Wilding, Grace;
(2023)
Brandom, Bourdieu and Agency: An Inferential Re-Reading of Habitus and its Place within Education.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The central argument presented here is that Robert Brandom’s Inferentialism addresses the dualism inherent in constructivist accounts of meaning generally, and within the work of Pierre Bourdieu specifically, by providing a holistic account of meaning which bridges the mind-world divide. His holistic account of meaning is prefaced on his unique understanding of human rationality. Humans act for reasons and, as such, we are responsible for our beliefs and actions. This is agency. Via this revised understanding of agency, the charges of determinism which continue to be levelled against Bourdieu and Bourdieusian scholarship, most commonly in relation to the key conceptual tool of habitus, can be answered. I will argue that a more nuanced, inferential, account of habitus, one which clearly demonstrates the process of agency, is possible. As the focus of Bourdieusian scholarship is not pedagogy directly but power, a model that can get to the heart of agency is a model that can provide an answer to, rather than description of, the enduring inequalities found in education. Furthermore, Inferentialism and its structured account of meaning can provide educationalists with a fresh way of approaching the process of research itself, one centred on the human capacity for expression. The logical expressivism of Brandom’s Inferentialism is key to the potential that this theory has within the context of education, giving educational researchers and practitioners a fresh way in which to develop their conceptual understandings of issues surrounding inequality via the practice of giving and asking for reasons.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Brandom, Bourdieu and Agency: An Inferential Re-Reading of Habitus and its Place within Education |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Education, Practice and Society |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10163279 |
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