Unit 7 - Bourdieu

Question 1

ideology of charisma

Answer 1

• with regard to cultural taste and art appreciation - those who have the taste for “legitimate” culture (the culture of those who are truly cultured) is simply a gift of nature - some people simply possess more aesthetic sophistication naturally
• directs the gaze towards the apparent producer and prevents us from asking who has created this “creator” and the magic power of transubstantiation with which the “creator” is endowed
• attempts to locate the creation of art in the genius of the artist himself
• the result of habitus and being trained up in a certain lifestyle/home - adds to your distinction

Question 2

aesthetizing attitude

Answer 2

• extending that detached sense of the autonomy of art (detached from what are perceived as common human enjoyments and functions) to the rest of life (e.g. how food is presented)
• “classifies the classifier”
• marks the person who sees life in this way as coming from a certain habitus
• mark of distinction - show yourself as someone who is able to navigate aesthetic waters
• appreciate beauty of art
• example: food - doesn’t need to be filling/nutritional, want it to look and taste amazing

Question 3

types of capital

Answer 3

• capital is the energy of social physics - the power to fulfill your self-interest in social systems, the engine that drives all social systems
• economic = capital as we tend to think of it - money, access to sources, financial clout
• symbolic = legitimation, with the establishment of author - has the power to render social arrangments “sacred” - whatever claims to be sacred must be hiding something
• cultural = “distinction” with a positioning of your cultural identity as marked by aesthetic and cultural superiority - has to do with asserting the legitimate superiority of your taste over over groups - all about your cultural position relative to other groups and their cultural tastes
• social = prestige, who you know and who knows you - known by more than you know = high social capital
• given access to through habitus

Question 4

habitus

Answer 4

• neither purely subjective or objective - it’s a mediating structure between the individual and their surroundings
• action and choice are filtered through habitus
• a shared set of dispositions and attitudes internalized through education and home life that link a social actor to a certain class
• class affects social action only when filtered through habitus
• habitus supplies one with various kinds of capital and marks one as being from a certain class - particularly cultural capital
• disposition - the posture you have as you carry yourself
• respect to art/aesthetics

Question 5

field

Answer 5

• insistence that social domination happened not only through economic means, but a variety of “fields” - areas or axes of struggle
• each of the field has specific, historically developed rules by which to play the game
• those who know the rules/have the resources to play by those rules rise to the top
• those who have access to the various capitals inherent in these fields are at an advantage socially, and they will reap greater rewards
• fields have rules called “homologies”
• the field is titled against those who are deprived in certain forms of capital

Question 6

doxa

Answer 6

• the common assumptions governing action in a specific field
• a set of unquestioned beliefs by which aspects of the world and its constituents (people, things, one’s own social situation and practices) are grasped as “natural”, taken for granted
• unquestioned truths
• opposite of opinion
• the rules of the game
• in every field there are certain rules (doxa) - aren’t fair to those without those