About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about Pierre Bourdieu’s more complex account of the role of education in reproducing inequalities in society, focusing in particular on: (i) Bourdieu’s focus on individual agency, in contrast to the more structural Marxist approach, and his ideas of subjectivism and objectivism; (ii) his notions of field and capital and how these can be used to understand inequality; (iii) his work on the roles of culture and taste in sustaining class distinction, particularly through the ideas of cultural capital and habitus, and how education upholds this distinction.

About the lecturer

Dr Eric Lybeck is Presidential Fellow at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester. His recent research focuses on the sociology of education, especially the university sector. He is author of The University Revolution: Outline of a Processual Theory of Modern Higher Education (2021) and Norbert Elias and the Sociology of Education (2019), and co-editor of Reconstructing Social Theory, History and Practice (2017).