Bourdieu for Dummies
Reposting this entry from 2015 featuring Abir Botes and in memory of Abir Botes who completed her PhD in 2020 and passed in November 2020 right before graduation. Well done Dr Abir Botes and thank you for your honest and hilarious views on Bourdieu.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Abir’s family and supervisor Dr Heather Jacklin.
“This is the start of a three-part series on our PHD Event held on 5 and 6 June 2015. We started with Shut Up and Write at 9am on Friday and our usual group expanded to include participants of the PhD Event which followed directly after. These PhD Events are set up by the Masters (Dr Carolyn McKinney) and PhD (Dr Dick N’gambi) Coordinators in the School of Education and they serve as a space where students present their proposals and work-in-progress. Our School of Education has replaced the proposal defence with this PhD Event and it is held every six months. Even though it is a more conciliatory and productive space, it is also quite nerve wracking to present your research for the first time to fellow students, your supervisor and interested academic staff. Although the spirit of PhD Event is positive, you do face those hard questions, feedback on gaps in your proposal and challenges to the aim of the overall project.
Featured Presentation: Bourdieu for Dummies
The presentation I feature in this post is by Abir, who is a first language Arabic speaker and second language English speaker and she is presenting work in progress on her PhD. When she presented her proposal at the previous PhD Event, about seven months ago, she was challenged on her lack of theoretical framework. Her supervisor suggested she use Bourdieu and though Abir did the readings and she is fully fluent in English, she could not get to grips with this theorist and his theoretical concepts. She had been back to her supervisor thrice for a face-to-face explanation on habitus, field and capital and it still did not make any sense to her. Then one evening complaining to her son, he suggested that she try youtube. She showed us this video… on Bourdieu made simple and we cracked up.
See youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87BPL62wyyU
We loved the refreshing change from graphs and tables and what I like to call “the axis of evil” .Thank you Abir for your honesty and for a great presentation.
Stay tuned for parts two and three from the SOE PhD Event
Shut Up and Write ! Thula Ubhale 