Disrupting Systemic and Systematic Educational Inequalities Through Legitimizing Racialized Non-Dominant Students' Power for Transformation

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 11:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Bourdieu and Inequalities

Abstract

This paper examines the struggle for autonomy in educational fields by demonstrating how adapting an anti-racist pedagogy can potentially transform the logics of the field of power that governs how educational capital is defined. I operationalize Bourdieu's vision of change by introducing non-dominant capital, the power indigenous, racialized students possess, as an analytical tool to challenge dominant educational practices. I demonstrate how legitimizing racialized students' power as capital creates moments of crisis within regulated, dominant educational fields. The analysis reveals how subversive alliances between non-dominant communities and like-minded actors can form collective symbolic action toward field autonomy, thereby drawing on Bourdieu's vision for a reasoned utopia operationalised through Cultural-Historical Activity Theory - grounded possibilities for transformation through collective action.

Author

• Sophina Choudry, University of Manchester