CONFLICT THEORY

Lecture 2
AIMS OF LECTURE:

1. To examine the work of Pierre

Bourdieu

2. Introduce Feminist theory

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)
 Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)
 Showed how educational values reproduced social inequality
 Distinguished between economic and cultural capital - cultural
capital also determines our experience and potential.
 Cultural capital: just like money in the bank, your cultural
group (or parents) can provide you with cultural and linguistic
competence which will ensure success at school (and later in
life). Cultural capital includes educational qualifications or
achievement
 Since middle class people have more cultural capital to pass
onto their children, this explains why they are more likely to
succeed (not because they are more intelligent). Therefore
school assessments which appear neutral and objective give
advantages to those possessing cultural capital.
Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)
 Taste is not “natural” but something you develop. Taste
helps determine and reinforce your place in class and
status hierarchies.
 People have dispositions to like certain things because
of the value people around them place on them.
 People from different classes like to eat different
things, play different sports, wear different clothes, buy
different consumer goods, like different leisure
activities
 Cultural capital and taste combine to determine your
habitus which impacts your success of failure in a
field.
 Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)
 Bourdieuargues that “cultural resources,
processes and institutions hold individuals and
groups in competitive and self perpetuating
hierarchies of domination” (Swartz 1997:6).
 Bourdieu argues this is how social distinctions
and power relations operate within modern
society. This serves to reinforce conflict
between social groups
 Feminisms
 Feminists identified society as patriarchal (society ruled by
rigidly defined male traditions)
 Feminists argued that traditionally, men have deliberately
exploited women and benefited from this. This has occurred
through:
 The social construction of the nuclear family (site of gender
domination) where women provide free labour whilst being
denied access to equal power
 The industrial revolution defined rigid roles where women
became excluded from the world of work and life outside the
home.
 Friedrich Engel’s argued (1884) that the advent of private
property from placed women as the property of their husbands.
He called this the “world historical defeat of the female sex”.
 Feminists argued there was NO reason why women should be
relegated to the home. This is because duties/roles are socially
imposed. Women are not biologically better suited to domestic
labour, nor are they necessarily the only ones who can care for
children
 Famous Feminists

Simone de Beauvoir
Betty Friedan
Germaine Greer
Ann Oakley
Gloria Steinem
Eva Cox
Anne Summers
Naomi Wolf

http://tvnz.co.nz/media7/s4-e7-video-3444378