The 1970 moment on reproduction: Althusser and Bourdieu

This paper returns to the tentative theories of the social order’s reproduction proposed by Louis Althusser and Pierre Bourdieu/Jean-Claude Passeron in the 1970s. The paper “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA)” offered the sketch of a theory of the conditions of the capitalist society’s reproduction in which Althusser advanced the thesis of the ISA. In the system of the ISAs, Althusser highlighted the centrality of the educational ISA. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron provided, in the book Reproduction, in 1970, an alternative theory entirely focused on the educational system, but within a different political perspective, which can be called “critical republican”. The paper intends to assess the impact and the divergences of these two criticisms of the social order, finally ending up with a reflection on their persistence nowadays and on the way to update them.