It promotes a new book by Basil Bernstein, along with other info about him.
Given the discussion of last month, I thought xmca-ers might want a look.
Here goes:
Copyright Sociological Research Online, 1996
Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity Theory, Research, Critique
Basil Bernstein
London: Taylor and Francis
1996
ISBN 0803951442 (Paperback), 074840371X (Cloth)
=A314.95 (pb), =A340.00 (Cloth)
xiv + 216pp
We are in the midst of a Basil Bernstein celebration: occasioned by
two Festschriften one
retrospective, one prospective (and rumours of a third coming from
Australia). The
retrospective volume (Sadovnik, 1995) contains 19 chapters and a
response by Bernstein;
the prospective (Atkinson, Davies and Delamont, 1995) 12 chapters
taking Bernstein's
ideas outwards in multiple directions. A celebratory symposium at the
American
Educational Research Association Conference in 1996 attracted 200
people who sat
spellbound as Bernstein expounded for 70 minutes: an unusual session
in a conference
where most papers are sound bites delivered as the doors swing
constantly open and
closed, while people come and go, pausing only to eat sandwiches,
check their catalogue
or just rest their feet. Because Bernstein rarely attends conferences,
he probably did not
realize how unusual his performance and reception were. For those of
us on the platform,
all AERA veterans, who had each brought along both a brief tribute and
a twenty minute
paper (in case Bernstein chose not to speak), the event was
extraordinary.=20
The enthusiasm for Bernstein will be reinforced by the publication of
this book. Twenty
five years after Bernstein published his first volume of papers,
Class, Codes and Control
Volume 1, this is effectively Volume 5, although it lacks both the
familiar title and the
original orange and blue Routledge colour scheme. Our comfortable
abbreviations
(CCC1, 2, 3, 4) have to be put aside. Once we open the book, however,
we are back on
familiar territory: lost in a labyrinth. Bernstein is, once again,
reworking his previous ideas,
reprinting his papers with modifications, making his ideas even more
complicated and
interwoven, and engaging in arcane disputes with nearly everyone who
has dared to write
about him. The complex re-interpretations of his own ideas are of more
lasting importance
than disputes with others, and will be the focus of this review, but
they are not easy to
follow. As Atkinson wrote:
Bernstein, then, is continually working the same themes into
intricate patterns
and motifs. Unfortunately for the general reader this work rarely
- if ever -
quite takes on the appearance of completion. Often the fabric
turns out to be
the labour of a Penelope: the threads are undone only to be
re-worked into
ever more intricate designs. Sometimes the patterns that
Bernstein weaves
become so intricate that the original figures are all but lost to
view like an
ornate Saxon design, the elements are elaborated and turned back=
on
themselves. It is as if the formal design takes over, and becomes
almost as
valued as the original representation. (Atkinson, 1985: p. 8)=20
That comment applies once again to this new book, which contains ten
chapters in three
sections. Part Three: Critique and Response contains four chapters.
One is a short
discussion of Bernstein's place in sociolinguistics as he sees it, the
second a reprint of his
debate with A.D. Edwards, the third a dialogue with Bourdieu, and the
last his response to
a paper by Harker and May (1993). Part Two contains two papers
intended to
demonstrate how Bernstein has always relied on 'the very close
relation between the
development of the theory and empirical research' (p. 4). The second
paper opens with an
attack on the British ESRC's compulsory methods training for PhD
students: redesigning
the PhD 'as a driving licence rather than a licence to explore' (p.
125). Part One contains
four chapters. The first introduces the key concepts, the third a
major analysis of how
social sciences construct competence. Chapter Two is a revised version
of a paper that
appeared in Class, Codes and Control 4; Chapter Four is the text of a
lecture given in
Greece and is only six pages long.
Overall the book is an essential purchase for libraries, and will be
consulted by many
sociologists interested in curriculum and pedagogy. However, no
beginner should try to
learn about Bernstein from Volume 5. The ideas are simply not
accessible to anyone unless
he or she has already wrestled with the four previous volumes. While
Bernstein is an
inspirational theorist, he has never managed to write a clear,
straightforward introduction to
his ideas and is fiercely resistant to everyone else's attempts to
produce one for him. We
all hate being misrepresented and oversimplified, but we all owe a
duty to those outside
our elite discourses which can only be discharged by providing
accessible routes into our
theories. Once again Bernstein has totally failed to provide such a
route.
Sara Delamont
University of Wales, Cardiff
References
ATKINSON, P.A. (1985) Language, Structure and Reproduction: An
Introduction to
the Sociology of Basil Bernstein. London: Methuen.
ATKINSON, P.A.; DAVIES, B. and DELAMONT, S. (1995) (eds) Discourse and
Reproduction: Essays in Honor of Basil Bernstein. Cresskill, N.J.:
Hampton Press.
BERNSTEIN, B. (1971) Class, Codes and Control Volume 1. London:
Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
BERNSTEIN, B. (1973) Class, Codes and Control Volume 2. London:
Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
BERNSTEIN, B. (1975) Class, Codes and Control Volume 3. London:
Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
BERNSTEIN, B. (1990) The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse : Class,
Codes and
Control Volume 4. London: Routledge.
HARKER, R. and MAY, S.A. (1993) 'Code and Habitus' : Comparing
Accounts of
Bernstein and Bourdieu' British Journal of the Sociology of Education,
vol. 14, no. 2,
pp.160 - 178.
SADOVNIK, A.R. (1995) Knowledge and Pedagogy: The Sociology of Basil
Bernstein. New York: Ablex.
Copyright Sociological Research Online, 1996