ABSTRACT
In the review of reproduction theory, this chapter begins with Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, who represent the economic determinist end of the spectrum, progress through the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein, and Shirley Brice Heath. For all its distinctiveness, Bernstein's work is understood most easily in the context of Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital. Through the concepts of cultural capital and habitus, Bourdieu seeks to explain how social inequality is perpetuated and why the process of social reproduction is so readily accepted by exploiter and exploited alike. For Bourdieu, "social class background is mediated through a complex set of factors that interact in different ways at different levels of schooling". The chapter considers Paul Willis and Henry Giroux on the other end of the continuum. Bowles and Gintis emphasize their "correspondence principle", which highlights the similarity between the social relations of production and personal interaction in the schools.
