- Title
- Introduction: Using Bourdieu to Theorize Aspirations
- Creator
- Stahl, Garth; Wallace, Derron; Burke, Ciaran; Threadgold, Steven
- Relation
- International Perspectives on Theroizing Aspirations: Applying Bourdieu's tools p. 3-17
- Relation
- Social Theory and Methodology in Education Research
- Relation
- https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/international-perspectives-on-theorizing-aspirations-9781350040335
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- In contemporary times, aspirations matter. Although aspirations have long been deemed valuable resources across a range of national contexts, public declarations on increasing or improving aspirations are of growing significance. Aspiration, as typically defined, is the hope or ambition of achieving a goal or setting oneself on a particular pathway. There is general consensus in social theory that aspirations are constituted in the social world through an amalgamation of different sources (family, schooling, etc.) as well as through intersecting identities (gender, ethnicity, class, etc.). Furthermore, dominant moral discourses in the social imaginary heavily influence aspirations as orientations towards one's future (Baker 2017). Highlighting how aspirations are structured in the social world, and often aligned with the prerogatives of the dominant classes, we see how, in Bourdieu's view, aspirations can often be dreams not fully realized where individuals are often 'obliged to live out the contradiction between their messianic aspirations and the reality of their practice, to cultivate uncertainty as to their social identity in order to be able to accept it' (Bourdieu 1984: 366).
- Subject
- aspirations; Pierre Bourdieu; goals; social theory
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1449742
- Identifier
- uon:43751
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781350040335
- Language
- eng
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