Participatory capital: Bourdieu and citizenship education in diverse school communities

A priority toward creating ‘active’ citizens has been a feature of curricula reforms in many income-rich nations in recent years. However, the normative, one-size-fits-all conceptions of citizenship often presented within such curricula obscure the significant differences in how some young people experience and express citizenship. This paper reports on research that explored the citizenship perceptions and practices of New Zealand social studies teachers and students from four diverse geographic and socio-economic school communities. Attention was drawn to the scale of their citizenship orientations and participation (local/global). Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptual triad and his species of capital in particular, the author posits that the differences observed between school communities can be usefully explained by a concept of participatory capital. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications for young people who fail to access the ‘symbolic’ global participatory capital associated with much contemporary citizenship education.