The Effects of Power Mechanisms in Education: Bringing Foucault and Bourdieu Together

Abstract

The aim of this article is to outline a theoretical framework for an empirical study focusing on the question of how schools from socio-culturally different areas face new governance and its power mechanisms. The authors' aim is to bring together Pierre Bourdieu's and Michel Foucault's approaches to power, capitalising at the same time on Risto Heiskala's recent synthesising theorisation of power. In terms of elaboration, the authors outline a four-dimensional framework in which episteme, ethos, theasis and techne constitute the four faces from the Foucauldian perspective. The respective Bourdieuan contributions constitute linguistic markets, institutional habitus, distinctions, and mechanisms of reproduction. In this treatment, it appears that the strength of the Foucauldian tools in the authors' intellectual box for their empirical research on the effects of new governance is on the level of the political, whereas Bourdieu also provides tools for the analysis of politics. The authors' conclusion is a heuristic device, a catalogue of possibilities, a springboard for field study.