Learning with Bourdieu : pedagogy, cosmology and potty training

This chapter will explore the pedagogical imperative in Bourdieu's work, drawing on an example from everyday life - toilet training - which is crucial to both the formation of a socially competent human and the instilling of a 'cosmology' fundamental to social reproduction (Bourdieu 1977: 93-94) to argue that we need to augment Bourdieu's toolbox to consider the pedagogic action underlying subject formation. This is in line with Bourdieu's claim that 'the most fundamental problems of political philosophy can only be posed and truly resolved by means of a return to the mundane observations of the sociology of learning and upbringing' (Bourdieu 2000: 168), but Bourdieu himself largely blackboxes the problem of acquisition. Bourdieusian sociology can be enriched by foregrounding the collective enterprise of inculcation through a conceptually elaborated, empirical program which explores the ensemble of pedagogic relations, setting, mode, space and the temporarily of teaching and learning.