Conference Program

The purpose of education is frequently presented in policy discourse as self-evident and technical: raising learning levels, enhancing human capital, ensuring inclusion. Yet to ask what education is for is a normative and political question about the forms of knowledge legitimised, capacities valued, and desired futures. Far from being settled, the purpose of education constitutes a field of struggle.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, doxa, and symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1977; 1991; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), this paper conceptualises educational purpose as a structured terrain in which multiple narratives coexist, yet are differentially institutionalised through classificatory regimes. Symbolic power operates through the naturalisation of these classifications, rendering certain purposes necessary and marginalising others.

Educational inequality, in this framing, is not only a matter of unequal resources but of symbolic stratification: some aspirations acquire institutional force, while others remain rhetorically affirmed yet structurally weak. The struggle over purpose therefore organises hierarchies of recognition, determining which capacities and futures are rendered legitimate.

The contemporary policy moment—particularly in the Global South contexts—is not characterised by a singular dominant doxa, but by what we term ‘structured hybridity’: the layering and partial incorporation of emerging narratives (well-being, holistic development, inclusion, cultural rootedness) within enduring developmentalist and technocratic architectures. Pluralism of purposes here does not imply equality. Coexistence occurs under asymmetrical conditions in which measurable, performance-oriented purposes are more readily convertible into standards, assessments, funding streams, and accountability mechanisms.

The argument is grounded in the India leg of a qualitative, participatory study examining how narratives about the purpose of education shape systems transformation and children’s opportunities to thrive. Our analysis of India’s National Education Policy 2020, alongside dialogic Exploration Circles with educational actors, reveals a ‘foundational–measurable–future-ready–cultural–inclusive’ architecture of purpose. While equity and well-being are prominently articulated, the policy’s operational levers—standards, assessments, and governance reforms—continue to privilege measurable and performance-oriented rationalities. This selective convertibility produces layered inequalities of recognition, instrumentality, and futurity. Emerging relational aims are incorporated, yet often subordinated to technocratic logics.

This hybridity is mirrored at the level of system actors who articulate economic mobility, cultural continuity, democratic participation, and human flourishing as simultaneous aspirations. Yet these purposes are differentially convertible into institutional instruments. As a result, thriving-oriented narratives frequently circulate as moral commitments without equivalent structural force.

The paper argues that the relationship between education and democracy cannot be understood solely through civic outcomes. Democracy is at stake in the struggle over whose definitions of educational purpose become authoritative, institutionalised, and materially consequential. By theorising structured hybridity, the paper refines analytical vocabularies for studying educational inequality beyond redistribution alone, foregrounding the role of symbolic power in organising plural purposes. Introducing thriving as a relational horizon, it expands imaginaries of democratic education toward dignity, belonging, care and collective flourishing. Rather than prescribing a singular purpose, the paper examines how plural purposes are negotiated within unequal symbolic terrains—and with what consequences for every child’s opportunity to thrive.