From traditional to modern domination

the meaning of the education system in the view of Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract

Based on Pierre Bourdieu's analyses, the article aims to build a comparative framework between two modes of domination (one traditional and the other modern) to highlight the specificities of domination in modern capitalist societies. We will seek to show that typically modern domination presupposes a growing process of objectification of social reproduction mechanisms – such as the formation of a self-regulated economic market, education systems, the State and law – which are articulated to make the social order obtain an immanent principle of conservation, exempting its agents from acting directly in favor of maintaining inequalities and hierarchies. Observing this movement, we will seek to highlight the place of the education system as a central institution in the process of social reproduction and as an instance that legitimizes the new divisions of modern society, increasingly justifiable by the function played by educational titles.