SOCIAL REPRODUCTION

Social reproduction refers to the processes that ensure the self-perpetuation of a social structure over time, in rough analogy to biological reproduction for a population.

The idea of social reproduction has its origins in Karl Marx's analysis of capitalist society in Volume 1 of Capital. One of Marx's key sociological insights is that "every social process of production is at the same time a process of reproduction" (p. 71). Although his work is concerned specifically with economic processes, Marx discusses the subject in a broad social context, specifically the application of these processes to reproduction of social relations of capitalism. This idea was generalized by later Marxists to an argument that any mode of production also reproduces the conditions of its own existence. Further generalization extended use of the term beyond the ranks of Marxist writers. Although much of sociology might be said to be concerned with the ways in which social practices and institutions are self-perpetuating, the concept has tended to be used largely in relation to social inequalities. The fact that disadvantaged members of society engage in practices that contribute to the maintenance of a situation in which they are disadvantaged has often been seen as particularly problematic. For example, the revisionist socialists of the late nineteenth century, especially in Germany, argued that the high fertility of the proletariat–the producers of children–perpetuated their low-wage conditions; they advocated birth control (even a "birth strike") as a means of undermining capitalist exploitation.

The most extensive modern development of the concept of social reproduction has been by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002). Bourdieu associates social reproduction with his concept of habitus which he defines in The Logic of Practice (1990) as something that "ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action, tend to guarantee the correctness of practices and their constancy over time" (p. 54). His work on different forms of style of life and of "taste" suggests how this process might operate. Bourdieu was also particularly concerned with the way in which the educational system functions, contrary to much conventional thought, to inhibit, rather than encourage, individual social mobility.

Despite the qualifying term "tend to," the use of "guarantee" in the above quotation does leave Bourdieu open to the charge, by Richard Jenkins, for example, of offering a structuralist account in which individual motivation and actions are ignored. The latter debate points to the general problem with theories of social reproduction: that they appear to be deterministic in character and do not allow for the possibility of social change. In that respect such theories are clearly deficient. However, the idea of social reproduction is valuable in suggesting areas of empirical investigation and theoretical development. In particular, it offers a useful corrective to the approach typically adopted in studies of social mobility. The very term social mobility carries with it the idea of intergenerational movement and so necessarily seems to require a theory of such movement. Lack of movement tends to remain untheorized. Conversely, the term social reproduction carries with it the idea of stability and calls for a theory that explains lack of movement; its difficulty, however, lies in the development of a theory of change. Empirical investigation requires an integration of both approaches.

See also: Marx, Karl; Social Mobility.

bibliography

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984 [1979]. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

——. [1980] 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. 1977 [1970]. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage.

Jenkins, Richard. 1992. Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge.

Marx, Karl. 1976 [1886]. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.

Kenneth Prandy