ABSTRACT
By the late 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu's work had become so widely used in studies of education in the UK that it even received particular attention in a government report. While this report was critical of Bourdieu's work, his concepts and theories remain as popular as ever in the study of education. This chapter focuses on the concept of habitus – primarily as described by Bourdieu – and its role in understanding how social inequalities are reproduced through the medium of the education system. It aims to define habitus and the related concepts of ‘capital’ and ‘field’, before moving on to explain how researchers have linked these concepts to social inequality in the education system. Habitus may therefore help us to understand why there are often observable patterns and regularities in the way that people and groups behave. Much of Bourdieu's work – particularly during the 1960s and 1970s – focused on habitus within the specific context of education.
