Mobilization of Pierre Bourdieu’s legacy 20 years later: topicality of a debate for education

ABSTRACT

This article proposes at discussing Pierre Bourdieu’s legacy for debates in Education, 20 years after his death. It begins with exhibition of unpublished works by and about the sociologist, which can help the task of appropriation and use of his theoretical framework of analysis. As a way of attesting to the fruitful use of its framework, an exhibition of unpublished research carried out in databases that contemplate postgraduate productions is carried out, trying to quantitatively and qualitatively identify theses and dissertations that refer to the sociologist in the title, abstract or between the keywords, predisposing that the authors use it to weave their arguments and the inference of empirically produced data, and from it, build knowledge in Education. The text ends with the recovery of what was exposed throughout the article, culminating with the support of the argument of the essential presence and mobilizations of Bourdieu for Brazilian educational scientific field.

Keywords:  Pierre Bourdieu; Mobilization; Topicality; Legacy; Education

RESUMO

O presente artigo se propõe a discutir o legado de Pierre Bourdieu para os debates em Educação, 20 anos após seu falecimento. Inicia-se com a exposição de obras inéditas de e sobre o sociólogo, que podem auxiliar a tarefa de apropriação e utilização de seu quadro teórico de análise. Como forma de atestar a profícua utilização de seu arcabouço, realiza-se uma exposição de pesquisa inédita realizada em bases de dados que contemplam as produções de pós-graduação, tentando identificar quantitativamente e qualitativamente, teses e dissertações que referenciam o sociólogo no título, resumo ou entre as palavras-chave, predispondo que o utilizam para tecer suas argumentações e a inferência de dados produzidos empiricamente e, a partir do mesmo, constroem conhecimento em Educação. Finaliza-se o texto com a recuperação do exposto ao longo do artigo, culminando com a sustentação do argumento da imprescindível presença e das mobilizações de Bourdieu para o campo científico educacional brasileiro.

Palavras-chave:  Pierre Bourdieu; Mobilização; Atualidade; Legado; Educação

Pierre Bourdieu, 20 years after: printed legacies

A statement from the Élysée Palace, official residence of the President of the French Republic on January 23rd, 2002, lamented the death of Pierre Bourdieu, stating that the sociologist lived Sociology as a science inseparable from an engagement. After his burial in the cemetery Père-Lachaise, in Paris, next to names like Chopin, Molière, Balzac, Auguste Comte, Isadora Duncan and Jim Morrison, some tributes were granted to him, with the presence of intellectuals, artists, unionists, researchers, professors and anonymous. Headlines in the media referring to him as one of the most influential intellectuals when the death of Jean-Paul Sartre, in 1980 (GAYON, 2020).

Gayon (2020) highlights that, from four angles, approaching, a great sociologist, “un grand monsieur”, but also a major media critic, his death, however, had a less intense media coverage and more localized to the intellectual pole, different from what happened the intellectual, the sociologist, the man, the media critic, the left and center left press, such as Libération and Le Monde, highlighted the news of the death of Bourdieu more than the center-right and right-wing newspapers, such as Le Figaro. The same happened with the more commercial television channels, such as TF1, that devoted a more limited time than the radio and television stations of the cultural pole, such as France Culture, who carried out a special program.

Now, after twenty years, unpublished books and reprints, articles in specialized journals and colloquia have been systematically launched, marking with various tribute forms the time frame of the anniversary of his death. Research colleagues, advisees, scholars, and promoters of his work have dedicated themselves to these publications, both to give him recognition and to publicize his theoretical framework of analysis, more useful than ever to try understanding the logics of the practices of the social world in contemporary times.

Among other actions with the aim at disclosing his legacy, there is a publication of the Pierre Bourdieu archive collection, which has been entrusted since 2020 for inventory to GED (Grand Équipement Documentaire), campus Condorcet, at the university library in Aubervilliers, France. It is a platform for research with a collection of more than fifty libraries and documentary funds, with a wide range of digital material. It means a shared laboratory for research in the human and social sciences areas, intending to be the point of convergence between disciplines, resources and researchers.

According to the GED website¹, “Bourdieu’s Collection” is composed of a vast collection of documents covering the entire professional activity of Pierre Bourdieu, from the 1950s until his death in 2002, including original manuscripts of books and articles with related documentation, research materials, course and seminar materials, notes, posters, reports produced for various institutions, documents related to editorial work, as well as correspondence. In total, the fund occupies approximately one hundred linear meters of archives for more than a thousand dossiers, to which a significant part of Pierre Bourdieu’s personal library is added. The international trajectory of Pierre Bourdieu and the influence of his work abroad are reflected in the great linguistic and geographical diversity of the collection. Access to the collection is subject to permission from the Scientific Evaluation Committee of the Pierre Bourdieu Fund, which currently comprises nine members: Etienne Anheim (EHESS), Jérôme Bourdieu (EHESS), Julien Duval (CNRS), Paul Pasquali (CNRS), Amín Pérez (Uqam), Franck Poupeau (CNRS), Nicolas Renahy (Inrae), Marie-Christine Rivière (Collège de France) and Gisèle Sapiro (EHESS).

In the case of relevant publications, it is important mention the Dictionnaire Internacional Bourdieu, under the organization of his collaborator in life, Gisèle Sapiro, launched in 2020, the year Bourdieu would have turned 90. It is a book with approximately 600 entries, from a pedagogical and reflective approach written by a team of 126 authors, coming from 20 countries, including sociologists, philosophers, historians, and anthropologists. In an interview to Naudet and Duvoux (2021), Sapiro and Poupeau, respectively organizer and member of the book’s editorial committee, stated that the dictionary aims at avoiding the occasional and random uses of concepts bequeathed by Bourdieu, also intending rectify a series of misunderstandings, even deliberate distortions that tend to deviate them from the meanings intended by the sociologist. Thereunto, they sought to historicize the concepts, to reconstitute their theoretical elaboration and the possible inflections they suffered in his work, based on empirical uses. The book could make it possible, therefore, to guide the reader in this immense work and to put the theory back in the dialogue that it maintained with the human and social sciences of its time.

As an unpublished work, there is L’intérêt au désintéressement, Cours au Collège de France (1987-1989) (2022) by Publisher Raison d’Agir-Seuil, which deals with his classes between 1987 and 1989 in Collège de France, in which he dedicated to examining the public service, approaching the employees, the formation of fields, such as the legal and the bureaucratic, considering that the social agents in these spaces are led to serve, at the same time, their own interests, but also to go beyond that. It states that, if disinterested actions oriented towards the universal are possible, it is because there is an interest in disinterest in these social universes².

Another unpublished book, and it can be said that it is long awaited by Bourdieu’s readers, because it brings a posthumous reconstruction of the great work that he planned to present his field theory, Microcosmes. Théorie des champs (2022), by Publisher Raisons d’Agir³. In this book, the sociologist presents one of the most innovative dimensions of his work, whose elements and partial formulations are found in many of his works, so much so that the book brings together texts already published, but in a sparse form. No less important than the notions of habitus or capitals⁴, there was not yet a more elaborate systematization published. The book approaches the field as an instrument of analysis that might mobilize a set of domains, or microcosms, components of the social cosmos or macrocosm, very diversified ones, such as Law, religion, the academic world, economics, art, literature, showing what they have, but also in common, with specific fights and dispute points. Bourdieu’s intention with the book, in his project, was to highlight the operative force and theoretical coherence of the concept. According to the editors, for the organization of the work, the notes left by the author on his original texts for this purpose were considered, compiling a collection of his writings that he intended to rework, as it was his habit.

According to Bourdieu (2005, p. 184),

In fact, until the 1980s I considered most of my publications - papers, off course, but also the books - like drafts (...) I knew I would start again, better, more definitively, in another paper or another book. Several times I have demanded that publishers promise to let me correct my book on the second edition. That is the case of L’Amour de l’art, which I practically rewrote in the second edition, or L’Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique that as the title says, it was just a sketch that should be withdrawn from sale when the ‘definitive’ book appeared, Le Sens Pratique (...) I’m always coming back to the texts, everything is revised, line by line, I change a word here, a word there. For example, someone observed that, at a certain point, where I said ‘system’ I started to say ‘field’ by occasion of a reprint or republication. (...) In fact, replacing ‘system’ with ‘field’ is a change in theory. But these changes are made little by little, step by step, through successive corrections which are ruptures.

The editors claim that the book, desired by its author and redone without him, for him, is an essential book to understand the scope of the relational aspect of his work, by completing Bourdieu’s conceptual, scientific, and methodological system.

In the table of contents of Microcosmes. Théorie des champs, there are themes like fundamental structures of the fields; fetichism; empowerment process; universalization work; provisions as principles of action; relationships between fields; notion of field, elements for a general theory; notes on the fields; further general propositions preceded by an introductory note from the editors. We can only hope for its brief appearance translated into Portuguese in Brazil, as has been the practice for many of his still unpublished books, that when launched in the country, contemplate a significant number of consumers who make use of his theoretical framework.

Other material (2022) launched by Raisons d’Agir is Pierre Bourdieu, une bibliographie, by Yvette Delsaut and Marie-Christina Rivière. According to the editors, this reference bibliography lists all texts (papers, boos, reports, and so on) written by Pierre Bourdieu and any translations that may have been produced. Started by sociologist Yvette Delsaut, one of the first collaborators of Pierre Bourdieu, then continued by Marie-Christine Rivière, associated for a long time with the direction of his laboratory, the book had already had an edition that had one compiled until 2002 (DELSAUT; RIVIÈRE, 2002). Now completed for recent years, the books’ table of contents describes a prologue that addresses the bibliographic genre, the main part of the book dedicated to the texts inventory, and ends with an interview in the fall 2001, in which Pierre Bourdieu and Yvette Delsaut question the logic that inspires the bibliography and discuss the collective spirit of research.

When commenting these launchings, Isabelle Péradon (2022, p. 01) affirms:

It’s been twenty years since Pierre Bourdieu left us. If the last decades of the 20th century were marked by the strong personality of the sociologist with a decided temper, It must be admitted that since 2002, his work has given rise to many parochial quarrels and few constructive analyzes, Publishers Agone, Seuil and Raisons d’Agir revived this thinker of domination, whose arduous writing was not easy to read, but the ideas and concepts literally infused society (Free translation by the author of the article from the original in French).

Mobilization of Bourdieu’s work in Education: topicality of a debate

Among some reprint of his books in France, Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique, is highlighted because it is revised, completed, and updated by Agone Publisher. Launched in 2002, the first edition intended to document Bourdieu’s interventions, even to undo the misunderstanding that the sociologist began to express himself, in the public space about politics, from the strikes of 1995, in France. The truth is that, as the book’s preface points out, such interventions are present throughout the author’s work, beginning in the 1960s, in his entry into intellectual life, becoming a constant reflection on the social conditions of existence, an integral part of his job as a sociologist (POUPEAU; DISCEPOLO, 2002). Both in the first edition and now, in 2022, it is about showing an articulation between scientific research and political intervention, from a collection of articles published in magazines (non-scientific journals), as well as oral interventions, preceded by an introduction intended to contextualize their appearance based on historical events, intellectual and scientific fields and the work of Bourdieu, following a chronological order that encompasses seven periods (POUPEAU, 2020).

According to Martinache (2022), in the editorial anthology that accompanies the posthumous tributes that mark Pierre Bourdieu the twenty-year anniversary of the death, this collection of various texts of “interventions” by the sociologist over nearly five decades, even twenty years after the first edition, if not more than before, it is in tune with the present and shows the clairvoyance of the sociologist. It also comes above all to demonstrate the link between the scientist and the political, demolishing Bourdieu’s “axiological neutrality” injunctions, sometimes pointed out by very hasty and misinterpreted readings of his work.

According to the commentator, Bourdieu criticizes political analysts, or as he calls them, the “doxosophists”, semi-academics authorized by the media field to comment on political News, and whose scientifically misconceived observations maintain numerous mystifying platitudes, and only a critique of the forms of information circulation could prevent disenchantment with politics. That is why the priority must be critical awareness of the mechanisms of symbolic violence⁵ operating in politics. Through his interventions, Pierre Bourdieu defended the need to politicize things by making them scientific, and therefore thinking about politics without thinking politically (MARTINACHE, 2022, p. 02). According to Poupeau and Discepolo (2002, p. 08), organizers of the previous book and this new edition,

the genesis of a specific mode of political intervention that traces social science and activism, far from being opposed, they might be conceived as two faces of the same social reality to help its transformation. Trajectory illustrated by the texts in this collection shows how sociology itself is enriched by political commitment and by reflection on the conditions of this commitment.

The book cover⁶ portrays Pierre Bourdieu photographed by Jean François Campos in Gare de Lyon, on December 12th, 1995, alongside strikers who opposed the Social Security reform and the pension system, led by the government of Alain Juppé, during the presidency of Jacques Chirac. According to Catani (2017, p. 44), “Bourdieu closely followed the series of street demonstrations that took place in France in December 1995, and on that occasion, he made a brilliant intervention at the Gare de Lyon (‘Against destruction of a civilization’), later included in his book Counterfires: tactics to confront the neoliberal invasion (1998)”.

As highlighted by Catani (2017, p. 43), a simple look at this book (he refers to the 2002 edition, published a few months after Bourdieu’s death, but that started with his collaboration, with suggestions, in 1999), “a summary of his engagement in different French and foreign social movements reveals the intensity and force of his thinking”.

As Catani (2017, p. 240) affirms, “despite the international presence of a widely commented and discussed work, the book favored the French dimension of the interventions and controversies that it sometimes provoked”. From the transnational characteristic of Bourdieu’s work, here the text contributions to current debates in Education are highlighted, a constant and continuous theme of the sociologist. If the idea is to renew Bourdieu’s readings and considerations for various microcosms, educational field can gain in the recovery of elements that help to think, in a critical way, the historical, theoretical, and social dimensions that impact such social space.

In the first block of texts dedicated to Education, Bourdieu’s (2002b) discussion of the reception of The Inheritors (1964) and Reproduction in Education, society and culture (1970) stands out, in which he evaluates that the first book, despite not saying anything so extraordinary because the facts were known by the scientific community, was like “thunder in the political sky” (BOURDIEU, 2002b, p. 73), revealing the mechanisms that were underlying what was empirically observed.

About the second book, the author affirms that “reproduction” had a catastrophic effect as the term circulated, but not everyone read the book. If, on the one hand, it became a paradigm according to which the contribution of the school system to the reproduction of the social structure was identified, showing a reality that shakes the mental structures and that can change the vision of the world, on the other hand, it blocked the text reading. About this, he commented that “history of literature shows very well what is common to the intellectual life of an epoch is most often not the content of books, but their titles” (BOURDIEU, 2002b, p. 75). there was a sanitary cord” (BOURDIEU, 2002b, p. 77) to nullify, or at least neutralize the message effects which showed that the education system exerted conservative effects, and previously it was considered a system that provided the learning of universal culture. Even nowadays, almost sixty years after the publication of The Inheritors, and more than fifty years after the publication of Reproduction in Education, society and culture, the system school defense remains ready, forgetting or not wanting to remember that “because the laws of reproduction are known, there is a small chance of minimizing the reproductive action of the school institution” (BOURDIEU, 2002b, 77).

Controversy surrounding the two publications is understandable for two reasons, according to Bourdieu (2002b). The first one is that readers of sociology work tend to read such texts in a normative perspective. The second reason would be the interests and investment in the school system made especially by the so-called “miraculous” (BOURDIEU, 2002b, 73), that is, the lucky few, coming from the popular circles, who managed to achieve some academic success and who, instead of questioning the fact that they are exceptions and trying to discover what distinguishes them from the majority of students, looking at the factual data of the objective probabilities of school success according to social origin⁷, they would have more difficulty in accepting such an anti-demagogic discourse based on sociological. When discussing these individuals, the author highlights that “those that school has liberated are those who, more than others, are inclined to believe in the liberating school. Alienated by their liberation, they have faith in the liberating school at the service of the conservative school which owes to the myth of the liberating school a part of its power of conservation” (BOURDIEU, 2002c, p. 49).

Another important text comments Proposals for teaching the future⁸ (BOURDIEU, 2002d). Pierre Bourdieu was elected full professor of Sociology at the Collège de France, and his inaugural lecture was on April 23^rd, 1982. On February 13^th, 1984, François Mitterrand, then President of France, asked the professors of the Collège de France to reflect on what, according to them, could become the fundamental principles of teaching for the future. The 1985 document prepared by the professors discussed nine propositions, namely: 1) unity of science and the plurality of cultures; 2) diversification of excellence forms; 3) multiplication of opportunities; 4) Unity in and by pluralism; 5) periodic review of the knowledge taught; 6) unification of the knowledge taught; 7) non-stop and alternating education; 8) use of modern education techniques; and 9) openness in and towards autonomy (BOURDIEU, 2002d).

When interviewed by Jean-Pierre Salgas in 1985, Bourdieu (2002e) declared that there is no answer to a question that does not imply a redefinition of the question and that the question will not always be answered as one might expect. Even so, the French sociologist praise the initiative to ask an institution like the Collège de France to deal with the problem of the functioning of the school system as an important political act for the recognition of this autonomy of the intellectual field. The text, therefore, expresses an authorized collectivity, said Bourdieu (2002g), not as his own production, since from his sociological analyses, he does not carry out a normative discourse. He even cites his book as an example, Reproduction in Education, society and culture, by affirming: “We did not say that the school produced or reproduced inequalities. We said that it contributed to reproducing them in a certain way. Perhaps this certain way is possible to control” (BOURDIEU, 2002e, p. 205).

According to the sociologist, the two main contributions of the school system to reproduction are the verdict effect and the hierarchy effect. The first one works as a fate effect that labels the individual stating what he is and what he can become. It is a serious situation when you think that the verdict is sanctioned by an indisputable institution and recognized by everyone. It causes “identity traumas” (BOURDIEU, 2002e, p. 205), which are undoubtedly one of the major constituent factors of pathological conditions found in society. According to Bourdieu (2002g), when approaching the teacher’s role, “it is possible ask whether one of the charms of this undervalued profession does not lie in the possibility that it offers to dispense with the verdicts, that is, to be Almighty God, to be so for thirty people” (BOURDIEU, 2002e, p. 205).

Therefore, as the organizers and presenters of the texts by Pierre Bourdieu in Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique, Bourdieu’s involvement in Proposals for teaching the future constitutes the opportunity to put into practice an involvement linked to the position of “consecrated heretic” (POUPEAU; DISCEPOLO, 2002, p. 185). From these propositions, the pedagogical environment seems to have paid attention to the criticism of “indifference to differences” (POUPEAU; DISCEPOLO, 2002, p. 185), but this more comprehensive document aimed at “advocating the valorization of scientific and artistic experiments, the development of critical dispositions, the establishment of a ‘minimum common’, periodic review of the knowledge taught, the right to Education for all age groups, as well as the use of modern techniques of dissemination...” (POUPEAU; DISCEPOLO, 2002, p. 185).

Even if Bourdieu has been quite critical of the use made of this report, according to Poupeau and Discepolo (2002), the sociologist accepts to preside with François Gros, in 1989, a commission on teaching content, set up by Lionel Jospin, Ministry of Education at Michel Rocard’s government. The document called “Principles for a reflection on teaching content”, popularly called “Bourdieu-Gros Report”, proposed to carry out a review of the knowledge taught to reinforce the coherence and unity of this knowledge and the conditions for its transmission. Once again, far from putting aside his critical sociology to accommodate himself to a theoretical-reforming action, the work by Bourdieu and his collaborators was question the portion of inequalities in the education system that could be corrected, leaving in suspension what the education system was still unable to deal with. The mission was not to interfere directly in the definition of programs, but to draw general guidelines for the progressive transformation of teaching content.

The document contained seven principles on the periodic questioning of programs for the inclusion of new content; of applicability of proposed teachings that should offer ways of thinking, of general validity and applicability; open, lightweight and reviewable programs should be designed with teachers collaboration, as a framework rather than a straitjacket; critical examination of the contents should reconcile two variables, its enforceability and its transmissibility; for best knowledge performance and diversification pedagogical communication ways, the suggestion was work groups with professors of different specialties, either for collective tasks, or to carry out observations and laboratories; the divisions of disciplines should also rethought, and seek balance and integration between the different specialties.

According to Bouveresse (2003), Bourdieu allowed himself to be involved in this commission for never having renounced his intention to change, present since the time of The Inheritors, proving with his interventions, in these studies, his optimistic belief in the possibilities of reforming the education system in an intelligent way and capable of really improving. Bourdieu (2002f) himself affirms that, once, a body made up of recognized sages received a mandate from the political power to attend to their own affairs, because they normally felt that political men only like dead sages. They used their work to justify measures that had nothing to do with their research, and as if they had been produced by an author of the past, it did not occur to them to ask his opinion.

Bourdieu’s appropriations in the Brazilian educational scientific field: inheritance interpretation and use

In a previous paper which was part of 10th anniversary of Bourdieu’s death, Medeiros (2013) carried out a census of theses and dissertations that used the sociologist in scientific production in Education, from empirical data surveyed with localization of theses and dissertations abstracts of Education Graduation Programs in Brazil, using the most direct describer “Bourdieu”, in the theses and dissertations bank by CAPES (Higher Education Personnel Improvement Coordination in its Portuguese acronym). At the time, from 2007 to 2010, 301 productions were found, defended in Education Graduate Programs (225 dissertations and 76 theses). To continue this inventory, a new investigation was carried out, in the same database, using the years 2011 to 2022 as a time frame.

In a data survey on May 2^nd, 2022, from the describer “Bourdieu”, 5437 results were obtained in the theses and dissertations bank by CAPES. After refinement from parameters such as type (masters’ degree and doctorate), year (from 2011 to 2022), large area of knowledge (Human Sciences) knowledge area (Education), assessment area (Education), the total was 1194 productions, 753 dissertations (masters’ degree) and 441 theses (doctorate) contained the term “Bourdieu”. Therefore, an exponential growth in the number of works located could be observed, in relation to that found in the research carried out by Medeiros (2013).

As inclusion and exclusion criteria, to be able to examine the postgraduate Productions in more detail, The parameter was applied as a filter according to which only texts guided by individuals who had five or more linked guidelines would remain in the research corpus, because the existence of research niches or production centers is prospected (MEDEIROS, 2013), who use the author’s work in prevalence for arguments and analysis, contrary to sporadic use, which could be an option of the student author of the work. After using this filter, from 657 supervisors, 295 productions remained for the exam (180 dissertations and 115 theses), which mentioned Bourdieu, whether in the title, abstract or keywords, assuming that, from these criteria, texts would be reached that demonstrated a greater commitment to the use of the author, supervised by 38 supervisors of Education Graduation Programs.

Works were cataloged to perform the analysis first stage, identifying title, defense program, year of defense, master’s, or doctoral productions. Chart 1 enables verifying the number of works per year. It should be noted that this is not the total number of defenses per year with the descriptor “Bourdieu”, but the number obtained by the inclusion and exclusion criteria. In the exhibition, there is a substantial increase in defenses per year, within the parameters used. The number of works in 2020, 2021 may have occurred more sparsely, in hypothesis, due to the situation of the Coronavirus Disease - Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on postgraduate courses, altering the student flow. Productions in 2022, the current year, are still being defended and in the filing process.

CHART 1
Productions by year.

Regarding the production centers (MEDEIROS, 2013), in other words, programs responsible for works that use Bourdieu’s theoretical framework of analysis for the construction of research, Chart 2 shows institutions that most produced theses or dissertations, highlighting the PUCSP, PUC GOIÁS and PUCPR. Soon after, in terms of the number of works by programs, UFSM, UEPG, UFS and UFPR are highlighted. If these data are compared with those obtained in the paper by Medeiros (2013), it is possible to perceive the permanence of some programs in a group of regularity of productions that use the sociological framework of Bourdieu. On the other hand, some programs have become part of this group, which has such use in a more systematic way, as well as others that begin to show signs of a certain asymmetry and rarefaction, such as UFMG and USP, that does not even appear on the chart and that used to make up an important space for the production centers in 2013. At a future analysis level, it is possible to cross-reference data between the names of supervisors and supervisors, their Productions in papers, books and other, further the research groups coordinated by them to try to identify the preponderant factor that favored the production of texts that used Bourdieu’s concepts and notions.

CHART 2
Productions by graduation programs.

Moving to another analysis pattern, it was possible to detect that, of the productions verified, many already bear the name of Bourdieu or bourdieusian (way of analysis) by title. Its concept of habitus is named and refer to provisions (as in attitudes/unconscious principles of action, perception, and reflection), and most of the works intended to investigate the teaching/professor and student habitus. As other concepts and notions mentioned, the concept of field, cultural capital, the notion of trajectory and social trajectory, symbolic violence are highlighted, revealing texts that indicate the production carried out from a sociological approach and from the use of Pierre Bourdieu’s praxeology, and it is important to remember that the orientation of its praxeological method seeks to articulate the plan of action and the plan of the structures. Chart 3 presents systematization of these data.

CHART 3
Concepts, notions and terms related to bourdieu used in theses and dissertations.

It is interesting to note the presence of the term trajectory in several productions. According to Brito (2017), Bourdieu integrates the notion into his main concepts - habitus, field, and capitals - to refer to the evolution over time of properties, such as the volume and structure of the agent’s capital, providing an explanatory principle of practices and the origin of representations inherent to the position objectively occupied in a given field. Then, to identify such a path, detecting the successive states of the field and the set of objective relationships that link this individual to this social space is necessary.

Because the filter was made by the Education area, it was no surprise to find the term in several titles, followed by the term teaching, school/school/school, practices in number of appearances, and a high incidence of works that approached the teacher/teaching, as well as aspects related to teachers’ education. As with other approaches, it was detected students/students/young people/children, politics, and evaluation/learning. Chart 4 shows the organization of data surveyed.

CHART 4
Terms related to the education area.

When examining the abstracts, it was also a constant to detect the reference to the author, either as the main debater for the theoretical-methodological foundation of the investigation, the use of his work method, or as a reference author to support the analyzes from his theoretical contribution, from his reflexive sociology, analyzes based on the concepts developed by him, among other references. Therefore, it demonstrated that the authors of the productions made use of Bourdieu’s construct to develop their investigations on quite variable themes, such as human rights and affirmative action, initial and continuing teacher education, public policies and government programs, student trajectories and professionals, school management, school violence, assessment, school performance and teacher judgment, socialization processes, art, sport, dance, etc., this attests to the multiple possibilities of using its theoretical-methodological framework for the construction of knowledge in Education.

As next actions to be taken for a more in-depth qualitative investigation, in addition to data-crossing, the reading of the abstracts in full must be completed, working their contents in an analysis capable of responding to aspects of Bourdieu’s appropriation, and methodologies used for the development of theses and dissertations and main research findings. As a third analysis level, productions might be selected for reading in full, recording their content and contributions to the exemplification of the sociologist’s use.

Bourdieu’s legacy, finish off for mobilization

This paper intended to underline the relevance of Bourdieu’s debate in educational field, and that his legacy remains in focus, whether from the publication of material in unpublished, reedited texts, or in his vast work already publicized, in addition to his participation in videos and interviews that are easily accessible on various platforms.

In Brazil, studying the author and using his theoretical framework of analysis in research and reflections to think about education in the country remains of paramount importance, even more when thinking about his militant and denouncing vein, revealing logics of practices, mechanisms of symbolic domination and the veiled relations of force and power. The example of his interventions, linking social science and arguments that might be mobilized for political action should help in debate to denounce verbal and mental automatisms.

It is possible to make good use of the pioneering spirit of intellectuals and scholars who helped to disseminate Bourdieu’s work in the country. Rocha (2022, p. 31) explained this “Transatlantic crossing” made by the author, placing him at the center of a Brazilian scientific network created around the sociologist and his collaborators in the 1970s and 1980s, responsible for the dissemination of his work, at the same time they searched for answers to problems in the fields of investigation in the country. Among the decisive moments in the trajectory of these pioneering readers and promoters, according to the second commentator, there is a socialization process of Brazilians in Bourdieu’s research group. This moment was the acquisition of a bourdieusian research modus operandi, and later, with the establishment of these agents in their own research programs and important posts in teaching and research institutions, there was the consolidation of the author in graduate programs and research centers, when he became a “global thinker” (ROCHA, 2022, p. 32).

It is clear how much his legacy remains fruitful, by the numbers pointed out in the postgraduate productions in Education that use the author to carry out their research, numbers derived from producing centers, of research niches in which legitimacy and scientific authority are found, responsible for disseminating a logic of author appropriation, forming these student authors in a specific path. This path is designed in a relationship network configured in the educational scientific field to form scientific dispositions.

To finish this article, it is important remember reflections by Grenfell (2018) on Bourdieu. According to the commentator, the sociologist offered concepts and notions that he called “tools for thinking” (GRENFELL, 2018, p. 16), such as key concepts which are not simply describers, but that embody a dynamic epistemology that act as an antidote to everyday language, asking, however, his readers to keep in mind the sociogenesis of his work, in other words, alerting that must be remembered for the observation of real practical contexts.

On the same warning line, Wacquant (2020) refers to the many ways of “dividing and segmenting” Bourdieu’s sociological theory for its use and that it is important to take care of the pedagogical capsules that neglect most of Bourdieu’s corpus, also that disciplinary biases have hardly indicated how to translate this theory into practical research projects and operations. He also refers to the three traps of the sociologist’s explorers, namely, the fetishization of concepts (which interrupts the investigation where it should begin); the seduction of “speaking bourdieusian” (WACQUANT, 2020, p. 52) because it is the academic language of the day; and, finally, the forced imposition of his theoretical framework of analysis.

In another text, this collaborator in Bourdieu’s lifetime claims that he is a visceral, epistemologically anti-theoretical author. He hints that one should not read Bourdieu as most are taught to read classical authors, as texts of holy scripture to be revered. In Bourdieu’s case this would be a categorical error and would represent an obstacle to understanding his work. The correct way would be to approach his texts as if they were how-to guides for formulating intelligent scientific questions and doing the difficult manual work that goes into solving such questions empirically. Finally, he indicates that it is necessary to be careful not to be part of the tsunami of research that invoke the sociologist, returned in periodicals, but which in many cases are limited to carrying out a rhetoric that sounds like Bourdieu although they have no connection with his Sociology. According to Wacquant (2018, p. 154), you should do a simple test:

take a pen and cross out all mentions of ‘habitus, capital and field’: if nothing is lost by deleting them, that means nothing has been gained by listing them, except to participate in the intellectual fad of the moment. On the contrary, when Bourdieu’s analytical concepts and principles guide concrete research operations, you are immediately able to articulate new questions and paint a new empirical landscape [...].

The challenge, therefore, for Bourdieu (2002g) is to take these observations into account and heed the author’s call for engagement to intervene, risking exposure to disappointment, or worse, to shock those who choose the virtuous ease of only looking after their interests in their ivory tower and who perceive the commitment as a failure in axiological neutrality, misidentified as scientific objectivity. Interventions are fundamental, but now defining strategies, connecting intellectuals in a collective, interdisciplinary, international endeavor.

References

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• BOURDIEU, Pierre. Retour sur la réception des Héritiers et de La Reproduction. In: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. Marseille: Agone, 2002b. p 73 - 77.
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. Éducation & domination. In: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. Marseille: Agone, 2002c. p. 51 - 54.
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. Propositions pour l’enseignement de l’avenir. In: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. Marseille: Agone, 2002d. p. 199 - 202.
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. Le rapport du Collège de France: Pierre Bourdieu s’explique. In: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. Marseille: Agone, 2002e. p. 203 - 210.
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. Universités: les rois sont nus. In: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. Marseille: Agone, 2002f. p. 189 - 198.
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. Instituer efficacement l’attitude critique. In: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. Marseille: Agone, 2002g. p. 470 - 475.
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. Entrevista. In: DELSAULT, Yvette. Entrevista de Pierre Bourdieu com Yvette Delsaut. Sobre o espírito da pesquisa. Tempo Social, São Paulo, v.17, n. 1, p.175-210, 2005. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-20702005000100008 Acesso em: 07 jul. 2022.
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• BOUVERESSE, Jacques. Bourdieu, savant & politique. Marseille: Agone, 2003.
• BRITO, Angela Xavier de. Trajetória In: CATANI, Afrânio Mendes; NOGUEIRA, Maria Alice; HEY, Ana Paula; MEDEIROS, Cristina Carta Cardoso de. Vocabulário Bourdieu. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora, 2017. p. 354 - 356.
• CATANI, Afrânio Mendes. Ativismo. In: CATANI, Afrânio Mendes; NOGUEIRA, Maria Alice; HEY, Ana Paula; MEDEIROS, Cristina Carta Cardoso de. Vocabulário Bourdieu. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora, 2017. p. 42 - 45.
• CATANI, Afrânio Mendes. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. In: CATANI, Afrânio Mendes; NOGUEIRA, Maria Alice; HEY, Ana Paula; MEDEIROS, Cristina Carta Cardoso de. Vocabulário Bourdieu. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora, 2017. p. 239 - 240.
• CHAUVIRÉ, C.; FONTAINE, O. Le vocabulaire de Bourdieu. Paris: Ellipses, 2003.
• DELSAUT, Yvette.; RIVIÈRE, Marie-Christine. Bibliographie des travaux de Pierre Bourdieu. Pantin: Le Temps des Cérises, 2002.
• GAYON, Vincent. Décès In: SAPIRO, Gisèle (org.) Dictionnaire Internacional Bourdieu. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2020. p. 4 - 8.
• GRENFELL, Michael. Introdução In: GRENFELL, Michael. Pierre Bourdieu: conceitos fundamentais. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2018. p. 15 - 21.
• MARTINACHE, Igor. Pierre Bourdieu, Interventions. 1961-2001, Lectures (En ligne), Les comptes rendus, 14/03/2022. Disponível em http://journals.openedition.org/lectures/54955 Acesso em 29 abril. 2022..
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• MEDEIROS, Cristina Carta Cardoso de. Bourdieu, 10 anos depois. Educar em revista, Curitiba, nº. 47, p. 315-328, 2013.
• PÉRADON, Isabelle. Pierre Bourdieu: um sociologie critique et émancipatrice. Mollat, 2022. Disponível em https://www.mollat.com/dossiers/pierre-bourdieu-une-sociologie-critique-et-emancipatrice Acesso em 29 abril. 2022.
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• POUPEAU, Franck; DISCEPOLO, Thierry. Textes et contextes d’un mode spécifique d’engagement politique. In BOURDIEU, Pierre. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. Marseille: Agone, 2002. p. 7 - 11.
• POUPEAU, Franck; DISCEPOLO, Thierry. Éducation & politique de l’Éducation. d’un rapport d’État à l’autre. In: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. Marseille: Agone, 2002. p. 185 - 188.
• POUPEAU, Franck. Interventions, 1961-2001. Science Sociale & Action politique. In: SAPIRO, Gisèle (org.) Dictionnaire Internacional Bourdieu. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2020. p. 25 - 31.
• NAUDET, Jules; DUVOUX, Nicolas. Au fil du labyrinthe Bourdieu, Entretien avec Gisèle Sapiro et Franck Poupeau. 5 mars, 2021. Disponível em https://laviedesidees.fr/Au-fil-du-labyrinthe-Bourdieu.html Acesso em 27 abril. 2021.
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• ROCHA, Maria Eduarda da Mota. Uma travessia transatlântica: a primeira geração de mediadores e mediadoras da obra de Bourdieu no Brasil. Tempo Social, [S. l.], v. 34, n. 1, p. 31-53, 2022. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.11606/0103-2070.ts.2022.191190 Acesso em: 04 maio. 2022.
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• WACQUANT, Loïc; AKÇAOĞLU, Aksu. Prática e poder simbólico em Bourdieu: a visão de Berkeley. BIB - Revista Brasileira de Informação Bibliográfica em Ciências Sociais, [S. l.], n. 85, p. 148-163, 2018. Disponível em: http://anpocs.com/index.php/current-issue/11113-pratica-e-poder-simbolico-em-bourdieu-a-visao-de-berkeley-traducao Acesso em: 22 jul. 2022.
  » http://anpocs.com/index.php/current-issue/11113-pratica-e-poder-simbolico-em-bourdieu-a-visao-de-berkeley-traducao
• WACQUANT, Loïc. Quatro princípios transversais para mobilizar Bourdieu na pesquisa. In PEREIRA, Virgílio Borges. Em (re) construção. Elementos para uma sociologia da atividade na indústria da construção em Portugal. Porto: U.Porto, 2020. p. 51 - 66.

• 1
  Retrieved from https://www.campus-condorcet.fr/fr/pour-la-recherche/le-grand-equipement-documentaire/collections-et-archives/le-fonds-pierre-bourdieu. Access: 04. 29.2022.
• 2
  This work concludes the initiative of publishing all Bourdieu’s courses at the Collège de France, in the subject of Sociology, from 1982 to 2001, which also includes: Sur L’État. Cours au Collège de France, 1989-1992. Paris: Raisons d’agir/Seuil, 2012 (translation into Portuguese: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Sobre o Estado: Cursos no Collège de France (1989-92). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2014); Manet. Une révolution symbolique. Cours au Collège de France, 1998-2000. Paris: Raisons d’agir/Seuil, 2013; Sociologie générale, vol 1. Paris: Raisons d’agir/Seuil, 2015 (translation into Portuguese as BOURDIEU, Pierre Sociologia Geral, vol. 1: Lutas de Classificação. Curso no Collège de France (1981-1982). Petrópolis: Vozes, 2021); Sociologie générale, vol 2. Paris: Raisons d’agir/Seuil, 2016 (translation into Portuguese as BOURDIEU, Pierre. Sociologia Geral, vol. 2: Habitus e Campo. Curso no Collège de France (1982-1983). Petrópolis: Vozes, 2021); Anthropologie économique. Cours au Collège de France, 1992-1993. Paris: Raisons d’agir/Seuil, 2017. Also check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li4fw8-DIXU. Access: 04/27/2022. Video in which one of the editors, Julien Duval, presents and comments this last book.
• 3
  Also check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlTiEvDGpns. Access: 04/27/2022. Video in which one of the main continuators of Bourdieu’s work and co-editor of the book, Franck Poupeau, presents and comment it.
• 4
  Habitus is a central concept in Bourdieu’s sociology. Mediating notion between individual and collective, it is a system of dispositions acquired in the socialization process, i.e., ways of perceiving, thinking, and doing that lead the agent to act in a certain way, being a principle that generates practices. On the capitals, social resources or profits might be cultural capital, in a sense extended to that of the economy, (when incorporated, objectified, institutionalized); social capital, or set of social relations, of sociability; symbolic, credit, recognition of possession of other forms of capital, symbolic virtue. From these arise other, developed by Bourdieu himself or by commentators.
• 5
  Symbolic violence is a concept coined by Bourdieu (2002a) to designate a type of veiled violence, a particular form of constraint exercised with the complicity of those who are victims of it, also becoming victims of embodied patterns of perception and appreciation, i.e. victims of the socially established order and of the imposition of arbitrariness that serve dominant groups. It extorts submissions that are not perceived as submissions, since the embodied the structure form of the commination relationship makes this relationship appear natural, also extorting socially inculcated beliefs. Therefore, it rests on a belief production theory, an aspect responsible for the conviction of belonging to a social field.
• 6
  Retrieved from https://agone.org/livres/interventions-1961-2001-2. Access: 29/04/2022.
• 7
  According to Chauviré and Champagne (2004), these data are no longer new to anyone and have even become part of a commonsense interpretation, but until the 1960s they were disguised by the gifting ideology. The explanation that inequalities in school success reside in the existence of “cultural handicaps” had a long process of recognition, confronting the naturalistic gifting ideology.
• 8
  Both the text “Propositions for teaching the future: report of the Collège de France (1985)” (Propositions pour enseigner l’avenir : rapport du Collège de France - 1985, in its original in French), and the text “Principles for a reflection on teaching content: report Bourdieu-Gros (1989)” (Principes pour une réflexion sur les contenus d’enseignement : rapport Bourdieu-Gros - 1989, in its original in French) were translated into Portuguese and they may be found in the book by VALLE, Ione Ribeiro; SOULIÉ, Charles. Pierre Bourdieu: uma sociologia ambiciosa da educação. Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC, 2019.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 Jan 2023
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  07 May 2022
• Accepted
  24 Aug 2022