Interpreting Bourdieu is difficult, since he generates concepts
promiscuously and sometimes defines them in wildly different ways from one
work to another, but in at least one place he talks of "social capital" as
"the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to
possession of a durable network or more or less institutionalized
relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition -- in other words, to
membership in a group. . . ."["The forms of capital," in J. Richardson
(Ed.) _Handbookk of theory and research in the sociology of education_,
1986.] In this sense, "intergenerational transmission" (I'm not sure he
ever uses the term) would be articulated through parents' decisions about
which neighborhoods to live in, which schools to send their children to,
how to spend their leisure time, where to go on vacation, and so on -- all
of which, in emergent, contingent ways, would shape the social ties,
friendships, and so forth of the next generation. No theory of
psychological "transfer" is required to talk about distributions of social
capital (or embodied, objectified, or institutional cultural capitals).
Instead, it would seem easier to link notions of social capital as defined
above to notions of communities of practice, if there were any reason to
want to do so. When Jean Lave suggests that Bourdieu thinks of learning in
a manner similar to "traditional learning theor[ists]" [Naoki Ueno post,
7/27], she is probably referring to his use of the concept of "habitus" or
class-based generative dispositions, an idea criticized by many
commentators, for many reasons.
It has not seemed to me that Bourdieu's work has been "privileged" in the
educational community. Although the idea of "cultural capital" is
frequently invoked, it isn't often used in an interesting way: as I
understand it, the point is not to identify who possesses or benefits from
which capitals, but to explicate the larger "economy of practices" in which
value and capitals are generated in the first place. My own sense is that
if Bourdieu work has any use, it's primarily for focusing our attention on
the interplay of institutionalized systems of value and practice, his
insistance on seeing science, higher education, the public schools, the art
world, tastes, and family life as densely intertwined. A useful
introduction is Loic Wacqaunt & Pierre Bourdieu, _Invitation to Reflexive
Sociology_ (I think that's the title) -- a book apparently intended in part
to demonstrate that everything Bourdieu has ever said is correct, and all
his critics are fools.
Jan Nespor
Department of Teaching and Learning
War Memorial Hall 305
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0313
nespor who-is-at vt.edu
phone: 540-231-8327
fax: 540-231-9075