Boltanski and liberal arts mk 2, second revisions.pdf (248.44 kB)
The complexity of educational elitism: moving beyond misrecognition
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 07:32 authored by Kathryn TellingCritical, and in particular Bourdieusian, sociology of education is often suspicious about educators when they describe their ideal students. It tends to see these descriptions as euphemisations, so that apparently intellectual assessments are really elitist evaluations about students’ class positions. However, this way of thinking about educators can lead to reductive accounts in which actors are completely blind to the real meaning of their beliefs, which must be unveiled by sociologists. In this article I utilise Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology to offer an alternative model of educators’ accounts, in which there is no real meaning to be unveiled, but rather a complex mix of meanings held in educators’ minds at once. Analysing interview data with those teaching on new liberal arts degrees in English universities, I demonstrate what can be gained by staying with the complexity of participants’ own accounts, rather than mining them for one fundamental truth.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
British Journal of Sociology of EducationISSN
0142-5692Publisher
Taylor & FrancisExternal DOI
Issue
7Volume
41Page range
927-941Department affiliated with
- Sociology and Criminology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes