Languages of Legitimation : the structuring signi cance for intellectual elds of strategic knowledge claims

Beginning from the argument that the sociology of educational knowledge remains a sociology without a theory of knowledge, this paper illustrates the signiŽcance of the structuring of knowledge for the development of intellectual Želds through a study of cultural studies in British higher education. The paper presents a means of bridging the divide between analyses of ‘relations to’ and ‘relations within’ education (Basil Bernstein) by conceiving educational knowledge as legitimation, i.e. as both positioned strategies within a Želd of struggles and potentially legitimate truth claims. First, the institutional trajectory of and claims made for cultural studies by its proponents are outlined. Analysis of the underlying principles of this language of legitimation is developed into a generative conceptualisation of modes of legitimation, and cultural studies is deŽned as a knower mode, where knowledge is reduced to the knower and epistemology replaced by sociology. Using this framework, cultural studies is then analysed in terms of: (i) relations to its institutional trajectory (developing Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘Želd’ approach); and (ii) relations within its mode of legitimation, focusing on their ramiŽcations for the Želd’s structure. It is argued that legitimation embraces the insights of both approaches, thereby contributing to a cumulative and epistemological sociology of educational knowledge. The medium is also a message