Nash Primary Effects

British Journal of Sociology
Vol. No. 54 Issue No. 4 (December 2003) pp. 433451

2003 London School of Economics and Political Science ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online
Published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd on behalf of the LSE
DOI: 10.1080/0007131032000143537

Roy Nash

Inequality/difference in education: is a real
explanation of primary and secondary effects
possible?

ABSTRACT
The persistence of social disparities in educational achievement in contemporary
societies is a matter of concern to social theory. Sociology of education has
distinguished between the primary and secondary effects of socialization in order
to construct explanatory theories of inequality of educational opportunity. Empir-
ical evidence from the recent OECD PISA research is analysed to suggest that
causes of the primary effect are the most important. The case is made with close
reference to Goldthorpes attempt to provide a rational action model of social
disparities in education. An approach informed by scientic realism is held to
offer a more adequate explanation.
KEYWORDS: Action theory; realism; educational differentials; PISA; sociology
of education

Inequality of educational opportunity (IEO) has been a matter of central
concern to the sociology of education for at least half a century (Halsey,
Floud and Anderson 1961). There is some evidence that class disparities in
achievement, and in relative chances of entering higher education, have
not altered greatly over that time (Shavit and Blossfeld 1993). The acute
difculties of constructing a comprehensive theory able to provide a satis-
factory explanation of this state of affairs are generally admitted. This paper
will attempt, somewhat ambitiously no doubt, to examine these matters
through an analysis of the competing approaches of sociological theories
that privilege, in one case, the inuence of habituated dispositions
(Bourdieu and Passeron 1977) and, in the other, the signicance of rational
actions performed in different circumstances (Boudon 1973; 1974). The
theoretical debate between these positions is one with major practical
consequences. The very concept that points to the matter to be explained

01 0007131032000143537(ds).fm Page 433 Thursday, November 20, 2003 10:31 AM

434

Roy Nash

is contested. It is for this reason that the term

inequality/difference

is used in
this paper to refer to observed disparities in access to education associated
with social class. For it seems preferable, although the sociology of educa-
tion has generally followed Coleman (1970) in regarding all such disparities
as evidence of inequalities in educational opportunity (that is in effective

provision

), to allow the possibility that not all differences, even between
social classes, are necessarily the consequence of unequal opportunities in
any non-circular sense (Murphy 1990). The ways in which similar opportu-
nities are recognized and taken up may, in fact, be centrally involved in the
production of inequality/difference. This is, in essence, the argument
advanced by Boudon (1973) in his explanation of IEO as being mainly a
secondary rather than a primary effect of class relations. An explanation of
this other central concept of the title will serve to introduce the substantive
argument to be developed.
Boudons analyses have made most sociologists of education familiar with
the concepts of primary and secondary effects. It is possible to observe at
any given stage of schooling a disparity in the attainments of students with
different class origins and, by denition, these are identied as the primary
effects of class relations. The term refers to effect, not cause, and it is
necessary only to accept that such observed differences are a consequence
of variation in class experience, of whatever kind and at whatever site, that
affect school attainment. It is almost invariably possible, however, to detect
class differences when attainments at a later stage are compared with those
obtained at an earlier stage. Boudon has demonstrated in this way that the
attainments of middle-class students are typically greater than those of
working-class students even when their earlier related attainments are
comparable. This is taken as evidence of a secondary effect. Again, an effect
is not a cause, but the presence of secondary effects does seem to rule out
certain factors that might be responsible for primary effects. Whatever the
inuence of class socialization might be on the development of the cogni-
tive and non-cognitive dispositions that affect educational attainment, for
example, it cannot account for secondary effects. This argument enables
Boudon to present a sociological theory powerful enough to displace those
narratives of psychology, with their emphasis on working-class

deciencies

,
that for so long have dominated the explanation of educational inequality.
Boudon further argues that secondary effects can most adequately be
explained, not by differences in class-cultural values, but as a necessary
outcome of the rational actions of agents with similar preferences but
operating in competitive markets with different effective resources and
relative opportunity costs. The argument has been inuential, particularly
among sociologists attracted to its theoretical position, and forms the basis
of a recent presentation by Goldthorpe (1996) of the thesis that social
differences in educational attainment, particularly access to higher educa-
tion, are best understood as a secondary effect and explained by a rational
action model.
Goldthorpes important contribution to the explanation of persisting


Inequality/difference in education

435
social disparities in educational opportunity in the

British Journal of Sociology

issues an open challenge to theories that suppose social reproduction to be
effected largely through cultural reproduction mediated by the agency of
the school. The dominant theory in the British sociology of education does,
indeed, recognize the importance of socialized practice, and in the modish
concept of

habitus

(1996: 500) as Goldthorpe says, thus making clear his
evaluation of Bourdieus sociology, as central to any successful account of
how social disparities in education are maintained. Goldthorpe insists, in
contradistinction to the now conventional circularities argued in this eld,
that a sociological theory should explain how the observed regularities in
question have come to be as they are, and in such a way that its hypotheses
are open to test. Goldthorpe argues that rational action theory (RAT)
provides such an approach. This position, however, raises questions that
require a further critique to that offered by Scott (1996).
It will be argued that Goldthorpes attempt fails for two reasons: rst, its
account of the mechanism responsible for the secondary effect rests on
insecure theoretical foundations and, second, it cannot stand as a general
theory of inequality/difference because contemporary evidence suggests
that secondary effects are not, in fact, the largest source of class variation
in educational attainment. The argument is required to be detailed and
elaborate. It is necessary to show that the fundamental assumptions of
rational action theory (RAT) are unable to perform the tasks asked of them,
that the construction of the problem of inequality/difference as one of
secondary effects is misguided, and that the critique of socialization theory,
which alone can account for the origin of primary effects, is both redundant
and misguided. The case in support of these critical propositions will be
made within a realist approach to the scientic study of social events and
processes (Bunge 1998).
Inequality/difference is widely and correctly understood as a state of
affairs that results from complex social processes at multiple sites. As
Erickson and Jonsson (1996) argue in the context of Sweden, class
inequality in access to tertiary education needs an explanation which
includes, at least, the propositions that for middle-class students, in compar-
ison with working-class students, (i) academic performance is better; (ii)
relative costs for are lower; (iii) the desire to avoid social demotion is
greater than the corresponding desire for social promotion; and (iv) the
possibility of success is perceived to be higher at every transition point. The
situation in Sweden will be discussed in some detail as Goldthorpe suggests
that the available evidence broadly supports his thesis: the Swedish case . . .
points to the fact that equality in educational attainment is by no means the
more or less automatic outcome of inherent features of advancing industri-
alization (1996: 458). This is debatable, but at this point it need only be
noted that Erickson and Jonssons analysis, although in all likelihood sound
as far as it goes, may be supported by a more systematic theoretical frame-
work. The discussion will, at the last, confront the substantive arguments
between RAT and socialization theory, with particular reference to


436

Roy Nash

Bourdieu, in an attempt to work with a comprehensive theory of inequality/
difference underpinned by an integrated numbers and narratives
approach compatible with scientic realism. The empirical basis of the
argument will be supported immediately by simple models using data from
the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
(OECD 2001).

SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM PISA

PISA is a characteristic product of the international educational research
community. The basic purpose of such studies is to provide policy-makers in
different states with comparative information on the performance of their
educational systems. Such studies can be criticized on many grounds, some
of them quite cogent, but they are carried out with a degree of technical
competence that cannot be taken for granted in educational research. PISA
investigated the attainments of 15-year-old secondary school students in 32
participating states, mostly OECD members, including the UK and Sweden
(OECD 2001). The principal focus of the study was on reading, but mathe-
matics and science literacies were also assessed and the research provides
valuable data on the academic attainments of students close to the minimum
school leaving age. Information was collected on a range of variables
including gender, SES, family resources, aspirations, self-concepts, learning
strategies, and attitudes towards school and teachers. The data les are made
public and secondary analysis is encouraged. The analysis presented in this
section is fairly rudimentary and will examine the evidence for a secondary
effect, suggest by a simple arithmetical model that the secondary effect is
minor (particularly in the UK) when compared with the primary effect, and
show that the classed distribution of achievement in the UK and Sweden is,
although signicantly different in some respects, not consistent with the
accepted narrative of Swedish exceptionalism (Erikson and Jonsson 1996).
In this thesis, the long period of social democratic government in Sweden,
particularly between 1930 and 1970 narrowed economic differentials
between social classes and, as Goldthorpe notes, was accompanied by a
narrowing in the probabilities of children of different class backgrounds
staying on in school rather than leaving after the compulsory period (1996:
498). These are social conditions in which conventional assumptions about
the democratic consequences of liberal expansion would predict a general
reduction in inequality of educational opportunity (Husen 1970). Boudons
theory, however, predicts that, although a narrowing of the cultural distance
between social classes might lead to a reduction in disparities in educational
attainment, no parallel decline in the rates of access to tertiary education and
high status employment should be expected. Goldthorpe accepts that the
difference between class attainment

is

relatively low in Sweden, as a result of
the comparatively higher performance of working-class students, and
constructs the rest of his case on that basis. It is just this initial step, however,



437
that the data appears not to permit. It will be relevant, therefore, to examine
the Swedish PISA data for the evidence they provide on SES differentials in
attainment and aspiration.
It will be noted that Table I demonstrates a classic secondary effect. It
shows that students with reading attainments in the upper fth of the
distribution are more likely to maintain high aspirations, as indexed by the
PISA scale, when their social origins are high than if they are low. The most
marked effect can be observed for Sweden in the case of mathematics: it
seems that SES 1 students are more than twice as likely as those from SES
5 to hold high aspirations. But even the most modest effect, for UK reading,
shows a differential of half as much again between SES 1 and SES 5. There
is clear evidence, therefore, of the effect identied by Boudon and
Goldthorpe as central to the generation of IEO.
It is by no means the case, however, that secondary effects are more
important than primary effects, at least as far as accounting for the overall
distribution of school qualications is concerned. In fact, the suggestion
that secondary effects are more important than primary effects in an
account of class differences in school achievement is almost certainly
misguided. Some simple arithmetical models will serve to make the point:

Step 1.

Calculate number of students in 1000 for SES 1 and SES 5 in upper
fth of attainment distribution:

Reading

Mathematics

UK: SES 1: 1000

0.378 = 378 1000

0.360 = 360
SES 5: 1000

0.067 = 67 1000

0.063 = 63

TABLE I:

Percentage of students with high attainment reporting high aspirations

SES Quintile UK Sweden
Reading Maths Reading Maths
1 57 61 53 60
2 47 50 43 55
3 47 42 52 59
4 47 45 44 52
5 37 38 27 28
N 1557 721 702 394

Note

:
Only students with reading, or mathematics, attainment (Warm estimates) in the upper
quintile of the distribution are included. SES quintiles are derived from the highest occupa-
tion recorded for a parent on the International Scale of Socio-economic status (Ganzeboom,
De Graaf and Trieman 1992). Quintile 1 is the highest. High aspirations are those coded in
the range 6888 on the SES scale: this represents 28.7% of the valid UK cases, and 30.1% of
the Swedish.


438

Roy Nash

Sw: SES 1: 1000

0.333 = 333 1000

0.328 = 328
SES 5: 1000

0.137 = 137 1000

0.134 = 134

Step 2

. Calculate secondary effect:
UK: SES 1: 378

0.57 = 215.5 360

0.61 = 219.6
SES 5: 67

0.37 = 24.8 63

0.38 = 23.9
Sw: SES 1: 333

0.53 = 176.5 328

0.60 = 196.8
SES 5: 137

0.27 = 37 134

0.28 = 37.5
This indicates the level of success achieved by 1000 students from each SES,
taking into account only those in the high attainment quintile, on the
assumption that their aspirations are realized.

Step 3.

Calculate secondary effect on SES 5 using SES 1 value:
UK: SES 5: 67

0.57 = 38.2 63

0.61 = 38.4
Sw: SES 5: 137

0.53 = 72.6 134

0.60 = 80.4
Hence, difference between SES 1 and SES 5 due to attainment:
UK: 378 67 = 311 360 63 = 197
Sw: 333 137 = 196 328 134 = 194
Difference on this model due to secondary effect:
UK: 38.2 24.8 = 13.4 38.4 23.9 = 14.5
Sw: 72.6 38.2 = 34.4 80.4 37.5 = 42.9
It is not possible to calculate the total gain due to primary and secondary
effect differentials because the latter datum is relative to a selected point of
comparison. In these calculations the performance of SES 5 students is
compared with the standard set by SES 1 students with respect both to their
level of demonstrated attainment and their level of reported aspiration.
This is in accordance with the standard practice of the sociology of educa-
tion, where the limits of possibility for the lower class are established by
their realization in actuality by the upper class.
The analysis shows, therefore, that if one considers 1000 students there
will be 216 in the top fth of the UK reading attainment distribution with
high aspirations from SES 1 and just 25 from SES 5. If the secondary effect
were eliminated, that is if SES 5 students had the same aspirations as SES 1
students and were assumed to realize them, the number of successful
students from SES 5 would rise by just 13. In the terms of this model, 311
SES 5 students fail, in comparison with SES 1, for want of attainment, and
of these only 13 will fail, in comparison with SES 1, due to causes respon-
sible for the secondary effect. The data will allow, as some readers will have



439
noted, more than one estimate of the size of secondary effect. It is possible,
for example, to take the aspirations of SES 5 students as the reference point
with respect to SES 1 students, but it is not possible on any sensible model
to show that primary effects make a lesser contribution to inequality/
difference than secondary effects. It should be plain that in contemporary
UK and Swedish society differential decision-making is actually a minor
cause of class differences in educational attainment. A comparison of
achievements in the UK and Sweden is presented in Table II.
Table II shows that the difference between the mean attainments of SES
1 and SES 5 students is wider in the UK than in Sweden. The standard
deviation gap is widest in reading, 1.05 standard deviations (SD and based
on plausible values) in the UK and 0.64 in Sweden; for mathematics the
gap is 0.95 and 0.72 SD respectively. It appears, however, that the
narrowing of the SES differential in Sweden has been achieved not by
improving the attainments of the lowest SES group, but rather by
suppressing those of the highest SES group. Indeed, in the case of mathe-
matics, attainments seem to be depressed in all SES groups when compared
to the UK. There is no obvious reason why the attainments of Swedish
middle-class students should be signicantly worse than those of UK
students, but an investigation might want to begin with a comparison of the
conditions of access to university education in the two countries. The
hypothesis that the UK has a more competitive entry regime, and thus
encourages a high standard of attainment, is one that might be tested.
The whole question of Swedish exceptionalism, at least with respect to
the educational attainments of senior school students, is thrown into doubt
by the PISA data. The most telling way to present the evidence is also the most
straightforward. Table III shows that the proportion of SES 1 students in the
highest achievement quintile is greater in Sweden than in the UK, but not by
a great order of magnitude, and it is also evident that the proportion of SES
5 students in the highest quintile is greater in Sweden than in the UK.In fact,
the proportion is more or less twice as high, but this only means that it is

TABLE II:

Attainment and SES in UK and Sweden

Reading

Reading

Maths

Maths

Reading

Readin

g Maths

Maths

1 578

585

576

584

545

547

544

544

2 553

556

553

558

526

533

522

528

3 527

525

528

532

515

516

513

513

4 509

510

516

519

501

502

493

492

5 483

481

490

489

484

483

474

472

N 8843

8843

4886

4902

4415

4416

2458

2464
Note

:
Reading and mathematics means are calculated using the Warm estimate and, given in italics,
the ve plausible values provided by PISA. The latter is the most appropriate for between-
country comparisons.


440

Roy Nash

about 2.5 to 1 compared with 5 or 6 to 1 in the UK. This is an improvement,
but it is not equality and, as the discussion has noted, the performance of the
lower working-class in these countries is much the same, and it is the relatively
poor achievements of Swedish middle-class students that is responsible for
the degree of equalization observed.
It is possible to show by regression analysis that the variation in attain-
ment can be accounted for only partially by SES variables. Regression
analyses of reading and mathematics attainment on a set of four variables
indicating family socio-economic status and literacy resources, namely,
highest parental SES status, family wealth (indicated by possession of a list
of items such dishwashers and mobile phones), cultural possessions (indi-
cated by the presence in the home of classical literature, poetry and works
of art) and number of books (assessed by a seven-point scale none to
more than 500), account for between 12 per cent and 19 per cent of the
variance. In summary, the Multiple R (correlation) values are:
These magnitudes are entirely characteristic of their genre, and

post hoc

speculation about the causes of the relatively minor differences in these
results for the UK and Sweden is unlikely to be productive.
The reduction of the distance between the mean educational attainments
of the upper and lower SES groups evident in the Swedish PISA data seem
to be caused by social processes and practices that the rational action
account of secondary effects attempts to relegate to a minor set of determi-
nants. In this context, Goldthorpes general hypothesis about the impor-
tance of the secondary effect in relation to the primary effect appears to
lack substance, and his specic suggestion that a relatively narrow class
disparity in standards of living is causally associated with the relatively
narrow disparity in educational attainment is not supported by the
evidence, at least if the comparative attainments of Swedish and UK
working-class students have any substantive signicance. The PISA data do

UK Sweden
Reading .431 .371
Mathematics .388 .341
TABLE III:

Percentages of students by SES in the high and low attainment quintiles

Reading Maths Reading Maths
High Low High Low High Low High Low
1 38 9 36 9 33 10 33 11
2 26 14 25 14 20 16 28 16
3 18 19 30 21 19 20 12 17
4 11 26 13 24 14 24 14 24
5 7 31 6 32 14 30 13 32
N 1830 1613 1027 914 868 889 467 497



441
not, of course, have any longitudinal component. What Goldthorpe needs
to explain (and it is a question one can presume to be exercising the minds
of those responsible for the Swedish educational system) is why middle-class
15-year-olds in that country appear to be under-achieving against compar-
ative benchmarks. Everything in this analysis of the PISA data suggests, in
the case of the UK and Sweden, that greater attention needs to be paid to
the multiple causes of the primary effect. The following section will push
forward the theoretical argument against the irrelevance of rational action
theory as a comprehensive explanation of inequality/difference.

GOLDTHORPES ACCOUNT OF SOCIAL DISPARITIES IN EDUCATIONAL
ATTAINMENT

Goldthorpe declares that he starts with an acceptance of methodological
though not ontological individualism: that is from the position that all
social phenomena can and should be explained as resulting from the action
and interaction of individuals (1996: 485). His concern is with explaining
macrosocial regularities that result from the actions of large numbers of
individuals, and he maintains that for this purpose it is sufcient to assume
that the tendency of actors to act rationally in the circumstances that
prevail is the

common

factor inuencing them even if relatively weak
while propensities to depart from rationality operate randomly in many
different ways (op. cit.: 485). One must object at once that the argument
that a common factor of rationality can be assumed in the explanation of
collective action is difcult to sustain. It is impossible to know whether such
a common factor to suppose for the sake of argument that the term has
an actual referent is relatively weak or relatively strong, because there is
no empirical procedure that can identify it at all. Rational action is
described, moreover, in terms so imprecise that it means little more than
to take into account the relative costs of given courses of action. The model
therefore assumes what it needs to demonstrate.
Accepting a fundamental methodological principle of RAT, Goldthorpe
writes, I shall avoid reference to distinctive class values, norms, forms of
consciousness or other supposed aspects of class cultures or subcultures
(op. cit.: 487). To introduce norms, he argues, would be to imply that class
formation was at a level at which a capacity for socialization . . . was
present, which he is unwilling to do because such a claim might prove
difcult to justify empirically and, perhaps more fundamentally, because
explanations that rely on the existence of such systematic cultural differ-
ences between classes do not in any event appear apt to the

explanandum

in question (op. cit.: 487). At this point it is valid to ask what methodolog-
ical purpose is served by assuming either that people from different classes
are guided by the same norms with respect to education or that if class
norms are different they can be assumed to be irrelevant to action in this
eld? Goldthorpe asserts that his acceptance of individualism is


442

Roy Nash

methodological, not ontological, makes reference to social structures and
institutions, and allows that norms

are

often the basis for action. Neverthe-
less, he does not propose, in constructing a model, to explain social
disparity in educational achievement, to investigate whether class norms
do differ between social classes, or in what respects they might affect
educational decision-making. The reasons he offers for this strangely anti-
sociological position are therefore of some interest. The rst argument
offered, that normative differences between classes might be difcult to
justify empirically, is actually ambiguous. It might mean that the data are
rarely available and that explanatory theories need to be constructed in
any case (even though they might be inadequately grounded), or that
empirical studies do not support the conclusion that there are normative
differences between classes. The rst interpretation begs the question that
needs to be answered if a realist theory is to be constructed, and the second
is simply false, because there is abundant evidence to show that middle-
class and working-class people hold characteristically different values
about all sorts of things, as advertising agencies are perfectly aware. One
might well ask, in this context, why, if it is so rational for able working-class
students to be satised with a lower status destination than able middle-
class students, so many do maintain high aspirations. The secondary effect
under discussion is often not particularly strong, and the classical data
available suggest that it never has been. The oldest study cited by Boudon
(1973: 25), who is responsible for this line of enquiry, was carried out in
1950 in the US city of Boston: it shows that, of boys in the highest IQ
quintile, 40 per cent from skilled labour and service and 80 per cent from
major white collar backgrounds expected to go to college. On this basis,
it seems that a substantial minority of working-class students have been
acting irrationally for a long time.
Goldthorpes declared purpose, moreover, is not limited to an explana-
tion of the secondary effect, but to explain the persistence of class differ-
entials in educational attainment (op. cit.: 486), as he puts it: I take the
degree of temporal stability of class differentials in educational attainment
to be a genuine rather than a spurious

explanandum

for class theory (op.
cit.: 487). There is, perhaps, a subtle difference between seeking to explain
how class differences in educational attainment are caused and how the

persistence

or

stability

of such differences is caused, but the distinction is a
point of such academic neness that it should not be admitted. It is
certainly difcult to imagine how a theory of the latter could not include a
theory of the former. But this tiny slippage between Goldthorpes

explanandum

and that of most researchers in this eld is not unmotivated.
In fact, to argue that the causes of class disparities in educational attainment
can be explained without reference to class variation in socialization prac-
tices is almost absurd, and Goldthorpes

explanandum

is only plausible if the
explanation is actually limited to the causes of secondary effects.
Goldthorpe never makes this distinction clear, but it is understandable in
this context that he should wish to treat the entire problem of class



443
differences in educational attainment as a secondary effect rather than as
a primary effect.
Goldthorpes attempt to nd out how established regularities come to
be as they are (op. cit.: 482), assumes that they can be explained by the
actions of people who need take into account only their opportunity costs,
which have been shown to be relative to social position. But what kind of
explanation of macrosocial regularities has actually been provided by this
theory? Unless the theory is

ontological

, that is unless individuals do act as
the assumptions of the model require, and in particular without reference
to norms of behaviour accepted by themselves and common in their class,
then it is unreal and has no practical value. The model has no predictive
utility, in any event, because it will explain any level of social difference in
educational attainment that happens to be observed, and it is admittedly
useless to those who offer counsel to young people, because it has no
ontological status and the relatively weak, and entirely hypothetical,
common factor may not be present. To argue for a sociology based on
micro-foundations, where individuals are seen as acting as members of
classes in the sense of being subject to the differing levels and forms of
resources, opportunities and constraints that their particular class situa-
tions imply (op. cit.: 500), has some plausibility, but these resources include
cognitive resources, which are dispositions, and there is considerable
evidence to show that they are acquired largely as a consequence of classed
socialization practices in early childhood. There is nothing that rational
action theory can bring to the investigation of that process. In respect of its
claim that RAT can provide an adequate explanation of secondary effects
it might be considered to have failed. And in respect of Goldthorpes
assumption that secondary effects are more signicant than primary effects,
that is entirely independent of rational action theory and is unsubstanti-
ated. The explanation of RAT is offered as superior, however, to that of its
principal competitor in the eld, and that theory, certainly in its Bourdieu-
sian version, is not without its own problems. In many ways, as the discussion
will show, it is vulnerable to severe critique.

PRIMARY EFFECTS, DEFICIT THEORY, AND COGNITIVE

HABITUS

It was noted in the introduction that a comprehensive theory of inequality/
difference should include recognition of the socialization processes that
generate primary effects and those more or less rational processes of
decision-making that generate secondary effects. The problem is to inte-
grate these approaches in such a way that hypotheses can be formulated in
such a way they that they can be tested by the standards of critical science.
Some very considerable advances in the modelling of the processes involved
in the generation of inequality/difference have been achieved by multi-
level statistical techniques (Goldstein and Thomas 1995; Bryk and Rauden-
bush 1992). What may need to be reasserted, however, is the importance of


444

Roy Nash

family socialization to the development of what will be called I hope
without undue provocation the structures of the cognitive

habitus

.
Rational action theory has nothing to say about the importance of cognitive
socialization simply because it can generate no useful models of the proc-
esses involved. The theory of reproduction it rhetorically opposes,
however, is nothing less than a theory of socialization, and as such might
well be able to provide valuable knowledge of what is almost certainly a
fundamental cause of inequality/difference (Hasan 1999). The difculties
in this area are as much political as theoretical. It is thus relevant in this
context to note that, although Bourdieus adoption of a Marxist lexicon,
his powerful concepts of reproductive strategies, cultural capital,
symbolic violence and the logic of practice, and his brisk dismissal of IQ
racism, have helped win a general acceptance of his work by left-radical
contemporary sociologists of education, there is, in fact, an inuential
radical-left critique of Bourdieu as fundamentally a decit theorist
(Bisseret 1979; Baudelot and Establet 1981). Indeed, his argument, restated
bluntly and unsympathetically, that [t]he working classes are trapped in
their habitus through cultural impoverishment and cultural difference
(Branson and Miller 1991: 42), has been sharply criticized by as many
commentators, who may be represented by Mehan, Villanueva, Hubbard
and Lintz (1996: 216), as a dark, determinist, and immutable formula-
tion. But the consensus of sociological opinion, recognizing Bourdieus

acts of resistance

, is generally favourable to the reproduction thesis. Bourdieu
argues, after all, that the School recognizes the

habitus

of the dominant class
as legitimate, typically regards those who lack this

cultural capital

as unedu-
cable by want of innate intelligence, and systematically excludes them by a
process of neglect. And he argues, further, that the educational system,
characterized by

symbolic violence

on a massive scale, should be subjected to
constant critique to expose its systematic

misrecognition

of reality, and made
an active site of democratic reform. This radical position is seen as entirely
consistent with the rejection of so-called decit theory. It will be unneces-
sary to demonstrate at any great length that the investigation of class
cultural variation in cognitive socialization, and its durable effects on school
learning, is regarded by many sociologists of education as an entirely
unacceptable project. Panofsky (2000: 210), for example, declares, I am
interested in this discussion to shift the emphasis away from a tendency to
blame the family and instead to consider the possibility that schooling is
implicated in the production and reproduction of inequalities. She argues
that her concept of research (op. cit.: 204):
resists the notion of a single standard of development in the area of
literacy or any other area of development; second, it resists the notion of
a single best model of parenting, or of family life; third, it resists
focusing on what children and families

lack

and instead focuses on what
they

have

, and in this way seeks to connect the worlds of home and school
in a new way and to reconstruct the homeschool relation on a new basis.



445
The rhetoric is over-familiar. The reality, however, ought to be even more
familiar. There should be no doubt in the minds of sociologists that
children brought up in families where classed forms of literate socialization-
have been practised enter school with highly developed cognitive abilities
and associated habits of social presentation (Jencks and Phillips 1998).
It might be wrong to argue that Bourdieus theory has undergone a
conscious revision, for his thought has always been multi-layered, subtle,
and free of an over-scholastic dedication to consistency, but a denite
change of emphasis can be detected in his last works. In a passage that
might read oddly to some of his followers, Bourdieu notes that the most
inuential contemporary theories of social differences in education
which have a certain radical genesis now reject the once dominant
psychological perspective in favour of structural alternatives (Bourdieu et
al. 1999: 422)
Factors that seem natural, like talent or taste, give way to poorly dened
social factors such as the inadequacies of the educational system or the
inability and incompetence of the teachers (whom parents increasingly
hold responsible for their childrens poor results), or, even more confus-
edly, to the logic of a completely decient system in need of an overhaul.
Bourdieu suggests that those, not least among them teachers, who once
maintained the conventional view that educational inequality was the result
of natural gifts or intelligence, and so on, have now adopted a different
position. His comments suggest, however, that what many have been taught
is not a

method

of practice

, but merely a formal and general sociological
account of reproduction, with its diagrammed circles of determinism,
having little substantive explanatory power and incapable of recognizing
social change. The constant reiteration of the internalized odds thesis by
Bourdieuians who have failed to notice that [t]here will be no return to
those social universes in which the quasi-perfect coincidence between
objective tendencies and subjective expectations made the experience of
the world a continuous interlocking of conrmed expectations (Bourdieu
2000: 234) was only made possible by a misreading that privileged

theory

over

method

. For in times of crisis, indeed, this relation breaks down. And it
is arguable that for dominated groups in contemporary society life is lived
in a state of permanent crisis. So did Bourdieu come at last to protest that
he was not a Bourdieusian.
Indeed, as Bourdieu (1998: 136) has allowed himself to say, albeit in a
passage that has been stripped bare of its masking euphemisms, the ability
to produce a complex chain of logical reasoning or the ability to accomplish
a perfectly rigorous moral act . . . remain the privilege of only a few because
these anthropological potentialities nd their full realization only under
denite social and economic conditions . . . one cannot, at the same time,
denounce the inhuman social conditions imposed upon proletarians . . . and
credit the people placed in such situations with the full accomplishment of
their human potentialities. This may seem only a whisker away from the once


446

Roy Nash

conventional sociological theories of lower-class behaviour (Roach 1967),
and it is signicant that Bourdieu has felt the need to bend the stick, as he
likes to say, in order to express dissent from the simplistic rhetoric of resist-
ance, post-modernist relativism, and populist illusions in general, now so
common in orthodox discourse (Bourdieu 2000: 233). The relationships
between social class, the possession of literacy resources, the generation of
effective cognitive ability through specialized socialization practices, and the
achievement of literacy by children, being real states of affairs and processes,
must continue to exist even when ignored. The idea that some children,
because of the way they are brought up in their early years, are more

intelligent

than others, at least in their possession of the specic skills of abstract
conceptual analysis

necessarily

recognized by the School, and that social differ-
ences in school attainment all but inevitably follow, may be unpopular, but
Bourdieu seems to be hinting, to put it no more strongly, that the hypothesis
should not be dismissed out of hand. It is in this context that Bourdieu
sounds a related protest against certain explanations of inequality in access
to education (1999: 187): [i]t is essential to checkmate explanations whose
highly fantastic nature would be immediately apparent if they did not awaken
the oldest phantasms of the Western tradition. Few sociologists wish to be
numbered among those who accept uncritically the dominant order of our
society and to that extent, if no more, to be complicit in its regime of
oppression. And yet to dismiss entire areas of reality as out of bounds is
inconsistent with a scientic approach to the study of social world.
Nothing in this argument, which is

with

Bourdieu rather than

for

Bourdieu, supposes that the primary effects of class socialization,
although they can actually be detected on the linguistic capacities of
children well before they attend school, are entirely generated by differ-
ences in cognitive

habitus

. The evidence does not support the theses that
educational achievement is determined by abilities xed in early child-
hood, that family resources other than cultural capital are unimportant,
or that school processes are irrelevant, and so on. To speak of the cogni-
tive

habitus

is not to encode IQ theory in a radical discourse, but to draw
attention to the relationship between classed environments and schemes
of language, thought, and modes of specialized cognition. On the other
hand, it does suggest that the contexts in which cognitive

habitus

are
developed are central to the construction of sound theories of inequality/
difference, that the reex dismissal of all such accounts as decit theory
is an error, and that the problem cannot be asked by the conceptualiza-
tion of inequality/difference as a secondary effect. It might be argued, in
fact, that the attempt to relegate to primary effects a relatively minor
explanatory function, particularly when that seems at least in part moti-
vated by a desire to refute so-called decit theory, is likely to reinforce the
all too noticeable tendency of the contemporary sociology of education
to neglect the necessity to recognize inequality/difference as a state of
affairs generated by social processes that require a scientic approach
able to embrace causal investigation and complex multi-variable



447
modelling within a realist conception of the social. This conclusion,
although contrary to that reached by Willmott (2002) and perhaps also
by Scott (2000), is entirely consistent with a realist theory of social science.
The differences between Bhaskars (1993) critical realism, now the
explicit basis of Archers (1995; 2000) sociology, and scientic realism
(Bunge 1998) will be given some discussion in conclusion.
CONCLUSION
What is to count as a sociological explanation? For Bourdieu there is no
sociology unless the causes of social events and processes are given in terms
of effective social structures. Scientic and critical realism are in full agree-
ment with this position. Boudon is ambivalent about the reality of social
structures because he wants to defend the thesis that macrosocial regular-
ities can be explained by rational action models, in contexts where costs
vary for agents from different social classes. And yet, as Elster (1993: 9), one
of the main proponents of RAT, has described its fundamental thesis as a
trivial doctrine, and argues that the approach is reductionist only in the
sense that any action can be explained by the motivation and beliefs of the
actors, there seems to be little to this theory in any event. Of course, there
is a trivial sense in which whatever social events occur in human societies
do so as the result of human actions and are not explained unless those
actions are described, but that does not of itself constitute a sociological
explanation. What is needed for a sociological explanation is an account of
how those actions, or practices, are shaped by social structures. Rational
action theory may be a theory of human practice, and, in its unelaborated
forms, an unrealistic and narrow one, but it is not sufcient in any form as
a sociological theory or, therefore, to be used as the basis for the generation
of sociological explanations. A realist approach to social structures can, with
much less ambivalence than Boudon, afford to take Elsters trivial doctrine
for granted. Sociological explanations of a satisfactory and complete kind
may most usefully be given in a Bourdieusian inspired structure-disposition-
practice scheme, where social structures give rise to individual dispositions,
and such dispositions generate action within established practices common
to a social group. But this raises substantive areas of theory that require a
more extended discussion.
Nothing is lost for sociology by these critical objections to explanatory
theories based on unreal assumptions. If it means that sociology cannot
construct a general theory of reproduction or IEO, of the sort attempted
by Bourdieu and Boudon, then it may not greatly matter. Bourdieus
valuable analysis of the historical shift in the mode of production and the
mode of reproduction does not depend on the concept of habitus, and his
theory offers to sociology more of a methodology than an explanatory
theory. Boudons models, with their assumption that people are capable
of making rational cost-benet decisions when they are in no position to
448 Roy Nash
do so, can also be relinquished without loss. Such models provide no
information about the real frames of mind in which students make deci-
sions to continue with their education or not. If it is necessary to work with
young people to help them reshape the frames of mind in which they act,
then sociologists might as well understand that this will require teachers
and others to engage with deep-seated habits they have acquired in the
course of their lives. Bourdieu is fundamentally right about this. That is
why, for all the dubious, and even unscrupulous, arguments deployed in
defence of his position, the theory of practice must be judged the more
practical account of the production of socially differentiated educational
attainment. As far as secondary effects are concerned, a theory of differ-
ential attainment need not assume a unitary principle of action. There are
any number of causes of the fact that, even when ability is held constant,
working-class students achieve less than middle-class students: they are
more likely to hold views in opposition to the school; less likely to see the
relevance of the curriculum to their projected occupation; less able to bear
the expense of further education; more concerned by the prospect of
losing contact with their friends (which is actually more likely for them
than for middle-class students); and more likely to be intimidated by the
unfamiliar settings of higher education. Students act on these causes as a
result of their experiences at home, at school, and in the wider community
experiences with parents, teachers, friends, and everyone else who has
an inuence on them, whether personally known to them or not. When
they do act they do so with various degrees of self-awareness and delibera-
tion but, especially when they fail to achieve apparently attainable aspira-
tions, the process is often allowed to happen, with some unhappiness and
self-recrimination, and their eventual destinations should not be seen as
the result of adequately reasoned actions directed towards them. It is quite
true that such list theories require an adequate, and information rich,
framework (preferably given statistical expression), within which to inter-
pret them most competently, but the over-simplications of RAT are no
help in that respect.
There is something like a universal recognition that occupations granted
the highest status are those that demand the longest and most expensive
forms of training and receive the greatest social and nancial rewards.
These occupations include those of lawyer, accountant, medical practi-
tioner, business executive, senior civil servant, and so on, and they are the
focus of many students aspirations, as even a cursory inspection of the PISA
data will show. Yet there is also evidence to suggest that occupational
aspirations and valuations of forms of labour are not strongly associated.
Although students of different origin may place similar value on the
schools offer of credentials, they do not necessarily share the schools
valuation of its high status knowledge. This is not to suggest that middle-
class students have less interest in obtaining credentials than working-class
students that notion would be absurd but it is to suggest that middle-
class students are more likely than working-class students to accept as valid
Inequality/difference in education 449
the schools concept of education as the process of acquiring a body of
knowledge and cognitive skills with a personal value that extends beyond
the award of the credentials that merely signify its presence. Working-class
students often live within a tension, always expressed in the form of a
seemingly ever-frustrated demand to know the relevance of their more
theoretically structured subjects, felt less acutely by middle-class students
more at home with the underlying model of the educated person
informing the entire curriculum. If the aspirations of working-class students
are called into question, as may always be the case, then it becomes that
much more difcult for them to sustain their efforts to study. Working-class
students often take a characteristically ambivalent stance towards the valu-
ation they perceive the school and wider society to place on mental and
manual labour. At the same time, however, they are aware of a different
valuation in which the actual labour performed by skilled workers, and the
hard-won practical knowledge that makes it possible, is celebrated against
the grain of the dominant framework of values even as the hegemony of
those values is acknowledged. It is particular easy for working-class students,
who have done no more than pattern their declared aspirations according
to commonly recognized valuations, to restructure them should their
grades begin to fail or the expense of a prolonged course of study be
appreciated in all its reality as the point of irrevocable decision-making
approaches.
The substantive conclusion must be that the effort put into constructing
sociological models of social conduct that privilege either habitual practices
or rationally chosen actions is largely wasted, when the reality, as anyone
can see, is that people sometimes act rationally (at least in many of the
rather large number of senses of that word), often simply follow the
accepted routines of their community without much reection (and
probably without a thought for the long-term consequences of the collec-
tive effects of their actions), and more often than not behave in a way that
is rather difcult to identify as either purely rational or purely habitual. We
stand to lose all this common-sense knowledge of real life, and the possi-
bility of explaining it by more sophisticated and integrated scientic
approaches, by adopting unreal and limited models. This is the more so
when the causes of primary effects, that is the effects of more or less durable
cognitive differences generated by classed socialization practices, are
located not only in the school but principally in the family, and pose an
intellectual and frankly political difculty for the sociology of education it
has never been able to resolve. This does not mean that this area of social
reality is too complex to study by the methods of science, only that the
simplifying assumptions of non-real models need to be replaced by ones
with a greater level of complexity. As for policy, if one may dare to raise a
matter so important in one sentence, the implications point not so much
at measures directed to interrupt the processes that generate secondary
effects, which would suggest interventions to lower the relative opportunity
costs for working-class students, as to the importance of continuing to lessen
450 Roy Nash
the primary effect by, for example, an extended provision of early child-
hood education and the encouragement of forms of pedagogy able to meet
the needs of children from all social backgrounds.
(Date accepted: August 2003) Roy Nash
Department of Social and Policy Studies in Education
Massey University
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British Journal of Sociology

Vol. No. 54 Issue No. 4 (December 2003) pp. 433451

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