ABSTRACT
Peer group is a ubiquitous concept in youth research, imbued with very different meanings. I use Bourdieu's concept of field to make sense of these divergent meanings and uses, following Lingard, Rawolle, and Taylor (2005) who point out that Bourdieu's concept of field can be used as a tool for analyzing academic domains. Bourdieu (1998) sees a field as a structured space which is relatively autonomous, with its own logics and practices. His notion of field opens up a consideration of the internal structures of fields and how they connect with and affect other fields as well as orienting us to the patterns of power relations and hierarchies that exist within and between them.
