A question of autonomy: Bourdieu’s field approach and higher education policy

Abstract

The concept of field forms the centre of Pierre Bourdieu’s relational sociology and the notion of ‘autonomy’ is its keystone. This article explores the usefulness of these underexamined concepts for studying policy in higher education. It begins by showing how Bourdieu’s ‘field’ approach enables higher education to be examined as a distinct and irreducible object of study. It then explores the value and limitations of this conceptualization through analyses of policy during two contrasting moments of transition in the same field. First, the insights offered by a field approach are illustrated by analysing the new student debate over the creation of new universities in early 1960s English higher education. This shows how the field’s relatively high autonomy shaped the focus and form of policy debates by refracting economic and political pressures into specifically educational issues. Second, considering contemporary changes in policy highlights how the erosion of the social compact underpinning higher education has increasingly fractured autonomy, necessitating the development of Bourdieu’s conceptualization. A distinction between positional and relational dimensions of autonomy is introduced to capture an increasing disjuncture between the origins of the actors running higher education and of the principles they are adopting, respectively. These concepts are utilized to illuminate the effects of current moves towards marketization and managerialism in higher education on principles, practices and identities within the field.

Notes

1. The Scottish system was sufficiently different to merit its own analysis and no ‘new’ universities were situated in Wales. The following discussion draws on a major, in‐depth relational field study of change in higher education (Maton, 2005a).

2. I shall focus on contributions to the debate by founding vice‐chancellors of new universities, such as Fulton (Sussex University), James (York University), Sloman (Essex University) and Thistlethwaite (University of East Anglia).

3. My distinction between Bourdieu’s theoretical descriptions of fields and the capacity of the concepts available for their empirical study is crucial to understanding the nature of this critique. Theoretically, Bourdieu emphasized the relative autonomy of practices [although even here he argued that ‘the principle of position‐takings lies in the structure and functioning of the field of positions’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 35)]. However, his conceptual framework as it currently stands when used in empirical research tends to underplay the structuring significance of symbolic practices for fields because it cannot conceptualize their structure in, for example, the manner offered by Bernstein’s concepts of ‘codes’. For fuller examples of this critique see Bernstein (1996), Maton (2000, 2003, 2005b) and Moore (2004). My aim here is not the displacement of Bourdieu’s concepts, but their development to realize in empirical research the potential offered by the theory of fields.

4. It must be emphasized that the strengths for PA and RA are relative, form a continuum and conceptualize underlying structuring principles rather than empirically describing family resemblances; the examples offered do not describe ideal‐typical universities but rather simply illustrate different modalities.