Little room for capacitation: rethinking Bourdieu on pedagogy as symbolic violence

In Bourdieu’s early work on education, he declares that ‘All pedagogic action (PA) is objectively symbolic violence insofar as it is the imposition of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary power’. This article rethinks Bourdieu’s proposition. It questions whether all PA is symbolic violence and the very notion of a cultural arbitrary upon which this view is based. For Bourdieu, culture is framed narrowly in terms of class, and pedagogy a mechanism by which it is reproduced. As such, it functions as a form of violence having much in common with Foucault’s notion of discipline. Unlike Foucault, however, who also acknowledges the enabling potential of power as a technology of the self, Bourdieu has no such equivalent. His concept of PA leaves little room for capacitation wherein, rather than a cultural arbitrary, certain skills can be seen to have an inherent use value equipping individuals with capacities that are a means for social transformation.