PIERRE BOURDIEU’S RECEPTION IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION IN BRAZIL

Abstract

The scope and breadth of Pierre Bourdieu’s works have been attested around the world since his first publications in the 1960s, including the translations of his works overtime, as well as the wide appropriation that his theoretical, conceptual, and methodological constructs have demonstrated in different areas of knowledge for over five decades. The present article selects the Brazilian Sociology of Education as a privileged academic space to analyse the reception of Bourdieu’s work in Brazil, approaching the conditions for the possibility of introducing and disseminating his ideas and the readings of this sociologist’s work in Brazil.

PIERRE BOURDIEU; SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION; BRAZIL

Resumo

O alcance e a envergadura dos trabalhos de Pierre Bourdieu são atestados ao redor do mundo desde suas primeiras publicações na década de 1960, passando pelas traduções que suas obras receberam ao longo do tempo e também pela ampla apropriação que seus constructos teóricos, conceituais e metodológicos têm demonstrado em diferentes áreas do conhecimento por mais de cinco décadas. O presente artigo elege a sociologia da educação brasileira como espaço acadêmico privilegiado para analisar a recepção da obra de Bourdieu no Brasil, ocupando-se das condições de possibilidade da introdução e difusão de seu pensamento e das leituras da obra desse sociólogo que passaram a ser realizadas no país.

PIERRE BOURDIEU; SOCIOLOGIA DA EDUCAÇÃO; BRASIL

Resumen

El alcance y la envergadura de los trabajos de Pierre Bourdieu se comprueban alrededor del mundo desde sus primeras publicaciones en la década de 1960, pasando por las traducciones que sus obras recibieron a lo largo del tiempo y también por la amplia apropiación que sus constructos teóricos, conceptuales y metodológicos han demostrado en distintas áreas del conocimiento durante más de cinco décadas. El presente artículo elige la sociología de la educación brasileña como un espacio académico privilegiado para analizar la recepción de la obra de Bourdieu en Brasil, ocupándose de la posibilidad de introducir y difundir su pensamiento y las lecturas de la obra de este sociólogo que se empezaron a realizar en Brasil.

PIERRE BOURDIEU; SOCIOLOGÍA DE LA EDUCACIÓN; BRASIL

Résumé

L’ampleur et l’envergure des travaux de Pierre Bourdieu sont attestées autour du monde dès ses premières publications dans les années 1960, passant par les traductions de ses œuvres au long du temps et aussi par la vaste appropriation de ses principes téoriques, conceptuels et méthodologiques démontrent dans différents domaines du savoir pour plus d’une cinquantaine d’années. Cet article place la sociologie de l’éducation brésilienne comme l’espace privilegié pour analyser la reception de l’œuvre de Bourdieu au Br ésil, abordant les conditions de possibilités de l’introduction et diffusion de sa pensée, et des lectures de son œuvre qui sont réalisées au Brésil.

PIERRE BOURDIEU; SOCIOLOGIE DE L’ÉDUCATION; BRÉSIL

The breadth of Pierre Bourdieu’s work (1920-2002) can be expressed by its reach in different areas of knowledge around the world. In the Brazilian scenario, social sciences have been focusing on his writings particularly since the 1960s and, with different stages of approaching the work of this sociologist (Bortoluci et al., 2015), a marked presence is perceived together with growing movements of thematic dispersions in the uses of his production, especially in anthropology and sociology, to the detriment of political science (Campos & Szwako, 2020). Bourdieu’s impact in the field of sociology of education (SE) is widely recognized worldwide, and since the 1960s - with the publication of the The Inheritors (2014/1964) and later with The Reproduction (2008/1970), both written in partnership with Jean-Claude Passeron - his work has been considered a milestone in this field.

As Nogueira (1990) well demonstrates, although we can point to other theories that claim to exist a relationship between school education and the reproduction of social inequalities, Bourdieu and Passeron’s work differs from other studies by its articulation between a general theory of the education system and empirical data, through the cultural dimension that stands out in this process and also through aspects such as the originality and extent of its focus (C. M. M. Nogueira & M. A. Nogueira, 2002).

Nevertheless, a set of longitudinal surveys carried out in different countries are at the very bottom of this debate, such as the one performed by Robin in 1963 and Plowden in 1967 in the United Kingdom, and Coleman in 1966 in the United States. In France, the “School of Demography” developed at the National Institute for Demographic Studies (Inde) stands out, as well as the important role of the Centre de Sociologie Européenne in the development of research in SE (Masson, 2001). This set of research converged in the same direction by indicating the strong relationship between school failure and social origins¹.

The appropriation of Bourdieu’s work took place in different parts of the world, including in Latin America, although the empirical substrate of his analyzes initiated from a specific political, social, and cultural reality: the French education system. However, it is recognized that his theory referred more broadly to the education systems of modern capitalist societies; and, although we can problematize the center-periphery relationship in capitalism, it would be plausible to indicate that certain questions raised by the author could be relevant to reflect on the reality of the Global South².

The present work seeks to carry out a brief analysis on the reception of Bourdieu’s work in Brazilian SE, considering the particularities that this field partakes in the country. Unlike the approach taken by Catani, et al. (2001), who sought to analyze the incorporation of Bourdieu in the field of education in a broader way, based on the articles published in the area, our concern is directly circumscribed to the process of embracing Bourdieu in SE.

In spite of dialoguing with the works of Bortoluci et al. (2015) and Peters and Rocha (2020), we understand that these authors, despite recognizing Bourdieu’s relevance for SE, tend to focus their analysis more on the resistance found to the reception of the French sociologist’s work, while we are concerned with highlighting the processes of translation and reception of his works related to education, as well as the debate that he generated in Brazil. We seek to highlight the paths and clashes in this process, dialoguing with its incorporation in the agenda of sociology in general³, and also in SE in Brazil.

French sociology in the tropics: antechamber for the diffusion of Bourdieu’s thought

In the first authors of the so-called “Brazilian Social Thought”, still at the end of the 19^th century, we already find a strong influence of French positivism. However, this did not mean that Brazilian authors transplanted French ideas mechanically. As Villas Bôas (2006) points out, there was a reading of positivism in Brazil, which led to the elaboration of an interpretation of Brazilian society based on a combination of different authors and intellectual traditions.

This heterogeneity can also be seen in the elaboration of the first sociology handbooks written in Brazil, published between the 1920s and 1940s. According to Meucci (2011), in addition to Augusto Comte recurrently appearing as the “father of sociology”, authors such as Le Play and Durkheim were central to these manuals, being the main theoretical exponents in this production. Nevertheless, the fact that American and German authors were also periodically used in the elaboration of the sociological interpretations present in these books should also be stressed. It is also during this period that sociology professions were spread throughout Brazil, primarily in secondary schools, including the Normal Schools, which were centers for teacher training. In these schools, Durkehim’s work Education and Sociology became especially popular, having been published posthumously in France in 1922, and translated into Portuguese by Lourenço Filho (1897-1970) in 1929. While in France the work received a second edition only in 1966, in Brazil it was continuously reissued (Nogueira, 2011). This book also strongly influenced the publication of Educational Sociology (1940), by Fernando de Azevedo (1894-1974), and the book with the same title Educational Sociology (1933), by Delgado de Carvalho⁴ (1884-1980).⁵

Based on the aforementioned, it can be seen that French sociology occupies a particularly relevant locus in the scope of teacher training in Brazil. Attention should also be paid to the fact that sociology was introduced in Brazilian secondary education aiming at the modernization of school curricula, and that the transformation of teacher training courses was considered essential in this process, since a new type of teacher was needed for a new society (Cury, 1988).

Added to this is the fact that French influence was also decisive in the 1930s when the first social science courses were being created in Brazil, with emphasis on the French mission that participated in the foundation of the University of São Paulo.⁶ Roger Bastide (1898-1974), for example, played a central role in the institutionalization of Brazilian sociology, having stayed in Brazil between 1938 and 1984 (Queiroz, 1994), and having also advised Brazilian students who later went on to carry out their graduate studies in France.

When the current Graduate System was created in Brazil with the University Reform of 1968, there was also an intense circulation of Brazilian social scientists who went abroad to pursue their doctoral training - France being one of the main destinations for that (Lima, 2019). In many cases, researchers who completed their doctoral degrees in that country were primarily responsible for the dissemination of Pierre Bourdieu in Brazil. This phenomenon was also repeated in the field of education sciences, with Brazil being a country that had one of the largest numbers of students carrying out graduate studies in France in this field of knowledge (Nogueira, 2011).⁷

This panoramic overview on the formation of social sciences in Brazil aims to demonstrate to the reader that Bourdieu’s reception in the country is also mediated by a particular way in which the academic field of Brazilian social sciences was related to the French social sciences, marked by a strong influence of this European tradition in the country, perhaps more than in other Latin American nations.⁸ Thus, intellectual circulation occupies a central place in this process, establishing a certain tradition in academic discussions and theoretical constructions. Understandably, such circulation obeys its own and well-established logic from the center to the semi-peripheries, and from these to the peripheries (Sapiro, 2014).

Thinking, like Bourdieu himself (Bourdieu et al., 2010), about the conditions necessary for his work to become part of the academic scene of Brazilian SE, it is necessary to point out that the narrowing of relations between France and Brazil in the process of sociology-independence is a determining factor in this second country. The position that French sociology occupied worldwide at the beginning of the twentieth century necessarily contributed to the dissemination of the works of French-speaking sociologists and to the taking of positivism built there as a perspective for interpretations about Brazilian society. Such diffusion - which was complemented by the prominent role of French sociologists who handled education in the first Brazilian sociology textbooks, with special emphasis on Durkheim, as well as by the French mission and the transit of Brazilian researchers who carried out their training in France - begins in the second half of the 20^th century with the first works of Pierre Bourdieu and the appropriations that started to be built in Brazil, as we will see henceforward.

This approximation intensified during the 20^th century with the establishment of the Graduate Studies Program in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, a period in which occurred the creation of an important scholarship program for Brazilian researchers to carry out their graduate studies abroad (Martins, 2018). It is emblematic that among productivity scholars in level 1A sociology - who mostly pursued their doctoral studies between the 1970s and 1980s - the most recurrent country for carrying out studies abroad was France.

The French presence also stands out in the field of education. Based on a survey carried out with the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes), the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp) Nogueira (2011) points out that France was the main destination abroad for pursuing graduate studies between 1987 and 1998. Among the group of advisors that welcomed Brazilian students, the name of sociologist of education Viviane Isambert-Jamati (1924-2019) stands out, considered one of the founders of education sciences in that country. Isambert-Jamati advised both researchers who received their PhD in education sciences and in social sciences, and some of their advisers became references in their fields of activity, such as Maria Alice Nogueira (Federal University of Minas Gerais - UFMG), Carlos Benedito Martins (University of Brasília - UnB), Maria Lourdes Bandeira (UnB), Nadir Zago (Federal University of Santa Catarina - UFSC), Lea Pinheiro Paixão (Federal University of Fluminense - UFF), José Baia Horta (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ), Ester Buffa (Federal University of São Carlos - UFSCar), Menga Lüdke (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro - PUC-Rio), among others.

These elements highlight the centrality that international circulation between Brazil and France had in the academic field of sociology in Brazil, with emphasis on SE, since many of the abovementioned authors became leaders in the field, founding working groups in this area among scientific societies such as the National Association for Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (Anpocs), the National Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Education (Anped), the Brazilian Society of Sociology (SBS), etc., as well as research groups and observatories, registered in the CNPq Directory, which are marked by a theoretical contribution based on the dialogue between French and Brazilian sociology of education.

Bourdieu’s readings in Brazil: a SE-based view

Bourdieu’s first texts began to be translated in Brazil in the late 1960s, with the publication of the article “Intellectual Field and Creative Project” in the collection The Problems of Structuralism, and the initiative of anthropologist Moacir Palmeira, who had attended the seminars of Bourdieu at the School of High Studies in Social Sciences that same decade in France. It is also worth mentioning the publication of the collection Sociology of Youth in 1968, organized by Sulamita Britto, who published in volume 4 the article “Time and Space in the Student World” by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron. According to Bortoluci, et.al. (2015), it is interesting to remark that Bourdieu’s ingress in Brazil occurred mainly through anthropology, and only later through sociology.

Moacir Palmeira narrates that he was in France pursuing his doctoral studies in the 1960s when he started to approach the ideas of Bourdieu and Althusser, strengthening academic ties in the following decade. According to the anthropologist: “In the mid-1970s, we expanded the relationship that I had established with researchers coordinated by Pierre Bourdieu at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne, when I was attending his seminars during my PhD period in France” (Lopes, 2013a, p. 446).

Peters and Rocha (2020) highlight the role that the Centre de Sociologie Européenne (CSE) and the Centre de Sociologie de l’Éducation et la Culture (CSEC) played in the formation of a network of Brazilian and French researchers; Monique de Saint Martin standing out as the main mediator in this process. This French sociologist was a specialist in the sociology of large schools, which led her to a privileged mediation position with specialists in the field of SE; this happened through diverse intellectual exchanges, which sometimes did not imply the existence of a formal academic orientation. Carlos Benedito Martins, instance, emphasizes her role in the process of approaching Bourdieu’s group:

And then Monique introduced me to Bourdieu’s group. I mean, my advisor was Viviane Isambert Jamati; but, in truth, it was Monique, Monique and Bourdieu were the ones who advised me in my thesis. It was a small group at that time. (Oliveira, 2019, p. 18).

These hints help us to understand that the processes of mediation and reception of Bourdieu’s work in Brazil necessarily went through a complex process of building professional and personal bonds that are not always institutionally tangible. Peters and Rocha (2020) go on to highlight how this initially entailed a process of disputes around Bourdieu’s reception in Brazil, in which the group that managed to achieve an “almost hegemonic” position in this process was that linked to the University of São Paulo (USP), and more specifically to the group of researchers connected to Sérgio Miceli. Pinheiro Filho (2009) points out that USP’s editorial, teaching and research conditions enabled better conditions for a durable reception of Bourdieu’s work - this implies that the readings of an author that end up consecrating themselves in a given country are necessarily the result of disputes and positions of the institutions and agents involved in the scientific game, which wind up determining their relative power in legitimizing an interpretative path.

Although Bourdieu’s diffusion began in Brazil in the field of anthropology, with the introduction of his texts in the courses taught by Moacir Palmeira at the National Museum, it is with the publication of The Economy of Symbolic Exchanges (1974), a collection of Bourdieu’s texts organized by Sergio Miceli - who was preparing at the time to pursue his doctoral studies under Bourdieu’s supervision in France -, that his work started to become popular in Brazil.

As an introduction to this collection, Miceli wrote the text “The Power of Meaning”, in which he points to the uniqueness and originality of the French sociologist, who at that time still did not enjoy the prestige that is currently conferred on him. In this introduction, Miceli details the dialogues that Bourdieu develops with classic and contemporary authors and introduces his central concepts to Brazilian readers. Ortiz (2013) states that the work organized by Miceli had the general objective of presenting the Brazilian reader to a panorama that was intended to be broad in the author’s interests and methodologies. Miceli ended up building a reading guide for the set of texts assembled in the collection, with the goal of “presenting the novelty produced in the center in order to make sense in a peripheral intellectual system” (Bortoluci et al., 2015, p. 228).

In this work it is interesting to note that Miceli and Bourdieu established an active dialogue, so it was not strictly a “simple translation of texts”, as the work selection process had been discussed jointly between both authors through an intellectual partnership. According to Miceli’s testimony:

We had this group for studies at PUC. And, once... We were reading Les Temps Modernes, things like that. There was a special issue on the problems of structuralism. Structuralism was in fashion, we read everything about structuralism - Levi Strauss, La pensée Sauvage, it was a fascination. And there was an article by Bourdieu called The Intellectual Field and Creative Project. I read it and was fascinated. I said to the staff: “Look people, let’s do a seminar on the text, because this guy really gives a ... He has a route to the sociology of culture, different from this more-square thing”. And then we discussed the text and I started looking at what we had about him - from a book he had already published. So, I went on to read: La Reproduction, Les Héritiers... After I read about two or three, I said: “We could make a selection of this guy’s works, who is so nice”. Then I wrote to him, and he sent me things I didn’t know and said: “Reflect on what you think will work best in Brazil, and then send me a proposal”. We had some correspondence. Then I made a proposal. He said, “Ah, that’s fine. This proposal is good, but I think you should include this and remove that”. He did some thinking, and I went on. Until we closed the deal. I organized the translation, did some of the texts and wrote the introduction. I invested madly in that translation. And I think the introduction was what really got him. (Barros, 2012, pp. 11-12)

Miceli also says that it was Bourdieu who chose the title of the collection, and that he was particularly excited about the idea of being his first large collection of texts, since only a minor one had come out in Germany a few years earlier. Despite the relevance that Miceli’s work had as a disseminator of Bourdieu’s work in Brazil, it is important to consider that this theoretical orientation was not incorporated without USP’s resistance. As Lopes (2013b) points out, the full legitimation of Bourdieu’s sociology at this university is relatively recent, occurring only after Miceli was renowned nationally, and Bourdieu internationally.

In both cases, we perceive the relevance of the circulation of researchers from Brazil to the French context for the development of this editorial project for the translation of Bourdieu’s work into Brazilian Portuguese. Therefore, Bourdieu’s work began to be translated and introduced in the national intellectual field mainly through his Brazilian alumni who pursued their doctoral courses in France, and who began to occupy strategic positions in universities and publishing houses in Brazil - translating texts, working as true disseminators of his writings, and also influencing those with whom they established partnerships here in Brazil, as co-workers and advisers.⁹

This collection organized by Miceli included the translation of the article “Teaching Systems and Thought Systems”, originally published in the Revue Internationale des Sciences Sociales in 1967. It also contained an appendix entitled “The Excellence and Values of the French Education System”, originally published in the Annales magazine in 1970. The presence of these articles - published after The Inheritors, but before The Reproduction - evidences the recognition of the centrality that the educational issue had in Bourdieu’s work, in addition to providing clues to the paths of the first appropriations that the Brazilian SE carried out in the context of Bourdieu’s educational thought.

Therefore, it is possible to infer that since the beginning Bourdieu has been introduced in Brazil as an author strongly linked to the educational debate. This question obviously connects him to the analysis of education systems, but he also recognizes his role as an investigator in the academic and intellectual field, which will become more evident in works published later - and, even more recently, in self-reflections, or in the sociology of sociology, which began to be carried out more systematically by researchers on the Brazilian scientific community.

Furthermore, as Weber (2011) indicates, the transformation processes that the Brazilian education system was going through between the 1960s and 1970s, marked by a late expansion and driven by the industrialization and urbanization process started in the south-central part of the country, built a fertile ground for the reception of French sociology in the field of education, since:

This production, which shifted the debate from the school to the society, propitiated in Brazil the criticism of the technical view of American origin, which then presided over the debate and educational policy. Such displacement, certainly influenced by the events of May 19680 in France, as pointed out by some authors, constituted an attempt to clarify the sense of inequality of opportunities in force among Western societies and, above all, to reveal that significant social changes could not be promoted by the school. (Weber, 2011, p. 165)

Still in this context, Bourdieu’s first work to which the Brazilian public had access in Portuguese was The Reproduction, published in Brazil in 1975, only five years after its publication in French. On the other hand, the work The Inheritors took 50 years to be published in Portuguese. It can be raised as hypotheses about why the avid interest in the first and the little interest in the later, the fact that, in The Reproduction, there is a proposal to elaborate a general theory of the education system, which would allow an easier incorporation of its concepts in the research to be developed in Brazil (Oliveira, 2018a). Furthermore, The Reproduction focuses on the primary and secondary education school institution, which was undergoing an expansion process at that time without having yet achieved a universal access.

Even before the Portuguese translation of The Reproduction, it is important to indicate that a review of this book carried out by Elba de Sá Barreto was published in 1972 in the Cadernos de Pesquisa magazine. From this review, it becomes clear how Bourdieu’s reception in Brazil was still incipient. According to this work:

In the impossibility of obtaining more accurate data about the authors, we can only affirm that they published a series of works dealing with problems related to sociology and education, especially in the 1960s. It is also a well-known fact that Professor Bourdieu has been notably devoted to the study of power structures. (Barreto, 1972, p. 97)

Then, a synthetic presentation of the work took place, which allowed the Brazilian reader a first approximation with what turned out to be one of the main works of SE of the 20^th century. In his final remarks on the book, Barreto (1972) makes the following critique:

By building an interpretation scheme entirely closed on itself, Bourdieu and Passeron stopped providing a logical place - except on the utopian level - for the critical possibility that they themselves represent through the pertinent analysis of the relations between the education system and the class system. The strictly deductive theory of social reproduction determined by the reproduction of the educational institution itself, fails to consider the moment when the system, along with its reproductive attribution, also engenders a movement towards overcoming this vicious circle. And it would be surprising if the authors did not recognize their analytical effort within this perspective.

In this sense, it seems to us that it is the lack of a historical perspective that prevents the adequate placement of the dialectical possibilities of the education system, which, if it is not the determining element of the transformation of a given constellation of power, can contribute in some way for this constellation to change. (Barreto, 1972, p. 99)

Ten years later, also in the Cadernos de Pesquisa magazine, Durand (1982) points out that The Reproduction was published as a “dry translation”, without notes or comments that contextualized the work in Brazil, not even through an introduction, having a very critical reception by some sociologists in the educational field, such as Freitag (1977) and Cunha (1979). For Durand (1982), from the publication of this book, Bourdieu and Passeron come to be perceived in the Brazilian academic field as authors of a reactionary sociology, or even of a pedagogical pessimism (Gomes, 2005). Cunha (1982, p. 57), in response to Durand’s analysis, points out that “Those who judge the theory of symbolic violence absolutely false (reactionary, etc.) and those who venerate it as absolutely true are both wrong, not admitting that it may have limitations, errors and contradictions”. However, this did not prevent the work from spreading widely, although with a very controversial reception.

It should also be borne in mind that it is in The Reproduction that Bourdieu first presents the concept of habitus, later reworked in Esquisse d’une Théorie de la Pratique (1972), and over the years in dozens of published articles and books. Therefore, it is a work that is fundamental not only for the understanding of his sociology of education, but also of his theoretical arsenal as a whole. Moreover, both Ortiz (2013) and Nogueira (2011) consider the publication of this book in Brazil as a milestone in the scope of research on education: while the former argues that elements such as the opposition between the perspectives of Paulo Freire and Pierre Bourdieu, the somewhat reckless approximation between Althusser and Bourdieu and the context of military dictatorship in the country must be considered in order to think about the impact of The Reproduction on Brazilian soil; the later states that it is because of this work that Bourdieu’s influence never declined in the country, above all, due to the paradigmatic revolution that his theory of reproduction caused in educational research.

Bourdieu’s other works related to education were published in the 1970s. In the collection Class Education and Hegemony (1979), organized by José Carlos Durand and Lia Machado, there were two articles written by Bourdieu, “The Comparability of Education Systems” by Bourdieu and Passeron, and “Conversion Strategies”, by Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski and Monique de Saint-Martin. As Catani (1980) points out, when analyzing this collection it becomes clear that it is still composed of texts written by other Bourdieu collaborators, and has the central concern of bringing texts that have as a reference the contemporary capitalist society to Brazilian readers and present a reflection on how education collaborates in reproducing the consensus required for class reproduction. It can be inferred that the actuality of this debate in Brazil would therefore reside in the fact that these reflections are about a contemporary capitalist society, in which the country would be inserted.

As Ortiz (2013) points out, it stands out the fact that in the Brazilian context there was a reading that brought Bourdieu’s ideas present in The Reproduction together with Althusser’s thoughts in the book Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Although we can perceive substantive differences between both works, for Ortiz this approach created a certain resistance in the reception of Bourdieu’s work in Brazil, especially in the field of education, which started to perceive him as a mere “reproductionist”. Also, according to the author:

it is worth highlighting the link established between La Reprodution and Althusser’s proposals in the Brazilian context (in France, Bourdieu is not seen as an Althusserian. There are numerous aspects that keep him from this current of thought, from his relationship with Marxism to the contribution of other authors such as Durkheim and Weber to his theoretical conception). First, there is the central thesis of the book. It can be argued that in the Althusserian perspective, the school would be only an “ideological apparatus of the State”, while for Bourdieu and Passeron its effectiveness would depend on how the Social is inscribed in the individual habitus. That is why the concept of mediation is central to the authors. However, there remains a certain convergence between these two conceptions. However, the approach to Althusser is also manifested in the way the book is written. It is structured based on generic statements - the theses -, commented on in separate sections below, the scholia, a device generally used in Philosophy and particularly by Althusser in several of his works. The fact is that this bond reinforced a certain resistance in relation to the works of Bourdieu among us. (Ortiz, 2013, pp. 84-85)

Still on the aspects of proximity and distance between Bourdieu and Althusser - especially in the field of education - Rodrigues (2017, p. 301) makes the following comment:

In this context, those interested in “Marxism of/in Bourdieu”, widen their eyes, and begin to establish a nexus of approximation, since the familiar air between one of the books produced in this phase - The Reproduction - and the notion of “ideological devices of State”, by Althusser, is evident. As it occurs, aging imposes denials of the past in which an authorial project was engendered, but one was not yet an “author”. He would not only deny that link, criticizing the “sociology of the apparatus” (Bourdieu, 1989), but he would also elaborate analyzes so different from those presented in this book, that they could be attributed to someone else. With the advancement of empirical research, the sociology of education practiced by Bourdieu will abandon the categorical sentences of reproduction and focus on specific practices of inculcation and incorporation of habitus (class/school), as well as the active part of those dominated in restoring relations of domination.

The arguments of Ortiz and Rodrigues are particularly understood here as non-exclusive, since, in fact, we perceive The Reproduction and Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses as works that depart from substantially different theoretical and, especially, methodological assumptions. However, it is in the unfolding of the author’s later works that these differences become more evident, especially with regard to the treatment that Bourdieu gives to the cultural dimension, with the progressive defense for its greater autonomy.

Still regarding the reception of this work, it is interesting to point out that at the time of the publication of The Reproduction in Brazil, there was an intense debate around the work of Paulo Freire who, precisely, sought to highlight the emancipatory dimension of the school, especially regarding popular classes.¹⁰ Therefore, it can be inferred that - at first - adhering to Freire’s theories in the educational field also led to some resistance to Bourdieu’s ideas in Brazil. Catani et al. (2001), when analyzing the reception of Bourdieu’s work in the Brazilian educational field, point to the fact that this field was marked by an orientation that focused on the search for solving practical problems, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, Bourdieu’hys theory at first did not seem to converge with the demands that were present in the educational field.

Still within the scope of integrating his theory more broadly, we can say that at first Bourdieu was perceived more as a sociologist of domination than of resistance, which reinforced his reservations in the educational field. This reading ended up being reinforced by the fact that there was an incorporation of the educational debate in Bourdieu normally separated from the sociological theory that gives it its shape (Hey et al., 2018).

However, this reading that situates Bourdieu as an author distanced from critical traditions, or underestimates his ability to point to practical paths, ignores at least two relevant aspects, namely: a) the proposal of a “rational pedagogy” indicated in The Inheritors, which allows “the greatest possible amount of individuals to learn in the shortest possible time, as completely and as perfectly as possible, the greatest possible number of skills that characterize school culture at any given moment” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 2014, p. 101, emphasis added) - rational pedagogy and democratization would go together, and should be based on a sociology of cultural inequalities; and b) that the relationship of Bourdieu’s work with Marxism itself is quite complex, marked by different points of approximation and distance (Bourdieu, 2004) - Burawoy’s (2017) work is very symptomatic of these possible intersection circuits between the thoughts of Bourdieu and the different consolidated Marxist traditions around the world, so the author points out that the greatest contribution of the French sociologist to such traditions is centered on the understanding of social classes as cultural formations, and not only as political-economic-social formations.

The fact that the University Reform of 1968 created the Faculties of Education in Brazil is also placed in the background of this debate, moving sociology away from the educational discussion. According to Cunha (1992), this is an important cleavage point to understand the limited interest of Brazilian sociologists in educational research in the 1970s. Although we can put this proposition into perspective, considering that education has remained as a research topic in different Sociology Graduate Programs in the country, which have progressively undergone an expansion and incremental agenda, the fact is that research in Sociology of Education began to find more and more space for its development in Faculties of Education, which was accompanied in many cases by the incorporation of sociologists into their professional faculty.

In the 1980s, the publication of a set of texts written by Bourdieu in the collection Grandes Cientistas Sociais, published by Ática, which was coordinated by Florestan Fernandes (1920-1997), also gained relevance. This issue, published in 1983, was organized by Renato Ortiz, who had carried out studies in France, as well as other disseminators of Bourdieu’s work in Brazil, having written the introduction “The Search for a Sociology of Practice”, which also had a crucial role for the presentation of the author’s fundamental concepts to Brazilian readers. Although there was no specific text on school education in such collection, there was one on the scientific field, originally published in the Actes de la Recherche in Sciences Sociales, in 1976, with the title “Le Champ Scientifique”, expanding the scope of Bourdieu’s contribution for the educational debate, considering the interface with the academic/scientific reality.

That same year, the emblematic book School and Democracy (1999/1983) by Dermeval Saviani was published, in which he analyzes the theories in the educational field, establishing a typology that encompasses three groups: 1) non-critical theories; 2) critical-reproductive theories; 3) critical theories. According to the author, the critical-reproductive theories would unfold into three subtypes: a) theory of the education system as a symbolic violence; b) school theory as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA); c) dualistic school theory. Clearly, this subdivision referred to the works of Bourdieu and Passeron, Althusser, and Baudelot and Establet, respectively, performing a recurring grouping also outside Brazil (Snyders, 2005). In the reading of Saviani (1999), this theory simply affirms the role of the school as a reproducer of social inequalities, and it is an illusion to think about the possibility of using the school as something to overcome marginality. A criticism of Saviani’s work can be made inasmuch as - as Bourdieu himself explains in other works (Bourdieu, 2011), such as in The Reproduction - the school “can” collaborate with the reproduction of social inequalities under certain conditions - the effectiveness of reproduction being conditioned to the way the Social is inscribed in the individual habitus - therefore, his theory does not elaborate a fatalistic sentence. However, what draws attention in this reading is that, despite sharing with the more general tone of Bourdieu’s current interpretation in the field of education at that time, Saviani makes an effort to point to the non-reactionary character of the work of Bourdieu and Passeron as there would be a critical reading about the process of social reproduction in this theory.

Six years later, the collection Escritos de Educação was published, organized by Afrânio Mendes Catani and Maria Alice Nogueira, two of the main promoters of Bourdieu’s work in the field of education. Both organizers follow the broader trend presented so far: of French-trained researchers; with the difference that Maria Alice Nogueira had received her training in the field of education sciences and not in social sciences, which points out that at this point the process of incorporating and disseminating Bourdieu’s theory within the scope of SE was no longer restricted to the field of social sciences in its strict sense in Brazil.

Years later, in 1999, another book widely disseminated in the Brazilian educational field approaches Bourdieu’s thoughts and classifies him in critical theories, as Saviani had done; the difference here is based on the fact that there is already a use of Bourdieu in the curriculum field, it is the work Identity Documents: an introduction to curriculum theories, by Tomaz Tadeu da Silva (2010/1999). Bourdieu and Passeron are briefly presented in this book in the list of critical theories of education that influenced critical theories in the curriculum; Tomaz Tadeu da Silva advances in the recognition of the criticisms that these theories received in the 1970s and 1980s for their supposed economic determinism and demonstrates how contemporary curriculum theories feeds on this legacy.

More recent analyzes (Neves, 2002; Martins & Weber, 2010; Almeida & Hey, 2018; Barbosa & Gandin, 2020; Oliveira & Silva, 2020) point to a growing interest of Brazilian sociologists in education, which occurs concurrently with the expansion of the Brazilian education system. It can be stated that most Graduate Programs in Sociology have lines of research in education, or at least broader lines of research that also encompass the educational debate (Oliveira & Silva, 2016). This movement also occurs concurrently with the consolidation of research lines in SE among Education Programs, which indicate favorable objective conditions for the dissemination of Bourdieu’s work in SE among both institutional spaces.

This increase in SE research in Brazil strengthens the interest in Bourdieu’s work in educational research, especially from the 1990s when Brazil universalized the access to basic education. Concomitant to this movement, Bourdieu became the most cited author in Brazilian sociology, as indicated by the study carried out by Costa (2010); therefore, we can infer that SE also followed this more general trend. Furthermore, he began to establish himself as a widely referenced author in Faculties of Education, following a broader tendency of connection between Brazilian SE and French sociology, as the analysis performed by Costa e Silva (2003) points out when analyzing the research group “Sociology of Education” of the National Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Education (Anped), created in the 1990s. However, despite the wide mention of Bourdieu’s work in the field of education in Brazil, we must consider that these are specific mostly citations, and only a small part of these works is developed based on the author’s theoretical arsenal (Catani et al., 2001).¹¹

One hypothesis that can help us understand Bourdieu’s diffusion in the field of education in a more recent period is related to the fact that he was interpreted for a long time as a “sociologist of culture”, almost in an exclusive way, in such a way that as the concept of culture gains centrality in educational research, his work also becomes more relevant in SE (Medeiros, 2013). Furthermore, in a recent scenario, this recentralization of the cultural issue in the field of educational research allows us to talk about a potential use of a renewed Bourdieu’s thought, especially if we consider that in Brazil - according to Bortolucci et al. (2015) - sociology of culture has been the most important area for the assimilation of Bourdieu’s sociology.

Regarding the relationship between Bourdieu’s work and the sociology of culture, it is necessary to open a small parenthesis in this discussion. Firstly, it is important to understand that the reproduction paradigm itself in the educational field according to Bourdieu differs from the debates elaborated by Althusser, as well as by Baudelot and Establet, precisely because it shifts the discussion to the dimension of cultural reproduction (Nogueira, 1990; Oliveira, 2018a), being central to the author’s understanding of school culture and how it would reproduce a class habitus; secondly, it should be emphasized that educational research is recurrently understood within more general lines of research in Sociology Programs, being articulated with other themes such as culture, science and technology, work, etc. (Oliveira & Silva, 2020).

This approximation with Bourdieu’s work also enabled a more complex reassessment of his fundamental concepts. Almeida (2007), for example, questions whether the concept of “cultural capital” is useful for the Brazilian reality. She recognizes that the Brazilian school system continues to classify students based on their greater or lesser proximity to erudite culture; however, it relativizes the weight of this cultural capital considering the deep economic inequalities that exist, which make Brazilian students access substantially different school institutions.

Nogueira and Nogueira (2002) also point out that one of the main criticisms that Bourdieu’s work has been subject to refers to the internal diversity of teaching systems, recognizing the lack of perception of this diversity in relation to schools and teachers as a limitation in his theory. At the empirical level, research such as that of Barbosa (2009) indicates how schools and teachers manage to impact the social and school trajectories of students belonging to poorer social classes.

At this point, one can point to two directions regarding the readings of Bourdieu’s work in the field of SE: a) on the one hand, the substantial differences between the French society and its educational system and the Brazilian society tend to demand a resizing of the school role in the process of reproducing practices and inequalities in particular; b) the acknowledgment that Brazilian society is a society stratified in terms of social classes and which has not overcome the issue of social inequalities would make it possible to approach and revisit Bourdieu’s writings.

Finally, it is important to highlight that the incorporation of the so-called “theories of the South”¹² in Brazilian SE (Oliveira, 2018b) has also led to a critical review of Bourdieu’s work. As Connell (2007) states, one of the limitations that we point out in Bourdieu’s theory when thinking about the Global South is, precisely, in the absence of the colonial experience in the social substrate that supports its theoretical apparatus, considering the Brazilian school reality, in which racial inequalities are central to the understanding of social inequalities, for instance. Hence, the concept of habitus, understood as a class habitus, would lose strength. This is not about rejecting the heuristic capacity of Bourdieu’s work, but about critically situating it based on the recognition of his theory’s limitations - and others produced in the Global North - to analyze idiosyncratic questions that refer to different social experiences.

Despite the substantive differences between the educational realities in Brazil and France, as already indicated, authors such as Catani (2002) and Valle (2007, 2014) continue to perceive Bourdieu’s relevance and importance to think about the school reality in Brazil. They understood that there is a sharing of some educational and social dilemmas between both countries, in addition to realizing that Bourdieu makes use of theoretical and analytical tools that could be useful for ponding over the Brazilian reality.

Finally, it should be noted that his other works focused more specifically on the educational reality only started to be read in Brazil in a more recent period. The Inheritors, as already indicated, was only published in Brazil in 2014; Homo Academicus, a 1984 text, was translated into Portuguese in 2011; and The State Nobility, published in 1989, has not yet been translated into Portuguese; and, more recently, the collection of texts entitled Pierre Bourdieu: An Ambitious Sociology of Education (2019), organized by Ione Ribeiro Valle and Charles Soulié was published.¹³ This demonstrates that there is still more space for the appropriation of Bourdieu’s thoughts, and more room for constructive criticism about the capacity of his work to elucidate substantive elements of the educational reality in the Global South. In this sense, the aforementioned new generations, who have figured as advisees of this first generation, continue to work with a theoretical and methodological scope connected to Bourdieu’s legacy at the intersection between sociology and education.

Final considerations

This brief article sought to observe, without exhausting the debate, the ways in which Bourdieu was incorporated into the Brazilian debate, specifically in the field of SE, which was one of the most central throughout his academic trajectory.

It became evident that the conditions for robustness in the appropriation of Bourdieu’s thought by SE agents in Brazil communicate to us [and must be understood from] the significant movements which occurred prior to the return of Brazilian researchers - who went to France to continue their training and studied with Bourdieu - as well as prior to the translations of his articles and books into Portuguese. With this, we want to highlight the prominent role of the French sociology in the automation processes of Brazilian sociology, the French mission at the University of São Paulo and the consequent first transits and partnerships between sociologists from these two countries. This scenario was a major condition for the interest and dissemination of Bourdieu’s ideas in Brazil.

The diffusion which occurred in Brazil through researchers who pursued their doctoral studies in France, both in social sciences and in education sciences, was the main driving force behind this process; and which in the case of SE, starts to have a greater resonance after the expansion of research lines in SE, both in Sociology and in Education Graduate Programs, since the orientation of works at this level also ended up contributing to the movements for the dissemination of Bourdieu’s thoughts in Brazil, as the recently graduated doctors arrived from France started to incorporate this author in their disciplines and in the works of their students.

It was also sought to demonstrate that, despite the initial resistance that were drawn in relation to the reception of Bourdieu’s work - which was partly due to a reading of his work as unable to respond to the practical demands imposed by the educational field in contrast to other theories that were more in evidence at that time -, his work started to be gradually incorporated into the research agenda of SE in Brazil. Over the past decades, the controversies in this reception process have been transformed, due to the undeniable reach that his works have gained; in reflections around the marks and the quality of the appropriation that has been carried out (Catani et al., 2001); as well as the increasingly rich and interdisciplinary dialogue, beyond the limits of education and correlating it with areas such as culture or politics, which has been promoted in the renewed uses of Bourdieu’s thought in the country (Medeiros, 2013).

Despite the criticisms that he has endured in a more recent period, which are based both on the theoretical limitations of his theory as in relation to the empirical reality - from the critiques of the theories of the South - the interest in his work remains present among Brazilian researchers, which reaffirm its timeliness and ability to launch relevant tools for understanding our educational reality.

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• Data availability statement

  The data underlying the research text are reported in the article.

• 1
  To carry out an examination of the production context around these works would scape the focus and scope of the present article. However, for a more in-depth analysis, see the work of Masson (2001) and Nogueira and Nogueira (2015).
• 2
  The “North” and “Global South” expressions comprise, from a post-colonial perspective, a socioeconomic and political division that encompasses, on the one hand, developed countries (Global North), and, on the other hand, underdeveloped and developing countries, in addition to poor regions and minority groups located in the Global North (Global South).
• 3
  An analysis that encompasses the appropriation of Bourdieu’s thought by Brazilian Social Sciences with its three fronts - sociology, anthropology, and political science -, was recently published by Campos and Szwako (2020).
• 4
  It is important to highlight the fact that both Lourenço Filho and Delgado de Carvalho were connected to the New School movement, being signatories to the New Education Pioneers Manifesto (Martins, 2003): while the former was concerned with a scientific renewal of the educational system, the later was focused on the task of disseminating the new-scholastic view on sociology and the practical character of this science (Meucci, 2011).
• 5
  Both authors were involved in the process of institutionalizing sociology in Brazil, since Carvalho was the first sociology professor at Colégio Pedro II in 1925; and Azevedo, the first sociology professor at the University of São Paulo, in 1933.
• 6
  This “mission” began in 1934, when Émile Coornaert (History), Pierre Deffontaines (Geography), Robert Garric (French Literature), Paul-Arbousse Bastide (Sociology), Étienne Borne (Philosophy and Psychology) and Michel Berveiller (Greek-Latin Literature) arrived in the country- only Berveiller and Arbousse-Bastide renewed their contracts with the university the following year. In 1935 Fernand Braudel (History), Pierre Hourcade (French Literature), Pierre Monbeig (Geography), Claude Lévi-Strauss (second chair of Sociology) and Jean Maugüé (Philosophy) arrived. Monbeig and Maugüé remained in the country until 1944 and 1947, respectively. As of 1938, a new group of professors arrived, composed of the following names: Jean Gagé (in the place of Braudel), Alfred Bonzon (French Literature), Paul Hugon (Economics) and Roger Bastide (substitute for Lévi-Strauss).
• 7
  This is an element that deserves attention from the point of view of the institutionalization and development of sociology of education in Brazil, since the relationship between the areas of sociology and education is one of its constitutive marks and one which, until today, promotes changes on training and professional performance among teachers and researchers who work with SE in the country (Oliveira & Silva, 2016) - the circulation between these two frontiers has occurred, for example, in Graduate Courses, in public tenders for university vacancies, in publications in journals in both areas, as well as in the establishment of research partnerships.
• 8
  To better understand the appropriations and criticisms that Pierre Bourdieu received in Latin America, consult Moraña’s book (2014).
• 9
  These positions within the academic field can be exemplified by an experience report written by Afrânio Mendes Catani (2002), which revealed that in the 1970s, when he started working with Sérgio Miceli, his readings of Pierre Bourdieu’s writings were accentuated. Here, Catani adds an interesting element to this process of approaching Bourdieu’s work in the academic cycles of São Paulo, informing that he had access to works such as Los estudiantes y la cultura in Castilian (from the original, Les héritiers: Les étudiants et la culture), in an edition acquired by the Fundação Getulio Vargas library in 1971.
• 10
  Thus, it is understandable that at that moment of Brazilian educational thought, Freire and Bourdieu were taken as diametrically opposed authors, the former being considered optimistic and the later, pessimistic, in view of the roles of education and the school institution. However, it should be noted that Paulo Freire's ideas and methods for the Brazilian school were based exactly on a critical view of a school that he himself named as “a bank” and whose logic did not contemplate reality, previous knowledge, and the worldview of the poorest. In this sense, it is possible to affirm that Paulo Freire’s optimism was centered on what the school could become once its historical ties were overcome.
• 11
  A new study horizon to deepen the understanding of Bourdieu’s impact and influence in the field of Brazilian sociology of education could be based on an analysis of works in Graduate Studies that not only mention the author (as we already have in the specialized literature), but which necessarily use Bourdieu’s theoretical contributions - this approach can provide a more accurate advance of the appropriation of his thought in this field.
• 12
  By Theories of the South, we comprehend the set of theories produced from a perspective of the Global South, considering the existing geopolitics of knowledge.
• 13
  Professor Ione Ribeiro Valle, as well as other organizers mentioned in this article, pursued her doctoral studies in France, in this case in the field of Education Sciences. The researcher was also responsible for the translation of Homo Academicus and The Inheritors in Brazil.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 May 2021
• Date of issue
  2021

History

• Received
  11 Apr 2020
• Accepted
  24 July 2020