2

Symbolic Violence: Education

as Concealed Power
Antonia Kupfer

Introduction

In 1970, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron published La repro-

duction. Élements pour une théorie du système d’enseignement. The English
translation Foundations of a theory of symbolic violence was published
in 1977 as the first part of the widely referenced book Reproduction in
education, society and culture, commonly called Reproduction. It is a diffi-
cult text, written paragraph by paragraph, similar to a juridical text. I
could find little secondary literature dealing with it; most analysis and
discussion of the book refers to the second part. This neglect deprives
English-speaking readers of an important contribution to social theory.
The present chapter aims to rectify this omission.
Bourdieu and Passeron’s concept of symbolic violence is critical in
understanding why social hierarchy is accepted by those who suffer
from it. The publication Foundations of a theory of symbolic violence was
the starting point. It focuses on the key role of education and schools
in maintaining domination and social inequality, problems that have
hardly deceased since the 1970s. On the contrary, I will present argu-
ments to explain an actual increase. Bourdieu and Passeron’s expla-
nation of how pedagogic work produces the objective conditions for
domination turns their concept of symbolic violence into a societal
theory. Their account of power and education is the polar opposite of
Arendt’s understanding of power as the ability to act, and education as
enabling children to renew the world. These two perspectives delimit
the spectrum of approaches to the relation of power and education set
out at the beginning of this volume.
In what follows, I restrict my discourse to this early text, not its
development in Bourdieu’s The State Nobility (1996 [1989]), Pascalian

26
A. Kupfer (ed.), Power and Education
© The Editor(s) 2015
 Symbolic Violence: Education as Concealed Power 27

Meditations (2000 [1997]), or Masculine Domination (2001 [1998]), in

order to focus on the role of education and schools in the act of domi-
nation. I will first place Bourdieu and Passeron’s concept of symbolic
violence in the sociological discussion on power, showing how it ties in
with, and further develops previous concepts. I will then explain what
symbolic violence means and the role education and schools play in
sustaining it. In the fourth section, I will raise points of critique, and
finally draw conclusions.

The concept of symbolic violence as part of a

sociological debate on power

In his excellent introduction to Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence,

Mauger (2005) reminds us that Bourdieu was neither the first nor the
only person who tried to determine why those who suffer oppression
nevertheless agree to, and/or participate in, oppressive power. In fact,
Durkheim and Mauss, Marx and Engels, and Weber offer three different
explanations for dominance being maintained when no direct physical
violence is threatened, and Bourdieu and Passeron integrate all three
into their concept of symbolic violence.
Durkheim and Mauss (2009) base their answer on human structures of
thinking. According to them, in order to make sense of the world, people
create classifications, but because they do so as a society rather than indi-
vidually, these classifications inherently express relations of dominance:

The pressure exerted by the group on each of its members does not
permit individuals to judge freely the notions which society itself has
elaborated and in which it has placed something of its personality.
Such constructs are sacred for individuals. Thus the history of scien-
tific classification is, in the last analysis, the history of the stages by
which this element of social affectivity has progressively weakened,
leaving more and more room for the reflective thought of individ-
uals. But it is not the case that these remote influences which we have
just studied have ceased to be felt today. They have left behind them
an effect which survives and which is always present; it is the very
cadre of all classification, it is the ensemble of mental habits by virtue
of which we conceive things and facts in the form of co-ordinated or
hierarchised groups. (p. 51)

As a consequence, dominance is experienced unconsciously, and people

develop an affirmative attitude, seeing oppressive social conditions as
28 Antonia Kupfer

natural and not questioning them. Bourdieu holds that one of the most
important tasks of sociology is to reveal these fundamental structures of
thinking, and thus, his and Passeron’s account of education and schools
as locations of idea transmission is crucial for the revelation of power
relations and dominance in societies.
A second strand of their concept of symbolic violence adopts Marx and
Engels’ perspective on the creation of consciousness. In their critique of
German ideology, Marx and Engels argue against Hegel and Feuerbach,
who developed ideas about human beings and their lives instead of
analysing how people actually live. Abstract ideas about human nature
do not form consciousness; an analysis of people’s consciousness requires
an analysis of their empirical living conditions as Marx and Engels stipu-
late: ‘Consciousness [das Bewusstsein] can never be anything else than
conscious being [das bewusste Sein], and the being of men is their actual
life-process’ (Marx and Engels, 1976, p. 36).
A second and related point which Marx and Engels make in their
critique of German ideology is that dominant ideas and ways of
thinking are the ideas and perspectives of the dominant class. Not only
are ideas and thinking patterns neither neutral nor independent of
socio-economic living conditions, but the power of the dominant class
extends beyond material, economic areas to the realm of ideas, perspec-
tives, worldviews, even ways of thinking. ‘The class which has the
means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls
the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the
means of mental production are on the whole subject to it’ (Marx and
Engels, 1976, p. 59).
Education is one of the primary arenas where ideas are produced,
taught, and acquired in societies. Consequently, if ideas, thoughts,
models, theories, and worldviews are not independent of the thinkers’
socio-economic position and develop strictly according to intrinsic
aspects and the logic of the dominant class, educational institutions
are restricted, conveying only special knowledge, views, ideas, and
approaches. Bourdieu and Passeron note in Marx and Engels’ analysis
that special knowledge is declared general knowledge, masking its origin
as knowledge of the dominant people. The confusion of special with
general knowledge contributes to the acceptance and maintenance of
domination. I will discuss this point in detail later.
According to Weber, domination cannot exist without a creed that
legitimises it. He differentiates three forms of dominance based on the
different claims to legitimacy. Legitimation can be primarily rational,
which means people believe that regulations are lawful; or it can be
 Symbolic Violence: Education as Concealed Power 29

traditional, which means people believe in the worth of past practices.

Finally it can be charismatic, which means people believe in the lead-
er’s sanctity or the leader as a role model. We might think that rational
domination above all requires a conscious agreement to the domina-
tion, and Weber mentions that an interest in obeying is necessary to
each relation of dominance although he does not further define these
interests. However, he also states:

In general, it should be kept clearly in mind that the basis of every

authority, and correspondingly of every kind of willingness to obey,
is a belief, a belief by virtue of which persons exercising authority
are lent prestige. The composition of this belief is seldom altogether
simple. In the case of ‘legal authority’, it is never purely legal. The
belief in legality comes to be established and habitual, and this means
it is partly traditional. (1978, p. 263)

He means that all domination is at least partly a product of practiced

traditions, without conscious agreement. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus
emphasises the dimension of unconsciousness because practising some-
thing without reflecting on it makes it much more powerful. Weber
(1978, p. 215) points explicitly to schools as an area of domination
that is influenced by social relations and culture. Similarly, Bourdieu
and Passeron demonstrate how the distinction between pedagogical
authority and pedagogical action legitimates domination in schools.
Finally I want to mention Foucault, who created a concept of power
at about the same time as Bourdieu and Passeron created their concept
of symbolic violence. All three authors emphasise the involvement and
participation of all people affected by domination, but Foucault resists
drawing a clear distinction between dominant and oppressed people, as
Naomi Hodgson explains in her chapter on Foucault in this volume.

The concept of symbolic violence and the role of

education and schools in domination

The concept of symbolic violence defines power as domination. It is not

restricted to the area of education but explains how education contrib-
utes to maintaining dominance. Bourdieu closely aligned his theories
with empirical practices and developed them over time. Thus he created
the concept of symbolic violence with a focus on schools and education.
Later in The State Nobility (1996), he focused more on the agreement
of the dominated and in Pascalian Meditations (2000) and ‘Masculine
30 Antonia Kupfer

domination’ (2001) emphasised the embodiment of perceptions as

critical aspects of symbolic violence (Mauger, 2005). The concept of
symbolic violence, then, did not arise as some pure abstraction that was
then applied to the concrete example of education. Instead, education
and schools are central to the creation and manifestation of power that
goes beyond these realms to contribute to the maintenance of social
inequality.
Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) start with axiom zero:

0. Every power to exert symbolic violence, i.e., every power which manages
to impose meanings and to impose them as legitimate by concealing the
power relations which are the basis of its force, adds its own specifically
symbolic force to those power relations. (p. 4, italics original)

This axiom defines symbolic violence – power that imposes meanings as

legitimate by concealing the power relations that support its strength –
and implies much more. First, a power that is not symbolic violence
supports symbolic violence. It consists in social hierarchies. The upper
classes use symbolic violence to maintain their domination, wielding it
as an instrument. To find out how domination works, we must identify
class backgrounds and the characteristics of actors and institutions, such
as schools.
Second, symbolic violence always has a specific meaning and specific
content. Therefore, it is variable and must be analysed within its specific
social context, which must also be analysed. The content taught at
school is both relatively autonomous and dependent on power rela-
tions. It is duplicitous: it seems to be meaningful on its own, independent
from the way it is created and presented, but it conceals the influence
and extends the prestige of those in power because certain content is
regarded as true, without admitting questions about whether it always
applies or how it came to be taught.
At this stage in the development of the concept of symbolic violence,
symbolic power refers to different educational institutions that Bourdieu
and Passeron see as systems of logical relations. When they mention, for
example, the institution of school authority (SAu), they are not refer-
ring to individuals, such as headmasters, or institutions, such as school
boards or local authorities, but to complex systems of relations; they
mean a whole set of practices to which people ascribe authority, based
on images, concepts and relations that are embedded in traditions and
political and cultural contexts as well as unwritten and written rules.
The concept of symbolic violence describes the relations between the
 Symbolic Violence: Education as Concealed Power 31

various institutions that together form school authority. Clearly, the

concept is extremely complex, and in what follows, I will explain its
main dimensions and their relationships.
Broadly speaking, Bourdieu and Passeron’s educational institutions
can be divided into two categories, one related to their agency and the
other to legitimation of their agency. In developing their concept of
symbolic violence, Bourdieu and Passeron name the relevant institu-
tions and explain their characteristics, products/outputs and the degree
of their influence. Pedagogic action (PA), pedagogic work (PW) and work
of schooling (WSg) are categories of agency, while pedagogic authority
(PAu) and school authority (SAu) are categories that legitimate the
former. Educational system (ES) is an overarching category that main-
tains the institutional conditions to secure the agency.
I will start with the category of pedagogic action, followed by an
explanation of the pedagogic authority that legitimates it. I will then
return to the level of agency to explain the category called pedagogic
work and its legitimation by outlining the authors’ understanding
of the educational system, touching briefly on the category work of
schooling, understood as pedagogic work in secondary schools. I will
end with the legitimation category of school authority and then explain
the authors’ argument that there can be no alternatives to pedagogical
action as violence.

Pedagogic action
Bourdieu and Passeron start from the generally acknowledged essence of
school: pedagogic action. First, I will outline their definition; second, I
will explain what pedagogic action creates, evokes and does; third, I will
focus on its influence.

Components of pedagogical action

Pedagogical action has two elements: the teaching content and the
teaching context, which are based on the dominant culture and the class-
specific culture of the students. Thus, to analyse teaching in schools,
we must grasp the interrelations among the curriculum, the domi-
nant culture in which schools are located and the pupils’ class-specific
habitus. If we follow Bourdieu and Passeron in rejecting the simple view
of education as a straight line in one direction from a powerful teacher
to a dependent pupil in favour of a much more complex process, we
can see that domination cannot work apart from the conditions of
the dominated. Here, their view is similar to Foucault’s. The authors’
conception of pedagogical action demonstrates that education is a wider
32 Antonia Kupfer

social process, not exempt from society in protected, cloistered institu-

tions, or ivory towers.
Since pedagogical action is so tightly linked to society, its depend-
ence relations differ with historical and geographical context. It does
not have the same shape over time and space but is shaped by specific
power relations of specific social contexts.

What pedagogical action creates and evokes

According to Bourdieu and Passeron, pedagogical action is the ‘chief
instrument of the transubstantiation of power relations into legiti-
mate authority’ (p. 15) or symbolic violence. It creates the illusion that
teaching content is purely subject-related and does not convey a certain
perspective, a specific meaning. This illusion is created by masking the
fact that teaching takes always place in social contexts that are shaped
by, and composed of, the dominant culture and the class-specific
culture. Context influences content. Bourdieu and Passeron see socie-
ties as hierarchically organised with upper and lower strata that support
social inequalities. Teaching takes place in a hierarchical society and is
used by the powerful to secure their privileges. To manifest their power,
they impose the content of what is being taught (see Marx and Engels).
Teaching content and curricula are not neutral. They do not follow an
intrinsic logic or express an independent truth because such things do
not exist, according to Bourdieu and Passeron. All knowledge is socially
created and thus related to social hierarchy. The content taught in
schools is imposed by the powerful but in a way that conceals their
overall power and their influence on content.
Later Bourdieu and Passeron specify that the main ‘thing’ pedagog-
ical action transmits is not content but the legitimacy of the dominant
culture as a fait accompli. As their concept of symbolic violence prima-
rily addresses power, not knowledge, they focus on the ways that social
hierarchies are created and maintained. Part of this modus operandi is to
differentiate ‘superior’ or ‘valuable’ knowledge or teaching content from
the ‘inferior’ or ‘non-valuable’. Pedagogical action makes the dominated
‘internalize the legitimacy of their exclusion; by making those it rele-
gates to second-order teaching recognize the inferiority of this teaching
and its audience’ (p. 41) and ‘by inculcation ... a transposable, general-
ized disposition with regard to social disciplines and hierarchies’ (p. 41).
They do not discuss whether there are indeed different levels of quality
in knowledge and teaching content because they exclude the existence
of an independent perspective from which anyone can evaluate the
qualities of knowledge and teaching content.
 Symbolic Violence: Education as Concealed Power 33

Degrees of influence/power in pedagogical action

Not only the shape, but also the degree of influence of pedagogical action
depends on the specific social context and the power relations in which
it takes place. The degree of influence rises when the state ‘hinders the
dominant classes from invoking the brute fact of domination’ (p. 14);
that is, when the dominant classes are not allowed to physically assault
or exclude others. The degree of influence also rises with ‘the degree
of unification of the market on which the symbolic and economic
value of the products of the different PAs is constituted’ (p. 14). For
example, the more economic value in terms of access to employment
positions attached to cultural products, such as school-leaving degrees
or diplomas, the more powerful and influential pedagogical action is.
The degree of influence of pedagogical action also differs according to
the students’ social class. The strongest influence is exerted on members
of social classes whose dispositions and cultural capital are similar to the
teachers’ and the teaching content and weakest where students’ dispo-
sitions and cultural capital diverge most from their teachers’ and the
content taught. As a consequence, actors for change are farthest from
the powerful and the least ideologised, or fooled.

Pedagogical authority
The social condition for the existence of pedagogical action is peda-
gogical authority, which is essential for the legitimating domination.
What is pedagogical authority? We cannot understand it in such mate-
rial terms as a person with power – for example, the education minister
or a headteacher – but as the abstract beliefs that teachers are neces-
sary and what they teach is right. Here we are reminded of Weber to
whom legitimation and the belief in authority are the preconditions for
domination. These beliefs are unconscious; no one explains or debates
and agrees to them. Bourdieu and Passeron mainly explain pedagogical
authority by its effect, which is its substance: ‘PAu ... reinforces the arbitrary
power which establishes it and which it conceals’ (p. 13, italics original).
Again, pedagogical authority reinforces arbitrary power by misrecog-
nising it as legitimate; it both constitutes and conceals arbitrary power.
We might say that it is the social recognition of the accomplishment of
teaching and learning, or pedagogical activity, so it ensures that teaching
and learning take place and that communication between teachers and
students takes place so that students attend and behave in the class-
room. Pedagogical authority is ‘in reality, automatically conferred on
every pedagogic transmitter by the traditionally and institutionally guar-
anteed position he occupies in a relation of pedagogic communication’
34 Antonia Kupfer

(p. 21). Bourdieu and Passeron make clear that pedagogical authority is
socially established by a whole system that creates and supports teachers.
The authority attained in the position of teacher eliminates the possi-
bility that individual teachers will not be seen as capable authorities. In
other words, the position enables teachers to exercise authority and at
the same time creates the impression that their authority derives from
the content they teach or a charisma that results from veiling the true
sources of pedagogical authority. Pedagogical authority has no norma-
tive content because the teachers’ authority is accepted regardless of
whether students actually learn anything. In fact, pedagogical authority
aims to exclude any questioning of the content or information of the
teaching and succeeds because ‘the pedagogic receivers are disposed from
the outset to recognize the legitimacy of the information transmitted ... hence
to receive and internalize the message’ (p. 21, italics original). Pedagogical
action is always tied to pedagogical authority, but they are not the same.
Pedagogical authority largely functions to conceal the agency and to
legitimate the violent act. To clarify how the agency operates, Bourdieu
and Passeron created a third category, pedagogic work.

Pedagogic work
By pedagogic work (PW), Bourdieu and Passeron refer to the process of
inculcation, which first takes place in the family (primary pedagogic
work), and later in school (secondary pedagogic work). The category
strongly refers to society, indicating that the authors’ concept of symbolic
violence must be understood as a societal theory (Gesellschaftstheorie)
and not restricted to educational institutions.

What does pedagogic work create or produce?

Pedagogic work produces ‘a lasting habitus’ (p. 31), which is needed
to maintain hierarchical societal structures. Since structures cannot
exist without agency, and agency is always situated within structures,
the habitus links them: ‘PW tends to reproduce the social conditions of the
production of that cultural arbitrary ( ... ) through the mediation of the habitus,
defined as the principle generating practices which reproduces the objective
structures’ (pp. 32–33, italics original). Bourdieu and Passeron also refer
to the social conditions as ‘the objective conditions for misrecognition
of cultural arbitrariness’ (p. 37). Primary pedagogic work differs in fami-
lies of different social classes, and when added to secondary pedagogic
work at school, which enables middle- and upper-class children to meet
demands but fails working-class children, pedagogic work establishes
societal hierarchy.
 Symbolic Violence: Education as Concealed Power 35

The objective conditions for maintaining societal hierarchy rely on the

double outcomes of pedagogic work: a ‘legitimate product’ (p. 39); and
‘the legitimate need for this produce’ (p. 38, not italic A.K.) producing
the legitimate consumer, a person equipped with the disposition to
consume the product in a legitimate manner. Since pedagogic work is a
dynamic process, its effect – concealment of the habit of internalising
symbolic violence – is amplified with more inculcation.

Conditions for productivity of pedagogic work

Bourdieu and Passeron posit three tightly linked measures of the specific
productivity of pedagogic work: the durability, transposability, and
exhaustivity of the habitus produced. They do not go into the details
of these rather technical measures but compare the productivity of
the pedagogic work in schools between pupils of different classes, who
developed different habits as products of different primary pedagogic
work in their families. They conclude that secondary pedagogic work
is stronger (more productive) when it takes place in a setting in which
explicit inculcation is organised in alignment with formal transferability
of the habitus, which is true for middle- and upper-class children.
Bourdieu and Passeron also differentiate between a more traditional
mode of teaching, which tends to be practical and carried out uncon-
sciously, and a more modern way that includes theory and space for
reflection on the practice. Traditional and modern ways of teaching
have different effects on pupils of different social classes and habitus.
Pedagogic work carried out in a traditional way fails pupils who are not
familiar with the practice the teacher demands. For example, a teacher
asking them to interpret a poem assumes they know how to interpret a
poem, and those who do not know cannot meet the demand. Traditional
school teaching that does not explicitly teach the prerequisites to carry
out the demands, legitimates certain ways of obtaining and mastering
the prerequisites.

Educational systems and the work of schooling

While pedagogic work establishes one dimension of the societal condi-
tions that shape pedagogical action based on the family habitus, the
educational system establishes another: the institutional conditions
that shape the exercise and reproduction of secondary pedagogic
work, or the work of schooling. Educational systems equip their agents
with standardised instruments, such as uniform teacher education or
national curricula that also work as instruments of control and tend to
exclude practices that do not contribute to the reproduction of existing
36 Antonia Kupfer

hierarchical teaching methods. As part of symbolic violence, educa-

tional systems must (re)produce the institutional conditions that cloak
the source of power and the influence it exerts.

School authority
Finally, Bourdieu and Passeron define the category of school authority
as ‘the institutionalized form of pedagogical authority’ (p. 63 without
italic A.K.), which means it provides authority to teachers as agents,
giving them ‘a legitimacy by position ... guaranteed by the institution
and which is socially objectified and symbolized in the institutional
procedures and rules defining ... training, the diplomas which sanction
it and the legitimate conduct of the profession’ (p. 30). School authority
impedes the recognition of power relations and thus is a very powerful
element of symbolic violence.

Bourdieu and Passeron’s argument against alternatives to

education as symbolic violence
Bourdieu and Passeron assert that pedagogical action must transmit
societal power relations to legitimate authority. They state: ‘All peda-
gogic action (PA) is ... the imposition of a cultural arbitrary’ (p. 5, italics
and boldface original). By ‘cultural arbitrary’ they mean that teaching
content ‘cannot be deduced from any principle’ (p. xi). In the Foreword
to the French edition, they explain what motivates this assumption:

... we simply give ourselves the means of constituting pedagogic

action in its objective reality, by recourse to a logical construct devoid
of any sociological or, a fortiori, psychological referent. We thereby
pose the question of the social conditions capable of excluding the
logical question of the possibility of an action which cannot achieve
its specific effect unless its objective truth as the imposition of a
cultural arbitrary is objectively misrecognized. (p. xi)

Since all societies have hierarchies, we cannot separate the analysis of

education, teaching and pedagogy from an analysis of the power rela-
tions of their social context.
Bourdieu and Passeron claim to argue on a logical level and offer an
illustration:

The paradox of Epimenides the liar would appear in a new form: either
you believe I’m not lying when I tell you education is violence and
my teaching isn’t legitimate, so you can’t believe me; or you believe
 Symbolic Violence: Education as Concealed Power 37

I’m lying and my teaching is legitimate, so you still can’t believe what
I say when I tell you it is violence. (p. 12)

Either way, teaching must be violence and further, pedagogical action is

never conscious, so it remains beyond our control.
The authors also exclude the possibility that any alternative educa-
tional praxis can solve the problem of violence. Various attempts, such
as non-repressive education, are still acts of repression because they
conceal their own arbitrariness. Again, since pedagogical action is not
conscious, students cannot agree or refuse to be taught arbitrary content
in an arbitrary fashion.
Finally, Bourdieu and Passeron deny the possibility that dominated
people can be liberated through education. First, dominated people who
acquire the dominant culture cannot gain emancipation because this
culture devalues theirs and requires their alienation from it. Second, to
glorify the dominated culture by declaring it ‘popular culture’ cannot
lead to liberation since this culture is as arbitrary as the dominant culture,
and people cannot hope to gain liberation from any arbitrary culture.
The text does not clarify the reason; do Bourdieu and Passeron simply
presuppose that liberation cannot be gained from an arbitrary culture,
or do they hold that liberation in a hierarchical society is impossible?
Since Bourdieu focuses on power relations rather than epistemological
questions, the latter interpretation is more plausible. Furthermore, when
he and Passeron discuss whether a democratic education would be theo-
retically in the interest of all dominated people, they conclude it would
not as long as education is a positional good since some members of the
dominated groups might aspire to and actually move upward socially.
In sum, Bourdieu and Passeron’s estimation of the possibilities for
emancipation through education contrasts both with Arendt’s, as
outlined in Wayne Veck’s chapter, and a Marxist view, as explained by
Mike Cole.

Critique of the concept of symbolic violence

I would like to raise two critiques of Bourdieu and Passeron’s concept of

education as symbolic violence. The first relates to the nature of peda-
gogical action, the second to the teaching content.
Bourdieu and Passeron assert that pedagogical action never works
consciously. I would agree in regard to families that most parts of sociali-
sation are probably not carried out or received consciously. However, in
schools, pupils and students are older and may develop a consciousness
38 Antonia Kupfer

of what and how they are taught. Teachers may also reflect on their own
education, their roles and their teaching. In my view, human beings
are able to tolerate contradictions to a larger extent than presumably
Bourdieu and Passeron would acknowledge and therefore my critique
rests on a different estimation of human nature. I think people can do
both: that is, to teach and learn unconsciously and have moments in
which they realise how the school and the teaching content are shaping
them. These moments of realisation may spark personal crises but not
necessarily immediate change. Social structures are enduring, and the
next day, teachers and students might go on with an exam.
My second critique is related to the first. According to Bourdieu and
Passeron, we cannot gain liberation from an arbitrary culture, and since
all culture, and therefore all teaching content is arbitrary, education
cannot lead to emancipation. In an absolute way, I would agree, but
again in my view, certain facets or degrees of liberation are meaningful.
I hold that people can gain a certain degree of liberation by obtaining
the best knowledge that exists at that moment, knowing consciously
that it has been created and may be developed further and change or
become outdated. This knowledge could enlarge the scope for action
and thinking and therefore affect life chances towards a higher degree of
liberation or even power as Young (2014) would say. In the ‘Report of the
Collège de France on the Future of Education’, originally published in
1985, Bourdieu contributes suggestions for changes to the French educa-
tional system. His view differs from the one outlined with Passeron in
Reproduction, acknowledging instead that education develops a critical
spirit which can be used against the abuses of symbolic violence. It holds
teachers responsible for enabling students to criticise, and advises schools
to teach the social history of cultural performances in an intercultural
way. To increase social equality, it calls for a greater variety of socially
recognised forms of cultural performances. I do not read this report as
negating the formal theoretical argument expressed in Reproduction but
rather as a political statement to propose policy changes.

Conclusions

Foundations of a theory of symbolic violence has two key messages. First,

schools are not primarily a place of learning but of (re)producing hier-
archical power relations. Second, learning does not happen independ-
ently of (re)producing hierarchical power relations.
Are these messages up-to-date? We still live in a hierarchical society,
and compared to the 1970s when the text was first published, social
 Symbolic Violence: Education as Concealed Power 39

inequality and inequalities in power relations have increased. Today,

income disparities have increased, and wealth accumulates in the hands
of increasingly fewer people. With the rise of financial capitalism,
democracy diminishes and power-sharing becomes more and more
unequal. Today, more people are in formal education and participate
longer than ever before. The amount of years for compulsory schooling
has increased, and large parts of lifelong learning are conducted in
formal settings, which means that formal education praxis impacts our
lives longer and to a larger extent. Education has crucial significance in
terms of individuals and societies. An analysis of education is largely an
analysis of social and individual life trajectories.
A third reason why I consider Bourdieu and Passeron’s text still relevant
is the fact that despite various reforms and the creation of alternative
schools, the vast majority of students continue to receive a conserva-
tive formal education. By conservative, I mean that very little social
history of cultural performances is taught; lessons still focus on cultural
performances themselves and not on their creation. In recent decades,
new technologies have been introduced to assist teaching and learning,
but they are mainly implemented and used in a rather uncritical way.
Ben Williamson’s chapter illustrates clearly that ‘learning to code’ lessons
enable children to use new technologies rather than to understand their
inherent and implicit powers and the content they convey.
To conclude, Bourdieu and Passeron open our eyes to a trap: we cannot
escape from power relations in a hierarchical society, not even in schools
or universities. We should not forget this observation, taking power rela-
tions into account in all our teaching and learning and working towards
a more egalitarian society outside the realm of education.

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