Abstract/Summary

The ways that social-classed backgrounds impact on day-to-day life have long been a focus of academic interest. Research exploring the underlying processes which explain social reproduction and inequality within and outside the classroom has enabled scholars to shine a light on how useful Bourdieu’s key concepts are to academics, educators, and policymakers alike. Noting that class is a heavily contested concept, our research has employed Bourdieu’s conceptual framework to examine processes of class, that is, specifically, the mechanisms and struggles over systems of classification (Bourdieu, 1984), social relations formulated through social space and capital (Bourdieu, 1985), and linked inequalities (Tyler, 2015). As educational researchers, we are interested in operationalizing and extending Bourdieu’s concepts to critically explore gender specifically in reference to the lived experiences of working-class women. Our work is embedded in a feminist sociology in both thinking from women’s lives, in terms of our own positionality as female researchers (including our “intellectual biographies”(Stanley, 1990) which drew us to Bourdieu’s work initially), and theorizing from the lived experiences of the women we research with. We recognize, however, that the category of “women” itself is socially constructed and fundamentally ontologically fractured (Stanley and Wise, 1990), with complex multiple intersections and diverse material realities.