HC3- habitus, field and capital Flashcards
Pierre Bourdieu
-Professor of sociology with a working-class background
-French thinker (not a ‘theorist’) politically engaged
-Philosophy for ‘every man’
two challenges
Challenge 1: distinction
Questions that come up with the work of Bourdieu:
- Why is our taste so predictable?
- Is it individuals or their social positions that decide upon these issues?
- How is distinction created and maintained?
- How is distinction related to space?
Challenge 2: social inequality
- To understand:
o Why social inequalities persist over time?
o Why inequalities are generally accepted by the lower classes (‘’symbolic violence’’; operation of forms of dominance high-class/low-class)
Habitus
-Habitus: ‘a system of practice-generating schemes which expresses systematically the necessity (structure) and freedom (agency) inherent in the collective conditions of life of a certain group of people’ (Bourdieu, 1992)
The characteristic way of thinking, feeling, acting and experiencing shared by members of a certain group of people (Inglis, ch. 10)
Capital
-> specific amount and type of capital:
- Economic capital: level of monetary resources a person has at their disposal. productive property (money and material capital that can be used to produce goods and services)
- Social capital: amount of resources a person has (networks, connections); amount of people and types of people. the amount of resources in terms of networks and relations
- Cultural capital: cultural resources a person possesses: ‘knowledge of legitimate cultiure’.
Amount of socially recognized prestige and amount of knowledge; partly embodied in the educational qualification
Field
- Society has a range of separate spheres where ‘particular sorts of games’ are played. These spheres are fields.
o There is no totalising & external structure of society
o Fields are highly relational, full of power relations and distinction - People have specific positions in particular fields (at the same time), in terms of habitus and capital
- Fields are sites of struggle where social agents strive for different forms of capital that gives them a position and a place in these social spheres.
Particular positions within fields are associated with particular amount of specific types of capital (relevant for that field). E.g. educational is centred around winning of educational capital (form of cultural capital).
Thus, amount of field-relevant capital a person possesses is basis for how successful a person will be. But not only about how much capital of each type, also whether the type of capital one has is appropriate to particular game being played within it.
- E.g. cultural capital more important in ‘field of cultural consumption’. If someone from lower class, who recent made lot of money, buys art, he’s seen to have no taste; domination higher class over lower class (putting lower down); mostly practical conscious.
Socialization processes
inculcation of the habitus into the individual (mental and bodily level).
Mind and body are shaped in ways of the group habitus (thinking and acting). Even the tiniest detail of an individual’s
behaviour (way they walk or talk) reflects habitus of the group (social class).
Generally speaking individuals aren’t fully aware that everything they do is expressive of habitus they have been socialized
into; habitus makes people see the world in common-sense ways (don’t allow actors to turn critical reflection upon habitus).
People just experience things ‘as they are’, without realizing that common-sense is result of habitus.
Habitus adjusts expectations to reality; e.g. idea of caviar at breakfast would never enter a very poor person’s head (outside of range of possible thoughts). People generally don’t reflect back on their habitus (seems natural to them). Only in contexts where habitus doesn’t work smoothly people become aware they have/are a habitus.
-If you’re in own class, you will not be aware of habitus (think and act are normal/natural). But when in other class, where people think, act, interact and talk different, person will realize he’s from other class. It’s only when customary activities (practices) seem to fail that person realizes to have a habitus at all (otherwise habitus generates practices without person realizing it.
Doxa
Common-sensical view of world is doxa: unexamined ways of acting that are at the root of each person’s (class-based) existence in the world
criticism Habitus
- Overstate power of habitus: social structures inculcate a class-based habitus into a person (through socialization) and all practices are simply functions of habitus -> structure determines action. Response: Habitus doesn’t determine practices; it has a creative side, allowing a person to make decisions about what to do. These are made in practical conscious. Habitus creates possibilities for action, but it always provides limited possibilities.
- Underemphasize ‘reflexivity’ habitus allow: people can be aware of habitus (and then change their practices so that they’re not prisoners of habitus).
Response: Habitus is invisible to most people even in ‘late-modernity’. Authors like Giddens overestimate reflexivity.
Habitus and socialization
o Primary socialisation: more or less your youth
o Secondary socialisation: the period after that
Habitus as structure and structuring
- It is a ‘structure’ as a system of disposition, which is structured by one’s past and present circumstances, such as family upbringing and educational experiences
- It is ‘structuring’ in that one’s habitus helps us to shape one’s present and future practices.
spatiality of concept of habitus
- Habitus cannot be equated with a particular space-> but space can reflect habitus
- Habitus predisposes particular spatial preferences
- Bourdieu emphasised social space
three states of cultural capital
o Embodied state: long lasting disposition in the mind or body (self-improvement)
o Objectified state: cultural goods (books, machines, instruments).
o Institutionalized state: (educational qualification)
(4rth) symbolic capital: more like a perception; seen as a legitimate quality of someone
summary of bordieux social theory
Combi of various theoretical positions (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, phenomenology).
Aims to identify, and demystify, forms of domination and symbolic violence, exercised by dominant over subordinate group.
Structure/agency
Structurationist position, with empirical focus on class-based social reproduction and competition.
Central concepts of habitus, practical consciousness, practices, capital, games and field.
Identity: class-based identities; subject to some alteration through engagements in different fields.
Modernity:
Structurally differentiated fields, centred around particular forms of capital, and organized to favour domination by upper classes through
game playing
bourdieux vs giddens
BORDIEUX MUCH MORE ON THE STRUCTURAL SIDE.GIDDENS STRESSES THE POSSIBILITY TO INTERVENE IN SITUATIONS.
2 paralellen tussen bourdieux and giddens
HABITUS IS THE PATTERNING, SO IT WHERE THE STRUCTURING TAKES PLACE. BUT ALSO WHERE AGENCY AND TRANSFORMATION TAKES PLACE. CREATES POSSIBILITIES, BUT IS ALSO LIMITING TO YOU= PARALLEL WITH GIDDENS
NOG EEN PARALEL: THEY SEEK AN ESCAPE ROUTE FURTHER THAN THE AGENCY AND STRUCTURE DIVIDE
