ABSTRACT
Although this zone of concern has been a permanent preoccupation of social theorising since its inception the modern critical conceptualisation of the problem, around the concept of cultural reproduction, was first developed by the French sociologist and cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu in the early 1970s. The initial empirical context of Bourdieu’s work was education in modern society: he saw the function of the education system being to ‘reproduce’ the culture of the dominant classes, thus helping to ensure their continued dominance and to perpetuate their covert exercise of power. Such ideas resonated with Althusser’s notions of ‘ideological state apparatuses’ which were emerging about the same period. Through his central concepts of ‘cultural capital’ and ‘habitus’ Bourdieu’s own work and his influence upon the research of others spread into an examination of other areas of concern such as socialisation, high culture and artistic practice, and style and mannerism in social relations. I will expand on these and other of Bourdieu’s ideas later in this chapter.
