The main title of this chapter refers to a ‘future synthesis’. However, as the rest of this book has made clear, actually, it is a ‘present’ synthesis. The contributors to it have already begun to combine New Literacy Studies and Bourdieusian social theory to create a framework delineating a methodological space, which we have referred to as classroom language ethnography. Chapter 9 looked at issues relating to the relationship between theory and practice, and the scope that the type of synthesis we have been advocating opened up for research into literacy presented in a series of practical case examples. Furthermore, it considered the usefulness of this approach for our conceptualisation of the literacy curriculum and, ultimately, a range of literacy events between teachers and students within the classroom. The present chapter takes these accounts as a starting point for a more formal statement on what this synthesis looks like in terms of principles of research practice. At the core of the chapter is an account of the elements involved in such an approach: the construction of the research object; conceptualisation of the research field and what constituents it is necessary to include in such an analysis; and the centrality of reflexivity. These are offered as guiding principles of research practice. However, we begin with a reconsideration of the underlying perspective which has guided the approaches used in the research in this book – Ethnographic – and further explore what ‘theory of practice’ signifies in this context.
The term Classroom Language Ethnography is a title, which has haunted much of the discussion in this book. What do we mean by it? To understand it, we might take each of its three words in reverse. We have seen that the term ‘ethnography’ itself is by no means unproblematic and, as a research approach, it has itself fragmented into various hybrid forms: linguistic, critical, realist, virtual, etc. However, all of these place themselves within a qualitative, naturalistic paradigm which begins with an intention to understand social systems in terms of their cultural patterns and artefacts. Participant observation is one of its key methodological principles: in other words, the researcher researches their subject not only as an observer, but by actual involvement in the very culture under study. To add the second word in our title phrase, therefore, ‘Language’ ethnography presupposes ethnographic study, which focuses on the differentiated language use and language patterns of the culture. Language, of course, has always featured in anthropological studies, and we have noted writers such as Hymes, perhaps the founding father of linguistic ethnography, whose work dates back to the 1960s, with its insistence on understanding the ‘speech event’ in terms of the social conditions which surround it. We might also remind ourselves, en passant, that language and culture almost became synonymous terms in the twentieth century when the very philosophy of man was predicated on a linguistic analogy which employed terms such as signs, discourse, syntax, structures, etc. Our three part title, ‘Classroom Language Ethnography’, therefore implies a naturalistic, socio-cultural research approach to classroom activity with a special focus on language and literacy. Even so, the term leaves significant scope for choice by each individual researcher about what is most suitable for a particular investigation: What type of ethnography? What are its key principles and terms? Which model of language is to be used? What are the implications/limitations of such a model? How is the classroom defined? What features of it are we most interested in and why?
Chapter 4 referred to how interest in language in the classroom originally concentrated on the form of language itself. The work of writers such as Barnes, Sinclair and Coulthard did much to highlight the structure of classroom discourse in terms of patterns of dialogue, questioning and answering. Nevertheless, although there was a qualitative dimension to their findings about language, socio-cultural conditions were largely overlooked. We have noted how traditional views of literacy were also preoccupied with language as a set of techniques and skills which pupils had to acquire in the course of their schooling. It was the advent of New Literacy Studies which challenged both of these views and placed both speech acts and literacy skills in their social and cultural contexts. NLS did much to highlight literacy's cultural construction; that is, as an aspect of learning and teaching that should be understood in social, political and ideological terms as well as through the technical aspects of language. In this respect, literacy moved from being a single autonomous set of skills to be a culturally defined construct. However, even in its most constructivist mode – a position that has much in common with Vygotsky's socio-psychological constructivism – there remain tensions between the particularity of agency and context and the necessity of academic narratives based on acknowledged and legitimated areas of scholarship. In extreme forms, this has resulted in the culture of classroom language being expressed only in academic terms, using all the associated patterns of conventional research practice rather than in its own terms. It is therefore in recognition of both the profile of agency and context, and of researchers’ interests, that a synthesis with Bourdieu's social theory becomes most significant and most useful.
Bourdieu's own academic epiphany – from philosophy to sociology – came about as a result of intense ethnographic experience in the Béarn and Algeria. This personal experience was to reverberate throughout Bourdieu's entire career. Such facts are not cited out of biographical interest alone, rather they raise questions of relationships, experience, and motivations in undertaking ethnographic research. On the one hand, there is the danger for the researcher of being subsumed in the primacy of experience and failing to keep an objectifying distance with regard to the object of research. On the other hand, there is the temptation to enter the field with preformed views and ideas, expressed in existing theories which frame all that is seen (and allows only that which fits within the frame to be seen). Ethnographic experience – in the field – can be highly personal. It is also time consuming. It is unlikely that a researcher will achieve an understanding of any culture through a brief encounter of just a few weeks, or simply by periodic sampling. Bourdieu's own view was that it took him many years to be able to see the world through the eyes of an Algerian peasant: to understand what such an individual saw, what was important to him, and what strategies he adopted to gain what he wanted. This illustration is not simply anecdotal, since it raises generic questions about the nature of understanding and what is needed for its formation. Furthermore, it highlights what can and cannot be seen: the ‘eyes’ of a Parisian academic are always likely to be a ‘world away’ from those of a rural peasant; and yet, the former must cultivate the eyes of the latter if he is to understand how his actions come about. We have consistently argued that ethnographic research practice cannot be atheoretical – the researcher does not enter the field theoretically blind, but with their own theoretical habitus that will shape both how the object is investigated and the resultant outcomes. More generally, ethnographic researchers must consider the relationship between the research practices they adopt and their direct experiences of the culture which is to be explored and understood because what data are collected and how, and what procedures are undertaken to analyse them, all feed into the construction of the research object.
Several distinct types of educational theory and ways of theorising about literacy were discussed in the previous chapter. However, we might ask, what is it to understand from these theoretical positions, and in what way might they guide policy and practice – perhaps by placing them on the triangle explored in the last chapter? Ethnographic research generally lies on the right hand side of the triangle (Figure 9.5) and is concerned with the links between ‘practice’ and ‘tacit knowledge’ and ‘fundamental educational theory (FET)’ that is largely phenomenological. Bourdieu himself referred to this type of theory as ‘ethno-methodological’ (Bourdieu 1977b/1972: 3). In contrast, theory which lies on the left hand side of the model – from ‘normative science’ to ‘justifying education principles (JEP)’ to ‘practice’ – prioritises theory over practice. When ‘theory’ is put first like this, its power lies in its apparent potential to offer ‘universal claims’ to guide policy and practice. The goal of such theorising is a set of conditionally universal (and clearly specified) claims of the basic form: ‘Given certain conditions, if such and such a type of event (A) occurs, it will be followed (or accompanied) by an event of type B’ (Hammersley 1990: 104). Hammersley offers an example of this type of theory-building based on ethnography, what he calls ‘differentiation-polarisation theory, drawing on work from Lacey (1970), Ball (1981) and Hargreaves (1967). He articulates this theory as follows: ‘that differentiation within school amplifies the effects of social class distribution of cultural resources, thereby increasing inequalities in school performances and life chances’ (p.106). In other words, if pupils are differentiated by streaming in schools, or banding, their school performance (and eventual life chances) follow a similar structure: the higher differentiated groups achieving more at school and in life and the lower differentiated groups achieving less. It follows that increasing differentiation increasing inequalities, and decreasing differentiation decreases them. Ultimately, there is ‘polarisation’. In many ways, these statements do indeed make for ‘good scientific theory’: they are clear, liable to falsification and prediction, and can be matched against empirical data. However, this and its associated ‘theories’, would seem to have virtually nothing to say about the culture of the classroom, the sociocultural provenance of the teachers and students, the interaction between the social and the cognitive, the way that classroom conditions are shaped by local and national framing structures, nor the underlying principles of practice which constitute them. In other words, the clarity of a theory like ‘differentiation-polarisation theory’ is at the expense of the personal, subjective, particular or contextual – in short, practical – aspects of theory which are central elements of NLS and Bourdieu's theory of practice. But, in what way is Bourdieu theoretical?
Bourdieu, of course, famously argued that he never ‘theorised’ as such; a statement itself which might seem surprising for all who find the conceptualisation of his discussion both highly theoretical and obtuse. Moreover, the ‘theory effect’, where how something is described becomes ‘more real’ that what is described, is one of Bourdieu's major charges against the ‘scholastic fallacy’ of believing in your own intellectualist worldview. Nevertheless, at the heart of Bourdieu's work, as we saw in Chapter 4, is a theory of practice. How is this theory articulated and what are the implications of its use?
Bourdieu's approach to investigating the social world is essentially empirical, in which he saw its relational and dynamic nature. Here, at a particular time and place, the changing structures and institutions of the social world are analysed (an external objective reading) at the same time as the nature and extent of individuals’ participation in it (an internal subjective reading). These two distinct social logics are inter-penetrating and mutually generating, giving rise to ‘structured’ and ‘structuring structures’ (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977a/70). Indeed, Bourdieu distinguishes between a theorist's viewpoint and a researcher's viewpoint: a theorist is interested in developing hypotheses to account for the particularities and functioning of an object of study (a move from ‘Practice’ to Justifying Educational Principles on the left hand side of triangle), whereas a researcher collects empirical data and analyses it in order to obtain a picture of how the ‘real world’ is constituted (this represents a move from ‘Practice’ to Fundamental Educational Theory on the right). Either of these viewpoints gives only a partial view if used alone. Bourdieu's approach does both, and more. His approach to the study of a social object can be described most simply as an on-going and reflexive interplay between the two positions – empirical investigation and theoretical explanation. In place of continued separation between the two positions, mitigated only by intensified interactions, Bourdieu advocates the fusion of theoretical construction and practical research operations – a theory of practice which is at one and the same time a practice of theory. Bourdieu, however, goes still further, arguing against simply adopting a scholastic view (from a distance). He sees the necessity for a return to practice and to the social world. Here, modes of thinking are necessary to understanding an object of study in relation to its field context and to the interests and positioning of the researchers themselves. Perhaps, the clearest example of this practical orientation in Bourdieu's own work is to be found in his early studies on education which could be argued to have led directly to his leadership of government reforms to the education curriculum in 1980s (see Bourdieu, 2008a)).
As noted in the Outline to a Theory of Practice (1977b/1972), Bourdieu sets out his theory of practice in terms of a series of ‘breaks’: from empirical knowledge; from phenomenological knowledge; from structural knowledge; and from scholastic (theoretical) knowledge itself (pp. 1–2). These breaks should not be seen as a series of exclusions; rather each theoretical position is retained and integrated into an overarching theory. In effect, we might understand these breaks as implying the addition of a fourth type of theory – structural knowledge – to the three previously identified in the triangle above). These forms of knowledge are presented as a tetradic model in Figure 10.1: as different types of knowledge recognised in ethnographic practice.
The key to the integration of these theoretical breaks is the addition of structural knowledge in relationship to the phenomenological, scientific and practical in order to indicate their essential structural nature. Indeed, we might say of such structural knowledge that it arises from practical action – that is the empirical cognitive acts of individuals in pursuit of their aims. Such an engagement involves a social context and individual agency – in Bourdieusian terms, field and habitus. However, it is important to understand it as an essentially constructivist aspect of human praxis – and from birth. Several epistemological principles follow from this account:
• That the primary cognitive act (i.e. that of a newborn child) takes place in a social environment and is essentially structural as it sets up intentional (what phenomenologists refer to as intensional) relations between the social agent and the environment.
• That environment includes both material and ideational structures.
• That the primary cognitive act therefore needs to be understood in terms of a search for social-psychic equilibrium, or control over Self, Objects and Others.
• That such an act – and subsequent acts – do not establish themselves in a value-neutral vacuum, but in an environment saturated with values and ways of seeing the world.
FIGURE 10.1 Bourdieu's epistemological breaks
• That such values and such ways constitute a preset orthodoxy into which agents are inducted.
• That such values and orthodoxies are dynamic and constantly evolving. However, their underlying logic of practice remains the same: they represent a certain way of seeing the world on the part of particular social factions of society.
• That way of seeing the world conditions and shapes the primary cognitive act in a dynamic relationship with individuals involved. In this way, individuals can be particular whilst all sharing commonalities with those immediately in their social environment.
• Both the particulars and the commonalities develop ‘dispositions’ to think and act in certain ways. The extent to which such dispositions are ‘fired’ depends on patterns of resonance and dissonance set up in the range of contexts in which individuals find themselves.
• The characteristics of orthodoxies, dispositions, and their underlying values are defined by the position particular social grouping hold in relation to other social groupings in the social space as a whole.
• That position is also structural and relational.
• Orthodoxies, values and dispositions express certain interests – those of the most dominant social groupings.
• In this way, there is a dialectical relationship between actual structures of social organisation and the structures of symbolic systems that arise from them.
• Nothing is pre-determined; everything is pre-disposed.
The world is infinitely complex. Any ethnographer struggles with representing that complexity. Faced with the multidimensionality, there seems to be a choice between two primary ways of tackling it. As noted above, the ‘theoretical’ approach held to be most robust and ‘scientific’ seeks to extract, simplify, and hypothesise on the basis of findings which can then be tested against further data analyses. However, a Bourdieusian approach to ethnography takes a different course; one which begins with the totality, accepts the complexity and seeks organising structures within it and their underlying generated principles. The logic of such principles is always to differentiate, but they do express themselves in different terms. In this way, the principles can be functionally operative at the same time as being misrecognised: if they were not, they would not be as effective. The whole of Bourdieu's conceptual universe – his theory of practice and the terms in which it is expressed (Habitus, Field, Capital, Disposition, Interest, Doxa, etc.), is predicated on this epistemological stance. However, it is a stance with practical implications. For example, social sciences sometimes use the concept of ‘social class’ as a primary classifier of social practice and outcomes. So, data is collected and similarities are grouped together under the social provenance of the individuals involved. A Bourdieusian approach is different in a way, one which is both more subtle and fundamental. In the common practice of sociology described, ‘social class’ becomes a pre-existing, independent variable. However, Bourdieu's intention was rather to construct a model of the social space, which accounts for a set of practices found there. These practices were to be seen as differentiating themselves according to observed differences based on the principles defining position in that social space. So, ‘social classes’ were a result of analyses. What is at issue here is not so much the similarities that classes share, but the differences between different classes. For Bourdieu, what we must do is ‘construct social space in order to allow for the prediction of the largest possible number of differences’ (1990d/1987: 3). What this results in therefore is less an account of ‘social class’ than a ‘sociology of distinction’ and differentiation, including its defining logic of practice and consequent social classification. A simple acknowledgement of ‘distinction’ as a basic human instinct is therefore not enough. Indeed, at one point Bourdieu takes exception with Veblen's view of ‘conspicuous consumption’. For Bourdieu, it is not enough to understand consumers simply as needing to be conspicuous. Rather, it is necessary for individuals to be noticed in terms of specific signs of signification within a specific field at a particular place and time. In the same way, both in terms of the case examples of Part II of this book, and the example quoted above from Hammersley, it is not enough for those concerned just to distinguish themselves; they need to be distinct according to certain symbolic terms and values. Noticeably, students are often symbolically rich in their own terms whilst at the same seeming to be impoverished according to classroom language orthodoxies; as for example in the case of the African-American students in Chapter 8. As Bloome and Brown demonstrate, students are left with a dilemma: they either abandon their own base cultural values (with all that entails in terms of associated affinities) and embrace the ‘new’ orthodox values of literacy of the classroom; or, they assert their own heterodoxy and accept that it can only be valued from within. A third possibility may be developing a cultural ambidexterity which, as Chapter 8 showed, requires a special set of pedagogical conditions which can demonstrate the required linguistic and cultural improvisation.
I have used the example of social classes here, and have argued that, from a Bourdieusian perspective, they only exist to the extent to which they are acknowledged as such in practical contexts governed by the particular principles of their position in the social space. But, the same argument can be applied to any ethnographic classifier, including literacies. The purpose of this perspective is above all, perhaps, to indicate the processes and consequences of that acknowledgement. Anything else is indeed to confuse the ‘things of logic with the logic of things’ (Bourdieu, 1990d/1987: 117). Naming pupils in certain ways, without this view, is tantamount therefore to an insult as it acts as a form of symbolic violence in imposing a certain (scholastic) perspectivism.
In actually understanding the relationship between the ethnographic context and the social space as a whole – between social variation and differentiation – it is therefore necessary to draw a distinction between the actual structure of the social system in its multidimensional stratification, and the symbolic products which arise from it: ‘In reality, the space of symbolic stances and the space of social positions are two independent, but homologous, spaces’ (ibid.: 113). The consequent method, giving rise to structural knowledge, attempts to reconstruct the space of differences, or differential positions, and then to account for these positions as differential properties of the social space. For Bourdieu, such properties are valued and are consequently defined in terms of the types of capital outlined in Chapter 4; or what is symbolically valued within a particular field context. Regions of the field can be ‘cut up’ to see the functioning and positions of a range of social groupings. Again, in terms of the theory and practice set out in this book, such groupings may be of any kind – race, gender, academic achievement. Names and clusters resulting from classroom language activity can be defined in terms of criteria and affinities, and the way they are distributed across the total range of categories. Furthermore, the major ‘primary’ principles of differentiation – linguistic, cultural and social – can be attributed to both the volume and the particular configuration of (cultural, social and economic) capital. In other words, individuals and groups define themselves by how much capital they hold and the profile of capital types within that holding. In our present context, this is to be understood in terms of linguistic capital, linguistic habitus, and the way these are expressed and valued in particular field contexts. Differentiated social groupings ‘on paper’ can consequently be related to what exists ‘in reality’. To the extent to which various individuals hold similar linguistic capital volumes and capital configurations (i.e. habitus and shared material conditions) in conjunction with others, they will constitute homogeneous, and thus identifiable, groups whilst remaining individually distinct as literacy students. Because they share a similar position in the overall structure of the social space, they share a similar habitus, which is identifiable in dispositional characteristics of literacy.
This four-fold approach has been referred to as ‘a science of existential analytics’, ‘structural constructivism’ (and ‘constructive structuralism’), social philosophy, and reflexive sociology. A more accurate term might be ’structural phenomenological ethnography’. In the context of this book, for literacy and language, we have called this theoretical approach ‘classroom language ethnography’. What is clear is that it requires certain ways of thinking and knowing. It produces theory that results not just from a simple piece of declarative knowledge – a theoretical statement that is falsifiable – but a declarative knowing that is also procedural, that holds within it the epistemological critique and synthesis that was necessary in order for it to be constituted in the first place – i.e. from the tensions between four distinct knowledge types. Hence, we might say that Bourdieu begins with a theory, which attacks theory. This way of knowing requires ‘dialectical thinking’, where more than one empirical and/or theoretical variable is held together at one and the same time; in the same way that a musician might need to hold more than one tone, tempo and rhythm together when playing a piece of music. The resultant knowledge may be contingent and temporary, and expressed as a sort of ‘final vocabulary’, to use a term employed by Richard Rorty to refer to ‘the best we can do’ at a particular point in time. However, this is a contingency which is not tentative, but rich, robust and critical – what Bourdieu refers to as ‘radical doubt’ and as:
a temporary construct which takes shape for and by empirical work. Consequently, it has more to gain by confronting new objects than by engaging in theoretical polemics that do little more than fuel a perpetual, self-sustaining and too often vacuous metadiscourse around concepts treated as intellectual totems.
(Bourdieu, 1989: 50)
In other words, Bourdieu's theory of practice holds in dynamic tension types of theory which struggle to ‘fly apart’. It is therefore contingent, and temporally and spatially dependent. What it offers is a process which maintains the strengths of ethnography in terms of the subjective, particular and personal whilst also achieving characteristics of more scientific theory; in that it is objective, representational and generalisable.
In the Introduction to the Invitation to a Reflexive Sociology (1992) Wacquant draws attention to the ‘fuzzy’ nature of the resultant theory (pp. 19–26), noting that if Bourdieusian concepts are simply too ‘blurred’ and ‘metaphorical’ for some, one might respond with Wittgenstein's argument that when a concept ‘depends on a pattern of life, then there must be some indefiniteness in it’ (p. 23). In other words, if habitus is ‘fuzzy’, it is because life often presents itself in ways which are indefinite, incoherent, and even vague: its underlying differentiating logic of practice would not operate if it were not so. It is logical to the extent that it is practical. Such a view runs counter to those who wish to construct theories and concepts which are ‘defined’ and ‘calibrated’. For Wacquant, the aim is consequently to ‘produce a science of an imprecise, fuzzy, woolly reality’ (p.23). However, as we have argued above, such a mission is far from being theoretically imprecise or epistemologically indeterminate. Rather, Bourdieu's theory emerges ‘as a program of perception and of action, a scientific habitus…, which is disclosed only in the empirical work which actualises it’ (1989: 50). This statement emphasises a point made elsewhere in this chapter about the significance of the researcher's own position with respect to and in the construction of the research.
I now turn to an explicit consideration of the essential features of approaching language classroom ethnography from a Bourdieusian perspective. There are three key aspects to this question: the construction of the research object; field analysis; and participant objectivation. There is a chronological element implicit in the order of these three aspects, because before undertaking a field analysis, attention needs to be given to the construction of the research object – participation in the research then raises questions of reflexivity. The three aspects might be understood as a series of consecutive research ‘stages’. However, in another sense, they are each co-terminus, and must be seen as active at each stage as the research unfolds. Nevertheless, in the present context, and with this proviso in mind, the three key aspects are now discussed in turn.
At one point, Bourdieu refers to the ‘construction of the research object’ as ‘summum of the art’ of social science research (1989: 51). A moment's reflection will reveal why this is so. As researchers, our choice of research topic is shaped by our own academic backgrounds and trajectories. To this extent, our research activity is a symbolic homology of the academic infrastructure with its various structural positions and groupings. I shall say more below about the effect of the academic field itself. For the moment, I want to focus on the research object itself. As has been noted on more than one occasion in this book, topics of research are not uncontested orthodoxies. Key aspects like ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’ are subject to intense argument about the terms of their representation. Of course, the same is true for ‘classroom’, ‘language’ and ‘ethnography’. We have seen that ‘ethnography’ has also been conceptualised in different ways, as has the ‘classroom’ itself. Chapter 4 of this book showed the extent to which Bourdieu's theory of practice offered a major challenge to conventional approaches to language, literacy and linguistic study. Such approaches, concepts and terms themselves come articulated in words which seek to ‘represent’ them. This is why Bourdieu warns the would-be researcher to ‘beware of words’: Beware of them because words present themselves as if they are value-neutral, whilst in effect they are socio-historical constructions, taken-for-granted as expressions of ‘common sense’, but with specialist assumptions about their meanings and imbued with logically practical implications of such meanings. In practice, words are susceptible to a kind of ‘double historicisation’: first, a word is used to represent a certain phenomenon at a particular point in time – one which is often constructed and presented in a way which renders as transparent the social and historical aspects of its construction; second, that dehistoricised form is then subject to further historicisation, as the original form is taken as the basis of fact from which further work and elaboration is operationalised. In this way, the most innocent word can carry within it a whole set of un-objectified assumptions, interests, and meanings which confuse the reality of representation with the representation of reality. Chapter 4 made the distinction between ‘substantialist’ and ‘relational’ thinking. In effect, it is so easy to (miss)take constructs as things in themselves rather than as sets of relations. To do one rather than the other – without knowing about it, still less acknowledging it – is to accept a whole epistemological matrix which has direct consequences for the way that an object of research is thought about, with the implications this error entails for the methodologies employed to collect and analyse data, and for the conclusions drawn as a consequence. Bourdieu offers the example of the word ‘profession’, making the point that as soon as it is taken as an instrument, rather than an object of analysis, a whole set of consequences follows. Moreover, such assumptions are not merely an innocent oversight, since one necessary modus operandi sets itself against another in a field competing for the limited symbolic capital that can be accrued from occupying a dominant position within it. This is no less true of the academic field. The word literacy can offer a further example. We saw in Part I how a traditional ‘autonomous’ concept of literacy – literacy as a set of technical skills – was opposed by the New Literacy Studies movement from the 1980s onwards; one which emphasised the social construction of literacy and, by implication, the ideological nature of the autonomous model. But, even NLS does not escape the challenge to objectify its own epistemological assumptions which reside in such key terms as ‘ideology’, ‘social construction’ and ‘classroom discourse’. Indeed, each of the key concepts used in the analyses of the practical chapters of Part II might be similarly interrogated. As for the word literacy itself, it has become quite ubiquitous, and within the literature we can find reference to: learning literacy, teaching literacy, emotional literacy, computer literacy, action literacy, reflection literacy, literacies and others. All of which raises questions about the value, power and integrity of the word itself for representing both a product and process. Fuzzy indeed! But, with no epistemological bases on which to ground itself. We need to see such terms are employed by different factions of the academic field as an element in their struggles for dominant field positions. Many simply do not recognise the contested nature of ‘literacy’, and indeed do not want to recognise the use that the term has outside their own territory. To this extent, the ‘construction of the research object’ is often the most difficult methodological stage to undertake: first, because, its terms – the names of the game – are the product of history, and therefore which have developed a certain ‘taken-for-granted’ orthodoxy; second, because a whole set of specific interests are often co-terminous with seeing the world in this way. Bourdieu argues that to break from these risks ‘relegating to the past’ a whole set of thinking, hierarchically established by the history and consequent structure of the science field itself (Bourdieu, 1996/1992: 160). Jobs might literally be lost, careers ruined, etc.! There is often therefore resistance. What Bourdieu argues for is a combination of ‘immense theoretical ambition’ and ‘extreme empirical modesty’; the constitution of ‘socially insignificant objects’ into ‘scientific objects’; and the translation of ‘very abstract problems’ into ‘concrete scientific operations’ (1989: 51). His main method for doing this is through ‘field analysis’.
As has been acknowledged at on more than one occasion in this book, the term ‘ethnography’ itself can be quite amorphous and ubiquitous. Very often it is used for any piece of qualitative research, or for research from a broadly sociocultural orientation. Even established writers on ethnography are often unable to give a precise definition of just what it is or, somewhat paradoxically, are overly insistent on what does and does not constitute ethnographic research. Many of these dilemmas themselves issue from anthropology, which can be seen as a parent discipline to ethnography. It is worth pointing out that Bourdieu rarely used the ‘ethnography’ rubric, but did instead often did refer to ‘ethnology’. The important distinction here is that if ethnography is concerned with the study of small groups and their contact with surrounding culture, ethnology aims more at cross-cultural comparisons, and the construction of a universal view of human history. Structural anthropology in general, and Lévi-Strauss's version in particular, would be good examples of this distinction. In a post-modern world, such a universalising mission has been heavily criticised, and consequently replaced with the alternatives – the cultural arbitrary and social relativity. In a sense, Bourdieu is equally critical of attempts to construct a totalising account of human action (in the way that Lévi-Strauss seems to do), all whilst paradoxically constructing a theory that does have ‘an interest in the universal’. At the same time, Bourdieu's theory of practice needs to be seen as offering a stability against the apparent nihilistic reflexivity of the ‘post-modern condition’, albeit saturated with notions of ‘radical doubt’ and practical realism.
As noted above, even when educational research into language learning turned away from psychometric testing from the 1960s onwards, the alternative ‘naturalistic’ methods often did not take account of socio-cultural contexts, except in the broadest, general, background sense. As a result, so-called ethnographic research into language classrooms often amounts to little more that a narrative account of what is observed in situ with little underlying theory of research practice. Indeed, as in the case of ‘grounded theory’, there is still a sense that generalities can and should be generated from such localised contexts which ‘speak for themselves’. Where language has been the main focus for analysis, the broader socio-cultural context of language discourse is often ignored or avoided. The structure of language – as for example, in Sinclair and Coulthard's work (op cit.) – is similarly allowed to speak for itself, as if the language in question did not occur in and in response to a particular pedagogical context, with all this entails in terms of socio-cultural conditions. The intent in using Bourdieu's theory of practice is to provide an approach which is as valid in the construction of the research project, as it is in carrying it out, and in analysis of resultant data. The same principles, the same theory of practice, orientate the researcher and the researched, the methodology and the resultant findings. But, how is it operationalised in practice?
It is perfectly possible to ‘rethink’ educational methodologies in terms of a Bourdieusian approach, for example, as with case studies that are common in educational and language research. Traditionally, case studies are used when ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ questions are being posed, when ‘the investigator has little control over events, and when the focus is on contemporary phenomena within some real-life context’ (see Yin, 1984: 13). These factors apply when there is an interest in process rather than product, and where authenticity of representation takes precedence over outcome. In an apparent echo of my earlier point about Bourdieu and research into real-life language education contexts, Bassey (1999) writes of ‘fuzzy generalisations’ as the end result of case study research, and as a way of highlighting the need to keep a balance between the particular and general significance in presenting research findings. Whilst case study research can, in some hands, be a recipe for a methodological free-for-all, there is no reason why it cannot also be guided by recognised schemes of analysis and recognised classificatory systems. Such formal/generic concepts can indeed be used for both explanatory and comparative purposes. The question is then which concepts and why? Clearly, from a Bourdieusian perspective, what is most important, both in constructing and analysing case studies, are the relational structures to be found within them; the logic of practice which generates and underlies them; and the symbolic products through which such relations are mediated. Such a research practice provides validity not so much in terms of traits or general commonalities, but through offering identifiable configurations within and between cases together with accounts of how these are formed and reproduced over time. In fact, Bourdieu's method is perfectly congruent with writers of the phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition, such as Dilthey (1988/1923), who argued that it was possible to discover general universals through the study of many particulars. Indeed, Bourdieu himself argued that a well constructed case ceases to be particular. We might even go so far as to describe Bourdieu's approach as ‘structural phenomenology’ of case; in other words, to see relational configurations as subjectively constituted in practice, but objectively ‘constant’. So, whilst the manifestations of a process are constantly in flux, their underlying logic remains the same.
Such an approach must be understood as being both methodologically and epistemologically distinct. As similarly noted by Mitchell (1984), a positivistic inference (for example, statistics) involves conclusions drawn about the existence and frequency of two or more characteristics in a wider population from some sample of that population; whilst, on the other hand, a process where the analysis draws conclusions about the essential linkage between two or more characteristics in terms of a distinct systematic explanatory schema must be understood as a logical inference. The distinction between substantialist and relational thinking is also critically important here. In the first case, conclusions are drawn about the whole population from a sample of that population, whilst in the second it is the structure of the entire population that is most significant. Generalisation is then defined in terms of an underlying theory, and its unfolding nature, to which the case study is related; rather than the case study being seen as a discrete case, which may confirm or refute established ‘truths’ expressed in theory regarded as scientific within the academic field.
If we are to regard the case examples which interest us in terms of their field contexts, and thus, involving sites and agents which are to be understood as being constituted by structures which are both structured and structuring, we might broaden the perspective to the very construction of the case study itself. Thus, in creating a case study we are, in the process, structuring a structure, the structure of which can then be analysed in relational terms – as a structured structure. There is an epistemological homology between the field context and its representation. This is why, as part of the research process, it is so important to objectify the construction of the research object (which the researcher brings to the analysis) and indeed the consequent scientific habitus of the researchers themselves. Once this is understood, almost any data or locally present artefacts can be employed to create the case.
Clearly, a fully developed account of Bourdieu's methodological techniques and procedures are beyond the scope of this book, and would include a wide range of approaches to ethnographic and documentary material as well as the deployment of a number of statistical methods such as Multiple Correspondence Analysis (see LeRoux and Rouanet, 2010 for example). Indeed, it might be argued that Bourdieu was almost certainly the most empirical of the world leading generation of French intellectuals that included Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, Deleuze, Lacan, Althusser and Lyotard. There are a number of points that can be made about empirical research and data collection.
There is, in practice, a limit to what data can be collected. One can ask people something – in an interview or questionnaire; give them something to do and observe what happens; simply observe and record; or collect documents, photographs and artefacts and analyse them. There are examples of each of these in the chapters in Part II. It is also worth noting that ethnographic and naturalistic research seldom relies on only one form of data collection; instead accounts are built up from a range of triangulated sources. Today, we might use ‘multimodal’ approaches, where the same empirical source is looked at from a range of data perspectives. Such research does not preclude the use of statistics – Bourdieu used them extensively himself, as noted. For example, in his work on the peasant farmers of the Béarn, education, and culture, Bourdieu's discussions frequently include statistical analyses alongside first-hand accounts from individuals involved in the field. From this very earliest work, Bourdieu was insistent that one should not see quantitative and qualitative approaches as oppositional; all whilst recognising that ‘statistics’ are often used as a strategy to ‘crush one's rivals’ so to speak (see 1963) with the weight of objective ‘fact’.
The key question for observational (ethnographic) methods is ‘to observe in what terms’? This question relates to how the research object is constructed, the language of this construction, and the underlying principles and assumptions that construction which can easily be overlooked. Bourdieu at one point refers to the predicative statement used by logicians: ‘The King of France is bald’ (see for example, 1991: 250). The point is that by engaging in debate about whether or not the king is bald, one has implicitly accepted that there is indeed a king. By extension, to debate any attribute of the ‘working class’ is to have already taken on board the assumption that there is indeed ‘a’ working class, and further, that we are all agreed what it is and how it is represented. As referred to earlier, it was therefore no wonder that when a group of lycéens wrote to Bourdieu for support in their struggles against the then current educational reforms, he warns them against speaking of themselves in terms of lycéens in general, because this overlooks a whole social differentiation in actual social existence (2008b/2002: 181). His warning is similarly against those who speak on their behalf as much as those who would speak of them.
Language is slippery; all the more so when it is used to construct survey and interview questions. Bourdieu is interested in creating the ‘conditions for the elaboration of truth’ (2001/1982: 46); something that can only happen where everything in the research process is equally subject to ‘objectification’. This is not the norm in conventional research practice. As a further example of the elusive nature of language, Bourdieu argues that the term ‘public opinion’ is a kind of auto-logical construction of the habitus of those constructing survey questions (1993/1984: 149– 57). It does this by assuming that an opinion on something is available to all; that all opinions are of equal value; and that the questions themselves are valid ones. It does not therefore exist in reality. In reality, these are issues of competence, of consensus and of authenticity. So, questions such as ‘Should teachers be allowed to go on strike?’, or ‘Should the curriculum be changed?’, are more about the mobilisation of a preconstructed opinion (and that pre-construction is never without interest!), often of those conducting the survey. Indeed the questions may be quite contrary to reality and should be better understood more as a series of dispositions. It is not only that ‘public opinion does not exist’, but that very often it is mistaken for what is taken as the ‘truth’ by the very groups being researched.‘By putting a microphone in front of a miner’, Bourdieu argues ‘many think that what you are going to get is the truth about miners’ (2001/1982: 46), whilst, in reality, what is obtained is a representation of the union discourse of the previous thirty years! Similar misrepresentations can be found across a range of social groupings. For Bourdieu, this phenomenon amounts to a kind of ‘dramatic auto-mystification’ – that there is a source of social truth in the world that can be uncovered as a place of origin without reference to the prior conditions of enquiry. This is a kind of intellectual indulgence for Bourdieu. For him, the sociologist, or language researcher, must always be ‘practically involved’: they listen, enquire, and get interviewees to speak, all whilst putting everything under a critical discourse. This engagement itself implies a certain modus operandi. In effect, the sociologist can only re-present a particular point of view (of their object of research) by being capable of:
taking account of all possible points of view (‘to live all lives’, as Flaubert said)… (to do this) to the extent that they are capable of objectifying themselves so that they can…understand that, in their place, they would be and think just like the objects of their research.
(Bourdieu, 1991: 5)
Such an ethnographic approach is exemplified by Bourdieu and his team in The Weight of the World (1999/1993). Here, Bourdieu warns against the type of conversational analysis which reads into each interview the contingent structure of a transaction (I-R-F, for example). Instead, he argues for an analysis of ‘invisible structures’, namely, the structure of the social space that organises it, the social space in which they are situated, and the past trajectories of those involved. It is necessary above all to ensure that an ethnographer does not project their own academic ‘alter ego’ into the interview and the objects of their analysis. As a consequence, in this study (op cit.), members of the investigation team were allowed to choose their own respondents from amongst and around the people they knew, because social proximity and familiarity help to reduce the symbolic violence implied by an interview when the interviewer is clearly coming from outside the field of experience of the interviewed. For Bourdieu, this helps to create the conditions of ‘non-violent communication’ (p. 608) between the investigator and the investigated. The end result is, contrary to normal ethnographic representations, a kind of ‘realist construction’ in which the authenticity of the primary empirical experience of the objects of research is clearly the source of the immanent generating structures found within it.
The aim is a ‘constant improvisation of pertinent questions, genuine hypotheses based on a provisional, intuitive representation of the generative formula specific to the interviewee, in order to push that formula toward revealing itself more fully’ (p. 613). However, Bourdieu also refers to the process of research as a ‘spiritual exercise’ since it also allows for the possibility of ‘an induced and accomplished selfanalysis’. He gives the example of a teacher who, after being interviewed, found consolation by understanding more about the social forces which acted upon her and rendered her life difficult (p. 470). It is well to note that the sort of ethnography we are discussing here is both a lengthy and delicate process. Moreover, such a process requires a constant return to past analyses in order to objectify them further in a way that is iterative. Such can be seen in the way that Bourdieu returned again and again to his own ethnographic analyses of the Béarnais peasants – 1962, 1972, 1989 (but see 2008a/2002) – in order to reconsider the structures immanent in what was observed there. But, what sort of structures?
So far, in this methodological discussion, we have considered issues about ethnographic data collection such as the terms of any observations, and the language of questionnaire and interview techniques. Of course, a Bourdieusian approach can employ any form of data or analysis in order to demonstrate underlying relational structures. As we have noted, statistical data can be as valid as qualitative data. A range of artefacts might also be employed as data sources. For example, Bourdieu refers to the way in which he has used Illness, Invalidity and Schooling Certificates in order to study the effects of the monopoly of state power (1989: 51). In Chapter 5, photographs of participants in the LETTER project are used; whereas in Chapter 6 the 3-D boxes made by pupils are included as part of the analysis. Nonetheless, we need some way to navigate through the various data sources which might be used in studying the structures underlying our objects of research.
‘Field’ is a primary analytical concept for Bourdieu; so much so, that ‘field analysis’ increasingly represented his main approach to research method. When asked by Loïc Wacquant (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992b: 104) what constituted such a ‘field analysis’ and how to proceed, Bourdieu described a relational methodology with three necessary steps. Put briefly these are:
First, one must undertake an analysis of the position of the field vis-à-vis the field of power by considering particular events, institutions rather than through pre-existing historical narratives.
Second, one must construct a mapping of the field itself, which shows it as the site of the objective structure of the relations between the positions occupied by agents who compete for legitimate forms of specific authority (capital).
Third, one must analyse the habitus of agents in the field to identify the system of dispositions they have acquired by internalising a deterministic type of social and economic condition.
It should be noted that while the order, scale and emphasis of this general method varies, each of the three steps is essential. The precise application of this method in a field analysis is, of course, dependent on the research objects and on the particular times and places to which it is applied. Practical examples of such field analyses can be found elsewhere. See Grenfell (1996) and Hardy (2011) for applications to language based contexts, and Grenfell and Hardy (2007) for applications to artistic and cultural fields. These three inter-related steps can in fact be understood as the criteria for the ‘structural knowledge’ which was presented in Figure 10.1, and which acts as mediator between the subjectivity of Fundamental Educational Theory and the objectivity of Justifying Educational Principles.
Clearly, it is debatable as to what extent Bourdieu himself presented field analyses with each of these three elements represented equally; although invariably his empirical studies did include elements of all three. For classroom language ethnography, the first analysis really refers to the relationship between the literacy field, the pedagogical field and the field of state power. In our present case, this would specifically concern the way government language policy shapes what happens in schools and classrooms, for example, through official curricular documents, syllabuses, etc. Chapter 8 offers an example of this level of field structure, where the school curriculum and the expectations of literacy are set directly by state legislation and which, the author tells us, result in teaching methods which reflect the dominant values of a white majority. Such curricular documents define what is ‘legitimate’ in the field, which itself implies an underlying logic of differentiating practice against which schools, teachers and students can be judged. It is again worth noting that the latter must be seen in terms of relationships connected with particular positions in the knowledge field; for example, the varying status of school disciplines and acceptable pedagogies, what is and is not to be valued within the field. In Chapter 8, mastery of particular forms of literacy and literature are shown to be greatly valued in Princeton high schools as indicators of educational success. For African-American students, whose cultural context prefers alternative literary forms and who have proved resistant to adopting these doxic forms, the literacy forms that the state legitimated curriculum presented an insurmountable, but necessary building block for any future achievement. Similarly, it is internationally recognised forms of literacy which are valuable to the Dalit women in Chapter 5 because they offer access to less dominated positions in the national field.
Field analyses are relational and the relations are ideationally constituted. However, the first step of an analysis also must include actual organisational structures, for example, by studying intermediary agencies between governments (ministries of education, for instance) and school/colleges. Such agencies may include examination boards, inspection services, and local education and teacher education authorities. In our present case, the point of focus here would be on language in education in policy and practice. Such an institutional ‘mapping of the field’ provides important information about the way that the local ethnographies are constructed.
A second step deals with these local ethnographies themselves, as they are concerned with functioning and structure of the field site itself. We have described the way that ethnographies are constructed as ‘naturalistic accounts’ of context. However, from a Bourdieusian perspective, the study of actual structural relations are always necessary. As noted, these relations arise in both structural organisations, and in the way ideas (curricular principles for examples) are expressed in practice through agents who occupy significant positions within the field. In Chapter 8, Bloome and Brown give such an account of how some African-American students are situated within a complex set of field relationships: between their school and other schools in the locality; between their teacher, the school literacy syllabus and the state-regulated curriculum; and between and within the participants in a collaborative research project about the practical construction of intertexuality in classrooms. Although the teacher acts in a particular classroom, in each individual exchange, there is expressed a whole institutional ethos originating from a particular language department, school, and the way the latter have interpreted state and national policies (doxa). What occurs in the classroom occurs in a value laden social space in which both material artefacts and linguistic discourse are immersed in a field where their particular forms are valued as cultural capital; for example, differentiated forms of literacy and other language practices. Rather than simply describing such a language classroom, or analysing the language to be found there in itself, a Bourdieusian approach therefore looks for structural relations within such a setting and the way these might be homologous to relations with agents outside the classroom. In this way, it is possible to locate the exact match and mis-match between what is and is not acceptable in linguistic terms, and the consequences for teacher, learner and the school.
In the final (third) step of a Bourdieusian approach, the habitus of the agents involved is analysed in terms of their own dispositions, identifiable in the particular capital they hold and the way this is expressed. Such expression might be found in an entire socio-cultural ethos, or in the particular pedagogy that they are applying. One illustration of this is to be found in the ‘jazzy’ language use of the teacher in Chapter 8 set against the dual cultural histories of her students. A further example can be found in Grenfell (1996) where field analysis shows how language teachers from a particular era of training exhibit different classroom practices in their approach to pupils as a result and, how these differences can be identified in actual questioning techniques. In other words, teachers have a certain ‘pedagogical habitus’ (which shapes what they do and why). In a similar manner, Pahl, in Chapter 6, explicitly examines the good match between the teacher's habitus – whose grandparents were miners and who claims to have loved art and design from an early age – and that of her seven-year-old pupils, the children of ex-miners who work enthusiastically and creatively at designing boxes. In each of these examples, habitus is dispositional, is valued according to dominant pedagogic capital, and is actualised in practice in classroom teaching. There are then relations of dominance derived from the habitus between the teacher, department and school (itself implying relations to state power), and the habitus of pupils themselves. Pupils come with a certain socio-cultural background – their own dispositional habitus. Rowsell, in Chapter 7, writes in a similar manner about how the outcomes of schooling for her students will be dependent on the way the ideational logic underpinning their own habitus resonates, or not, with the principles incarnate in the ethos of the school and the methods and content of the literacy curriculum. This system of convergence or divergence needs to be understood in terms of ‘elective affinities’, or dis-affinities, between schools and pupils, teachers and learners. The intention of classroom language ethnography is that these relations can be studied and identified in the language of classrooms by analysing them in terms of these three steps.
In a way, the three-step approach that Bourdieu suggested may appear to be overly schematic. However, it is worth emphasising that, although for analytical purposes it may be useful to keep the three steps separate, any ethnographic account will be constructed in a way which integrates the three of them to a greater or lesser extent. That being said, it is also worth emphasising that, and even though any one research project may focus on one step more than another, all three are necessary. Very often classroom ethnographies undertake only the second step of a full field analysis – omitting the broader socio-political field, and any analysis of individuals’ inter-relationships within the field. Moreover, classroom ethnographies do not always focus on structures and relations within the classroom, nor take sufficient account either of external structuring influences or the individual, personal and professional habitus of those involved. Or, the focus becomes too biographical, where individual life histories go unanalysed and are expected to speak for themselves in a kind of affirmation of social uniqueness, and thus potential, instead of the researcher interpreting what occurs in terms of the interaction between generalities of socio-cultural and institutional context. Nonetheless, the scope for methodological improvisation is still enormous within these set parameters.
In a sense, the main conviction behind a Bourdieusian approach to classroom language ethnography is not simply that in our normal operative state the world (in this case the language classroom) is not so much more complicated than we think, but that it is more complicated than we can think. The thinking tools that Bourdieu's method provides are intended as a way of opening up that complexity in order to provide new insights. However, it would be a mistake to consider the deployment of terms like habitus, field and capital as an end in itself, or that simply expressing data analysis with these words was a sufficient route to understanding and explanation. At its extreme, such an approach can result in little more than a metaphorising of data with Bourdieusian language. The three-level approach to data analysis outlined above is intended to be a key to avoiding such a reification of conceptual terms. However, there is a third vital ingredient for Bourdieu: reflexivity. We find it everywhere in his writing, but what are its practical implications for classroom language ethnography?
The whole focus on the construction of the research object we have discussed here is that it is partly an attempt to break with the ‘pre-given’ of the world, especially the academic one, and to rethink language and language pedagogy in a new way. As part of this process, reflexivity is more than a pragmatic option; it is rather an epistemological necessity. As we saw above, what Bourdieu is proposing is to break from ‘scholastic knowledge’ itself! In other words, the scholastic world of theory about language teaching and learning needs to be seen as being just as prone as the empirical world of language classrooms to acting on the basis of presuppositions created historically; so much so that there is indeed the danger of research knowledge becoming a kind of ‘scholastic fallacy’, where what is offered in the name of scientific knowledge is in actuality simply the reproduction of a certain scholastic relation to the world, and one indeed imbibed with its own interests. Bourdieu writes of three presuppositions which are key dangers in this potential ‘misrepresentation’ (see Bourdieu, 2000/1997: 10). First, there is the presupposition associated with a particular position in the social space; in other words, the particular habitus (including gender) as constituted by a particular life trajectory, and thus the cognitive structures which orientate thought and practice. Second, there is the orthodoxy of the particular site of the field of language pedagogy itself – its doxa – with its imperative to think (only!) in these terms, as they are the only ones acknowledged as legitimate in the field. Third, there is the whole relation to the social world implied by scholastic skholè itself; in other words, to see the former as substantive, given, and an object of contemplation rather than relationally – praxeologically – and existentially dynamic. Finally, therefore, in order to break from scholastic reason itself, it is, for Bourdieu, not sufficient simply to be aware through some form of return of thought to thought itself. Such actions are for him a part of the same scholastic fantasy that believes that thought can transcend thought and, in so doing, escape from all the socio-culturally constructed presuppositions listed above. Because these presuppositions are unconscious, implied and occluded in the very nature of thought itself, it is necessary to find another means to escape from them than the type of reflexivity commonly accepted by social scientists (for example, Alvin Gouldner). For Bourdieu, the necessary alternative is through a process of ‘participant objectivation’, or the ‘objectification of the objectifying subject’:
I mean by that the one that dispossesses the knowing subject of the privilege it normally grants itself and that deploys all available instruments of objectification…in order to bring to light the presuppositions it owes to its inclusion in the object of knowledge.
(ibid.)
Social scientists, language researchers or classroom ethnographers are called on to apply the same methods of analysis to themselves as to their object of research. What this means, in effect, is to see their own research field in terms of habitus, field and capital, and to objectify their own position within it. Bourdieu attempted such a procedure himself in books such as Homo Academicus (1988/1984) and Sketch for a Self-analysis (2004). However, one point is crucially clear: although this undertaking can be attempted on an individual basis, and is partly necessitated by a personal epistemological imperative, what is even more important is that participants in a particular academic field, here language education, commit themselves to a similar process of reflexivity as a way of showing up the limits of its own science. Bourdieu is perfectly aware that such an activity runs counter to the conventional underlying logic of practice of the scientific field, with its interest in asserting its own worldview in competing for a dominant position in the academic field overall. As a result of the latter, there is often a reluctance on the part of academics to recognise and acknowledge the limits of thinking that a truly reflexive process would reveal. For Bourdieu, it is the particular mission of sociology – or at least his version of sociology – to insist on this reflexive stance. Indeed, anything else is a kind of ultimate act of scholastic bad faith.
It is possible to return this call to the fields of literacy and classroom language ethnography. We have noted that the term ‘literacy’ is itself open to a range of interpretations, each of which might be seen in terms of positions spread out across the academic field. The autonomous versus ideological versions of literacy are one possible opposition, but we have seen that there are other conceptualisations of literacy competing for recognition and field dominance. Here, New Literacy Studies can be seen to exist in a form which is bounded by specific principled relations to a range of epistemological and practical orthodoxies. Such conceptual boundaries define possibilities and limitations; for example, in terms of integrating the social and cognitive within an authentic socio-cultural framework. An example is provided for us by one branch of language research, linguistic ethnography, which has become a prominent methodological approach in recent years, and used in Part II; one which needs to be understood as a hybrid academic force situated somewhere between linguistics and ethnography. Here, the conviction is that ‘ethnography opens linguistics up…and linguistics ties ethnography down’ (Rampton 2007: 8). In many ways, this strand of language research can be seen to be a welcome synthesis of quantitative and qualitative approaches, the objective and subjective, one which parallels the move we are advocating towards a relational and structural classroom language ethnography. However, even here, it is necessary to ‘objectify’ both ‘linguistic ethnography’ in terms of its own epistemological and institutional structures. Such a reflexion (sic) shows up organisational and epistemological relations with real consequences in terms of method and resultant knowledge outcomes (see Grenfell 2010 for further discussion). The same would be no less true for classroom language ethnography.
Bourdieu makes its clear that an undertaking based on his theory of practice may result in a downplaying of attributable research significance: ‘to pay a higher price for truth while accepting a lower profit of distinction’ (1991: 34). But, then adds ‘the truth is that truth is at stake’ and, to this extent, there is no authentic alternative but to follow its own logic. As has been argued here, such truth is only possible after a certain break from both the practical and theoretical worlds which are conventionally on offer through the addition of a knowledge form concerned with relationships and with structure. The result must be seen in terms of a new way of knowing – a metanoia or ‘reflexive objectivity’. This itself involves a conversion to a new type of scientific habitus, characterised by what has been called praxeological knowledge. Such a conversion needs to be understood as both being dispositional and collective, rather than simply oppositional and individualistic. What is called for then is a revolution of an entire way of thinking within the community of language and literacy researchers. For Bourdieu, such a revolution is not simply a question of changing minds but changing the conditions in which minds are formed, which itself involves different intellectual environmental conditions: ‘To change the world, one has to change the ways of world-making, that is, the vision of the world and the practical operations by which groups are produced and reproduced’ (1989: 23). A Bourdieusian epistemology of practice provides the concepts for such a change in world making. In this respect, it is not simply the way of thinking that must change but the way that way of thinking is constructed that must also change. When applied to the language classroom, the result is what we have been developing as ‘classroom language ethnography’.
As we have shown in this and earlier chapters, classroom language ethnography in Bourdieusian terms entails a series of specific characteristics. First, it must be empirical and be specific to a particular time and place. Second, it must be reflexive to the extent that it takes account of the researchers’ own interests and experience in relation to the language classroom in order to ‘objectify the objectifying subject’. Third, it should be iterative and cyclic, so that outcomes remain open to revision in the light of future investigations. But, the most significant defining characteristic of classroom language ethnography is that the analysis must be a relational one. The process of investigation must therefore necessarily include three distinct types of relationships, each of which should themselves be considered in relation to each other, that is:
• the relationships between the large scale economic, cultural and political contexts and the language pedagogy events studied in order to show how the one influences and shapes the functioning of the language classroom (the relationship between the field of language education and the field of power);
• the inter-relationships between key educational organisations and state institutions, and, the individuals who are engaged in the particular social and pedagogical language activity (the relationships between agents and field institutions);
• the relationships of similarity and difference between the characteristics of individual field participants, including the most dominant (categorisation of the habitus of a range of individuals).
Such an analysis offers a procedure for examining the practical functioning of literacies in their real-life socio-cultural settings, a process which shows clear relationships between subjective experience and objective understanding. This approach promotes a way of working in which structural knowledge derived from it contributes to a form of theoretical knowledge, that is now truly based on the actuality of practice. The theoretical (praxeological) knowledge arising from such an undertaking can then be seen as forming part of a knowledge base which itself adds to our pool of understanding of literacy and the classroom as constituted by the normative sciences.