Relational sociology was conceived by theorists frustrated by what they viewed as an incomplete accounting of social reality. Torn between notions of structural rigidity, on the one hand, and rational choice individualism, on the other, relational sociologists have sought new units of analysis. Social reality, they have argued, is manufactured…

This article elaborates the relational ontology in an ethnographic study. The aim is to seek relational construction of preschool practice and how children's positions are constructed in it. The study is based on the understanding that ethnography and relational sociology share the idea that society emerges through repeated relations. The…

The purpose of career guidance includes the support of citizens' agency. In this article, we develop a framework for analysing the internal structure of agency within career guidance theory. This framework is inspired by relational sociology. The approach is used in an analysis of two contemporary career guidance theories: the systems theory…

Teachers' agency has recently been vastly studied from a sociocultural perspective, emphasising that teachers' action is shaped by the structures within which teachers work. However, this study provides a different perspective, introducing relational sociology to the research on teachers' agency. Here, agency is seen as embedded in…

The purpose of this scholarly essay is to offer a number of logics of academic arguments as follows: leadership as contested/seductive theories, leadership as an organizing activity, and leadership as praxis. Each academic argument presents its own theoretical, communicative and practical challenges, often necessitating a beginning again in search…

In this paper, we engage with Chinese diasporas research through recourse to Bourdieu's relational, reflexive sociology. We start with the historical and recent developments of Chinese diasporas research and point out the potential of using Bourdieu to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of this research. While we see a steady stream of…

This dissertation examines the role and influence of state, federal, and institutional policies in the experiences of developmental students and instructors enrolled in, or teaching at, community colleges. Through the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu's relational sociology and Field Theory, I organized and examined narratives and…

Bourdieu's version of field theory has had an impressive impact on the ways that sociologists of education conceptualize educational practices. These accounts tend to focus on the varying levels of ontological complicity established between students' cultural dispositions and educational institutions. In this paper, the wisdom of these…

The narrative of the "skills gap," or the notion that the United States economy suffers because employers are not able to find job applicants with workplace-ready skills (e.g., American Society for Training and Development 2012), has become an influential rallying cry in higher education funding circles in recent years. It is with these…

This paper reports on research into the ways that schools engage in university application processes. Questionnaire and interview data were collected from 1400 Year 13 students from 18 independent and state schools in England and 15 in-depth interviews were carried out with school teacher higher education (HE) advisors. The analysis compares…

Despite pledges to increase student body diversity, low-income students and Black, Latinx, and Native American students remain grossly underrepresented at elite colleges. To date, most studies exploring stratification in college enrollment patterns have looked at this phenomenon from the student or organizational perspective--examining either…

In this response to Konstantinos Alexakos, Jayson K. Jones, and Victor H. Rodriguez, I will focus primarily on the importance of relationality for the development of a science learner identity. Along the way I will review (1) The cultural dynamics involved with the formation and sustenance of relationships in social life; (2) The methodological…

The concept of field forms the centre of Pierre Bourdieu's relational sociology and the notion of "autonomy" is its keystone. This article explores the usefulness of these underexamined concepts for studying policy in higher education. It begins by showing how Bourdieu's "field" approach enables higher education to be examined…