colleagues:

If you’re from a certain background you just seem automatically comfortable

with stuff . . . like my friend Jackie, from a really privileged background. I
remember one dinner, at the Caprice [London restaurant]. I’d never been
before, and I remember worrying so much that I was going to fuck up. And
we’re all waiting for our food and she just picks up her roll up and starts eating
it like this [imitates stuffing food into his mouth] in front of all the partners
(laughs). And you just think, actually, that’s what it gives you the confidence
to do. It’s almost like learning to draw the figure before you can be an abstract
artist. What a moneyed background gives you is that sense that you know all
the right ways to do stuff, but because you know, it doesn’t matter, you can
do what the fuck you like.
 The limits of capital gains 117

Of course it is difficult to know how this sense of cultural and social deficit directly
affected respondents’ incomes or wider careers. The precise process of capital
conversion is notoriously difficult to capture (Savage et al., 2015), particularly
from cultural and social into economic capital. Nonetheless, there was a consistent
sense across interviewees that they lacked tacit advantages possessed by those with
a ‘natural’ practical knowledge of the ‘rules of the game’ in elite occupational
fields.
Of course interviews provide fundamentally subjective accounts and it may well
be that respondents’ sense of their own disadvantage were somewhat exaggerated
or distorted. Yet this is telling in itself, as internal perceptions of deficit were
clearly an active constituent of the notion of barriers to success. Here the pull of
primary habitus, what Ingram (2011) neatly terms habitus tug, left many
respondents with a paralytic suspicion that they somehow ‘weren’t good enough’
(Mark, 42, script writer), a ‘fraud’ (Amy, 31, doctor), that a ‘fall’ was just around
the corner (Helen) or that they were forever in danger of being ‘caught out’ (Usha,
41, graphic designer). In other words, the very real intra-occupational barriers
described by the upwardly mobile were not always imposed by others, but
sometimes represented self-induced anxieties about exceeding one’s own ‘field
of possibles’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p.110).

The ambivalences of upward trajectories

As I have demonstrated, the sense of disadvantage felt by many upwardly mobile
respondents was a process in which they were, at least to some extent, active
contributors. But this was not simply about the crippling insecurities of the
parvenu. Indeed, there was often a powerful corresponding sense that they
themselves did not fully want to belong in their field of destination. This frequently
manifested through what Bourdieu calls ‘self-elimination’ (Bourdieu, 1984,
p.379), where respondents consciously excluded themselves from certain
legitimate social or cultural domains as a way of actively guarding against identity
mutation. As Michelle (52), an architect, explained:

I’m very much blinkered. My whole family is the kind of ‘our kind of people
don’t do that kinda thing’. We impose limitations on ourselves. My brothers,
my sisters, my parents, we’re all kinda ‘no, no, no, we don’t do that, you
can’t wear anything fancy because we don’t do that, don’t get above
yourselves, who do you think you are?’ Whereas Keith [husband], as I say,
he’ll listen to any type of music. He would even go and watch a cricket match,
whereas my family were always football, football, football. There’s probably
thousands of examples. There’s a hotel on Refrew St, it’s called Citizen M,
all tinted glass and posh. And I would just never go in, because my type of
person just doesn’t go in there, you know? Keith would say – ‘ah hell, they
want our business, let’s go in’. Whereas I tend to impose limitations.
118 Sam Friedman

The notion that some respondents, like Michelle, very consciously imposed
‘limitations’ on the cultural and social aspects of their upward trajectory further
complicates the notion of a class ceiling. It suggests, in particular, a certain
ambivalence towards the lifestyle that one is expected to adopt following
occupational success, a conscious refusal to comply with all such rules of the game
(illusio). My interview with Peter (45, arts PR executive) provided a particularly
intriguing illustration of this ambivalence. I interviewed Peter in a famous private
members’ club in London, of which he was a member. At first I thought Peter’s
choice of venue was a way of signalling his success to me, a symbolic marker of
his upward journey. But instead, over the course of our interview, it became clear
that the club held a complex and quite contradictory role in Peter’s mind. As we
began the interview, he explained that he had always been ‘very anti-clubs’, that
everyone in his industry used them for ‘networking and entertaining clients’ but
that he didn’t like the exclusivity, ‘the snottiness’, and besides he was ‘scared of
being rejected’. A few years ago, however, his husband (also in PR) had been
‘asked to join’ and had convinced him to try it too. Peter had now been a member
for nearly a decade, but interestingly he still seemed decidedly uncertain, even
suspicious, of the club. He was critical, for example, of the ‘shady’ way other
members used it ‘to do business’ and instead proudly asserted his affinity with
the staff:

I like the people who work here. I treat them like normal people, which they
are, and I think a lot of people who join these places, any club, there’s a certain
aggrandisement about you and I hate the way they talk down to the waiters.
It took me years to turn up in a t-shirt here, but I remember one day someone
who worked here said I love your tattoos, and I thought ‘now I feel
comfortable’.

This example may seem innocuous but in fact I think it neatly underlines the
profound complexity of upward social mobility, and particularly the delicate
renegotiation of habitus it demands. From deep suspicion to a paid up member,
Peter’s relationship to his private members’ club mirrored his upward trajectory
from, in his words, ‘a little working-class boy from Romford’ to a very successful
director of an arts PR agency. Yet while the club gave Peter access to an elite
environment perfect for cultivating professional relationships, he was keen to
distance himself from these more instrumental or strategic uses. Instead, he
delighted in mocking the ‘posh’ aesthetic and the ‘uptight’ members. In this way,
it is possible to see the constant push and pull of habitus that takes place during
upward mobility and what Bourdieu (2002, p.510) calls the ‘contradictions of
succession’. Elsewhere I have written about the psychological price attached to
this mental juggling act, and how it can lead to a sense of dislocation and cultural
homelessness (Friedman, 2015; 2012). Here, though, I see these findings more as
a means of sounding a note of caution before reading the GBCS class ceiling
as somehow a straightforward sign of discrimination or elite closure. Instead, a
 The limits of capital gains 119

Bourdieusian lens demands a more complex analysis, one that acknowledges how
the emotional pull of class-cultural loyalties can entangle subjects in the affinities
of the past, and why – despite prevailing political rhetoric – upward mobility may
remain a state that not everyone unequivocally aspires to.

Conclusion
A short while ago, over a pint in a favourite Bristol pub, I made a garbled attempt
to introduce Bourdieu to my old friend Kieran. He listened politely, humouring
my passionate but long-winded explanations of habitus, field and symbolic
violence. At the end, wishing to hammer my point home, I triumphantly
introduced his parents, and recalled my mum’s snobby comments about his living
room. ‘But Friedles’, he said cooly. ‘We were just as bad, my family used to rip
the piss out of you all the time – the mouldy food, the TV rationing, the books
no one in your family had actually read.’
At the time I was convinced Kieran hadn’t understood my point. But the more
I think about it the more I think his words demonstrate a very nuanced and very
Bourdieusian understanding of social mobility. Fundamentally in this chapter I
have tried to demonstrate that thinking with Bourdieu is particularly fruitful for
moving beyond mobility as simply rates of occupational entry and instead helps
to illuminate people’s ongoing mobility trajectories, structured by both their
volume and composition of capital. Indeed, a focus on capitals – using the GBCS
– illustrates that those from lower-class backgrounds tend to face barriers even
once they ‘make it’ into elite occupations, most notably in terms of a powerful
earnings class ceiling.
Yet the chapter has also stressed the importance of reading such findings
alongside a subjective exploration of how mobility is actually experienced. And
it is here that Kieran’s words are particularly telling. While my mum’s taste
snobbery toward Kieran’s family are good examples of the very real cultural and
social barriers that the upwardly mobile tend to face within elite domains, the
family’s astute counter-snobbery is a useful reminder that this is not a straight-
forwardly one-way process. As the accounts in this chapter illustrate, individual
habituses always retain – at least in some shape or form – the symbolic baggage
of the past and this means that most people do not necessarily fetishise upward
mobility in the same way as politicians. As Kieran went on to tell me, his parents
still feel detached from their ‘posh’ local community but at the same time they
actively contribute to this detachment. They defiantly drive 10 miles to drink in
their old local pub and proudly tell anyone who will listen that ‘they are, and
always will be, working class’.
It is worth noting a few brief caveats to the arguments advanced here. First,
upward social mobility is highly complex and cannot, and should not, be reduced
simply to the issues of deficit and disadvantage I have discussed here. As I have
pointed out elsewhere (Friedman, 2015), the experience of mobility is significantly
affected by the range, speed and direction of one’s trajectory in social space, as
120 Sam Friedman

well as their particular combination of class, gender and ethnicity. Second and
connected to this, I would also note that my findings do not foreclose the
possibility, as Abrahams and Ingram explore elsewhere in this book, that the
changes in habitus implied by upward mobility are always associated with anxiety
or ambivalence and may simultaneously yield significant insights and opportunities
afforded by the ability to act as plural actors (Lahire, 2011).
However, despite these cautions, I feel these findings point toward the need to
further interrogate the apparent social success of those who enter elite occupations
from less privileged origins. While they may be held up by politicians as exemplars
of meritocracy, this masks disadvantages (and ambivalences) that live on long after
they have negotiated entry.

Notes
1 Most studies suggest approximately 20 per cent of those in professional and managerial
jobs have been long-range upwardly mobile (Bukodi et al., 2014; Bennett et al., 2008).
2 Comparisons of two (or sometimes three) moments in a respondent’s life (i.e. social
origin, current job and occasionally also first job) (Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1992;
Goldthorpe, 1980).
3 The analysis in this section was carried out with Daniel Laurison.
4 While it is difficult to define a set of uncontested ‘elite occupations’, here we primarily
draw on the guidance of Rose (2013) who argues the best existing measure is provided
by Class 1 of the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC). We also
include a number of high-status occupations routinely associated in policy discourse
with the British elite but not included in NS-SEC 1 (see Friedman et al., 2015 for further
detail).
5 Social mobility is usually defined by looking at comparable social class variables for
one’s social origin and destination. Here, while we are able to measure ‘destination’
using respondents’ self-reported job title, an identical measure for ‘origin’ is not
available. We therefore refer to the question asking respondents what work the ‘main
income earner’ carried out when they were 14. While the nine possible answer
categories do not exactly map onto the eight major NS-SEC categories, they come fairly
close. We thus code responses into four groups; intergenerationally ‘stable’, ‘short-
range’, ‘mid-range’ and ‘long-range’ upwardly mobile (see Friedman et al., 2015 for
further detail).
6 Rather than assuming a priori that certain culture is more “highbrow” than others,
Savage et al. (2013) carried out an inductive analysis of cultural taste using multiple
correspondence analysis (MCA) in order to assess the structuring of cultural divisions
in Britain.
7 A few disclaimers: first, formal statistical inference is not possible, so I do not include
measures of statistical significance. Second, many of the independent variables in these
models (for example origins and schooling) are clearly correlated with one another.
This will reduce the size of the observed effects of these variables, so if we still see
strong relationships we can assume these are operating above and beyond their overlap
with the other variables.
8 Although as noted the GBCS data is not representative, it is possible to benchmark
these findings with data from the 2014 Labour Force Survey (LFS). The results of an
LFS regression on income-origin differentials, controlling for educational qualifications,
age, sex, ethnicity, region of the UK and whether the respondent worked part time,
shows very similarly that the long-range upwardly mobile within NS-SEC 1 earn £7,997
less than the stable.
 The limits of capital gains 121

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Chapter 9

Unresolved reflections
Bourdieu, haunting and struggling
with ghosts
Kirsty Morrin

Reflecting back on my childhood, I recall often staring out my bedroom window.

My window looked out over the backyard; my dog Sasha would usually be there,
barking at next-door’s cat. Just beyond the end of my yard was a tall red brick
wall. This belonged to a factory, at the time abandoned, soon to be converted into
flats. Running alongside the factory was a railway track, and in the distance,
beyond the tracks, an ornate factory chimney, the most prominent of all the
buildings in the town. This image then framed in the centre of the window view,
is now inscribed in my memory. These industrial landscapes are not only inscribed
in my thoughts, but also in my biography. The ornate chimney attached to the
factory that my parents worked in as I grew up, penned into ascription on my
birth certificate; ‘Mother: textile worker’, ‘Father: end of line operative’. On
reflection this could be seen as having both a literal and symbolic meaning. The
abandoned factory yard and the back alley behind my house are where my friends
and I played as children, drawing hopscotch on the floor with old dried-out stones
or trying out new tricks on our rollerblades. The backyard I looked upon, and the
bedroom from which I was staring, one I shared with my sisters, once belonged
to another family of factory workers. The purpose-built, two-up two-down terrace
would not have existed but for Milltown’s1 (my hometown’s) industrial past.
In the first section of this chapter I reflect on the industrial and cultural heritage
of Milltown in order to critically consider the recent introduction of Milltown
Community Academy. The academy in question has not only transformed the
physical layout of the town through the building of a 49 million-pound ‘super-
structure’ from which it operates, but has further attempted to instill a change in
the psychic landscape of the townspeople through its ‘entrepreneurial ethos’.
I interrogate educational policies that led to the opening of the academy and
critique them as initiatives that construct disadvantage in terms of a ‘lack of
aspiration’, with modes of inequality cast as individual problems brought about
by cultural ‘deficits’ rather than accounting for the impacts of material deprivation.
Further, I counter the idea that the solution to past educational ‘failures’ within
the academy and wider community are to be found in the introduction of a ‘spirit
of entrepreneurship’. I employ the Bourdieusian concept of doxa (1977) to assert
that current policy reform attaches ‘deficit’ to culture, specifically working-class
124 Kirsty Morrin

culture and ‘solution’ to enterprise, in this case, entrepreneurship in a ‘taken-for-

granted’ manner. This reflects the way in which policy is part of a ‘doxic practice’,
whereby questions of ‘working class deficit’ and entrepreneurial advantages go
unquestioned. Bourdieu describes doxa as the ‘pre-verbal taking-for-granted’ of
the world (Bourdieu, 1990, p.68). Doxa is said to generate practice through the
illusio of practical sense. In other words, it is possible for individuals to have
‘transposable dispositions’ that adapt to attaining goals through generative
practice, without ‘presupposing’ an aim or how to get there (Bourdieu, 1977, p.72).
In this way, ‘unthinkingness’ is ‘an active and creative relation to the world’
(Bourdieu, 1992, p.122).
In 2007 and against the odds, I finished my A levels and left the town for
university. Moving into and living in university halls was an unsettling experience;
I found myself host to a variety of strange feelings. My accent was marked out
as ‘strong’ and became a topic of conversation. The discussions I used to engage
in at home, often about football, became less frequent. I felt distanced from what
I had known. These ‘out of place’ (or ‘out of time’) feelings are well documented
in sociological research on non-traditional university students, notably in
Bourdieu’s notion of hysteresis – as the emotional turmoil one might feel when
habitus ‘lags’ (or ‘tugs’) temporally in relation to the field in which you are
positioned (Bourdieu, 1977; 1984; 1990; 1996; 2000; Ngai, 2005; Reay et al, 2009;
Ingram, 2011). It is no wonder, I suppose, that as the first in my family to not
only attend university, but to attend an elite institution, I felt some biographical
affinity when I first heard of Bourdieu’s work during my undergraduate Sociology
degree. Through Bourdieusian insights, learned in the lecture hall and seminar
room, yet also experienced and ‘felt’ in the social, I began to feel as if the symbolic
boundaries of my life were being redrawn. How I spoke, how I dressed – these
‘things’ were loaded with (new) symbolic meaning; distinctions of class, inscribed
from birth, were now being reflected in the present. It is these thoughts and
feelings that led me to think about and later formally research my ‘home’ in an
undergraduate dissertation.
In this piece I not only want to consider when and how such ‘unsettled feelings’
arise, but the ways in which we might further reflect individually and theoretically
on ‘unsettledness’. Bourdieu’s habitus-clivé has been discussed in Friedman’s
previous chapter, as well as the subsequent chapter by Ingram and Abrahams.
Friedman in Chapter 8 explores the lingering effects of an individual’s upbringing
upon their habitus when they experience social mobility. Friedman shows how
these individuals’ resistance to the conformity of legitimate clothing and language
of the middle classes who occupy the same employment field as them, can result
in a stagnant career progression in which they encounter what Friedman terms
‘the class ceiling’. Friedman similarly shows the discomfort experienced by
middle-class people in possession of legitimate cultural capital when occupying
predominantly working-class spaces. Ingram and Abrahams, in Chapter 10, discuss
the sense of reflexivity that working-class students undergo in higher education
when they ‘achieve’ social mobility. Both these chapters gave me a useful insight
 Unresolved reflections 125

into other case studies of social mobility using Bourdieu’s concept of cleft habitus.
In addition, this chapter will be exploring not only what comes into play when
we enter into a dialectic relationship with past experience and current practice,
but also the possibilities of what ‘comes to life’ through practical action as a result
of this. Beverley Skeggs (2011) notes that there are limitations in Bourdieu’s
conceptual framework, in its inability to set out working-class resistances
against stigmatising judgements, underplaying people’s ability to deflect and
contest these. Similarly Mckenzie has shown how working-class women can invert
stigmatisation by applying their own codes of recognition to working-class culture.
Keeping working-class resistance in mind and reflecting on my own biography,
in the final section of this chapter I analyse some of the interview narratives
collated during my PhD fieldwork. The research was ethnographic work under-
taken within and outside Milltown Community Academy. I document unsettled
feelings (in the context of Bourdeiusian ‘unsettledness’) as well as accounting
for subsequent reflexive practices present in the narratives of my respondents. I
follow in the theoretical trajectory of the works of Crossley (2001) and more
recently Atkinson (2010), who document phenomenological developments (or
phenomenological hauntings) to Bourdieu’s conceptual frameworks. I offer an
additional reading of habitus-field relation to that of Bourdieu and the ‘unsettled-
hysteresis’ effect, to consider how ‘unsettledness’ located in a habitus-field
disjuncture, might lead to further feelings of ‘unresolvedness’ giving rise to
strategy and resistance in narrative. I do so through Avery Gordon’s (1997)
phenomenological notion of ‘social haunting’. Haunting, Gordon explains, is ‘an
emergent state’ and tells of how the field carries with it residues of the past
(Gordon, 2011, p.3). Further explaining that ‘ghosts’ are the signs of repression,
Gordon talks about the visible premonitions of what ‘has been’ that arise when
there is a rupture to the current (doxic) state: ‘The ghost demands your attention.
The present wavers. Something will happen’ (ibid.). In this shift from noting the
‘unsettled’ to accounting for the ‘unresolved’, I consider a vital addition to the
Bourdieusian toolbox.
Having finished my undergraduate dissertation, I found myself standing in my
parents’ kitchen, this time in a different room, in a new house, which was just
around the corner from the old one. I was reading the local newspaper.
Immediately one story caught my attention: ‘Milltown Academy in Enterprise
First: A Milltown high school has become the first in England to house business
enterprise pods from which local start-ups and students can run their enterprises’
(local newspaper). Although I had heard about the academy as it replaced the
school just up the road from my house, and it had caused huge controversy during
the construction of its new building, I had not been aware of the ‘entrepreneurial
specialism’ it proposed. Not only was the school introducing business pods for
students and new local businesses to operate from within the academy walls, it
saw ‘entrepreneurship’ as a way of breaking the cycle of ‘the poverty of aspiration’
through the promotion of an ‘entrepreneurial mindset’. In Milltown Community
Academy, ‘entrepreneurship’ is not just good business sense but a set of cultural
126 Kirsty Morrin

and social skills to be harnessed for future success in education and beyond. In
the words of the academy sponsor, it is a ‘way of life’. Having just refuted (with
empirical evidence) that a ‘lack of aspiration’ or ‘poverty-as a cultural facet’
existed in the individuals I interviewed in the town for my undergraduate
dissertation, I found myself now facing the same landscape of unfounded deficit.
The ‘new’ model of education was built on nothing more than ‘old’ deficit models.
Something had to be done.

Milltown Community Academy

In 2000, the New Labour government and the then Department for Education and
Skills (now Department for Education (DfE)) laid out the means for the creation
of city academies under The Learning and Skills Act (2000). City academies were
renamed to the simpler ‘academies’ we recognise today under the Education Act
(2002). The DfE stated all academies should be independent and largely funded
by central government and a sponsor, rather than a local authority.2 Initially only
placed in urban areas of ‘disadvantage’, academies and academy sponsors were
appointed with the task of ‘reversing the cycle of failing schools’ and ‘helping
articulate a clear educational vision that champions the ability of all children to
achieve their potential’ (www.dfe.gov.uk, emphasis added). The sponsors would
also be expected to introduce a specialism at the academy in order to help them
achieve the aims set out by the DfE. Furthermore, and of particular interest to this
chapter, is the way in which the academies initiative was also proposed to tackle
the so-called ‘traditional ways of thinking . . . achieve success, and break with
cultures of low aspiration’ (ibid., emphasis added). In this way, sponsors are said
to be ‘accountable for progressive and sustainable improvements to performance
in their schools’ (ibid., emphasis added).
In the case of Milltown Community Academy, its conversion to academy status
took place in 2008.3 Prior to this, the formerly-named Milltown High School had
been placed in ‘special measures’ by Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED)
after (among other things) in 2003 only 22 per cent of its pupils achieved five
A*–C GCSE grades (including Maths and English). In 2004, the Lower Layer
Super Output Area (LSOA) in which the high school stood was in the top 7 per
cent of ‘most deprived’ in England (Office for National Statistics), marking the
high school out as one ‘prime’ for academy conversion at the time. It was in 2004
that the now academy sponsor expressed an initial interest in academy takeover;
sponsorship came in the form of an educational charitable foundation, founded
by a billionaire businessman turned philanthropist. Documenting his own successes
in the business world, the sponsor and his foundation claimed not only ‘learning
as central to the regeneration of the local economy and community’ (Sponsor
expression of interest document, 2004) but also the virtues of an ‘entrepreneurial
education’ in leading such regeneration.
In the context of Milltown Community Academy, sponsors and official school
documentation claim that ‘entrepreneurship’ is not just about having good business
 Unresolved reflections 127

sense, but is a set of individual and social behaviours that if harnessed are said to
act as a ‘catalyst for social change’ (academy sponsor website) and, in turn, creates
a more ‘successful’ society:

Our aim is to build a more successful society where regardless of their

background, young people have the essential skills and entrepreneurial
qualities they need to seize control of their own lives, and become contributing
members of their local community.
(Sponsor Brochure)

In 2010, and after delays (something I talk about later in this chapter), Milltown
Community Academy moved into a new multi-million-pound building. The
building, or ‘superstructure’ was costed to the sponsor for two million pounds,
with government subsidising the further 47 million pounds. This made the build-
ing and additional resources the most expensive UK academy when it opened.
The academy is a geometrically constructed, glass-fronted building, standing
five storeys high and scaling 14,000 square metres in the centre of the town
(architecture reports/website). The very site of the school and the building, it is
claimed, reflects a socio-spatial embeddedness of the ‘entrepreneurial ethos’ as
linked to be at the centre of ‘progressive’ education and to ‘Milltown’s future’:

The design is modern and contemporary and illustrates an ambition to take

hold of the future . . . the site, town and usage of the building are opportune
and appropriate. Education is the future.
(Architectural design statement)

There are a number of things we should draw out here. First, what assumptions
underlie the ‘need’ for an ‘entrepreneurial education’? What is it about this period
in time that makes the academy necessary in the eyes of the DfE and academy
sponsor? Why Milltown? Finally, what impacts has the academy had on the
physical and (if any) psychic landscape of the town and townspeople?
Through Bourdieusian insight, I contend that current ‘neo-liberal’4 educational
policy initiatives have deficit models of working-class culture written into them.
When we think about the link between policy and education, it is important to
remember that in the mid-1960s, when Bourdieu was writing about the existing
conservative educational ethos of French higher education, he was aware of the
reciprocal relationships between the structures of society and that of institutional
structures, as well as how an individual’s biography would influence their educa-
tional trajectories. As Derek Robbins states:

The educational system operated for society in the same way as a diary might
for an individual. It offered clean sheets on which might be written both
accounts of what has happened and projections of what might occur. It
structurally guaranteed a continuity between the past and the future and
128 Kirsty Morrin

sustained the individual’s sense of personal identity and was, therefore,

conservative, but it embodied no predisposition in favour of either the past
recollection or the future aspiration.
(1991, p.54)

Here I will identify this in terms of educational policy, but I will also go beyond
this, exposing the general outlook and overwhelming acceptance that solutions-
based ‘enterprise culture’ or ‘entrepreneurship’ are legitimate and equitable. In
this respect, both ‘deficit as cultural’ and ‘enterprise as solution’, I argue, are part
of a ‘doxic’ regime in current policy reform (Bourdieu 1977; Bourdieu &
Wacquant 1992).
Recent educational policies (see Millburn Report, 2009, for example) have
stated that in order to tackle ‘blocked’ social mobility and to close persistent
attainment gaps there must be a focus on ‘unleashing’ and ‘raising aspiration’
within schools (Milburn Report, 2009) as well as ‘encouraging’ parents and carers
to ‘get involved’ in their children’s’ education (DfES, 2006, p.23), further
cementing the meritocratic narrative transmitted by successive (higher) educational
policies discussed by Burke in Chapter 2. This focus illustrates that policy
initiatives and subsequent academy-sponsorship schemes place the emphasis of
previous educational ‘failures’ on issues of the ‘cultural’ poverty. By attributing
such ‘poverty’ to a ‘lack’ of aspiration and/or a ‘lack’ of parental involvement,
policy is not acknowledging the impact of structural and material deprivation; as
typified by this quote from the (then) Department for Children and Families (now
the DfE), ‘children living in deprived communities face a cultural barrier which
is in many ways a bigger barrier than material poverty’ (DSCF, 2008, p.27,
emphasis added).
Regardless of years of sociological research refuting the direct and absolute
link between low ‘aspirations’ and educational ‘under attainment’ by students and
parents alike (see Carter-Wall & Whitfield, 2012; Archer et al., 2010), the message
of the marked and detrimental impact of aspiration deficit persists in policy
outlook.
In addition, we are increasingly seeing a promotion of enterprise culture within
educational policy and reform, where it seems to have become ‘common sense’
or, I argue, ‘doxic’ (Bourdieu: 1977) to incorporate private sector principles
(Cuban, 2004; Woods & Woods, 2011). Doing so is seen to instill ‘a culture of
ambition to replace the poverty of aspiration’ in schooling (Adonis, 2008, p.15).
While the entrepreneurial initiative at Milltown Community Academy is distinct
and more overt in some of its practices, the underlying assumptions that an
‘entrepreneurial ethos’ acts as a foundation for a progressive model of education
is not an isolated case, nor an entirely ‘new’ one. Enterprising initiatives in English
schooling during in the 1980s were identified and dispelled as not successful in
the works of Hollands (1990) and McDonald and Coffield (1991). However, there
currently seems to be an ‘ontological complicity’ between the main UK political
parties that the ‘entrepreneurial solution’ is one that will ‘fix all’. Entrepreneurship
 Unresolved reflections 129

has become a ‘nation call’, ‘the solution’; it will supposedly bridge the deficit in
economy, labour market and education. In a speech given just after the formation
of the Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition government in 2010, David
Cameron, the Prime Minister, stated: ‘light the fires of entrepreneurialism in every
corner of our country. That’s what our coalition strategy for growth is all about’
(Cameron, 2010). More recently the former Labour leader, Ed Miliband, called
on entrepreneurs as though the nation’s future rested in their hands and, more
notably, on their ‘ideas’: ‘I say to every entrepreneur we need your ideas and your
enthusiasm’ (Miliband, 2014). Moreover, in the ‘Enterprise for All Report’ (2014),
Lord Young suggested that entrepreneurship should be embedded in all educational
institutions, from primary school through to university.
Bourdieu outlines how ‘the established cosmological and political order is
perceived not as arbitrary, i.e. as one possible among others, but as a self-evident
and natural order which goes without saying and therefore goes unquestioned’
(Bourdieu, 1977, p.166). In this next part I will document two ways in which the
current ‘neo-liberal’ deficit-solution doxa championed itself as so ‘necessary’ and
part of ‘natural progression’ in the cultural-material space of Milltown. First, I
will outline how the building of Milltown Community Academy came at the cost
of a number of people’s homes, which were cleared (against the will of some home
occupiers) to make way for the building. Second, I consider the accelerated nature
of claims to ‘success’ in the current doxic order, and document how since 2008
the academy sponsor has subsequently taken over a further 11 institutions, three
of which are in Milltown.

Displaced and distracted

As mentioned, Milltown Community Academy was granted academy status in
2008, but it did not move into its new 49 million pound building until 2010. The
initial plans were that Milltown Community Academy would be ‘launched’ in its
new building. However, the building project was delayed due to contestation over
the chosen site for the new building. When the plot of land was chosen, the new
academy building was proposed back in 2003 as part of the Housing Market
renewal Pathfinder scheme.5 As well as being occupied by a variety of local
residents, the earmarked land also had local businesses, a doctor’s surgery and
vacant properties on the site. After consultation between governing bodies,
residents and business owners, an agreement on ‘opportunity purchases’ and
‘housing relocation packages’ could not be reached. This saw the parties involved
enter a two-year battle with authorities over the placement of Compulsory Purchase
Orders (CPOs) on their properties. CPOs are powers awarded to acquiring
authorities to ‘compulsorily purchase land to carry out a function which Parliament
has decided is in the public interest’ (Compulsory Purchase and Compensation
document, 2004, p.7, emphasis added). It is in the notion and questioning of just
what the ‘public interest’ is, that this piece situates itself. In the context of Milltown
and the building of the academy, CPOs were initially granted to the governing
130 Kirsty Morrin

bodies in 2005 and around 90 per cent of the buildings in the area were seized
and demolished. A number of residents continued to fight the CPOs for a further
two years, in which time the CPOs were overturned and retracted, and then
reinstated seeing the remaining houses cleared for the building of the academy to
take place. Importantly, the Milltown CPO procedure is now cited as an example
of ‘bad practice’ in a 2010 Compulsory Purchase Order report and offers advice
to governing authorities on how ‘not to secure’ CPOs in the future.
It is a salient point, however, that although the residents fighting to keep their
homes were avidly against the proposed building site of the academy, they were
not publicly against the academy itself. One contesting resident at the time sums
up the sentiment of the campaign in a public letter published in the local newspaper
in 2005:

The campaign is not saying don’t build the academy, it’s only against the
proposed site . . . people think the academy is a good idea, just not where
they want to put it.
(Milltown resident)

Although there was protest en masse from some of Milltown’s residents around
the building, there was no similar resistance documented on the entrepreneurial
initiative it housed. Of note here is that ‘public interest’ is concurrent with the
need for Milltown Community Academy as well as the entrepreneurial initiatives
it proffers. In other words, ‘public interest’ has become bound up with market
logic solutions in school, where the notion of ‘progression’ is to be established
not only in an academy, but in an entrepreneurial academy. Many residents,
campaigners and protesters documented (among other things) the sheer emotional
costs of the process of re-homing, or displacement of the residents affected by
the building project. One former resident complained that ‘they’re splitting up my
family, my community and all my friends’ (Milltown resident, 2006). Regardless,
the ‘public interest’ as market logic doxa prevails.
Milltown Community Academy was the sponsor’s flagship project and the first
to open in the UK. Since then, the academy sponsor has gone from overseeing
one school in Milltown to opening or taking over a further 11 educational
institutions,5 all of which have entrepreneurial education as their core ethos. Three
of the further 11 institutions are in Milltown, to date, the town’s only three
secondary institutions: two converter academies, one Studio School. They are all
now run by the same sponsor. The speed with which these institutions opened,
year on year, without much time to evidence their ‘success’, notes the strength of
the ‘neo-liberal’ agenda to produce and reproduce itself. One way in which
Milltown Community Academy has moved from ‘special measures’ to a school
that is currently graded ‘good’ by OFSTED, has been to increase the number of
students achieving five A*–C GCSEs including Maths and English to that above
the national average, which is currently 59 per cent. There was in fact a rise from
2009 of 23 per cent to a peak of 64 per cent in 2013. However, in 2014, there
 Unresolved reflections 131

were changes to how the league table results were calculated. This involved taking
the result of the student’s first exam rather than their best result over a number of
attempts. This change in how league tables were calculated, saw a drop in the
number of students achieving five A*–C grades (including Maths and English) at
Milltown Community Academy, plummeting from 64 per cent achieving the
grades, to just 33 per cent. Regardless of whether this drop illustrates the faults
in the implementation of this examination policy for calculating league table
positions, or it predicts that we should be concerned about future ‘one time only’
examination policies, or even that the school was involved in ‘game playing’ that
resulted in better GCSE grades recorded, the consequences were that Milltown
Community Academy now plummeted into ‘unsatisfactory’ territory. However,
this has not stopped the sponsor chain taking over further institutions since.
Given the controversy that surrounded the displacement of people to make
room for the building of Milltown Community Academy, it is interesting that
no-one negatively affected by this development seemed to question the deficit-
solution model of this new academy, not to mention its ‘entrepreneurial’ initiative.
Bourdieu’s concept of doxa is a useful tool to explore why this may be. For
Bourdieu, doxa contributed to the reproduction of social institutions and relations.
Doxa as pre-reflexive, according to Bourdieu, means that a ‘sense of limits’
becomes internalised within agents (Deer, 2008, p.120). In this way, individualistic
discourse of ‘success’ through business and ‘one’s own efforts’ has become so
entrenched in the mind-set of the people of Milltown, that the academy’s
‘entrepreneurial’ ethos went unchallenged. As Bourdieu (1992, p.14) states,
doxa is

a formidable mechanism, like the imperial system – a wonderful instrument

of ideology, much bigger and more powerful than television or propaganda

The ‘naturalisation’ of the sponsor’s focus on entrepreneurship has resulted in

sponsorship being spread across Milltown and into other areas of similar
demography. This model of education has been portrayed as ‘progressive’ and
‘successful’. It is the power of this doxic regime that displaces and distracts agents,
which for me confirms the usefulness of the application of Bourdieu’s theorising
to empirical research.
So far in this chapter I have shown how Bourdieu identifies doxa as constitutive
of a set of arbitrary and generative principles that largely go unquestioned by those
subject to its rule because of its ‘naturalised’ position and, therefore, pre-reflexive
nature, in which structures and relations are taken for granted. Moreover, I have
described doxa as a useful conceptual tool for understanding current educational
policy reforms that have led to the introduction of an ‘entrepreneurial academy’
in Milltown. In this way, it is possible to anticipate that through ‘naturalised’
notions of distinction, the ‘issue of social inequality’ may at times be rendered
‘largely invisible’ (Savage, 2000, p.159, emphasis in original). With the value
placed on some voices over others in the ‘public interest’, and a perceived or
132 Kirsty Morrin

prediction of a sharp fall in the student grades at Milltown Community Academy

in 2014, the issue of inequality is clear to me, but just how apparent is it to those
living it?

Inhabiting heterodoxy
As part of my PhD research, I conducted a 10-month ethnography of Milltown
Community Academy and its surrounding area from 2013 to 2014. As well as
everyday participant observations, focus groups and collating local newspapers
(among other things), I spoke to around 150 people (inclusive of 40 formal
recorded interviews) about their experiences and perceptions of the academy, from
students to parents, teachers to librarians, staff serving lunch to the local
entrepreneurs who run their businesses from inside the academy. My motivations
for conducting the research might be considered ‘heretical’ or as former education
secretary Michael Gove so warmly puts, in the blasphemous position of ‘an enemy
of promise’. If my own position is one built through learning the skills of ‘reflexive
sociology’, a method Bourdieu defends as ‘necessity of the critical intellectual’,
my research motives are also a condition of experiencing and ‘feeling’ the
changing social condition of moving from Milltown to university. But what of
the narratives, motivations and experiences of those affiliated with the shift from
the old Milltown High School into Milltown Community Academy? Might these
narratives also consist of ‘feelings of change’, and therefore give rise to questions
of what happens to people in a time of transition?
Bourdieu (1977) talks about how a sudden rupture of external structures can
affect agents: ‘objective crisis, which, in breaking the immediate fit between the
subjective structures and the objective structures, destroys self-evidence
practically’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p.168–69). Lizardo and Strand (2010) consider such
an ‘unsettledness’ of habitus in Bourdieu’s writing as one that can be both pre-
reflexive state and one that can lead to reflexivity. The ‘unsettled’ feelings that
operate below the level of consciousness can be theorised as part of the hysteresis
effect (Bourdieu, 2000; 1996, p.157; 1990, p.59; 1984, p.142; 1977, p.77) where
‘dispositions which are out of line with the field’, experience negative internal
sanctions (Bourdieu, 2000, p.160). Speaking to the temporal elements of hysteresis,
it can further be defined as the lag in practical effect of the changing circumstances
under which persons act. The latter reflexive elements of unsettled habitus as
conceptualised in the ‘Don Quixote’ effect (Bourdieu, 1984, 1988, 1990) leads to
a ‘heightened awareness’ of one’s environment when habitus-field disjuncture
arises. However, Bourdieu further claims that crisis is ‘a necessary condition for
a questioning of doxa but is not in itself a sufficient condition for the production
of a critical discourse’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p.169). So are we saying that an ‘objective
crisis’, or habitus-field disjuncture, under the current Bourdieusian theorising,
mean that the working-class people remain compliant?
To answer this I need to return to Beverley Skeggs’ (2011) work and consider
her critique of Bourdieu in which she argues his work is unable to set out working-
 Unresolved reflections 133

class resistances against stigmatising judgements, and this underplays people’s

ability to deflect. I consider the critique that Bourdieu constrains working-class
people by considering them as unable to ‘think doxa’ (or ‘commit’ heresy) and
further as being immobilised by their illegitimated capitals, in a world of cultural
arbitraries (Goldthorpe, 2007). Moreover, located in my findings and in the
narratives of some of the respondents and participants in my study, I found some
considered resistances. I argue therefore that Bourdieu’s ‘hysteresis’, ‘hysteresis-
reflexivity’ or ‘Don Quixote’ effects do not fully account for the ongoing, reflective
and dialectic nature in which respondents engaged with my questions and their
environment. It also does not account for ‘what’ kinds of reflexivity arose in the
interview. As I contend there were not just moments of ‘unsettledness’, but further
reflections on those feelings and narratives of defense that rose against them.
In Outline of Theory and Practice, Bourdieu offers a further theorising of the
doxic regime, one that might offer a move away from modes of ‘unthinkingness’
and domination (thus reproduction), to the possibility of theorising for ‘thought-
fulness’ and breaks to the doxic regime. In Bourdieu’s (1977) work, there are two
ways in which doxa can enter thought; one is through the ‘straightened opinion’
of orthodoxy, which seeks to reinstate the purest form of doxa. The other is
heterodoxy, which seeks to oppose; it is the ‘choice-heresy-made possible by
existence to competing possibilities and to the explicit critique of the sum of the
total of the alternative not chosen that the established order implies’ (Bourdieu,
1977, p.169).
In light of this I take a phenomenological (and spectral) turn towards Avery
Gordon’s notion of ‘social haunting’. Haunting offers what is ‘a very particular
way of knowing what has happened or is happening’. Furthermore, it also adds
a complimentary and developed reading of habitus-field relations in the context
of my study (Gordon, 1997, p.8). Gordon asserts that haunting is

an emergent state: the ghost arises, carrying the signs and portents of a
repression in the past or the present that’s no longer working. The ghost
demands your attention. The present wavers. Something will happen.
(Gordon, 2011, p.3)

This is the idea that those moments of crisis, or ‘past repression’ can lay dormant
in the field itself, but when habitus-field relations rupture, according to the
epistemology of haunting, the ‘ghost’ arises and demands our attention. Ghosts
in this respect are the temporal residue in the field that creates dissonance. Not
only might this lead to an unsettling of what we had known, but through haunting
a further ‘something-to-be-done’ emerges as the ghost beckons us to listen.

Ghost hunting: from unsettled to unresolved

Gordon tells us ‘to study social life one must confront the ghostly aspects of it’
(1997, p.7). It is in the ‘demanding’ nature of ghosts that I found this alternative
134 Kirsty Morrin

analytical tool for ‘listening’ to narratives in my fieldwork. In the narratives of

my interviewees, I ‘listen’ to the spectre for resisting. As suggested previously, I
consider two doxic modes of policy practice emplaced on the academy and those
affiliated with it, one of ‘working-class-as-deficit’ (inclusive of Milltown’s-past-
as deficit) and second, ‘entrepreneurship-as-solution’. The former I contend can
be seen as a ‘repressive former state’ Gordon identifies. For example, during an
interview with a student, I noted a deviation, further reflection and a struggle with
a ghost in her response to a question about her aspirations for university.
Lydia, a ‘star student’, spoke about her aspirations for university. She
documented that there is an absolute expectation from teachers, staff and her peers
at Milltown Community Academy that she will not only go to university, but a
‘good’ university, therefore she would be focusing her attention on Oxbridge and
Russell Group applications. However, after I had asked Lydia which universities
specifically she was thinking of applying to, she paused for a few seconds, then
gave the following four-fold response without any further questioning:

But my mum and step dad, they’re really supportive, kind people, they’re
just supporting me in whatever I do but they’re saying just go as far as you
can, they’re just telling me to, go for it [pause] I don’t know, I can’t really
describe it, they never tell me not to do something, and they never tell me to
do something, they allow me to make my own mistakes, but support me in
whatever I’m doing [pause] It’s not just ‘cos they don’t want me to do it that
they don’t say ‘do this do that’ like the school it’s just ‘cos they’re just nice
people and like lovely and they went to college but that’s it but that doesn’t
mean they don’t help me or support me [pause] well they didn’t go to
university but that doesn’t mean they don’t want me to go.

I argue that Lydia is struggling with a ‘ghost of deficit’, as located not in her current
educational success, but in the lingering effects of her habitus as reflected in her
parents’ educational past trajectories as they did not go to university. Lydia felt
the need to reflect and defend her parents as just as ‘aspirational’ and supportive
as the school, and not ‘in deficit’ just because their educational pasts did not map
her perceived educational future in university. The visibility of ‘ghost of deficit’,
I claim, actually led the student to do two things. First, it led Lydia to consider
her position as relational to her parents and her future plans for university. This
caused a feeling of unsettledness, a habitus-field disjuncture of ‘what was’ in her
parents and ‘what could be’ in her own educational future. Second, it unearthed
a feeling of something-to-be-done, something to further explain, something to
defend, and, finally, the resistance itself, a defense of her parents – again a doxa
(or a social haunting) of deficit.
It is important to be aware of both methodological or interviewer effect during
this exchange with Lydia. It could be contented that my position as a PhD
researcher from a Russell Group university produced this type of response.
However, I would examine the overt relationship between the question ‘so, what
 Unresolved reflections 135

universities are you thinking of?’ and the possibility of deciphering a parental
involvement. Was the student Lydia aware and reflecting on the ways in which
her parents had been brought into question by deficit attachment to the town and
what stood before Milltown Community Academy? I would argue she was.
To begin with, there is a disruption between similar habitus, i.e that of Lydia’s
and her parents’. Here I contend that the ghost marks them out as distant from
each other, their differences located in ‘past’ non-transition into Higher Education
and ‘present’ expectation of a transition into university. However, what is defended
here by Lydia, is against a ‘ghost of deficit’ and although that ‘deficit’ might be
perceived as inside specific habitus (that of her parents in this case) the student
is not recognising it as such. In this way she rejects the notion of ‘lag’ or that her
parents are positioned as ‘behind’ because of their educational experiences and
challenges that this might be put upon them. In this way the ghost is an ‘out there’
phenomenon located only in the field as she finds it, not in the habitus of her
parents. She sees the ghost in the field itself and tussles with it there, resisting the
‘ghost of deficit’ as she goes. This offers a small example of resistance and a
pattern of resistance to explore in all of my fieldwork. As Gordon foresaw, the
present wavered. Something happened.

Concluding remarks: I haunted, he haunted,

we haunted
Through driving mists I seemed to see
A Thing that smirked and smiled:
And found that he was giving me
A lesson in Biography,
As if I were a child.
(excerpt from Lewis Carroll’s CANTO III: Scarmoges, 1911, p.25)

In this chapter, I have considered how my own biography is linked to much of

Bourdieu’s work, as a perpetual presence in my past and current work, engaging
me in an ‘ongoing dialogue’ (Crossley, 2001, p.116) as an early career academic
in an ever-expanding world of theory. Alongside this, I have given an insight into
how the introduction of an entrepreneurial academy in my hometown reflects a
current doxic mode of policy reform, where I contend that there is a ‘working-
class-deficit’, ‘entrepreneurship-solution’ loop being played out as ‘progressive’,
‘successful’ and ‘necessary’. I argue that this is the political discourse we need
to critique.
Paralleled with my own autobiographical reflections in ‘moments of crisis’ or
habitus-field disjuncture located in the narratives of my participants, I have further
documented how Bourdieusian notions of ‘unsettledness’ might not fully explain
the modes of resistance found in the working classes. In addition, I have proposed
a phenomenological development of Bourdieu’s habitus-field relation, and done
so through Gordon’s (1997) Social Haunting. Avery Gordon (1997), and more
136 Kirsty Morrin

recently Elizabeth Silva (2014), have spoken of ‘social haunting’ as a ‘sociological

matter’, proposing an epistemology of haunting that considers both socio-
historical memory and their place and interrelations with the present. At various
stages of his career, Bourdieu was influenced and haunted by phenomenological
theory (Crossley, 2001; Robbins, 2000). In fact, the very doxa I have spoken about
was attributed before Bourdieu, to the phenomenological thinker, Edmund
Husserl (see Husserl, 1973, 1990, 1991). Scholars such as Myles (2004) have
claimed Bourdieu’s reading of Husserl to ‘over- polarize’ doxa and reflexivity
(ibid., p.91). However, Robbins, Crossley and Myles have also affirmed that
Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of doxa and his theorising of habitus-field relations
is not incompatible with more dialectic, phenomenological reasoning and
development. I propose not to consider a re-reading Bourdieu’s doxa in relation
to Husserl, but move forward with another phenomenological concept, one that
might make for further consideration of habitus-doxa, habitus-field relations. This
is the notion of ‘social haunting’ (Gordon, 1997). These ruptures I document do
not in and of themselves bring about change, but create space where the
possibility of change arises (Spivak, 1988). It is this movement from unsettledness
as ‘bad feelings’ to unresolvedness as ‘something-to-be-done’ that I think is vital
for class analysis.
Bourdieu is not a ghost to be exorcised, but one to struggle with and reflect on.
We need also need to look towards those who have continued a Bourdieusian
approach to empirical research, for example Bev Skeggs and Diane Reay, David
James, Derek Robbins, as well as the future generations of Bourdieusians to come.
We should further consider the phenomenological and dialectic developments of
Bourdieu’s work, in order to understand how those positioned as ‘powerless’ in
society might resist. In this case resistance came against the spectre of deficit, but
what is salient is to consider how we might struggle with the ghosts of enterprise,
or entrepreneurship – a spectre that is haunting Milltown, a spectre that is haunting
Europe.
Thinking back to my childhood and my memories of looking out the bedroom
window, I am now aware; I am aware of the history of the town and the changes
it is undergoing. I am also aware that my view is now obscured. I would see the
same backyard, the same factory-come-flats, the railways track remains and so
does the ornate factory chimney, but there’s something else in the distance,
something catching the sun; it’s the corner of Milltown Community Academy’s
roof, piercing the skyline, cementing its place firmly in my story, and firmly in
the future of Milltown’s (educational) landscape.
Something must be done!

Notes
1 Pseudonym used for town and from hereon in all names affiliated with the town. In
addition, for reasons of anonymity, all inserts marked as ‘quotes’ from academy
documentation, sponsor brochures and websites, architecture reports and websites and
 Unresolved reflections 137

local newspapers have been adapted to make them non-traceable sources. The context
and words used are as similar as possible to avoid a change in meaning or emphasis.
2 Under early New Labour rules, sponsors were required to contribute 10 per cent of the
capital costs of a new academy building, a cost capped at two million pounds. From
2009 onwards, it is no longer necessary for academy sponsors to make any financial
contribution to their academy.
3 The school turned academy remains non-selective, but during conversion expanded
from an 11–16 years institution to an 11–18 years academy and sixth form.
4 ‘Neo-liberalism’ as defined by Bourdieu, but identified as a contested term, in both
practice and theory. Here I do not have the room to elaborate but see for example Will
Davies (2014) ‘The limits of neo-liberalism: authority, sovereignty and the logic of
competition’, and Rajesh Venugopal’s (2015) article, ‘Neoliberalism as a concept’.
5 Operating from 2002 to 2011, the scheme set out to ‘renew failing housing markets
and reconnect them to regional markets, to improve neighbourhoods and to encourage
people to live and work in these areas’ (Wilson, 2013).

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Chapter 10

Stepping outside of oneself

How a cleft-habitus can lead to
greater reflexivity through
occupying ‘the third space’
Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams

Introduction
Bourdieu discusses the way in which the habitus, defined as ‘a system of
dispositions, that is of permanent manners of being, seeing, acting and thinking,
or a system of long-lasting (rather than permanent) schemes or schemata or
structures of perception, conception and action’ (Bourdieu, 2002, p.27, emphasis
in original), is developed from the field of origin but can be altered by new
experiences and pedagogic action. He talks about his own conflicted experiences
of a cleft habitus and suggests that this comes about when the habitus encounters
a new and contradictory field, causing an internalisation of divided structures
(Bourdieu, 2002; 2000). Bourdieu considers this confrontation – a product of the
process of social mobility – to be painful, which indeed it is for many who
experience it. In Chapter 8 Sam Friedman discusses this process, exploring the
way in which a person’s habitus as structured by original social background retains
prominence even when they experience life in a new social field. Importantly, he
highlights how this can create painful negotiations. Bourdieu argues that at times
a working-class originary habitus acts as a barrier to being fully accepted within
a middle-class occupation/social world when a person is socially mobile (Bourdieu,
1990). Friedman (2015), following Bourdieu, discusses the psychological pains
such a shift in field and habitus may cause individuals, arguing it generates a sense
of being held back from middle-class acceptance or being torn between two
competing worlds. His arguments echo the conclusions of earlier work by Diane
Reay (2004; 2002) as well as our own previous work (Ingram, 2011), which
discusses the psycho-social impacts of a cleft habitus. In this chapter we want to
take this theorising forward by considering the powerful way in which this position
can sometimes be a positive and empowering resource, without denying the
potential pain it causes. Through drawing upon and incorporating Homi Bhabha’s
concept of the ‘third space’ we aim to extend Bourdieu’s concept to consider the
positive aspects of a marginal vantage point, a rearticulation of habitus (rather
than a division), which contests the terms of two incommensurable fields to create
a new space. In talking about the ‘third space’, Bhabha makes the argument
that ‘the transformational value of change lies in the rearticulation, or translation,
of the elements that are neither the One . . . nor the Other . . . but something else
 Stepping outside of oneself 141

besides which contests the terms and territories of both’ (1994, p.28). For us the
‘third space’ is useful in that it helps us to think about ways of being neither
working-class, nor middle-class but something else besides. It is quite an
optimistic concept in a way because it works with the idea that this process is a
creative one and is interesting to consider alongside Bourdieu’s more negative
framing of the divided habitus (Bourdieu, 2002).
We discuss how we were drawn to Bourdieu’s work – and Bourdieu himself
– due to a mutual experience of occupying this third space. This fractured lens
has been the way in which we have come to view the world, and so the work of
Bourdieu had immediate resonance with us both. We discuss our understanding
of this awkward positioning and the theoretical and empirical insights it has
afforded in our work as academic researchers. In this chapter we will consider
the way in which occupying ‘the third space’ can lead to greater reflexivity;
through drawing upon the work of Patricia Hill Collins we consider how this
position renders us ‘outsiders within’ (Collins, 1986), as located within a
marginalised yet inclusive place that enables us to experience ‘epistemic privilege’
of vantage point. Overall this chapter develops a discussion around working with
Bourdieu in order to think about different ways in which working-class people
negotiate class migration and social mobility. We consider ways of theorising the
divisions and revisions of habitus and highlight the potential of those who are
marginalised to disrupt the boundaries of social fields. In doing so we build upon
and extend Bourdieu’s concept of cleft habitus and account for greater complexity
in understanding shifts in habitus and field.

Class migration
My main problem is to try and understand what happened to me. My trajectory
may be described as miraculous, I suppose – an ascension to a place where
I don’t belong. And so to be able to live in a world that is not mine I must
try to understand both things: what it means to have an academic mind – how
such is created – and at the same time what was lost in acquiring it. For that
reason, even if my work – my full work – is a sort of auto-biography, it is a
work for people who have the same sort of trajectory, and the same need to
understand.
(Bourdieu, 1992, p.117)

Despite the obscurity of Bourdieu’s writing we have found his concepts to provide
us with a clear framework for thinking about how we (and the participants of
our research studies) have navigated the somewhat misaligned working-class
and middle-class worlds we occupy; in particular we are fascinated by the ques-
tion posed by Bourdieu – what does it mean to be able to live in a world that is
not ours? To do so we have to think about how those separate worlds and our
positions within them are created and what it means to be able to belong in two
spaces at once.
142 Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams

We are both academics from working-class backgrounds. While we are at

different stages in our career trajectories we share common ground in that often
we feel as though we are occupying worlds that are not our own. This is in respect
of both our originary working-class family/community field and the field of the
academy. Having come to Bourdieu as part of our journey of social mobility we
feel an alignment with him and his work. In the previous chapter, Kirsty Morrin
also discusses the affinity she feels with Bourdieu. Morrin reflects upon her own
hysteresis that the habitus-field disjuncture can produce for a working-class student
such as herself occupying a middle-class space. Morrin refers to this as a ‘social
haunting’ in which your background has a lasting and lingering effect on your
actions and practices, including influencing what you choose to study as a
sociologist. While we do not have the space in this chapter to adequately tell our
stories we feel it necessary to contextualise the discussion to follow somewhat
within our own personal narratives of class migration.

Nicola
I grew up in a deprived community in North Belfast where several generations
of my family had been raised and where I was surrounded daily by grandparents,
aunts, uncles and literally dozens of cousins. Despite the fact that my parents had
to both work extremely hard to provide for the family we lived comfortably in
our two up two down terrace. We didn’t have many luxuries but we had food on
our table, clothes on our backs and most importantly we generated a lot of happy
memories. My existence was incredibly social and communal. My family dropped
in and out of each other’s houses on a daily basis, everyone looked after everyone
else’s children and if any work was required in relation to property there was
always someone to call upon who would come and sort it out, whether it was
plumbing, building, joinery, telephone maintenance, tiling, electrical work,
curtain making, dress making, knitting or crocheting. No one ever thought to
charge for their labour, it was just accepted that we sort each other out when in
need. Neither of my parents were educated beyond the age of 16. My dad, who
worked as a telephone engineer, had a couple of O Levels, and my mum, who
worked in a garment factory, was barely literate, having left school at around 14,
after years of being the bane of many teachers’ existences. My mother is no longer
alive but she was one of the most sensitive and clever people I have ever met,
regardless of lack of qualification. She instilled in me the value of a good education
from an early age and took pride in the fact that I excelled at school from the
moment I stepped through the gates. My educational journey, supported by my
family, took me to a world where I learned to value aspects of a culture that was
outside that of my family cultural milieu. I went to an all-girls Catholic Grammar
school and became the quintessential working-class grammar school kid. Later,
when I came to read Jackson and Marsden’s classic study of working-class success
I felt that I could have walked straight out of the pages of their book. Like their
participants from the 1950s, grammar schooling for me:
 Stepping outside of oneself 143

had meant a rejection at conscious or unconscious levels of the life of the

‘neighbourhood’. This mattered less for some than others. But when the new
manners, new friends, new accents, new knowledge, heightened the adolescent
tensions of home life, security and sense of purpose shifted from any wide
emotional life and located itself narrowly in schoolwork, in certificates, in
markability.
(Jackson & Marsden, 1962, p.152, emphasis in original)

The experience of reorienting my way of seeing and being in the world through
middle-class acculturation and educational success was quite a disturbing one. It
threw me into state of heightened reflexivity where I questioned and analysed
taken-for-granted ways of being, and left me feeling like I belonged nowhere.
When I first came to Bourdieu’s work as an adult I was struck by how his theories
made sense to me and chimed with the complex amalgam of issues that I’d been
trying to make sense of through my own life, which had taken me through
university, into a career in teaching, into motherhood, out of the neighbourhood
into a nice life in London, then back into the neighbourhood from where I’d once
actively wanted to escape. Symbolic violence was the first concept that I was
introduced to through the work of Paul Connolly. I was living back in Ardoyne,
one of the most deprived areas of Belfast, and raising my kids and revaluing the
culture I had left behind. My partner, who had an anthropology degree from Oxford
and was doing a PhD at the time, brought home an academic article for me
as it connected with things on which I had been reflecting. The concept of sym-
bolic violence struck me as a powerful way to consider the significance of the
denigration of working-class culture that is synonymous with the valuing of
middle-class culture. It is an act of violence against the working classes whom,
I had come to realise through my circuitous route through, out and back into
working-class culture, had a great deal of value that the middle-classes lacked.
I was hooked on exploring these ideas (I still am) and went on my journey into
academia.

Jessie
I grew up in an ethnically diverse inner-city working-class neighbourhood with
a single mother living on benefits. While we did not have much money and my
mother had no formal educational qualifications, I would argue that she had
developed cultural capital through radical feminist self-education. This had not
enabled her to overcome poverty and ‘be socially mobile’ but had empowered her
with the tools to understand and support my educational journey. Having spent
my teenage years immersed within the social world of my area and attending the
local comprehensive school, I first felt the impact of a habitus misaligned with
the field when I attended the elite University of Bristol to study a degree in
Sociology. In part I dealt with this through remaining solidly within my local
community and refusing to adapt my habitus to suit the new field. This was majorly
144 Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams

enabled through having a migration buddy (my boyfriend) who – coming from
my local area – was also studying at the same institution at the same time. After
finishing my degree I began working as a research assistant on the Paired Peers
project in the Sociology department while continuing to further my education
through a Masters. During this time the research team along with specific
academics – who had themselves experienced social mobility – helped me to
further develop my sociological imagination in a safe and supportive environment,
free from judgement and symbolic violence. Following this I began my PhD, which
is a painful and emotional journey as the focus of my study forces me to confront
my own educational experiences and history; it is forcing my habitus to confront
itself and all its contradictions. It is a place of extreme reflexivity where I have
‘stepped outside of myself’. While this place is difficult to manage it is also
productive and is nurtured with the support of others who have been through this.
In particular through the supervision of Professor David James, who himself has
a tale of class migration to tell (James, 2010), I am able to be comforted and feel
at ease with the uncomfortableness that is my class migration. While this glimpse
into my sociological journey does not do justice to my story, what I want to argue
is that my journey is one of a habitus divided yet reconciled and that this is partially
attributable to the support of others in a mutual position of dislocation. I am still
on my journey of social mobility so for me this process is ongoing. At times it is
more painful than others but it is the space of mutual understanding that acts
as a haven, a safe place where I can be myself with others who are similarly in
this space.
Coming back from our stories to Bourdieu, we are driven by the need to
understand what is lost for working-class people in the experience of becoming
socially mobile and living in two places in social space at the same time. Although
Bourdieu touches upon these ideas in relation to a cleft habitus many times in
his work (Bourdieu, 2008; 2002; 2000) we are frustrated by the lack of full
development of this and theorising about the internalisation of incommensurate
structures. While the seeds of these ideas appear in his work it is through the work
of Diane Reay that we find them further developed and worked out (Reay, 2015;
2004; 2002).
However, there is more work to be done in fully theorising the idea of a cleft
habitus and as a new generation of Bourdieusian scholars we are attempting to
build upon the theoretical insights developed before us. We are particularly
interested in thinking about the different ways in which people may navigate the
internalised processing of structures from different fields. It is clear to us that not
everyone will be affected by the assimilation of multiple structures in quite the
same way. Within our work we have been developing ways of accounting for these
differences and have been attempting to work through our ideas on both the
negative and positive impact of the internalisation of seemingly incompatible
structures. In doing so we have developed the concept of ‘habitus tug’ (Ingram,
2011), which denotes a multi-directional pull on the habitus rather than a division,
and ‘chameleon habitus’ (Abrahams & Ingram, 2013), which helps us to think
 Stepping outside of oneself 145

about the way the habitus can draw upon the internalisation of different structures
to shift in accordance with the demands/expectations of different fields.

Conceptualising habitus interruptions

Our starting point has been Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, his extension of this
concept to thinking about a ‘cleft habitus’ and our own reflections on what it means
to fit and to be in your place (or not). Bourdieu writes:

It is likely that those who are ‘in their right place’ in the social world can
abandon and entrust themselves more, and more completely to their
dispositions (that is the ‘ease’ of the well-born) than those who occupy
awkward positions, such as the parvenus and the declasses; and the latter are
more likely to bring to consciousness that which, for others is taken for
granted, because they are forced to keep watch on themselves and consciously
correct the ‘first movements’ of a habitus that generates inappropriate or
misplaced behaviours.
(Bourdieu, 2000, p.163)

What Bourdieu is writing about here is feeling out of place, and finding yourself
to be a wrong sort of person in a given situation. In particular he is considering
how someone who has gained wealth but is from humble origins can be forced
to consciously monitor their ways of being so as to ensure they fit within high
society. We are drawn to this passage as it highlights what we have previously
argued: that when a habitus is forced outside of the structures in which it
developed, acute reflexivity can occur. Being forced into a new space makes you
think not only of what is novel in that space but it creates a new lens to look at
where you have come from. However, while we also understand and have felt the
pull to ‘correct’ our habitus through some awkward experiences where we have
felt ourselves judged because of our working classness, we have both used this
reflexivity to refuse to ‘correct’ ourselves and instead suggest that it is the middle-
class field that at times needs correcting. We are interested in considering what
happens when a person’s habitus is interrupted, and importantly what processes
are involved in managing this. In doing this it will be necessary to consider the
structural influences on the habitus, and how these influences can be produced by
experiences in different fields. We wish to recognise that the habitus can be
generated within multiple fields, some of which may help inform the originary
habitus (including the family, community, and geographical location) and others
that may act on the habitus later (including the institution of education and the
world of employment). Bourdieu gives short shrift to consideration of the
internalisation of the structures of multiple fields, although the formations of his
ideas on this can be found in discussion of his concept of hysteresis. It could be
argued that in these conditions the habitus is destabilised as it is caught in a tug
between two conflicting social fields. Bourdieu writes of these conflicting external
146 Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams

forces: ‘Thus it can be observed that to contradictory positions, which tend to exert
structural “double binds” on their occupants, there often correspond destabilized
habitus, torn by contradiction and internal division, generating suffering’ (2000,
p.160).
In relation to a misalignment between habitus and field, Bourdieu writes, ‘Where
dispositions encounter conditions (including fields) different from those in which
they were constructed and assembled, there is a “dialectical confrontation” between
habitus as structured structure, and objective structures’ (2002, p.31). It could be
argued that the dialectical confrontation between habitus and field (other than the
field of origin) results in a degree of accommodation where the habitus accepts
the legitimacy of the new field’s structure and is in turn structured by it, thus
enabling a modification in the habitus. Yet the habitus is still constrained by the
structuring forces of the field of origin. In this case the new habitus is made up
of conflicting elements: the internalisation of new experiences and schemes of
perception can lead to the internalisation of conflicting dispositions. This can be
conceptualised as a ‘habitus tug’, where conflicting dispositions struggle for pole
position and the individual can at times feel pulled in different directions. This
may create a ‘destabilised habitus’ where the individual is not a ‘fish in water’ in
either field. In some cases the conflicted habitus causes division, leaving an
individual alienated from the practices within a field. Bourdieu describes this in
terms of a cleft habitus resulting from contradictions of formation: ‘I have many
times pointed to the existence of cleft, tormented habitus bearing in the form of
tensions and contradictions the mark of the contradictory conditions of formation
of which they are the product’ (2000, p.64). These contradictions are obvious when
people are uprooted from one way of life and find themselves living in another
part of the world, for example; or when the structure of society changes
dramatically due to revolution. As an anthropologist, Bourdieu is able to highlight
his ideas through radical examples. However, his theory should not be restricted
to such radical changes in life. There are many other ways in which people can
be confronted with lived cultural dissonance. Influenced by Bourdieu, Lahire
(2011) argues that ‘compulsory education leads children to be faced with forms
of cultural apprenticeship, knowledge and social relations that are quite foreign
to their original milieu’ (p.x). They are then faced with contradictory forms of
structural influences, which can lead to habitus changes. It must be cautioned
though that, while habitus can be changed, it is mostly durable with changes
unlikely to occur (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.192). Indeed, the education
system is more often a central cog in the process of production rather than a force
for habitus change. However, change is possible and while durable the habitus is
not static, despite arguments to the contrary from Bourdieu’s critics (see for
example Jenkins, 2002). We are interested in the tensions caused by habitus
change.
The tension between habitus and fields and the notion of a habitus divided
against itself (Bourdieu et al., 1999; Reay 2002) is central to our work where we
often explore the pull between working-class identity and working-class
 Stepping outside of oneself 147

educational achievement. A question on which we still feel unable to reach a clear

conclusion is: is it possible to remain working-class and to be educationally
successful? Bourdieu sums up these tensions in the following quotation, as part
of his interview with Wacquant in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology:

If, to resist, I have no means other than to make mine and to claim aloud the
very properties that mark me as dominated . . . in the manner of the sons of
English proletarians proud to exclude themselves from school in the name of
the ideal of masculinity borne by their class culture (Willis 1977), is that
resistance? If so, on the other hand, I work to efface everything that is likely
to reveal my origins, or to trap me in my social position (an accent, physical
composure, family relations), should we then speak of submission?
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.24)

We agree with Bourdieu that at times when there is a rupture in the seamless
interconnection between habitus and field, a certain amount of reflexivity is
enabled. This is not necessarily caused by crisis, as this rupture can be produced
in ordinary life in any situation where habitus and field are not aligned. In order
for this misalignment to occur the habitus needs to be confronted with a field that
is not the originary field (the one to which it is attuned). In such cases it is posible
for the habitus to internalise a degree of conflict. Lahire refers to the ‘internal
plurality of the actor’ (2011, p.43) to describe how people can internalise and call
forth different dispositions in response to different fields, relying on a person’s
ability to switch between and inhibit conflicting dispositions depending on the
demands of the occasion. He writes:

It is because the dispositions that make up each individual legacy of

dispositions are not necessarily coherent or homogeneous among themselves,
moreover, that each new situation experienced by the actor plays an important
role as the filter, selector or trigger and is the occasion for an application or
suspension, a flourishing or an inhibition of this or that part of the embodied
dispositions.
(Lahire, 2011, p.xii)

However, we are interested in presenting a more complex picture of the potential

ways in which plural dispositions can operate as part of the habitus, as we think
that as well as accounting for the divisiveness of internalising contradictory
structures it is important to account for the potentially creative aspects of this
process. We have developed the following typology of habitus interruptions to
help us account for different ways of negotiating multiple fields. This is
summarised Table 10.1 and the explanation that follows.
Table 10.1 provides a theoretical model for analysing the interaction between
habitus and two different fields, i.e. the field of origin and a secondary field. It is
applicable for analysing the interface between two strong, not wholly aligned fields
148 Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams

Table 10.1 Habitus interruptions typology

Disjunctive: originary field Conjunctive: originary field

OR secondary field AND secondary field
Abandoned habitus – divided from originary Reconciled habitus – two fields are
field. A person renegotiates their habitus reconciled. A person can successfully
in response to the structuring forces of navigate both fields. Can accommodate
the new field both structures despite opposition.
Can induce a degree of reflexivity
Re-confirmed habitus – divided from new Destabilized habitus – person tries to
field. The new field is rejected and so its incorporate the structuring forces of each
structures are not internalised field into their habitus but cannot achieve
successful assimilation. Instead they
oscillate between two dispositions and
internalise conflict and division

in which an agent operates, especially when there is a transition between field

influences. Working with Bourdieu’s overall model of a theory of practice and
relying on the conceptual tools of habitus and field, we accept that a person’s
primary habitus is formed through socialisation within the family and through
experiences in early life (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). This forms
schemes of perceptions, conception and action; and as noted above, this in turn
forms the basis on which all future experiences are built:

Early experiences have particular weight because the habitus tends to ensure
its own constancy and its defence against change through the selection it
makes within new information by rejecting information capable of calling into
question its accumulated information, if exposed to it accidentally or by force,
and especially by avoiding exposure to such information.
(Bourdieu, 1990, pp.60–61)

This can help account for why working-class people can reject schooling or forms
of leisure activity where the middle classes dominate.
However, as children get older they become less dependent on the family as
the main social space in which they operate, and are likely to experience life in
other social spaces (fields) too. These new (or secondary) social fields then exert
a strong force and impact on dispositions through the internalisation of structure.
For most children school is an important secondary social space; important in the
sense that they spend a lot of their time within this social space and so internalise
the structuring influences based on their experiences of this field. For some children
(particularly middle-class children) there is a high degree of congruence between
the structures of perception produced by their early life experiences and the
structures of perception produced by schools. It has been argued that schools
 Stepping outside of oneself 149

purvey middle-class values and this creates resistance for working-class kids.
However, there has been little discussion of how some working-class children
accept the (so-called) middle-class values of the school and therefore incorporate
the structures to produce schemes of perception that are congruent with the school
field. Theoretically this is interesting because if the two fields exert opposing
structural influences then the habitus must in some way be affected by this conflict.
Is it possible for people to incorporate two separate schemes of perception, or must
they reject one in favour of the other? With reference to Bourdieu’s concept of
habitus and the embodiment of reflexive dispositions in relation to multiple fields,
Bernard Lahire argues:

Sometimes contradictory socialising experience, can in/cohabit the same body;

. . . mental and behavioural dispositions, internalized to a greater or lesser
extent, can manifest themselves or be put on standby at different moments
in social life (according to the area of practices) or the course of a biography.
(2008, p.186)

This implies that a social agent can simply swap and change their habitus and
practice, pulling out dispositions in accordance to fields. We find this an
interesting idea but too simplistic for accounting for the complexities of
contradictory social experience. Lahire’s thinking is perhaps more akin to the idea
of the cultural omnivore (Peterson & Kern 1996). It suggests a smooth process
of ‘picking up and putting down’ tastes and practices at will. It is our contention
that the process of internalisation of contradictory structures creates something
much more complex than dispositions shifting between a state of latency and
manifestation. We perceive something much more messy than omnivouressness
and less straightforward than cultural mobility as a natural accompaniment to social
mobility. In our research we have worked with the idea that two contradictory
fields – the home and the school/university – can have differing structuring
influences, which may indeed be in opposition. We have shown this through work
on the way working-class teenage boys attempt to reconcile their educational
success with their sense of working-class masculine identity (Ingram, 2011; 2009)
and through considering working-class local students experience of an elite Higher
Education institution, and the way that they develop a chameleon habitus, that
although shifts in accordance to fields, does so in a bumpy way that is both positive
and negative for the students (Abrahams & Ingram, 2013).This model is applicable
as a toolbox for analysing the processes involved when a person is caught between
the influences of any two opposing fields. We recognise that within school, the
home and the school field may in fact be aligned. In this case the model is not
applicable.
Table 10.1 is divided into four separate sections, each pertaining to a
relationship between the habitus and the two fields. Each section represents a
separate possibility for the habitus in terms of how it incorporates the structures
of the fields. In the left-hand column the two possibilities are based on the
150 Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams

incorporation of the schemes of perception from only one field and the rejection
of the other. In the right-hand column the two possibilities are based on the
incorporation of the schemes of perception of both fields. This is a heuristic device
and as such is an approximate and not a perfect measure. We understand that to
some degree in all cases schemes of perception from both fields will be
incorporated. However, the degree of incorporation of each set of schemes may
vary and it is this that we find interesting to theorise. We provide an explanation
of each of these four potential responses, first explaining the disjunctive responses
and then the conjunctive responses. The disjunctive responses pertain to situations
when the habitus incorporates one or other of the fields’ schemes of perception,
conception and action. The two sets of schemes are seen (not necessarily in a fully
conscious sense) as alternatives. The conjunctive responses pertain to situations
where the habitus attempts to incorporate both schemes of perception and attempts
to find a way of accommodating the contradictions. We offer two options within
each type of response, i.e. two disjunctive and two conjunctive responses.

Disjunctive responses

Abandoned habitus
The abandoned habitus is divided from its originary field. As the secondary field
of the school exerts a structuring force on a person’s habitus they have difficulties
in accommodating both sets of incongruent structures. Over a period of time the
structures of the new field become internally dominant as part of the habitus, and
the old/originary structures are usurped or overwritten. Through a complex
interaction between structure and agency a person renegotiates their habitus in
response to the structuring forces of the new field. An example of this may be
when a working-class child adopts the manners and attitudes of his/her middle-
class peers and becomes attuned to behaving ‘appropriately’ and performing well
in school, but in doing so becomes less attuned to the ‘appropriate’ manners and
ways of being when at home or in his/her community.

Re-confirmed habitus
The re-confirmed habitus is divided from a new/secondary field. Again, as the
secondary field of the habitus exerts a structuring force on the habitus a person
will experience difficulties in accommodating both sets of incongruent structures.
As the new schemes filter through the habitus they become diluted by the strength
of the old schemes. At times this may be partly conscious, when an agent considers
the ways of viewing the world offered by each of the fields’ structures. However,
often this will be part of the non-conscious operations of the habitus, and the new
field’s structures simply find no means of being received by and assimilated
into the originary schemes. The new structures do not then become part of the
internalised dispositions of the habitus. The new field is rejected and so its
 Stepping outside of oneself 151

structures are not internalised: the person’s original habitus is re-confirmed (re-
confirmed, rather than confirmed, because the habitus that is not exposed to a new
field may be considered confirmed on a daily basis, through its encounters with
the field of which it is the product; a re-confirmed habitus has encountered and
rejected an alternative field and therefore alternative dispositions, conceptions and
perceptions). This may lead to symbolic violence, reproduction, misrecognition
and may be best exemplified by Willis’ (1977) ‘lads’, who thoroughly reject school
in favour of their own working-class male subculture.

Conjunctive responses

Reconciled habitus
The reconciled habitus occurs when the two fields, although opposing, are
integrated. Despite the oppositional structuring of the secondary field the agent
is able to reconcile the internalisation of both fields’ schemes of perception. This
is reminiscent of Lahire’s discussion of contradictory socialising experiences
cohabiting the same body (Lahire, 2011; 2003). A person can successfully navigate
both fields by drawing on these different aspects of habitus depending on which
field they are in, i.e. they are responsive to each field and have a ‘feel for each
game’ and behave accordingly. The agent behaves ‘naturally’ in each of the
divergent fields, i.e. in attunement with the field’s accepted norms of behaviour
and disposition. In this way a person can accommodate both field structures despite
the opposition between them. It could be argued that in these circumstances,
because of the incongruence of the schemes of perception and the differing ways
in which a person acts in the separate fields, a high degree of reflexivity is
generated. The reconciled habitus is a more positive framing of habitus interruption
and accords with the concept of the third space where something new is generated
from the process of internalising incommensurate structures.

Destabilised habitus
A destabilised habitus is when the structuring forces of each field are incorporated
into the habitus but cannot be reconciled. Instead the two separate schemes of
perception vie for dominance. The person tries to incorporate the structuring forces
of each field into their habitus, but cannot achieve successful assimilation. Instead
they oscillate between two dispositions and internalise conflict and division. The
participants of Friedman’s work (2015; 2014) are often good examples of this form
of habitus interruption and indeed his work builds from Bourdieu’s theorising of
habitus clivé. We also have spoken to this form of habitus disruption in our own
work (Ingram, 2011).
We offer these forms of habitus interruptions as a model for thinking about
multiple ways in which the internalisation of dissonant fields can be negotiated
by individuals. In our research we have found the idea of a divided habitus to be
152 Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams

both useful and limiting in thinking about different ways of navigating social
mobility. There is a need for a model to account for those who have left behind
their class without pain, those who have found it painful, those who refuse to erode
their identity and those who find a way to reconcile the differences. The model
we offer is attemtping to offer this complexity with the recognition that a person’s
habitus type is not static.

Conclusions
‘Third space travel’
The borderline work of culture demands an encounter with ‘newness’ that is
not part of the continuum of past and present . . . it renews the past, refiguring
it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the per-
formance of the present.
(Bhabha, 1994, p.10)

In this chapter we have considered the ways in which Bourdieu conceptualised

the divided habitus and discussed the usefulness and the limitations of his thinking
on this with reference to his, our own and others’ work. We have argued for the
need to move beyond the idea of divisiveness in relation to the internalisation of
contradictory structures in order to give way to thinking of the potentially creative
aspects of the process of bringing sets of structures together that don’t belong.
We have set this out in our typology of ‘habitus interruptions’ and have provided
a way of theorising the process of encountering different structures through living
and being in different fields. We want to finish by drawing further on the work
of Bhabha and of Hill-Collins to think about the positive aspects of a cleft habitus,
which is an area of Bourdieu’s theory that requires expansion.
Bhabha’s concept of the third space provides us with a useful way of thinking
about what can be created from the painful experience of a cleft habitus, and what
can be generated from the process of being forced to step outside of oneself. We
have described what we are calling a ‘reconciled habitus’ wherein the structures
of different fields have somehow been accommodated. We do not conceive of this
as being about finding the common ground of different structures, but about
something entirely new being created in their fusion. In passing through working-
class and middle-class worlds we have become class and cultural hybrids, belong-
ing in neither and both places at once. We have been displaced to the third space
and have recognised this displacement in our research participants too.
But for me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original
moments from which the third emerges; rather, hybridity to me is the ‘third space’,
which enables other positions to emerge. This ‘third space’ displaces the histories
that constitute it and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives,
which are inadequately understood through received wisdom (Bhabha, 1994, p.211).
There is an interesting creativity in not belonging fully in different fields because
it allows us to contest the boundaries. Through a displacement of habitus we need
 Stepping outside of oneself 153

to operate in a space outside of the fields in which we function. Bhabha’s concepts

of hybridity and the third space have helped us to take Bourdieu’s concept of the
cleft habitus further (Abrahams & Ingram, 2013). His theoretical work is borne
out of ways of thinking about and understanding identities in relation to migration
and although our work is not considering migration in the geographical sense we
are interested in what we call ‘class migration’, a movement across and through
social space. In doing this we take our histories and the structures that shape our
habitus and find ways of creating our own ‘structures of authority’ that go beyond
integration or assimilation. The ‘third space’ does not emerge from combin-
ing two dominant social fields and picking and choosing aspects of both to fuse
together; it is the development of something new altogether in relation to the
confrontation of the incommensurate aspects of two fields.

Outsiders within
Overall we have argued that, through experiences of a cleft-habitus, socially mobile
individuals, while potentially feeling much pain and anxiety over their location,
are able to generate much creativity and insight through occupying a position
within the third space. Friedman in an earlier chapter talks about his school friend
Kieran and the symbolic violence his family encountered as their tastes and
practices were not accepted. Despite moving in social space into the economic
elite, they did not possess the ‘right’ cultural capital to be socially and culturally
accepted in that world. However, he concludes by highlighting the complexity of
this, discussing how Kieran’s parents in fact made fun of his own family’s tastes,
and how they adamantly claim position within the working-class community
culturally despite their economic mobility. Kieran’s parents arguably occupy a
powerful position within the third space. Rather than rejecting one world in favour
of the other and attempting to adapt their habitus to suit that world, they creatively
contest the rigid boundaries of these two supposedly incommensurable fields.
Laughing at the pretentious practices of the cultural elite, something they do not
necessarily want to be part of, they attempt to generate a new position for them-
selves; they appear to exist within two fields or, as we argue, in a third space.
From this position they can step outside of themselves and view both social fields
from a distance, allowing them greater reflexivity.
Academics researching social class and inequality who have experienced social
mobility and find themselves in the ‘third space’ arguably occupy a privileged
position from which to research and view the world. This resonates with stand-
point epistemological arguments made by feminists. In opposition to positivistic
assertions that social scientists should be objective and value free, standpoint
epistemology reclaims the importance of using one’s own experiences as valuable
research tools (Smith, 1992; 1988; Harding, 1987; Stanley & Wise, 1983). It is
argued that science is blind to its own subjectivity and that notions of objectivity
are in fact merely male subjectivity (Caplan, 1988). Thus, feminists have argued
for the need to be honest about one’s bias and specific standpoint. Collins argues
154 Nicola Ingram and Jessie Abrahams

that admitting the knowledge we construct is partial renders it more trustworthy

than knowledge that is partial but presents itself as universally true (Collins, 1990).
Bourdieu argues ‘experience linked to one’s social past can and must be mobilised
in research’ (Bourdieu, 2004, p.113).
Patricia Hill-Collins provides an excellent and directive analysis of the benefits
of what she calls ‘outsider within status’, which echoes the discourse of standpoint
epistemology, in that it is about using the ‘experiences’ of marginalised groups
as a foundation for sociological research (Collins, 1986). We contend that there
is another element to this, which relates back to the Marxist idea of the bourgeoisie
controlling the production of knowledge; that is, sociological knowledge has
been primarily constructed through the standpoint of white middle-class males.
Collins argues that black feminists have directed sociology through their status
as ‘outsiders within’ (Collins, 1986); we argue that working-class academics can
similarly utilise their status as ‘outsiders within’ or third space occupants. Collins
defines outsider within status in the following way:

At its best, outsider within status seems to offer its occupants a powerful
balance between the strengths of their sociological training and the offerings
of their personal and cultural experiences. Neither is subordinated to the other.
Rather experienced reality is used as a valid source of knowledge for critiquing
sociological facts and theories while sociological thought offers new ways
of seeing that experienced reality.
(Collins, 1986, pp.29–30)

‘Outsiders within’ can expose elements of reality that are concealed by orthodox
approaches to analysis. They are more likely to notice anomalies that have been
ignored due to taken-for-granted assumptions imminent in traditional sociologists’
belief that they have a ‘normal world view’ (Collins, 1986).
Merton argues that ‘outsiders’, due to their exploited and dominated position
in the social structure, once trained as social scientists occupy a privileged position.
This is because they have been sensitised to the problems within the social system
and can thus see things taken for granted by groups who have benefitted rather
than having been disadvantaged by it (Merton, 1972). There is something about
having a similar experience of oppression or disadvantage that can serve to enhance
one’s knowledge or direct knowledge. That is, although the experience of ‘class’
is relational, what all members of the working-class seem to share is an experience
of having been disadvantaged in one way or another by a social system that does
not benefit them. If they migrate from a position of disadvantage to a position of
advantage in a middle-class world they see this world with different eyes to those
who have only known the privilege of that world. Being outsiders within they
understand that world but from the vantage point of the third space, which disrupts
the ‘normalising’ world view.
Those of us occupying the third space are ‘outsiders within’, our class of
origin often preventing us from being complete ‘insiders’ within the middle-class
 Stepping outside of oneself 155

academic world. However, while feeling or indeed being made to feel like
‘outsiders’ in the academy, we are in fact existing and working within it, rendering
us ‘outsiders within’. Moreover, we consider that within the working-class field
of origin we operate as ‘insiders without’, having grown up in such a community
our knowledge and loyalties remain strongly rooted within that culture but we are
no longer fully ‘within’ it; thus we would coin this concept to capture such a
position. This position is helpful when attempting to conduct research within such
communities and we often find ourselves moving with ease into such fields,
understanding the taken-for-granted norms and symbols within such a space. Many
academics before us have experienced and spoken openly about how a shared
background can result in greater access and understandings within the research
process. For example, Mohony and Zmroczek (1997) draw upon these issues
in their influential edited collection Class Matters: Working-Class Women’s
Perspectives on Social Class.
In relation to our own work we have found our personal biographies to be both
a useful source of experiential knowledge, a helpful tool for gaining access to
marginalised communities and also a motivation to focus on specific issues of
inequality. We are drawn to Bourdieu as we, like him, occupy the third space and
are outsiders within; this shared experience engenders a strong connection. We,
like him, experience immense tensions at times and feelings of isolation and
dislocation. Yet, like Bourdieu, we are able to channel this into insight and
understandings of those in marginal positions. We are drawn to Bourdieu’s work
as he ‘gets it’ – his insights seem to reflect our reality, and seem to be borne of
occupying a similar position between two contrasting social fields. By testing the
boundaries of the middle-class academy through our outsider within status and
refusing to accept the rules of the field and adapt our habitus to suit them, we are
aiming to claim a new space, a ‘third space’, one where those caught between
two worlds are accepted and feel at home. The third space offers a small but
significant resistance against the pull of an academy that privileges and supports
the cultural reproduction of the dominant class.

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Chapter 11

Conclusion
Bourdieu – the next generation
Jessie Abrahams, Nicola Ingram,
Jenny Thatcher and Ciaran Burke

The main thing for me is that Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ are especially sharp.
At the risk of over-doing the analogy, these tools were made from good
philosophical metal in the first place, and were refined and honed via empirical
work over a long period. They have a high degree of complementarity and
mutual, interlocking dependency. Even so, they do not - and do not claim -
to give us a finished theoretical edifice (though there are some regularities in
how the social world looks when they are used). Rather, I feel there is
something more modest in Bourdieu, which is an invitation to use the tools
oneself.
(James, 2015, personal correspondence)

This book makes the case for the relevance of Bourdieusian theory for a generation
of contemporary sociological researchers interested in inequalities. Every chapter
exemplifies an approach to Bourdieu that engages with conceptual thinking that
is neither habitual (Reay, 2004) nor superficial (Hey, 2003). We are interested in
what is at the heart of Bourdieu’s theory without reifying his concepts or idolising
the thinker. Importantly, we gain value from using Bourdieu to think through the
complexities of contemporary social inequalities.
We have learnt from and been influenced by the first generation of anglophile
scholars who have taken up Bourdieusian concepts. As we reflect on our own
journeys with Bourdieu, we realise the influence of Diane Reay, Bev Skeggs,
David James, Derek Robbins, Val Hey and Paul Connolly – academics who have
been our mentors, supervisors, examiners, role models, friends and colleagues.
The way that we have come to ‘know’ Bourdieu is grounded in their thinking, as
much as the first hand reading of his texts. As a new generation of Bourdieusians
we are thus less tied to the direct influence of his writing, which may give us the
freedom to take his theory in new directions.
This book is a product of many years of ongoing engagement and conversations
among Bourdieusian scholars often brought together by the BSA Bourdieu Study
Group. Inspired by feminist approaches to research, we promote a way of doing
and using Bourdieusian theory, which is about community, collegiality and
collaboration. We are attempting to resist the neoliberal marketisation of the higher
158 Abrahams, Ingram, Thatcher and Burke

education landscape through supporting each generation and building on each

other’s work. We are inspired by and are inspiring each other. Diane Reay writes
of the way in which our ‘academic freedom’ has been challenged in the name of
capitalism:

Just as insidious is the conversion of knowledge into something to be sold,

traded and consumed. We no longer have independent knowledge under-
pinned by academic freedom, but a knowledge economy where the value of
knowledge is decided by political elites on the basis of its utility to them.
(Reay, 2014, para. 7)

She continues that this has resulted in a situation whereby the academy is now
‘servicing the status quo’. As a study group we are attempting to use Bourdieusian
theory to break away from this, reinstating critique and challenging the status quo.
We are trying to reclaim our academic freedom and come together for intellectual
debate; this book is truly the fruit of such collaboration. As a study group we often
host debates around the themes within this book and argue that these debates and
disagreements are crucial to the development of the field as we work at times in
different directions to make sense of the entanglement that is Bourdieusian theory.
In this conclusion though we draw together some of the central and complementary
themes running through the book and engage in a conversation with them. We
want to highlight the way in which they speak to each other and are – in part – a
product of this shared thought. We do this through the lens of capitals and then
habitus and social mobility, considering the way in which each chapter contributes
to building on these concepts and situating them as of relevance within contem-
porary British society.

Capitals
The inability to trade one’s cultural capital because it has only limited value
or is not recognised in the places where value can be accrued is a substantial
disadvantage to and sign of being born working-class.
(Skeggs, 1997, p.129)

As was aforementioned, Bev Skeggs is a thinker who has been largely influential
in introducing many of the authors in this collection to Bourdieu’s concepts. As
such this quote has a deep and powerful resonance with the themes in this book
around the valuing and devaluing of certain capitals and the painful process this
can cause. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 build on the concept of capital in different
ways, but crucially they all speak to each other and together they push forward
debates among the scholarly community. In this section we tease out some mutual
and complementary points emerging from each chapter and thread them together
in an attempt to highlight some central themes.
 Conclusion 159

In Chapter 2, in response to the recent popularity of a focus on habitus as the

key to understanding the experiences of inequality in contemporary society, Ciaran
Burke makes a call for the re-centralising of capitals within Bourdieu’s theory of
practice. Following this up, Lisa Mckenzie in Chapter 3 demonstrates the power
of using the concept of capital alongside an awareness of field and the metaphor
of ‘the game’ to understand the way in which disadvantaged and marginalised
communities have come to be so through a devaluing of their forms of culture.
She argues that working-class culture and practices are devalued as they are
understood in relation to mainstream values alone and disconnected from ‘the
game’ within which they function. She argues thus, for the importance of
contextualising practices, something Bourdieusian theory can help us to do very
well. Derron Wallace’s Chapter 4 similarly argues that a de-contextualising or
simplification of the concept of capital has resulted in political denigration of ethnic
minorities and their culture and practices are seen as ‘lacking’. Lindsey Garratt
in Chapter 6 provides us with insight into how this may occur through the body
and bodily practice. She argues that Bourdieusian theory and in particular the
concepts of habitus, embodied cultural capital and hexis can help us to understand
the process through which bodily phenotypes are constructed as objects of value
– or as valueless, but concurrently how this construction is inculcated within our
bodies as the site of practice.
Wallace extends Prudence Carter’s (2003) notion of ‘Black’ cultural capital by
showing how ‘blackness’ can be a form of capital within a peer group of working-
class Afro-Caribbean young men in London. Wallace’s chapter offers an
interesting comparison to Thatcher and Halvorsrud’s chapter in which they argue
that the Polish and ‘white’ South African migrants would draw on their ‘whiteness’
as a form of capital in an attempt to avoid the ‘racial’ discrimination that ‘non-
white’ migrants and ethnic minorities suffer in British society. They draw on
Bourdieu’s capitals as a way to understand their Polish and South African
participants’ comprehension of social class and divisions in British society. The
participants brought with them knowledge of strategies to ‘play the game’, drawing
on their cultural capital in order to assure intergenerational social reproductions
for their children in Britain, which involved a privileging of whiteness. Relatedly,
both Wallace and McKenzie show how stigmatised groups can invert values as
they create their own value system within their community. As such, in Wallace’s
chapter ‘blackness’ becomes a capital possession for the black students in London,
whereas for McKenzie the residents living on the St Ann’s estate in Nottingham
abide by their own code system that gives them status and symbolic legitimation
on the estate as a way to shield them from the stigma they receive from wider
society. Bourdieu is often used to talk about legitimated forms of cultural capital;
what these studies bring to the debate is an understanding of the workings of
alternative forms of capital. Moreover through their work we come to understand
the ways in which the legitimisation process is contextual and operates differently
at different levels of social space. Some capitals only have ‘value’ in certain spaces.
160 Abrahams, Ingram, Thatcher and Burke

As an interesting follow-on to the discussion of the re-valuing of devalued

capitals, Tamsin Bowers-Brown in Chapter 5 demonstrates how it is not always
easy to create forms of resistance to symbolic domination. Her study of secondary
school girls’ understandings of achievement and educational choices shows the
force of legitimated cultural capital in constructing the rules of the game. She
argues the girls attempted to deliberately generate forms of ‘useful’ capital for
CV building purposes only. In this way they were inadvertently maintaining the
status quo and reproducing the illusio by continuing to value and legitimate what
is arbitrarily considered important. Furthermore, the over-emphasis on the
hierarchy of ‘core’ subjects meant that not all interests and talents were recognised
as equally valuable. The girls asserted that anything other than progression to
higher education was deemed ‘a failure’. These symbolically violent practices are
often internalised with pupils accepting personal responsibility for both their
achievements and their ‘failures’. This demonstrates how the legitimacy of the
hierarchy is maintained. She thus argues that Bourdieu’s theory is crucial as it
centralises the political and school contexts when unpacking experiences of
educationally successful young people.
The need to appreciate the temporality and contextual application of some
capitals can also be seen in Burke’s argument (Chapter 2). He demonstrates ways
in which seemingly socially mobile individuals’ trajectories are influenced by
access and use of context-specific forms of capital – in particular, social capital
accessed through family. He argues that this context-specific capital can be used
as a one-off investment to gain a return of a ‘graduate job’; however, once this
capital is spent, it cannot be used again. Burke questions the extent to which these
individuals have become socially mobile as their positions are capped and their
options limited due to a return to previous forms of capital.
Overall these chapters come together to form a collective discussion of the
functioning of ‘the forms of capital’ today in the lives of marginalised and often
silenced groups in the UK (young people, migrants and those living in ‘de-valued’
communities). The next section, through weaving together Chapters 7 to 10, turns
to the concept of ‘habitus’ and its relation to the process of social mobility in
contemporary British society.

Habitus and social mobility

Social mobility is a wrenching process. It rips working-class young people
out of communities that need to hold on to them, and it rips valuable aspects
of self out of the socially mobile themselves as they are forced to discard
qualities and dispositions that do not accord with the dominant middle-class
culture that is increasingly characterized by selfish individualism and hyper-
competition.
(Reay, 2013, p.667, emphasis added)

Without using the term habitus, Reay provides a Bourdieusian analysis of the
painful process of social mobility. The description of having the valuable aspects
 Conclusion 161

ripped from the self, accords with some of our experiences and provides the
impetus for much of our research. Bourdieu’s theoretical framework is evident
here and Diane works with the notion of the habitus divided against itself
(Bourdieu et al., 1999), providing a vivid image of what that division can do to
working-class people as they leave behind their roots and accept middle-class
culture. Chapters 7 to 10 all engage with this idea in some way or another through
using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus clivé, divided, or cleft habitus. Sam Friedman
in Chapter 8, for example, uses habitus clivé to explore the painful dimensions
of social mobility. His work importantly reminds us that social mobility, as a
common sense political discourse much mobilised by successive governments of
all persuasions, requires critical scepticism and challenge. This is an example
of Bourdieusian sociology in action, where seemingly sensible ideas can be un-
picked through the use of his tools to reveal the inequalities that inhere within.
As Bourdieu argues that ‘what is essential goes without saying because it comes
without saying: the tradition is silent, not least about itself as a tradition’ (Bourdieu,
1977, p.167). Friedman provides an example of the traditional application of
Bourdieu in the contemporary. His work shows the continued relevance of Bour-
dieusian theory as a means to challenge what is often unquestioned.
Kirsty Morrin in Chapter 9 takes the notion of unearthing inequalities that lie
beneath accepted wisdom a stage further in her consideration of both her research
and her position within it. She employs Bourdieu’s notion of doxa to think about
the ways in which policies embed within the education system and restructure
the habitus of actors in this field. Creatively bringing Gordon’s (1997) concept of
‘social hauntings’ to the Bourdieusian toolbox, she is able to then account for
the ghostly traces of the originary habitus and how it manifests to form small
resistances. Instead of thinking of the habitus as divided, Morrin conceives of a
restructured habitus always being haunted by its past structures. This is an interest-
ing development of Bourdieusian theory, showing a fruitful breaking away from
purist adherence to his concepts but thinking with the theorist nonetheless. Even
Bourdieu’s strongest critics admit that he is good to think with and against (Jenkins,
2002) even if they challenge his concepts. Morrin shows a confidence to engage
with Bourdieu on her own terms – both with and against. Her work connects to
both that of Friedman (Chapter 8) and Ingram and Abrahams (Chapter 10) in that
she uses ‘social hauntings’ to talk about something that has traditionally been
considered as a cleft habitus, and in doing so brings a fresh way of conceptualising
habitus revisions. While Bourdieu has written on the cleft habitus, his theoretical
work on this is frustratingly under-developed. He does, however, provide us with
the genesis of thoughts for taking this concept forward and Diane Reay in partic-
ular has led the way on this throughout her body of work. This book takes up
this engagement with ways in which habitus can be used to understand attempts
to reconcile the internalisation of structures from two incommensurate fields
and in concert with Reay this work is part of the ongoing conversation about
the contribution of Bourdieu, including the limitations of his work and its
application.
162 Abrahams, Ingram, Thatcher and Burke

Thatcher and Halvorsrud (in Chapter 7) take this discussion forward in their
comparative study of two sets of migrants – Polish and South African. They
explore what happens to members of a society when that society is disrupted by
political and economic transformation, but also when people migrate to a new
society. They argue that such an investigation relates back to the issues Bourdieu
was working on when he was studying the social organisation of the Kabyle
tribe in Algeria. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of a divided or cleft habitus
(which has it origin in Bourdieu’s study of the Kabyle), they show how migrants
experience a disjuncture between their present circumstances and the world in
which these individuals were originally raised and socialised. Through an
exploration of their adaptation into British society, the distinct character of each
set of migrant group can be shown as internalised by them yet always transitioning.
The habitus is shown to be fluid and subject to revision through new structures.
This very much connects with the final chapter of our book, which although
considering a different empirical issue, that of social class mobility, also
interrogates the notion of habitus change. Ingram and Abrahams refer to this
as ‘class migration’ and similar to Morrin introduce another theorist to the
Bourdieusian conversation. Through drawing upon Homi Bhabha’s concept of the
‘third space’ (Bhabha, 1994), Ingram and Abrahams think through the flipside of
habitus division; that of the creative energy that can be released through such a
negative process. The process may be compared with nuclear fission, where
splitting the atom causes division yet releases energy and resulting fragments that
are different to the matter that produced them.

Final thoughts
Although this book has included chapters from a small group of people, we are
all part of a wider community of early career Bourdieusian researchers who have
made connections with each other through our published work and collegial
engagement at academic conferences and ongoing BSA Bourdieu Study Group
events. We wish to recognise the value of these ongoing conversations. As the
editors, we cannot ignore the increasing popularity of Bourdieu among early career
researchers in Britain. Bourdieu is primarily a social theorist whose ideas have
spread across many disciplines. The continuing relevance of Bourdieu’s theoretical
framework is often best verified through practical application of his concepts,
which may explain his popularity among empirical researchers. The authors in
this collection come from a variety of backgrounds, but nevertheless this new
generation of researchers feel a deep affinity to Bourdieu. This book provides a
glimpse into the reasons for this through critically centralising the authors
personally, situating them within their own trajectories and stories. In an attempt
to engage with one of Bourdieu’s central ideas – that of reflexivity – each author
was asked to describe their own journey to and with Bourdieu. They thus reflect
on the impact their own experiences have had on their research interests but also
discuss what it was that initially drew them to the work of the French thinker. In
 Conclusion 163

so doing each author has exposed themselves by recounting childhood memories

and structural conditions that led them to Bourdieu. Professor David James in
personal correspondence to the editors describes what we consider a central reason
for the popularity of the thinker to this new generation of researchers who are
beginning their careers in an age of austerity:

Bourdieu’s work insists on a relational approach and a strong form of

reflexivity. It promotes a respect for people as individuals, whilst nevertheless
championing an analysis at the level of the social. In a socio-economic context
that appears to demand the worship of individualism (and in which, therefore,
individualistic economic or psychological models might themselves feel
especially ‘natural’), a Bourdieusian perspective can seem like a radical
refusal of the Anglo-Saxon way of seeing the world. In my view it gives us
some hope of understanding and then challenging ‘what goes without
saying’. We owe it to our fellow human beings – especially those that suffer
the most and have the least by way of voice or power – to at least try.
(James, 2015, personal correspondence)

We continue to live in an unequal society, where inequalities, although at

times challenged, refuse to be uprooted. Bourdieu has been found useful, by the
authors in this book, and by other Bourdieusian scholars for interrogating forms
of inequality. To argue, as some do, that new theories need to be engaged with
because Bourdieu has simply become too popular, entirely misses the import-
ance of his usefulness in the face of entrenched injustice. Just as Bourdieu should
not be used on the basis of fashion or popularity, so should he not be dismissed
on the same grounds. No theory will ever provide the answer to everything, but
as a way to engage critically with an unequal world Bourdieu’s tools are some of
the sharpest we have.

References
Bhabha, H. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bourdieu, P., et al. 1999. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary
Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Gordon, A. 1997. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minnea-
polis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
James, D. 2015 Why is Bourdieu still relevant and important today? Some thoughts.
Personal Correspondence, 27 April 2015.
Jenkins, R. 2002. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Sociologists. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Hey, V. 2003. Identification and mortification in late modernity: New Labour; alpha
femininities and their dis/contents. Keynote address at the 2003 International Conference
of Gender & Education, University of Sheffield, UK.
164 Abrahams, Ingram, Thatcher and Burke

Reay, D. 2004. ‘It’s all becoming a habitus’: beyond the habitual use of habitus in edu-
cational research. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 25(4), pp.31–444.
Reay, D. 2013. Social mobility, a panacea for austere times: tales of emperors, frogs, and
tadpoles. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 34(5–6), pp.660–677.
Reay, D. (2014) ‘From academic freedom to academic capitalism’, Discover Society.
[Online] [Accessed on 26 April 2015] Available from: www.discoversociety.org/2014/
02/15/on-the-frontline-from-academic-freedom-to-academic-capitalism/
Index

Abrahams, J. 1–7, 89, 120, 124, 140–155, 100–101, 103; social mobility 108,
157–163 110–114; see also economic capital;
academies 123, 125–131 social capital; symbolic capital
Adams, M. 10 capital accumulation 31, 34, 63
Alexander, C. 47 capitalism 32, 92, 100, 158
Algeria 29, 89, 162 Carter, P. 39–41, 47, 49–50
Allen, K. 57 Cartesian dualism see dualism
anamnesis 81 Chambers, S.A. 77
apartheid 90–93, 96–97, 103 class see social class
Archer, L. 12, 62 cleft habitus 110, 124, 140–141, 145–147,
Atkinson, W. 20–21, 125 151–155, 161
austerity 68, 163 Coffield, F. 128
authenticity 41–42, 46–49, 51, 74 cold-knowledge 61, 70
colonialism 89, 99
Back, L. 75 communism 90–92, 97, 100–103
Baker, J. 68 Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs)
Ball, S.J. 61, 70 129–130
Bathmaker, A.-M. 59, 65 Connolly, P. 143, 157
Bhabha, H. 140, 152, 162 context-specific capital 20, 160
Blair, T. 28 council estates 27–30
Bornholt, L. 69 Crossley, N. 9, 125, 136
Bowers-Brown, T. 27, 55–71, 160 cultural capital 14–16, 38, 41, 100–102,
Bradley, H. 14, 69 115–117, 143; black 39–40, 44, 46–48,
Burawoy, M. 90–91 50–52, 95, 159; class inequality 27, 31,
Burke, C. 1–22, 26, 55, 58, 80, 111, 128, 33–35; education choice 58–59, 61, 64,
157–163 69; embodied 74, 76, 82–84, 100, 159
Burkitt, I. 80
Butin, D.W. 55 Davies, J. 68
Butler, J. 77 De Beauvoir, S. 77
Byrom, T. 66–67 Derrida, J. 77
Descartes, R. 76–79
Cameron, D. 28, 129 determinism 8, 34
capital 2, 8–10, 17, 20–22, 28–29, 34, 91, de-valuing 27, 29, 35
158–159; and the body 76, 81–82; doxa 11, 82, 89, 123–124, 128–129, 131,
education choice 55, 57–58; migration 133–134, 136, 161
166 Index

dualism 74, 76–79 Heath, A. 11

Dublin 73 Hepworth, S. 60
heterodoxy 132–133
Eade, J. 93 hexis 74, 76, 81, 83
economic capital 12–13, 31, 58–59, Hey, V. 157
68–69, 100 Hill-Collins, P. 152, 154
education 33, 101–102, 112, 126–128, Hodkinson, P. 70
131–132, 134–135, 147–148, 160; Hollands, R. 128
choice 55–57, 64, 66–69; educational hot-knowledge 61, 70
capital 64, 100 Husserl, E. 136
employment strategies 17–18 hysteresis 124, 132–133
entrepreneurship 92, 98, 108, 123–131,
135–136 Icarus Effect 21
ethnicity 37–38, 75, 91–93, 95, 97–99, 159 illusio 64, 70, 81–82, 114, 124
ethnography 29, 35, 39, 116, 125, 132 immigration see migration
European Union 92, 94, 99 Ingram, N. 1–7, 89, 117, 120, 124,
existentialism 74, 76, 78 140–155, 157–163
intersectionality 51, 56, 82, 103
feminism 56, 77, 143, 153, 157 Ireland see Republic of Ireland
field 2–3, 10, 55, 61, 81, 101, 110, 119, Irwin, S. 60
159; cleft habitus 146–147, 149–151,
153; social haunting 133, 135–136 Jackson, B. 142
Foucault, M. 75 James, D. 144, 157, 163
Fox, J.E. 94 Jenkins, R. 61
Friedman, S. 9, 30, 89, 107–120, 124, 140,
151, 161 knowledge economy 11, 21, 158

Garratt, L. 73–84, 90, 159 labour market 12, 17, 20, 93, 99
gender 34, 48, 56–57, 74, 77–78, 82, Lahire, B. 146–147, 149
154–155 Lawler, S. 33, 115
Gilroy, P. 50 Levi-Strauss, C. 8
Goldberg, D.T. 75 Lightfoot, N. 66–67
Gordon, A. 133, 135, 161 Lizardo, O. 132
Gouldner, A. 6 London 42–44, 47–48, 95–96, 100, 159
Gove, M. 132 Lopez Rodriguez, M. 102
Greenbank, P. 60
McDonald, R.F. 128
habitus 2, 9–11, 17, 19, 22, 143, 148, 150, McDowell, L. 93–94
158–162; and the body 74, 76, 80–83; Mckenzie, L. 14, 25–35, 39, 56, 116, 125,
class inequality 28, 32, 35; cleft 110, 159
124, 140–141, 145–147, 151–155, 161; McRobbie, A. 56
educational choice 55–56, 59, 61–62, market-driven education 56, 130, 157–158
67, 70; migration 88–90, 92, 97, 101, Marsden, D. 142
103; social haunting 124, 133, 135–136; Marx, K. 154
social mobility 109–110, 118–119 masculinities 74, 77, 81, 147, 149
habitus tug 117, 144, 146 meritocracy 11, 21, 100, 102
Halvorsrud, K. 9, 51, 88–103, 159, 162 Merleau-Ponty, M. 8, 79–80
Haylett, C. 32 Meszaros, P.S. 61
 Index 167

micro-aggressions 50, 103 Robbins, D. 1, 6, 89, 127, 136, 157

middle classes 15–16, 27, 33–35, 37, 41, Ryan, L. 94
44; cleft habitus 140–141, 143, 145, Ryle, G. 78–79
148–149
migration 52, 73–75, 81, 88–91, 94–96, Savage, M. 111
98–101, 153, 162 Sayad, A. 89
Miliband, E. 129 Sayer, A. 11
Moore, R. 100 Scott, J. 14
Morrin, K. 35, 39, 57, 89, 110, 123–136, Shilling, C. 83
142, 161 Silva, E. 136
multiculturalism 93, 96 Silverstein, P. 89
Murji, K. 75 Skeggs, B. 26–27, 34–35, 115, 125, 132,
Myles, F. 136 157–159
social capital 13–14, 18–19, 58–60, 66,
narrative 25–35 69–70
Nash, R. 1 social class 3, 14–18, 97, 102–103, 107,
neoliberalism 56–57, 157 124, 136; black cultural capital 37, 41;
New York 37, 39, 42 class ceiling 110–114, 118, 124; class
Northern Ireland 8, 142–143 consciousness 38, 102; class migration
Norway 88 141–145, 153, 162; educational choices
Nottingham 27, 30, 33, 39, 92, 97, 116, 55, 59, 63; hierarchies 27, 33, 38;
159 inequality 25, 28, 34–35, 62
social haunting 125, 133–136, 142, 161
Office for Standards in Education socialism 91, 98
(OFSTED) 58, 70, 126, 130 social mobility 3, 11–12, 20, 31, 69,
Oliver, C. 101 107–120, 124, 158, 160–162; cleft
O’Reilly, K. 101 habitus 140, 143, 153; migration 89, 93
social reproduction 2, 62, 66, 70, 159
Passeron, J.-C. 62 Solomos, J. 75
peer groups 40, 44–47 South Africa 90–92, 94, 96, 98, 102–103,
phenomenology 2, 78–79, 81, 125, 133, 159, 162
136 Stalin, J. 91
Poland 90–94, 97–98, 100–103, 159, 162 Stenning, A. 98
power relations 32, 39, 57–58, 83 Strand, M. 132
Pygmalion Dilemma 20–21 structural determinism 10–11, 80
Structuralism 2, 8
race 35, 37–52, 82, 84, 90–93, 98, symbolic capital 31, 33, 35, 57, 83
102–103 symbolic violence 29, 34, 46, 119, 143,
racialisation 37–40, 46, 74–76, 78, 90, 94, 151, 153, 160
97 Szelenyi, I. 102
racism 73–75, 77–78, 81–82, 93, 159
rationality 11, 75–76, 78, 84 Thatcher, J. 1–7, 9, 51, 88–103, 157–163
Raty, H. 61–62 Thatcher, M. 28
Reay, D. 1, 10, 55, 63, 140, 157–158, third space 6, 140–141, 151–155, 162
160–161 Thompson, P. 3
reflexivity 3, 10–11, 70, 145, 147, 151,
162 UCAS 64, 70
Republic of Ireland 73, 81 USA 37, 39, 42
168 Index

Verdery, K. 90–91 Winterton, M.T. 60

Vincent, C. 61, 70 working class culture 123–125, 146, 151,
159
Wacquant, L. 82, 147 working classes 12–13, 15, 57, 98, 100,
Wallace, D. 35, 74, 95, 159 154; black cultural capital 41, 51; cleft
Webb, D. 58 habitus 140–142, 148–149; converted
Weber, M. 33, 91 17–22; inequality 27–28, 30, 32, 34–35;
whiteness 38, 92–94, 98–99 social haunting 124, 132–134; social
Willis, P.E. 151 mobility 107, 119
SOCIOLOGICAL FUTURES

‘Bourdieu: The next generation is a wonderful, exhilarating read, full of innovative ideas and new ways
of thinking about perennial social concerns from social mobility to migration. Its wide-ranging,
fascinating insights into how Bourdieu’s thinking can be developed for the 21st century breathe
fresh life into established social theories. It is a “must-read” not only for those trying to make sense

Bourdieu: The Next Generation

of Bourdieu but for everyone interested in wider philosophical and political issues of inequality,
identity and the role of the state.’
Diane Reay, Professor of Education, Cambridge University, UK

This book will give a unique insight into how a new generation of Bourdieusian researchers apply
Bourdieu to contemporary issues. It will provide a discussion of the working mechanisms of thinking
through and/or with Bourdieu when analysing data. In each chapter, authors discuss and reflect
Bourdieu:
The Next Generation
upon their own research and the ways in which they put Bourdieu to work. The aim of this book is
not just to provide examples of the development of Bourdieusian research, but for each author to
reflect on the ways in which they came across Bourdieu’s work, why it speaks to them (including
a reflexive consideration of their own background) and the way in which it is thus useful in their
thinking. Many of the authors were introduced to Bourdieu’s works after his death. The research
problems the individual authors tackle are contextualised in a different time and space to the one The development of Bourdieu’s intellectual
Bourdieu occupied when he was developing his conceptual framework. This book will demonstrate
how his concepts can be applied as ‘thinking tools’ to understand contemporary social reality.
heritage in contemporary UK sociology
Throughout Bourdieu’s career, he argued that sociologists need to create an epistemological break,
to abandon our common sense – or as much as we can – and to formulate findings from our results.
In essence, we are putting Bourdieu to work to provide a structural constructivist approach to social
reality anchored through empirical reflexivity.

Jenny Thatcher has recently completed her PhD at the University of East London. She is a co-
founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Nicola Ingram is a Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at Lancaster University. Nicola is also
a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group and co-convenor of the BSA
Education Study Group.

Ciaran Burke and Jessie Abrahams

Edited by Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram,
Ciaran Burke is a Lecturer at Plymouth University and author of Culture, Capitals and Graduate Futures:
Degrees of class. He is a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Jessie Abrahams is a PhD student at Cardiff University. Her thesis is focused on the effect of the
increased university tuition fees on young peoples’ ‘aspirations’. She is also a co-convenor of the
BSA Bourdieu Study Group.

Sociology/Social Theory/Bourdieu SOCIOLOGICAL FUTURES

Cover image: Shutterstock

www.routledge.com Edited by Jenny Thatcher, Nicola Ingram,

Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats Ciaran Burke and Jessie Abrahams