Social conditioners, logic of practices and constitutive elements of the academic-scientific habitus of the postgraduate student

Abstract

The article tries to understand the the performance of the graduate student, focusing on the development of constituent elements of the academic-scientific habitus. The research presented qualitative-quantitative approach and was carried out in two public universities. The participants interviewed in the research answered an online questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The study is based on Bourdieu. The concepts of scientific field, habitus and cultural capital elaborated by the author were used. Elements of the cultural and social origin of the graduate student are evidenced in their school trajectories, actions, strategies and hierarchical positions established in the field of post-graduation. The conception of education as a possibility of social ascension and maintenance is present in the ideals of their families. Students belonging to the culturally underprivileged classes struggled to fit to the dominants capital cultural and school. Students who have social privileges use the cultural capital incorporated by their families as a strategy for maintenance in the field. The results indicate the construction of a new cultural configuration in the university context in which the process of student habitus construction is mediated by the multiple social and institutional relations established in the academic-scientific field, thus bringing implications to the students' socialization.