McCarthy, Francesca;
(2024)
(Mis)recognising the symbolic violence of academically selective education in England: a critical application of Bourdieusian analysis to pupils’ lived experiences.
Critical Studies in Education
10.1080/17508487.2024.2409672.
(In press).
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Abstract
This paper contributes to critical scholarship of the concept of symbolic violence by raising two questions. The first concerns the extent to which symbolic violence is recognised and misrecognised by those who experience it. The second problematises the relationship between symbolic violence and social justice by considering how an accepted relationship of disadvantaged = dominated is itself a misrecognition. The specific form of symbolic violence I explore relates to the English system of academically selective education. I examine the lived experiences of three pupils who took and did not pass the ‘11+’ (the exam taken by pupils which determines entrance to an academically selective ‘grammar’ school). The tools of pedagogic action, pedagogic work and pedagogic authority are used to demonstrate how symbolic violence operated in the ‘everyday suffering’ of the pupils. I also highlight that such suffering enhanced pupils’ awareness of the rules of the game allowing them to recognise the potential for capacitation that arose from intentional compliance with the dominant. Re-positioning the pupils as not in need of emancipation highlights the misrecognition within the relationship between symbolic violence and social justice. I argue that recognising the contextual complexities of social justice is a means of countering such misrecognition.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | (Mis)recognising the symbolic violence of academically selective education in England: a critical application of Bourdieusian analysis to pupils’ lived experiences |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/17508487.2024.2409672 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2024.2409672 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Symbolic violence; misrecognition: academically selective education; Bourdieu; pupils’ lived experiences; social justice |
| 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 - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment > Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10197993 |
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