Social Class Differences - Internal Factors - Pupils’ Class Identities&The School Flashcards
What is habitus?
Habitus is a concept developed by Bourdieu (1984).
Habitus refers to the learned, taken-for-granted ways of thinking that is shared by a particular social class or group.
It includes tastes and preferences for particular lifestyles and consumption patterns (eg, fashion and leisure activities), and beliefs about what is realistic for members of the group to aim for. Their outlook on life and their expectations about what is normal or realistic for ‘people like us’.
A groups habitus is formed as a response to it’s position in the class structure.
What is the link between habitus and the middle class?
The middle class have the power to define their habitus as superior and to impose it on the education system.
As a result, the school puts a higher value on middle class tastes, preferences etc.
What is the link between habitus and cultural capital?
Bourdieu concept pf cultural capital is linked with habitus as it gives the middle class an advantage, while working class culture is regarded as inferior.
What does Archer focus on in pupils’ class identities?
Archer (2010) focuses on the interaction between working class pupils’ identities and school, and how this produce’s underachievement. To understand this relationship we link it to the concept of habitus.
What is symbolic capital?
Symbolic capital is where the middle class are deemed as to have worth and value in the school, this is because schools have a middle class habitus.
Pupils who have been socialised at home into middle class tastes and preferences gain symbolic capital or status and recognition from the school.
What is symbolic violence?
The school devaluates the working class habitus, so that the working class pupils’ tastes (eg, in clothing, appearance and accent) are deemed to be tasteless and worthless.
Bourdieu calls this withdrawing of symbolic capital ‘symbolic violence’. By defining the w/c and their tastes and lifestyles as inferior, symbolic violence reproduces the class structure and keeps the lower classes ‘in their place’.
As a result, w/c students may experience the world of education as alien and unnatural.
What did Archer find about symbolic violence?
Archer (2010) found that the working class pupils felt that to be educationally successful, they would have to change how they talked and presented themselves.
For w/c pupils, educational success is often experienced as a process of ‘loosing yourself’. They feel unable to access the ‘posh’, middle class spaces such as university and professional careers, it is seen as ‘not like them’.
What are ‘nike’ identities?
Many pupils were conscious that society and school looked down on them. Their symbolic violence led them to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth, status and value. They did this by creating their own class identity by heavily investing in ‘styles’, especially through the brand Nike.
Wearing these brands was a way of being them, without them they would feel inauthentic. Pupils’ identities were strongly gendered, eg, girls adopted a hyper-heterosexual feminine style.
Style performances were heavily policies by peer groups and not conforming was ‘social suicide’. The right appearance earned symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and brought safety from bullying.
What went wrong with ‘nike’ identities?
Nike identities led to conflict with the school’s dress code. Reflecting the school’s middle class habitus, teachers opposed ‘street’ styles as showing ‘bad taste’ or even as a threat. These pupils were labelled as rebels.
What did Archer say about nike identities and habitus?
Archer argues that the school’s middle class habitus stigmatises working class pupils’ identities. The pupils’ performances of style are a struggle for recognition: middle class saw ‘nike’ identities as tasteless, however to the working class it was seen as their symbolic capital and self-worth.
What impact do nike identities have on higher education for working class pupils?
Nike styles play apart in working class pupils’ rejection of higher education. They saw it as unrealistic and undesirable.
How is higher education seen as unrealistic for working class pupils with a nike identity?
Higher education is seen as unrealistic because it is not for ‘people like us’, but for richer, posher, cleverer people and they would not fit in.
It was also seen as unaffordable and a risky investment.
How is higher education seen as undesirable for working class pupils with a nike identity?
Higher education is seen as undesirable because it would mot ‘suit’ their preferred lifestyle or habitus.
For example, they did not want to live on a student loan because they would be unable to afford the street styles that gave them their identity.
What does Archer say about nike identities?
Archer et al says that working class pupils’ investment in ‘nike’ identities is not only a cause of their educational marginalisation by the school; it also expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle.
As a result, working class pupils may choose self-elimination or self-exclusion from education. They ‘get the message’ that education is not for them, they will actively choose to reject it because it does not fit in with their identity or way of life.
Who did Ingram study about working class identity and educational success?
Ingram (2009) studied two groups of working class Catholic boys from the same highly deprived neighbourhood in Belfast.
One group had passed their 11+ exam and went to a grammar school.
The other group failed their 11+ exam went to a local authority secondary school.
The grammar school had a strong m/c habitus of high expectations + achievement.
The secondary school had a habitus of low expectations of its underachieving pupils.
