Abstract

Theoretical in form and narrative in format, the dissertation is less an argument than an exposition of an argument. The sociological works of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu are explicated, examined, and to some extent evaluated. A major premise of the dissertation is that these works remain largely inaccesible to American readers outside a relatively small circle of sociologists, curriculum theorists, and educational philosophers. Basil Bernstein, a British sociologist, has developed a linguistic theory of underachievement in school that is tied to social structure and social class relations. Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, argues that school failure among large numbers of working class children is a pre-determined consequence of structural factors related to patterns of class stratification and amenable to empirical investigation. ;References to the theoretical positions of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu appear more and more frequently in American scholarship, due in part to the recent availability of translations of texts by Bourdieu that reflect their mutual influences on one another. While such references appear with greater frequency, expositions of their works are rare and generally sketchy. The purpose of this dissertation is to help clarify what it is they have to say both abroad and to an American audience. ;Cultural reproduction theory refers to the study of processes whereby social class distinctions are transmitted from one generation to another by means of structured habits and strategies which recreate in the young a set of non-biological attributes recognizable by others as related to social class status. Cultural reproduction theory finds its expression in educational sociology because class related cultural attributes are thought to be transmuted in school into educational advantages. Thus, cultural reproduction theory represents a challenge to notions that schools and equal educational opportunities can help bring about a more meritocratic social order apart from broader social reforms. ;An effort is made to render some underlying philosophical issues more evident and better related to American approaches to similar issues. Considerable space is devoted to Bourdieu's earlier anthropological scholarship as his positions on issues in philosophy of science and sociology of knowledge are well developed in those sources