The Pierre Bourdieu´s concepts of field and habitus and their (possible) application to Education Policy

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the possible applicability of the concepts of habitus and field, coined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, to research in education, in particular, that focused on educational policy in Brazil. It is a theoretical-epistemological study, which has both characteristics of bibliographical analysis and applied research, insofar as it intends to interact with the main currents of epistemological studies of public policy, especially, educational and with some of the policies that have taken place at the national level. We sought to situate the field of Brazilian educational policy from a three-dimensional model of analysis, in which both agents and structures - and also trajectories - can find place in a new technique of apprehension of the movements of the educational field. It was concluded that political praxis is broken by the conditions of the agents and, with this, the epistemological understanding of educational policy itself depends on variables that are often intangible, inasmuch as they are conditioned by the field and the habitus.

Keywords

• pierre bourdieu.
• educational research.
• educational politics.