Globalizing Policy Sociology in Education: Working with Bourdieu

The paper uses Bourdieu to develop theorising about policy processes in education and to extend the policy cycle approach in a time of globalisation. Use is made of Bourdieu’s concept of social field and the argument is sustained that in the context of globalisation, the field of educational policy has reduced autonomy, with enhanced cross-field effects in educational policy production, particularly from the fields of the economy and journalism. Given the social rather than geographical character of Bourdieu’s concept of social fields, it is also argued that the concept can be, and indeed has to be, stretched beyond the nation to take account of the emergent global policy field in education. Utilising Bourdieu’s late work on the globalisation of the economy through neo-liberal politics, we argue that a non-reified account of the emergent global educational policy field can be provided