Attending a children's folk high school with Bourdieu

Attending a children’s folk high school with Bourdieu.

1. Research topic/aim
This presentation finds its outset within the analyses of an ethnographic fieldwork carried out at a children’s folk high school in Aarhus, Denmark in late 2020.

Following Bourdieu, my analyses throughout this presentation aims to show that those of the children and the young people at the school, who possess conversation capital as a form of embodied cultural capital, get a chance of dominating and defining the social rules of the field.

2. Theoretical framework
In an ethnographic study of a Finnish school class, the Finnish educational researchers Mari Vuorisalo and Lena Alanen explore how some children seem to possess or acquire what they deem conversation capital. Conversation capital give the children, who possess it a special access to the teacher, and with that, a range of privileges in form of speaking time, access to social communities and continuous negotiations of the codes of practice in the class. In their Bourdieu-informed analysis, the conversation capital becomes a legitimate and effective implement in the social practices of the class and relates directly to the power- and dominance structures that constitute the social field of the classroom (Vuorisalu & Alanen, 2015: 85-95).

3. Methodology/research design
My methodological inspirations behind the project are inductive and explorative and with a foundation in educational anthropology, the basis for this project is an ethnographic fieldwork consisting of 45 hours of participant observation of the different courses offered at the folk high school as well as four one-hour semi-structured interviews with volunteers and course leaders at the place (Andersen, 2019: 36, 333).

4. Expected findings
Through empirical excerpts this presentation frames analyses of how such social mechanisms are constructed, maintained, and negotiated at the children’s folk high school. My analyses are driven by bourdieusian readings, like the ones mentioned above and the conceptual framework of the relational sociology in general to show how power and dominance structures influence the social codes in the children and youth groupings at the school, where such subtle social mechanisms are constructed and (re-)negotiated through the everyday interactions of the children, young people and adults at the site.

5. Relevance to Nordic educational research
In an establishment of certain Nordic values in education, values such as engagement and democracy come up among others (Klette, 2018, Frostholm, 2021). In a children’s folk high school setting such values are established and maintained through a pedagogical practice characterised by student democracy, pupil involvement, dialogue, singing and community gatherings. The power- and dominance structures of the social agents of the place are an immanent part of such practices, and my presentation aims to show just that. Apart from that, drawing mainly on a Finnish reading of classic bourdieusian theoretical framework, this presentation already found its main inspiration within an analysis rooted in the north.