Chapter 6: Basil Bernstein: Social Divisions and Cultural Transmission

Basil Bernstein (1924–2000) was Karl Mannheim professor of the sociology of education at the London University Institute of Education, and Director of its Sociological Research Unit. Between the late 1950s and the early 1970s he produced strikingly original theory and research (though he was primarily a theorist) on the effect of social situation on language production and use, the restricted and elaborated codes. From the early 1970s he turned his attention as well to sociological analysis of the curriculum. Most of his work can be found in the four volumes of Class Codes and Control published between 1971 and 1990. Bernstein’s corpus of work was developed over a period of some forty years, since Volume I contains a paper from as early as 1958, and an additional monograph, Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity appeared in 1996.