Gardening Taste: Theoretical Concepts and Framework - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 42

possible to envisage diffuse education occurring through the informal consumption
of artefacts which trade in cultural capital, for example, aspects of the media. In
these ways, pedagogic action works both to reproduce the cultural formation in
which it operates and the power relations which under-pin its own system. It acts to
uphold the ideological interests of the dominant classes and re-inscribes the unequal
distribution of cultural capital in any social formation. The ideas of pedagogic action
are carefully monitored: it 'involves the exclusion of ideas as unthinkable, as well as
their positive inculcation (depending, of course on the nature of the ideas). Exclusion
or censorship may in fact be the most effective mode of pedagogic action' (Jenkins
2002, 105). Misrecognised by both its promulgators and its receivers, the authority
of pedagogic action is either willingly embraced or thought of as at least impartial.
Furthermore, pedagogic action has a cumulative effect on the social agent: family
education prepares the individual for institutionalised education, which in turn acts
as preparation for a lifelong trajectory of diffuse education in the form of cultural
messages. In these ways, pedagogic work acts to sediment durable intellectual and
cultural dispositions through the habitus. It is through these processes that legitimate
culture becomes consecrated and, according to Bourdieu, is deemed irreversible.
Importantly however, the results of pedagogic authority are not immutable
either within or between classes; pedagogic action is received with varying degrees
of success. This is because different classes have dissimilar dispositions towards
pedagogy or as Bourdieu terms it, each class holds its own 'pedagogic ethos'
(Bourdieu and Passeron 1990a, 87). These dispositions vary depending on a group's
perception of the tradeable value of educational credentials. Middle-class secondary
school pupils, for example, are likely to regard qualifications as assets which are
worth the investment because their high tradeable potential will equip them for
possible futures in the professions. Further, Bourdieu argues that pedagogic action
is administered in different ways, on a scale which moves from the 'implicit' to the
'explicit' (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990a, 47). These need to be distinguished, for
they impact on how different classes receive them. Implicit pedagogy is transmitted
unconsciously, is suited to 'traditional' forms of knowledge and is most effectively
conveyed through a learning channel such as that experienced between student
and tutor or craftsman and apprentice. Explicit pedagogy, on the other hand, is
'articulated', rationally structured and formalised and best serves 'specialised' forms
of elite knowledge.
In all senses, Bourdieu argues that the working-class are disadvantaged in relation
to both forms of pedagogic action. For example, whereas the working-class are left
to contend with the practical urgencies of daily life, the dominant class are released
from ordinary necessities and are therefore in a better position to receive explicit
forms of pedagogic work. Furthermore, in the context of post-industrial societies
where 'symbolic mastery' is favoured by the dominant and is restricted to the elite,
those marginalised are confined to 'practical mastery'. Most pedagogic work in
schools relies on the implicit transmission of symbolic mastery, so that yet again,
the dominant are privileged because they already possess, through family education,
the prerequisite competencies of symbolic mastery. Thus the working-class are
doubly disadvantaged: unable to take advantage of explicit pedagogic work, they are
excluded from elite forms of knowledge; and insidious, discrete symbolic mastery,