Bourdieu’s critical analysis of capital (BCAC) is a useful tool for unmasking how schools legitimate class structure and identifying the institutional, societal, and cultural forces that structure class reproduction and oppression. In this paper, we examine the ways educational researchers have constrained the critical application of Bourdieu’s concepts. We highlight the utility of BCAC for exposing the symbolic violence that educational systems enact upon students and families who are unfamiliar with the “culture of power.” Our purpose is to engage in a revitalized critique against the reproduction of educational inequalities and explicate how BCAC is useful toward these ends.
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