Posted by mjmacdonald
June 27th, 2011
In the discussion of Bourdieu in Chapter 3 we spent a long time on habitus. Habits acquired through repetition, practice, and imitation of role models do not become second nature quickly or through ‘willing it to be so.’ The processes of developing not only habits but this larger habitus is multi-layered and dynamic in its [...]
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Posted by jerilynsambrooke
June 27th, 2011
As we began thinking about the relationship of practice to theology, several participants in the seminar voiced their concern about the use of “priority” to speak about the importance of practice over cognitive rationality. This notion of priority has been refined in the past few days to the “irreducibility” of practice. As a seminar group, [...]
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Posted by Laurie Matthias
June 27th, 2011
Today we focused on Paul Griffiths’ The Vice of Curiosity. Drawing from Augustine, he defines curiosity as seeking knowledge in order to own, dominate, and control it. It’s associated with a restless insatiable, non-contemplative pursuit of what is trivial, forbidden, and flashy. In contrast, he suggests that we pursue studiousness, a participation in what is [...]
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Posted by James K.A. Smith
June 26th, 2011
Our seminar is in the thick of Pierre Bourdieu’s dense but provocative tome, The Logic of Practice. We are reading Bourdieu to help sketch how practice has an irreducible “sense” that cannot be articulated by deliberative “reason.” In other words, to put a twist on Pascal, practice has a “logic” of which logic knows nothing. [...]
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Posted by Ronald Feenstra
June 26th, 2011
This is a brief, selective overview of half of the seminar on “Reflective Pedagogy and Christian Practices.” The following are just some of the topics we have addressed during the first week of the two-week seminar: 1. What does the first class of a course communicate to students? We noted that the teacher can use [...]
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Posted by Phillip Luke Sinitiere
June 26th, 2011
This past week I prepared to send my oldest child off to summer camp. My wife and I packed his bags, sleeping gear, and wrote letters that he will receive each day. It not only brought back memories of summer camp as a kid, it also reminded me of my first Calvin Summer Seminar–which a colleague gleefully [...]
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Posted by Chad Lakies
June 25th, 2011
Modernist Christians have failed to change the world. They have simply lived out a particular habitus, what Pierre Bourdieu (in The Logic of Practice) defines as a set of dispositions which have shaped them (and continue to do so) in manners of which they are unaware. The critique of modernist Christian efforts to change the [...]
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Posted by Laurie Matthias
June 24th, 2011
Today I was privileged to listen to a master teacher unpack his pedagogical choices as he wrestled with ways to incorporate Christian practices in his German course without sacrificing curricular goals (such as learning German vocabulary and grammatical structure, for example). I was fascinated as David Smith shared how he had consider the ways in [...]
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Posted by Laurie Matthias
June 23rd, 2011
Today we discussed Peter McLaren’s Schooling as Ritual Performance. A 1986 study of a Catholic school in Canada serving a predominantly Portuguese immigrant population, it was an excellent reminder of how rituals and practices can powerfully communicate cultural values and shape identity. Resistance from students, both overt and covert, reminds us how often we as [...]
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Posted by Laurie Matthias
June 23rd, 2011
During yesterday’s sessions we entered into rich conversation about the premises of Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom. To have access to the author, to be able to ask him why he chose to write this book, what he was thinking about when he wrote certain sections, was a real privilege. I came away with some [...]
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