ABSTRACT
I fi rst encountered Bourdieu on an MA Education degree course. When I enrolled for the degree, I was a secondary school teacher in England and my intention was to get an edge in the promotions game and not to get hooked on research, although that is ultimately what happened. Unwittingly, in that decision I was enacting one of Bourdieu’s critical concepts: cultural capital. Education conferred on me a distinction or a material advantage; the MA opened the door to an Oxford DPhil and the rest as they say ‘is history’. In fact Bourdieu (1986) would say that the whole of the social world is ‘accumulated history’ (p. 46). This means that there is no way out of the cultural assumptions and habits which we have inherited and which we will reproduce in the ways in which we interact with society. This chapter will argue that Bourdieu’s theory of education, reproduction and distinction is a powerful tool for the analysis of education, particularly in faith-based settings, which is the context in which I work.
