bourdieu about education

[lucian voinea]

I would suggest the following books by Bourdieu:

Academic Discourse: Linguistic Misunderstanding and Professorial Power
The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture with a New Epilogue, 1979
The State Nobility : Elite Schools in the Field of Power


Be aware, from the beginning, that Bourdieu's writing is quite 'different' from what you've read before. When I say different, I mean the quality of his topic, phrase formulation, use of data, concepts and methodology used. If you want first (and also if you have time enough) you might try to read his work titled "Practical reasons", where you can find a series of articles that give you a more rapid understanding of his sociological view. In the same time, you might use some reader on his work, in order to easier grasp the concepts that Bourdieu uses (for ex. Understanding Bourdieu, by Webb, Schirato and Dannaher, book that has also two chapters dedicated to his analysis of education; Culture and power, by David Swartz and Bourdieu and education: acts of practical theory, by Michael Grenfell, David James) .

Lucian

P.S. I think that Pascalian Meditations is a book that requests form the reader 'some' (to be read as 'quite some ...') philosophical vocabulary and vision and, in my opinion, it is not quite the Bourdieu's work to start with. This book would be more somewhere to the end of the readings from PB's work, after you get very at home with his sociological approach, vocabulary and so on...