Bodies at Home and at School: Toward a Theory of Embodied Social Class Status

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BODIES AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL: TOWARD ATHEORY OF EMBODIED SOCIAL CLASS STATUS

Sue Ellen Henry

Education DepartmentBucknell University

Abstract. Sociology has long recognized the centrality of the body in the reciprocal construction ofindividuals and society, and recent research has explored the influence of a variety of social institutionson the body. Significant research has established the influence of social class, child-rearing practices,and variable language forms in families and children. Less well understood is the influence of children’ssocial class status on their gestures, comportment, and other bodily techniques. In this essay Sue EllenHenry brings these two areas of study together to explore how working-class children’s bodies are shapedby the child-rearing practices associated with their social class status, and the potential effects thesebodily techniques have on their experience in schools.

‘‘Brandon, come up here,’’ commanded Mr. Coates, a white, middle-aged veteran 4th gradeteacher and part-time football coach for the local middle school. Brandon is a quiet boy ofabout four and a half feet tall: white, with dirty blonde hair, wearing an oversized t-shirthanging to his knees displaying Dale Earnhart’s signature. He slowly approaches Mr. Coates’desk. ‘‘When I ask you to get to work, that’s what I mean,’’ Mr. Coates stands and firmlyexplains to Brandon. ‘‘Look at me when I’m talking to you. If you don’t look at me, I don’t feelthe respect I deserve. Stand up straight — in our school, you stand up straight and look peoplein the eye when they are talking. Got it?’’

— Research fieldnotes, October 2010

Introduction

Bodies matter. How one moves physically through the world — gestures, gait,hold of the hands, frame of the face, gaze of the eyes, our ‘‘bodily techniques’’ —have an impact on one’s experience of the world as well as on the constitution ofthe world itself. This statement seems obvious in many ways. And yet, despiteits transparency, the work of school focuses on developing the mind — thecognitive — and educators and researchers alike frequently ignore the body. Inschool, there is what sociologist Chris Shilling calls an ‘‘absent presence’’ ofthe body: there, but not there.1 Despite this lacuna, if one looks deeply, a clearvision of the body emerges. The oft-cited rules for the contemporary elementaryclassroom provide ample evidence: keep your hands to yourself; leave your seatonly when necessary; be quiet in the hallways; raise your hand before speaking;stay in line. In an organizational system that is primarily designed to socialize(some might say ‘‘civilize’’) children, how do these latent corporeal rules interactwith the corporeal rules children learn in their homes? What are the consequencesfor children when the corporeal rules conflict?

In this article I address these questions by exploring the emerging field ofcorporeal realism, developed by Chris Shilling. The influence of social class on

1. Chris Shilling, The Body and Social Theory, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2003), 17.

EDUCATIONAL THEORY Volume 63 Number 1 2013© 2013 Board of Trustees University of Illinois

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children’s academic achievement and language development is well documentedin the literature.2 Here I explore new ground by theorizing the impact of socialclass on the ways students’ bodies might be controlled and shaped due to thechild-rearing experiences in the home, and I consider the consequences thesecorporeal lessons might have on their school experience.

A critical caveat is necessary before beginning. My analysis originates in thenotion that social class does not operate separately from other crucial identitymarkers, such as race or gender. Social class interacts with gender, (dis)ability,race, and other identity markers in ways that make the boundaries of socialclass extremely fuzzy and idiosyncratic. Additionally, this exploration does notpresume that social class is a superordinate identity marker. Rather, in this pieceI recognize that social class is a powerful organizing structure in our society;3 Iwish to suggest that until we have deepened our understanding of how social classinfluences the body’s actions and gestures and the consequences these corporealperformances have in shaping lived experience, it is worthwhile to theorize aboutthis question. While I acknowledge the important interactions between socialclass and other significant identity markers in the lived experience of persons, mygoal here is to focus primary attention on the ways in which social class influencesuses of the body.

To explore these relations, I start by examining the literature of sociology of thebody, focusing on Chris Shillings’s work on corporeal realism and Pierre Bourdieu’sconcept of habitus as it relates to physical capital, an embodied form of capitalamassed by young children chiefly in the home. I then turn to an exploration ofAnnette Lareau’s comprehensive study of the different logics of child rearing thatworking-class and middle-class parents use. Combined, these theoretical perspec-tives argue that social class is a fundamental social structure and a dominant forcethat shapes and controls children’s bodies in specific ways. From this position, wecan then question how such deep corporeal learning might manifest in schoolingsituations, where corporeal rules from the home may come into conflict with thecorporeal rules of the school. In the final section of this essay, I imagine new empir-ical work that could further our understanding of the ways in which working-class

2. On academic achievement, see, for example, Valerie E. Lee and David T. Burkham, Inequality at theStarting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School (Washington,DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2002); and Deborah J. Stipek and Rosaleen H. Ryan, ‘‘EconomicallyDisadvantaged Preschoolers: Ready to Learn but Further to Go,’’ Developmental Psychology 33, no.4 (1997): 711–723. On language development, see, for example, Basil B. Bernstein, Class, Codes, andControl, 4 vols. (London: Routledge, 2003); and Shirley Brice Heath, Ways with Words: Language, Life,and Work in Communities and Classrooms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

3. Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret (Ithaca, New York: CornellUniversity Press, 2000).

SUE ELLEN HENRY is Associate Professor of Education at Bucknell University, 459 Olin Science,Lewisburg, PA 17837; e-mail <[email protected]>. Her primary areas of scholarship aresocial class influences on educational experience and multicultural education.

Henry Bodies at Home and at School 3

student bodies perform their class status in school. Ultimately, such analysismay illuminate how these corporeal actions are understood in schools, where thecorporeal norms typically reflect middle- and upper-class notions of the body.4

Sociology and the Body

Chris Shilling argues that sociology has always had a contentious relationwith the body.5 Some classical thinkers have made the body an overt focus ofstudy; others have only hinted at the possible implications of their theories forthe body, but have not made the body a central topic of examination. Regardlessof the primary stance toward the body, nearly all sociologists maintain that thereis a reciprocal relation between the body and society. This mutual relation, claimsShilling, rests on three principles: (1) within the body exists the source of sociallife; (2) the body serves as the location for social structures; and (3) the body is themeans through which individuals are located within social order.6

Central to understanding how bodies both represent and resist social struc-tures is Pierre Bourdieu’s work on habitus.7 The habitus is ‘‘‘a socially constitutedsystem of cognitive and motivating structures’ which provide individuals withclass-dependent, predisposed ways of relating to and categorizing both familiar andnovel situations.’’8 Habitus is shaped in particular social locations and formulates aworldview that exemplifies the social location(s) of the individual. Such social loca-tions refer to ‘‘the class-based material circumstances which contextualize people’sdaily lives and contribute to the development of their bodies.’’9 The body serves as

4. It is of course true that schools work with different populations of students given their link toneighborhoods and enrollment patterns. Schools located in working-class neighborhoods could bedescribed as ‘‘working-class schools,’’ as Jean Anyon does in her classic study of the different approachesto knowledge typical of schools from a variety of social class positions. Yet, it is also true that, as agroup, teachers tend to represent middle-class expectations and values. For instance, in 2007–2008, theNational Center for Educational Statistics reported that 44.5 percent of U.S. teachers held a master’sdegree and 7.3 percent held a degree beyond the master’s, totaling 51.8 percent. In this same year, the U.S.Census Bureau reported that only 10.1 percent of the U.S. population above the age of twenty-five heldan advanced degree (a degree beyond the bachelor’s). Interestingly, even in Anyon’s study, teachers inthe ‘‘working-class school’’ overwhelmingly understood their students from middle-class perspectives,characterizing the students as ‘‘lazy’’ and in ‘‘need of the basics.’’ I assert that, in part, because of theirmiddle-class understandings of legitimate knowledge, these teachers reified their latent assumptionsabout children from working-class backgrounds by selecting knowledge that, because of its focus onformulaic, algorithmic, fact-based ‘‘practical knowledge,’’ asserted their middle-class values throughtheir curricular choices. See Jean Anyon, ‘‘Social Class and School Knowledge,’’ Curriculum Inquiry 11,no. 1 (1981): 3–42.

5. Shilling, The Body and Social Theory.

6. Chris Shilling, The Body in Culture, Technology, and Society (London: Sage Publications, 2005),10–11.

7. See Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992); aswell as Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

8. Rogers Brubaker, ‘‘Social Theory as Habitus,’’ in Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, ed. Craig Calhoun,Edward LiPuma, and Moishe Postone (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 212–234; quoted inShilling, The Body and Social Theory, 113.

9. Shilling, The Body and Social Theory, 112.


the physical representation of one’s habitus: the embodied form of local societalnorms and expectations. Indeed, one’s habitus not only influences one’s cognitiveaspirations and expectations,10 but also how one uses his or her body to achieve oravoid these internal beliefs. Such an awareness of the habitus is reinforced by Bour-dieu’s assertion that ‘‘the habitus is located within the body and affects every aspectof human embodiment. Indeed, the way people treat their bodies ‘reveals the deep-est dispositions of the habitus.’’’11 Consistent with Marcel Mauss’s anthropologicalwork focusing on ‘‘bodily techniques,’’ such as the variety of cultural differences insitting, standing, walking, running, eating, and squatting (to name a few), Bourdieumaintained that the embodiment of one’s habitus is most evident in autonomicand fundamental corporeal functions, such as eating and blowing one’s nose.

Shilling takes the three central tenets of the sociology-body relation andBourdieu’s habitus concept as the starting points for his conception of corporealrealism. Central to corporeal realism’s position on the body is that the body, whileoffering a window into the habitus, also serves as the center of individual agency.Society does not only write itself upon the body; the body also changes society asa result of its actions and reactions. Thus, while the body serves as the centrallocation for the habitus, it also provides the individual the agency necessary fortranscending one’s social location.

Shilling titles his scholarship ‘‘corporeal realism’’ as a rhetorical signal. The‘‘corporeal’’ represents the individual experience of the body, and ‘‘realism’’ rein-forces the notion that society and the body are real, reciprocal entities, structuringand being structured by each other simultaneously, through habitus. This positionidentifies the societal structures that impinge on the individual’s habitus, as wellas training attention on the ways in which individuals seek to use their bodies toalter or adjust these structures. For Bourdieu, social class status is a central organiz-ing feature of the habitus. Consequently, Shilling’s corporeal realism sees habitusas mutually influenced by the social class status of the body and the larger socialclass contexts that the body navigates, which include not only one’s personal classstatus but also the class status of other important institutions the person inhabits,such as schools. Habitus, according to Shilling, is a structure that individualsinternalize cognitively and physically; moreover, this internalization results incertain views of the world. The habitus, he writes, ‘‘refers to a socially structuredbodily disposition and associated body techniques that organizes each generation’ssenses into particular hierarchies, predisposes people toward particular ways ofknowing and acting, and promotes particular orientations to the world.’’12

10. Jay MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood(Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2009).

11. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (London: Routledge andKegan Paul, 1984), 190; cited in Shilling, The Body and Social Theory, 113.



In advancing his notion of corporeal realism as a means of exploring thebody–society relation, Shilling maintains that such a view recognizes ‘‘thedistinctive ontological properties involved in the attempted transmission of aculture, in people’s experiences, and in the actual embodied outcomes of thisprocess.’’13 One such ontological property is social class, in particular how socialclass location shapes one’s bodily forms and uses. Because social class locationshave differing value in social institutions, they are central to the construction ofsocial inequalities throughout society. The ability to parlay the capital one gainsin his or her own social location into wider value societally depends on the fitbetween one’s own forms of capital and those recognized and valued by socialinstitutions, such as school.

According to Bourdieu, physical capital is the embodiment of the socialcapital one develops through his or her habitus and social class status. Drawingon Bourdieu’s notion, Shilling argues that working-class adult bodies tend towardthe instrumental and practical, largely due to limited discretionary time.14 Theworking-class body tends to represent ‘‘a means to an end’’;15 such an orientationcan be seen in a working-class understanding of illness and the purpose ofmedication to ‘‘put the body right’’ in order to get back to work.16 Working-classbodies are marked by the ‘‘body as machine’’ metaphor, where the body servessuch central purposes as making a living, caring for family members, and keepingup one’s home. Middle-class bodies, in contrast, operate on the ‘‘body as project’’metaphor; from such a position, physical exertion is accomplished in the nameof health, and the focus is less on developing and maintaining sheer strengththan on producing a body ‘‘better suited to a world in which economic practice isconstituted more strongly by the presentation of the self.’’17

Fundamental to these orientations is agency: the perception that one’s actionsare capable of changing the world in order to meet one’s own needs and desires.One has agency when one believes that one’s actions are capable of influencing theworld in which he or she must operate. For the working-class body, agency exists inthe capacity to earn a living or to take care of one’s family: to act in the world thatis constructed. In contrast, those who inhabit the middle class tend to feel greatercapacity to transcend current conditions, perhaps best seen in the example of usingphysical exercise to change one’s body shape or weight. Indeed, there is evidenceto suggest that middle-class people believe they have more control over their own

13. Ibid., 250.

14. It is critical that readers not overinterpret these theoretical suggestions; Shilling’s desire here is totypify trends, not essentialize working-class or middle-class people in narrow, rigid ways.


16. Ibid.

17. Richard Harker, Cheleen Mahar, and Chris Wilkes, eds., An Introduction to the Work of PierreBourdieu: The Practice of Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990), 118.


health, ‘‘control that can be exercised by choosing an appropriate ‘lifestyle.’’’18

Thus, generally speaking, those embodying middle-class body techniques tend toact as agents in changing their circumstances, whereas those embodying working-class social status are more oriented to a feeling of managing life circumstances.

In sum, corporeal realism helps the researcher attend to three essential ele-ments of the lived experience of the body. First, such a view emphasizes the expe-riences individuals have of their bodies and the feelings that emerge and get madeby the body: the corporeal angle. Second, this view also prioritizes the cultural andinstitutional means of shaping the body and the potential results of those meansin action: the realism angle. In addition to studying the sources of body pedagogics(cultural and institutional structures) and the experiences of individuals of thesebody pedagogics (the feelings and reactions to these ‘‘teachings’’), a third importantfocus emerges from adopting corporeal realism: outcomes. This element asks ifand how these influences have resulted in ‘‘changes to people’s values, to theircapacities and dispositions for action, and to any other aspect of their habitus.’’19

Given the elements that comprise corporeal realism and habitus, it seems clearthat for school-age children, the habitus of the school they attend is an importantinfluence on their minds and bodies. As many scholars maintain, the organizationalhabitus of schools — as seen in behavioral expectations and local norms — aresignificant influences on students.20 School-age children have to manage two dom-inant institutions: home and school. What are the consequences for these childrenwhen the body pedagogics of these two locations differ? This question suggests thatwhen considering the influence of social class on the working-class child’s body,there are two kinds of habits to investigate: those of the home and of the schooland its curriculum.21 Social class deeply shapes both of these habitus situations.

Applied here, corporeal realism illuminates the ways in which the structuresof home child-rearing practices and the patterns of bodily expectations in schools


19. Ibid., 160.

20. See, for example, Erin McNamara Horvat and Anthony Lising Antonio, ‘‘‘Hey, Those Shoes AreOut of Uniform’: African American Girls in an Elite High School and the Importance of Habitus,’’Anthropology and Education Quarterly 30, no. 3 (1999): 317–342; Erin McNamara Horvat and JamesEarl Davis, ‘‘Schools as Sites of Transformation: Exploring the Contribution of Habitus,’’ Youth andSociety 20, no. 10 (2010): 1–29; and John B. Diamond, Antonia Randolph, and James P. Spillane,‘‘Teachers’ Expectations and Sense of Responsibility for Student Learning: The Importance of Race,Class, and Organizational Habitus,’’ Anthropology and Education Quarterly 35, no. 1 (2004): 75–98.

21. A wonderful example of some of the dominant body pedagogics in early elementary school is outlinedby Brian M. McCadden in his article, ‘‘Let’s Get Our Houses in Order: The Role of Transitional Rituals inConstructing Moral Kindergartners,’’ Urban Review 29, no. 4 (1997): 239–252. While McCadden’s focusis not on body pedagogics specifically, he begins this essay with a powerful vignette of the embodiedtransition rituals of a typical kindergarten classroom: the song with physical movements, meant as aclassroom management strategy: ‘‘At the end of a song (during which we are all dancing around themeeting space), we sit down. Mrs. Hooper holds her arms up and calls out to the class, ‘Open, shut them;open, shut them; give your hands a clap. Open, shut them; open, shut them; put them in your lap.’ Herhands, as well as the hands of the students, mimic the words of the transitional mantra’’ (239).


influence the working-class learner who is navigating these two, often distinctand perhaps even contradictory, worlds.

Important to this argument is the positioning of the learners’ bodies not onlyas object but also as subject. When studying children’s bodies as object, one wouldfocus on, for instance, the ways in which child-rearing practices that are shapedby social class status ultimately shape the ways children use their bodies. Forinstance, from an object perspective, one might ask about the consequences ofusing a high chair for feeding a young child versus sitting the child in one’s lapor on the floor.22 Conversely, the study of children’s bodies as subject aims tounderstand the body as an entity that has thoughts, beliefs, and feelings aboutsuch patterns in one’s life. How does the child apprehend the expectation of beingfed from a high chair or being able to eat while sitting in the lap of a relative? Whatmeaning does this likely unconscious action, based upon a particular habitus thatframes what is ‘‘normal’’ or ‘‘expected’’ in ‘‘our’’ society, have for the parent andthe child? This approach helps us theorize the position for the learner in a fulland sophisticated way, rather than from a weak and bifurcated position, one thatis particularly common in theories pertaining to children.23

Corporeal realism allows researchers to draw back the veil on otherwiseunexplored bodily techniques to wonder aloud about their meaning, both in thesocial world (what do these actions signify?) and to the actor (what do theseactions do to me, and how do I shape them in my own way?). Shilling’s approachencourages a critical discourse on bodily techniques that parents and teacherslikely take for granted because they are so deeply connected to their habitus. Inorder to explore the influence and consequences of social class body techniquesin (largely) middle-class schools for children of working-class status, we musthave a robust understanding of the links between child-rearing practices as shapedby social class status and the bodily techniques that result from such childhoodexperiences. Armed with Shilling’s corporeal realism, we can now turn to AnnetteLareau’s work on the influence of social class on child-rearing practices to considerthe implications these practices might have for the corporeal rules that result inworking-class homes.

22. This is a particular topic that Marcel Mauss explored at length in his originating work in thefield: Marcel Mauss, ‘‘Techniques of the Body,’’ Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70–88,http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085147300000003. Mauss maintained that in ‘‘civilized’’ societies wherechildren were placed in chairs for feeding, one of the body’s responses was the loss of the capacity tosquat. Squatting, he argued, was a physical capacity that had sociological and psychological implicationsin societies less ‘‘civilized’’ and demonstrated the ‘‘triumvirate’’ of the physical, psychological, andsociological of bodily techniques.

23. Debra Van Ausdale suggests that this tendency to see children as less capable adults is evoked in mostof the dominant psychological theorizing about children, theorizing that is verified by ‘‘adult-centric’’views of childhood as a time of ‘‘innocence’’ and ‘‘naıvete.’’ See Debra Van Ausdale, The First R: HowChildren Learn Race and Racism (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).


Implications for the Embodiment of Social Class

Theorizing in this area is difficult because of the considerable tension insociology regarding the notion of social class.24 Among those who agree that socialclass is a decipherable construct deserving of exploration, there is further difficultyin seeing social class from a child’s point of view. This difficulty often resultsin the use of demographic forms of social class discernment: free and reducedlunch status, family income levels, and parental educational attainment. Whenexamining local behavior among small groups of individuals, some researchersinterested in social class study language use and forms, and this work has providedrich accounts of how one who is working class might experience his or herlife navigating through social institutions organized along different principles.25

Using Lareau’s fascinating exploration of the inner workings of homes andchild-rearing practices, based upon social class location, we can now take thistrend one step further by illuminating some of the elements researchers mightfollow to understand the influence of social class on the body.

Taking as her starting point the centrality of social class as an organizingstructure in social life, Lareau’s work has been particularly important forsystematically examining the various forms of social capital that emerge fromthe different child-rearing practices employed by middle-class and working-classparents.26 Theoretically, Lareau works from a Bourdieuian notion of social capitaland habitus. She sees social capital as the element of exchange between individualswithin various social networks, much as Bourdieu defined social capital as

the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durablenetwork of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition— or in other words, to membership in a group — which provides each of its members withthe backing of the collectively-owned capital, a ‘‘credential’’ which entitles them to credit, inthe various senses of the word.27

24. While Annette Lareau’s work is widely revered, there are critics of the notion that social class is anorganizing structure around which lifestyle choices cohere. Foremost among these critics is sociologistPaul Kingston. He claims that ‘‘class structuration in America is weak: for the most part, groups of peoplehaving a common economic position do not share distinct, life-defining experiences’’ (Paul Kingston,The Classless Society [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000], 4). This is a provocative argument, butone that sociologist Michael Zweig suggests is only impressive if one overlooks the concept of power.As Zweig writes, ‘‘When I talk about class, I am talking about power. Power at work, and power in thelarger society. Economic power, and also political and cultural power. . . . Working class people share acommon place in production, where they have relatively little control over the pace or content of theirwork, and aren’t anybody’s boss’’ (Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best KeptSecret [Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2000], 1–3).

25. Examples of such work include Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes, and Control, 4 vols. (London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 2003); Shirley Brice Heath, Ways with Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1983); and Lisa Delpit, Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (New York: NewPress, 1995).

26. Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2003). This work will be cited in the text as UC for all subsequent references.

27. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘‘The Forms of Capital,’’ in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology ofEducation, ed. John G. Richardson (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 249–50.


Habitus works by shaping social capital, combining and reframing it into socialstructures that are then internalized in individual actions — forms of speech andgestures (Bourdieu’s physical capital) — so as to be useful (or not) in particularsocial systems. Importantly, according to Bourdieu and operating as a foundationalbelief for Lareau, is the notion that one’s habitus is ‘‘acquired via less-than-conscious embodied practices, or ‘mimesis’; the subconscious inculcation of thespecific ‘rules of the game’ of a particular field.’’28 Thus, the embodiment of one’shabitus occurs in a subconscious way, appearing to be ‘‘natural’’ and organic — or,in other words, simply the ‘‘right’’ way to be.

Lareau’s empirical study demonstrates that different forms of social capitalaccrue to children raised in families of different social class positions due todifferential child-rearing practices that evolve from these diverse social classlocations. She argues that children from middle-class homes attend school withparticular insight into the unwritten rules, or the hidden curriculum of school,due in large part to the similarity of rules regulating patterns of negotiation,eye contact — and ultimately power — that exist between the middle-classhome and school. Similarly, she asserts that working-class students do not gainsuch complementary insight into the ways and norms of schooling becausethe organizational patterns and child-rearing practices they experience are moredissimilar from school. We can see, then, that in many ways school-age childrenfrom working-class homes must work doubly hard to understand the rules of twoimportant systems, as well as develop the skills to move between these two worlds.These sophisticated tasks are similar to those documented for second-languagelearners.29

According to Lareau, parents in middle- and upper-middle-class homesemploy the logic of concerted cultivation, which leads children to see themselvesas agents in their lives. In working-class and poor homes, parents employaccomplishment of natural growth logic, which leads children to understandtheir personal power over their own lives and within institutions as generallyconstricted. Lareau’s research reveals that these patterns and approaches to childrearing can be seen most clearly in three areas of family life: organization of dailyactivity, use of language, and interventions with institutions (UC, 11 and 31).

From the concerted cultivation point of view, parents understand their role tobe that of creating a young adult overtly and directly. This aim is accomplished byoverseeing a high degree of involvement by the child in multiple activities beyondschooling, having dedicated supervisors of children’s time (coaches, teachers, andso on), and limiting ‘‘free’’ time. Collectively, these activities are meant to develop

28. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 66.

29. See Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings and Laurie Katz, ‘‘Integrating Home and School Identities of RecentImmigrant Hispanic English Language Learners Through Classroom Practices,’’ Journal of Language,Identity and Education 6, no. 4 (2007): 299–314; and Angela Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press,1999).


in children a sense of teamwork, fortitude, dedication, and time managementskills: in essence, a strong work ethic scaled to a child’s activities rather thanemployment (UC, 62).

Parents working from the logic of concerted cultivation use language in waysmeant to foster autonomy and reasoning in children. Language in middle-classhomes focuses on the use of logic and marshaling evidence for one’s position, afeature that can be seen in Lareau’s finding of substantial negotiation of desiresbetween children and their parents. Language in these families is also used todemonstrate facility with abstract concepts and for solving conflicts; the refrain‘‘use your words’’ to address interpersonal conflicts is prevalent in these homes.Using words to position oneself as an equal actor in decision making is a skill thatthese families seek to engender in their children (UC, 129).

Such an approach to language, combined with the role of ‘‘cultivator’’ of asoon-to-be-adult, results in parents seeing their responsibility to be their child’sadvocate in the context of dominant institutions, such as school. The consequenceof such an approach to child rearing is the creation of a child who has a well-developed sense of personal agency — so much so that Lareau terms this innersense a form of ‘‘entitlement’’ within middle-class children. Consistent with otherresearch on middle-class beliefs about schooling,30 middle-class parents in Lareau’sstudy believed that school should work to their own child’s personal benefit andregularly advocated for their children’s needs. In addition, middle-class parentssupported their children learning the language of adults so that they could advocatefor themselves and their needs; this orientation was seen by middle-class adultsas integral to the fostering of a young adult who navigates the world successfully(UC, 165).

From the logic of accomplishment of natural growth, parents perceive theirrole as adults in the family as substantially different from that of children.Working-class parents in Lareau’s study maintain that there is a time of childhoodwhere children are not adults in the making but rather children in their own right,different from adults. Working-class parents see their role as parent as distinctlydifferent from the roles of other important adults in their children’s lives, suchas teachers. Parents working from this position understand their main obligationsto be providing for children physically and emotionally and allowing them togrow in ways that children do ‘‘naturally,’’ without considerable intervention orinvestment in cultivating an adult (UC, 3).

One important outgrowth of this approach to child rearing is that childrenhave more time to ‘‘hang out’’ and to organize their own sources of entertainmentamong informal groups of other children, often without adult supervision orintervention, unlike their middle-class peers. Indeed, Lareau found that middle-class children averaged twice as many scheduled activities each week compared

30. Ellen Brantlinger, Dividing Classes: How the Middle Class Negotiates and Rationalizes SchoolAdvantage (London: Routledge, 2003).


to working-class children (UC, 282). While working-class children participate inafter-school activities, they often arrange their participation on their own. Parentalresponse frequently focuses more on issues of affordability and access rather thanon deliberately seeking out these activities on behalf of their child (UC, 83–84).

Lareau’s research finds that language use in working-class homes tendstoward the utilitarian. Working-class parents frequently use directives anddeclarative language. Combined with their perception, noted previously, thatvarious important adults play distinct roles in their children’s lives, these parentsoffered support for schooling in terms of reinforcing with their children themessages ‘‘follow your teacher’s directions’’ and ‘‘do your homework.’’ Parentsworking from this position often express a sense of dependence on institutionssuch as school, expecting that teachers will teach and that their role as parentsis to support their children’s education by getting them to school and by verballysupporting the teacher. Lareau summarizes that the outcome of this form of childrearing fosters a sense of ‘‘constraint’’ in children due to the reliance on expertauthority rather than seeing the self as a local expert regarding his or her ownexperience and needs as middle-class children do (UC, 198).

Taking these examples as starting points, we can now ask, what might thecorporeal performances of children raised in accomplishment of natural growthand concerted cultivation homes look like? How might they be different orsimilar? By definition, this is a theoretical exercise. It is my hope, however, thatby considering Lareau’s work in light of the theory of embodiment and corporealrealism, we can better understand how children in these different social locationsmight use their bodies in different ways.

Theorizing the Body Under Conditions of Concerted Cultivation

The orientation of entitlement drives the consideration of the corporealperformance(s) of the child of concerted cultivation.31 When one acts from aposition of agency, what is the body doing? One can imagine that in a U.S. context,the person with agency is standing tall, looking in the eye of the person with whomthey are conversing, using their hands to emphasize a point, and perhaps eveninitiating the conversation. Indeed, these acts are consistent with data Lareaupresents on concerted cultivation families and their child-rearing practices.

Lareau describes Garrett Tallinger, a middle-class African American fifthgrader, and the way in which he meets adults: ‘‘he shakes hands, looksthe person in the eye, and generally seems at ease’’ (UC, 41). Describingthe cultural capital Garrett learns in his home, Lareau cites the notionof ‘‘white-collar work skills,’’ including ‘‘how to set priorities, manage anitinerary, shake hands with strangers, and work on a team’’ (UC, 39). Because

31. While it is certainly true that multiple factors bear on the performances that children make —personality, gender, and so on — it is still important that we consider the patterns of performancesthat social class, as a significant element of habitus, has on cultivating various bodily techniques andperformances.


of their highly structured schedule, organized and facilitated largely by adultsin their lives, children of concerted cultivation learn ‘‘dispositions thathelp them navigate the institutional world’’ and the bodily performances(being physically aggressive in sporting events, keeping to a schedule, andparticipating in organized activities) that correspond with this orientation(UC, 39).

Looking at discipline within these homes offers another window intothe use of the body, or, in this case, the lack of action by the whole body.Because language use factors high among the social capital exchanged inthese homes, discipline between parents and children largely revolves aroundverbal sparring. Verbal arguments between parents and children and betweensiblings were common in these homes; yet, with the exception of the voicethat emanated from the body, there was a lack of corporeal engagementduring these episodes. Similarly, expressions of affection also relied heavilyon verbal exchanges and brief periods of touching between parents and chil-dren. Lareau documents that parents frequently told their children that theyloved them and would offer short hugs and kisses on the cheek during theseexpressions.

How ‘‘cultivated’’ children may use their bodies in schools emerges quiteclearly from these research findings. It is easy to imagine that because of theirextensive experience with adult-driven supervised activities, as well as theirrelative lack of regular decision making over how to spend their limited ‘‘free’’time, these children may have more practice in physically sitting or standing towait for directions before proceeding in a task. These children may be physicallycomfortable waiting for complete adult directions, and in school conditions(particularly with early learners), one can see how such waiting can be interpretedas obedient and well behaved.

Moreover, one can easily imagine that ‘‘cultivated’’ children may be far moreexperienced in using language — rather than their bodies — and expecting teacherintervention to work out problems in school, given the broad experience theirhome lives offer in this arena. Contemporary curricula related to positive listeningbehaviors suggest that children of concerted cultivation may be further aheadthan their working-class counterparts in terms of experience with these ‘‘rules.’’For instance, Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a broadlyused curriculum throughout U.S. schools. Endorsed by the U.S. Departmentof Education, this approach outlines prosocial listening behaviors for earlylearners:

1. Look at the speaker

2. Sit crisscross applesauce

3. Keep hands to yourself


4. Silence please while the teacher is talking32

While none of these ‘‘rules’’ is particularly bad, if we consider their collectivepower and thorough incorporation into the school day, it becomes clear that theirorganizing effect is enormous.

Theorizing the Body Under Conditions of Accomplishmentof Natural Growth

The orientation of constraint drives the consideration of the corporealperformance(s) of the child of accomplishment of natural growth. When one actsfrom a constrained position, what is the body doing? Lareau’s study suggests thataccomplishment of natural growth children spend more time at rest or moderatelyphysically active because they tend to watch more television and play more videogames when compared to their concerted cultivation peers. Consequently, onemight expect that the bodies of accomplishment of natural growth children wouldbe, at least at times, more sedentary, that there would be more time ‘‘hanging out’’rather than engaging in activities structured by adults. At the same time, childrenliving in accomplishment of natural growth homes used their own personalpower to organize their own games and played more freely in public spaces withneighborhood peers; they often performed self-designed dances in their homes foreach other. These activities did not inherently require the support of an adult todrive them to an activity or to coordinate the details, as was more true for childrenin concerted cultivation.

Discipline in these homes employed the body more often than in concertedcultivation homes, where, as noted earlier, there tended to be greater reliance onpurely verbal exchanges. The same was true for displays of affection, whichrelied far more on long hugs, physical rough-housing, and friendly physicalplay between siblings and parents and children. Tyrec Taylor, another AfricanAmerican fifth grader in Lareau’s study, seems to epitomize the physical resultsof the accomplishment of natural growth approach to discipline and affection.For example, Mrs. Taylor accounts for Tyrec’s recent bout of misbehavior byexplaining that ‘‘he has not had a beating recently’’ (UC, 71). Similarly, one nightwhen playfully talking about what Tyrec was watching on television, Mrs. Taylor‘‘grabs her son and hugs him from behind, rocks him back and forth for aboutthirty seconds and says, ‘Are you watching that foolishness?’’’ (UC, 72). Lareausuggests that these physical enactments of care and discipline were seen frequentlyin accomplishment of natural growth homes in the study.

In school, one can imagine that children raised with the logic of naturalgrowth may feel more constrained in their physicality, as their ability to makedecisions about and exercise control over their own actions comes into conflict

32. Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), ‘‘Good Listening Bodies’’ (2012). The guidelinesoutlined in this document are adapted from Lucy Hart Paulson and Richard van den Pol, Good TalkingWords: A Social Communication Skills Program for Preschool and Kindergarten Classes (Longmont,Colorado: Sopris West, 1998).


with the more conventional teacher-directed approach to movement. Additionally,because of their more extensive experience with making up their own games andentertainment, the notion of working to please an adult may be less motivatingthan that of working to please themselves. The ubiquitous ‘‘no touch’’ rule mayleave children from natural growth homes feeling that school is a rather sterileenvironment, particularly given the emphasis in schools on language use overphysical reinforcement. In other words, receiving a verbal compliment may feelless rewarding than a hug to a child from the logic of natural growth.

Moreover, one can wonder whether a child who is accustomed to making moredecisions over his or her body might be understood by teachers using a differentmetric for determining who is ‘‘listening’’ or ‘‘engaged.’’ In school, quiet bodiesare learning bodies. Bodies that move, that use their physical strength (for play orfighting), are not seen as making a valuable contribution to the main focus of theschool day.

In sum, it appears that the physical restraint and the verbal assertion that‘‘cultivated’’ children practice is more akin to the cultural capital of school thanthe physical assertion and verbal constraint enacted by the bodies of ‘‘natural’’children. Paradoxically, the independence and self-direction that ‘‘natural’’ bodiespossess is seen as antithetical to the school endeavor, particularly for early learners,where in other situations such values may have tremendous value.

From this theoretical analysis, it is clear that empirical evidence is essentialto fully understand how the embodied practices of social class operate in schools.Studying social class is tricky; sorting out social class from other central identitymarkers is difficult, and definitions of social class remain highly contested. Thisinitial analysis suggests, however, that because school is a highly structuredenvironment, particularly elementary school, it is reasonable to assume thatchildren from concerted cultivation environments have more practice at sittingstill at their desks, physically waiting for directions, and interacting with adultsin ways that appear to meet the expectations of middle- and upper-middle-classschool personnel. Working-class and poor children, by virtue of their experiencemaking decisions over their own corporeal performances, may have less practiceat sitting still, waiting for directions, and displaying the kind of body language thatcommunicates to school personnel what they interpret as respect and obedience.Some research in this area suggests that these bodily performances might accountfor the higher rates of disciplinary action and special education referrals amongworking-class children.33 These findings, along with complementary findings instudies of language differences among people of various social class backgrounds,

33. Karolyn Tyson, Integration Interrupted: Tracking, Black Students, and Acting White After Brown(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Anne Gregory, Russell J. Skiba, and Pedro A. Noguera,‘‘The Achievement Gap and the Discipline Gap: Two Sides of the Same Coin?’’ Educational Researcher39, no. 1 (2010): 59–68. See also Matthew Ladner and Christopher Hammons, ‘‘Special But Unequal:Race and Special Education,’’ in Rethinking Special Education for a New Century, ed. Chester E. Finn Jr.,Andrew J. Rotherham, and Charles R. Hokanson Jr. (Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Foundationand the Progressive Policy Institute, 2001).


suggest that the study of the corporeal enactments of social class offers animportant, yet complicated, window into the lived experiences of students inschools.

Summary: Where Do We Go from Here?

This initial theoretical consideration of the embodiment of social class hasbrought to light several important conditions for further inquiry. First, drawing oncorporeal realism, it is clear that exploring the impact of social institutions (suchas school) on the body has merit and is consistent with long-standing sociologicalpractice. Second, using Annette Lareau’s work highlights the deep influence thatsocial class status has on children. Combined, these studies suggest that, notunlike language differences studied by Basil Bernstein and Shirley Brice Heath,students’ corporeal performances (largely shaped by their social class status) areimportant factors influencing their experiences of school. Studies focused on thisissue could address the following questions: How do the bodily expectations ofschool overlap with the bodily lessons learned at home? What are the effects ofcorporeal lessons in school, such as extended seat time and keeping hands toone’s self, on children from different social class backgrounds? Such investigationscould prove useful in providing further insight into why children from middle- andupper-middle-class backgrounds continue to outperform students from working-class backgrounds in America’s public schools. Indeed, these types of questionsare being asked by educational researchers, but so far studies such as these do notdirectly take on the difficult project of understanding the role of social class statuson the production of these corporeal outcomes.34

Investigations that operationalize social class are difficult for many reasons,not the least of which is that the concept is not a unilaterally agreed upon topicin sociology.35 This foundational difficulty is made even more troubling whenone considers that those who study the body often describe their examinationsin frustrating terms. Shilling notes, ‘‘the body remains one of the most contestedconcepts in the social sciences.’’36 Theorists Bryan Turner and Judith Butler, wellknown for their contributions to the literature, each claim the illusory natureof the body.37 Adopting a corporeal realism approach can ease these troubles bypositioning such studies of the body within a critical phenomenological orientationtoward the notion of social class. A phenomenological view, by definition, focuses

34. For information on how the UK is collecting data on the social class divide in academic achievement,see Emma Perry and Becky Francis, The Social Class Gap for Educational Achievement: A Reviewof the Literature (2010), http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/367003/RSA-Social-Justice-paper.pdf.

35. See Kingston, The Classless Society; and Lareau, Unequal Childhoods.

36. Shilling, The Body in Culture, Technology, and Society, 6.

37. Ibid. Also see, for example, Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity(New York: Routledge, 1990); and Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘‘Sex’’(New York: Routledge, 1993).


on the lived experience of the individual and has historically been more concernedwith ‘‘the bodily basis of experience’’ versus the study of the experience on thebody.38 Indeed, Shilling suggests that corporeal realism preserves the benefits ofthe focus on lived experience without getting caught in this paradox.

Of particular value to the expectant researcher of the body is corporealrealism’s window into both the lived experience of the body of the individual(including his or her emotional responses to these experiences and the internalizednotions of identity that arise) and its attention to the institutional structures(in this case, home child-rearing patterns and school-based body pedagogies)that shape the conditions in which the body becomes material. Of essentialimportance here is that the agency of the actor is preserved while there isalso acknowledgment of how powerful institutional structures influence theindividual’s experience. Furthermore, this multipronged orientation avoids thedistracting dualisms commonly seen in sociological research, where an emphasison either focal point takes precedence over the other.

Given the difficulties surrounding examinations of the body, and thecontentious nature of social class in particular, it would be easy to resist the call forfurther inquiry into the influence of the corporeal on school experience. Thoroughunderstandings of the body, however, have the potential to provide invaluableinsights into the difficulties and successes students have in their attempt to beeducated in our nation’s public schools. These investigations promise to offereducators additional perspectives on the structures that shape their reactions tochildren’s backgrounds and opportunities for altering practices that unconsciouslyreproduce inequality in education.

38. Shilling, The Body in Culture, Technology, and Society, 5.

Documents

Bodies at Home and at School: Toward a Theory of Embodied Social Class Status