ICS Seminar Series - Megan Watkins

Date: Thursday 13 August 2015
Time: 11.30am - 1pm
Venue: EE.G.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

Megan Watkins

Little Room for Capacitation: Rethinking Bourdieu on Pedagogy as Symbolic Violence

Abstract 

In Bourdieu's early work on education and cultural reproduction, he declares that 'All pedagogic action is objectively symbolic violence insofar as it is the imposition of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary power' (Bourdieu, 1977: 5). This paper rethinks Bourdieu's proposition. It questions not only whether all pedagogic action is symbolic violence, but the very notion of a cultural arbitrary upon which this view is based. For Bourdieu, culture is narrowly framed in terms of class, and pedagogy a mechanism by which it is reproduced. As such, it functions as a form of violence having much in common with Foucault's notion of discipline as a technology of power. Unlike Foucault, however, who also acknowledges the enabling potential of power as a technology of the self, Bourdieu has no such equivalent. His concept of pedagogic action leaves little room for capacitation wherein, rather than a cultural arbitrary, certain skills have an inherent use value equipping individuals with capacities that are a means for social access and transformation.

This reconceptualisation of pedagogy as enabling allows for a reconfiguration of field as a domain of social action not just a domain of reproduction and distinction. It also allows us to grapple with the transferability of these capacities across fields, a process Bourdieu only characterised as a conversion of capital. To address these issues it is also important to map Bourdieu's discussion of pedagogic action onto contemporary characterisations of pedagogy within the wider field of education. This conceptualisation of pedagogy, the paper argues, replicates key binaries within educational discourse between notions of teacher- and student-directed learning neglecting the inherent relationality of pedagogy, the pivot upon which agency is generated but which Bourdieu similarly neglects.

Biography

Megan Watkins is Associate Professor in the School of Education and member of the Institute for Culture and Society. Her research interests lie in the cultural analysis of education and the formation of human subjectivities. In particular, her work engages with issues of pedagogy, embodiment, discipline and affect and the interrelation of these to human agency. These interests mesh with her exploration of the impact of cultural diversity on education and the ways in which different cultural practices can engender divergent habits and dispositions to learning. Megan's books include Discipline and learn: bodies, pedagogy and writing, (Sense,2012), Disposed to learn: schooling, ethnicity and the scholarly habitus (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the recent collection, Cultural pedagogies and human conduct (Routledge, 2015).