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Coffee House: Habitus and Performance Among Law Students

Turner, Sarah; Manderson, Desmond

Description

Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler, we develop a detailed ethnography of a social space in a major law school and explore its socialization of the students there. "Coffee House" is a weekly social event sponsored by Canadian law firms and offering free drink and food to the students present. We argue that this event and the actors involved profoundly change student identities and alter educational aspirations. Although the students themselves insist that "nothing is going...[Show more]

dc.contributor.authorTurner, Sarah
dc.contributor.authorManderson, Desmond
dc.date.accessioned2015-12-10T22:57:11Z
dc.identifier.issn0897-6546
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/60551
dc.description.abstractDrawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler, we develop a detailed ethnography of a social space in a major law school and explore its socialization of the students there. "Coffee House" is a weekly social event sponsored by Canadian law firms and offering free drink and food to the students present. We argue that this event and the actors involved profoundly change student identities and alter educational aspirations. Although the students themselves insist that "nothing is going on," our ethnography suggests that in "Coffee House" identity is developed through performances, and in the accumulation of symbolic capital, until ultimately students come to feel their future career path is not a matter of choice, but destiny. We explore the important work of Bourdieu through this setting, but ultimately we resist his determinism, and suggest instead that, following the work of Butler, identity is a more complicated and fluid dynamic between space, repetition, and performance. It appears that a personal unconscious transformation among law students attending Coffee House is underway; yet opportunities to change the meaning of this space and these performances remain.
dc.publisherUniversity of Chicago Press
dc.sourceLaw and Social Inquiry
dc.titleCoffee House: Habitus and Performance Among Law Students
dc.typeJournal article
local.description.notesImported from ARIES
local.identifier.citationvolume31
dc.date.issued2006
local.identifier.absfor180119 - Law and Society
local.identifier.ariespublicationu4046278xPUB547
local.type.statusPublished Version
local.contributor.affiliationManderson, Desmond, ANU College of Law, ANU
local.contributor.affiliationTurner, Sarah, McGill University
local.description.embargo2037-12-31
local.bibliographicCitation.issue3
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage649
local.bibliographicCitation.lastpage676
local.identifier.doi10.1111/j.1747-4469.2006.00025.x
local.identifier.absseo970118 - Expanding Knowledge in Law and Legal Studies
dc.date.updated2015-12-10T07:59:03Z
local.identifier.scopusID2-s2.0-33747882755
CollectionsANU Research Publications

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