UNDERSTANDING DISTANCE LEARNING CONTESTS IN PRISON SETTINGS THROUGH THE LENS OF BOURDIEU'S SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: VOICES FROM THE FIELD

The purpose of this study is to explore and critically analyze the contests faced by incarcerated students engaged in distance education, using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence as a theoretical lens. By drawing on accounts and experiences from participants within a Namibian prison setting, the study aims to uncover how institutional practices, cultural assumptions, and structural inequalities subtly reproduce educational disadvantage and reinforce marginalization. Data was collected using a tape recorder, and semi-structured interviews were recorded. Inmate students who were studying using e-learning were purposively selected as participants. The tape-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim by a professional transcriber who gave the transcripts to the researcher to interpret. The researcher employed an interpretive paradigm to analyze the transcribed information. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence describes the subtle, normalized processes by which systems of inequality in prison are sustained and misrecognized as natural. Symbolic violence is perpetuated not only through material deprivation but also through pedagogical and institutional practices that implicitly marginalize incarcerated students.