Bourdieu Lecture

Bourdieu Lecture 17/11/05

There is a kind of theme running though the ideas and philosophers that we have looked at so far – and that is a sort of overcoming of binary opposition.

The next theorist that we will look also tried to overcome some of the binary oppositions which he saw operative in social theory or sociology.

Pierre Bourdieu was born in the south of France in 1930.

As part of his military service Bourdieu had to teach in Algeria – it was there that – Bourdieu who was teaching philosophy previously - became interested in anthropology and sociology after some exposure to colonialism in Algeria.

The main thrust of Bourdieu’s work is a critique of the false oppositions that have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world.

Bourdieu is particularly keen to break down the opposition of subject and object – or objectivism/subjectivism .

As Bourdieu puts it: “the most steadfast (and, in my eyes, the most important) intention guiding my work has been to overcome the opposition between objectivism and subjectivism.”

This stance is presented in his early 1970’s essay: An Outline of a Theory of Practice.

In this essay Bourdieu outlines two, and ultimately three, levels of theoretical knowledge:

(quote 1aa)

First Level: Primary Experience (or the phenomenological level)

This level is known to all social researchers as the source of their basic descriptive data about the familiar, everyday world – either of their own society or of another.

Second Level: ‘Model’ or ‘Objectivist’

Here knowledge constructs the objective relations (e.g., economic or linguistic) which structure practice and representations of practice.

Boudieu’s theorizing is an attempt to overcome this opposition between subjective and objective knowledges.

Bourdieu introduces a third level of theoretical – kind of theoretical knowledge that focuses on the objective and structural knowledge but at the same time examines the practices of actors at the center of subjective theoretical knowledges.

Bourdieu’s uses some particular conceptual terms in his work to overcome this opposition between objectivism and subjectivism in theory. They are:

(quote 1a)

Habitus

Field


Bourdieu thinks that Durkheim (and his social facts), the structuralism of Saussure and Levi-Strauss, and the structuralism of Marxism.

(quote 1)

Objectivism

Durkheim

Saussure

Levi-Strauss

Marxism

Subjectivism

Phenomenology

Ethnomethodology

Symbolic Interactionism


Bourdieu critiqued both theoretical approaches

(quote 2)

Objectivism

Focus on the objective structures while ignoring the process of social construction by which actors perceive, think about, and construct these structures and then proceed to act on that basis.

In other words, objectivist theoretical approaches ignore agency and the agent.
Instead, Bourdieu tries to focus on structure without losing sight of the agent.


Subjectivism

Focuses on the way in which agents think about, account for, and represent the social world while ignoring the social structures in which these processes exist.

In other words, subjectivist theoretical approaches concentrate on agency while ignoring structure.

Instead, Bourdieu focuses on the dialectical relationship between objective structures and subjective phenomena.

(quote 3)

“On the one hand, the objective structures …. form the basis for … representations and constitute the structural constraints that bear upon interactions: but, on the other hand, these representations must also be taken into consideration particularly if one wants to account for the daily struggles, individual and collective, which purport to transform or to preserve these structures.” – Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Power.” in Sociological Theory 7:14-25

To overcome this objective-subjectivist problem – Bourdieu employs the concept of practice – this is seen as the outcome of the dialectical relationship between structure and agency.

Practices are not objectively determined nor are they the product of free-will.

Bourdieu labels his own theoretical orientation: constructivist structuralism.

Bourdieu follows a basic structuralist approach – but it is a different kind of structuralism than Saussure or Levi-Strauss or structural Marxism –in that while they focus on structure and language – Bourdieu argues that structures also exist in the social world.

(quote 4)

Constructivism - the view that our knowledge of the world is the product of social practices, or of interactions between social groups.

Structualism – any analysis that emphasizes structures and relations. It is the view that the social phenomena are not physical objects, but objects with meaning, and that their signification must therefore be the focus of analysis.

Bourdieu tries to bridge the gap between constructivism and structuralism – and it is generally agreed that he succeeds to some degree – he does lean more toward the structural side – it is for this reason that Bourdieu and Foucault are both categorized as poststructuralists.

Bourdieu’s constructivism is unlike the constructivism of – for example, phenomenologists and symbolic interactionists – in that Bourdieu ignores subjectivity and intentionality.

(quote 5)

Bourdieu does think that it important: to include the way in which people – on the basis of their position in the social space – perceive and construct the social world.

However: the construction that happens in the social space is constrained by structures.

We can describe what Bourdieu’s theoretical interest as: the relationship between social structures and mental structures.

Bourdieu theoretical work is the effort to bridge subjectivism and objectivism using the concepts of habitus and field.

While habitus exists in the mind of the social actors – fields exist outside their minds.

Habitus

Habitus is the concept for which Bourdieu is probably most famous for.

We are unconscious of habitus, yet it manifests itself in the day-to-day practices: the way we walk, talk, eat, or even blow our noses.

(quote 5a)

A specific habitus becomes clear when a range of things (occupation, education, income, artistic preferences, taste in food, etc) are shown, statistically, to correlate with each other. Thus, the professor of law will tend to have had a private school education, prefer J.S. Bach, have a high income, and prefer a simple, if elegant, diet of lean meats, fresh fruit and vegetables. This correlation is what Bourdieu says constitutes a specific (in this case, bourgeois) set of dispositions, or a habitus. A habitus is a set of dispositions common to a class.

(quote 6)

Habitus are the “mental, or cognitive structures” through which people deal with the social world. People have internalized schemes through which they perceive, understand, and appreciate, and evaluate the social world. It is through such schemes that people both produce their practices and perceive and evaluate them.

A habitus is acquired as a result of a long term occupation of a position within the social world.

We can think of habitus as internalized social structure.

We can think of habitus as both being produced and producing the social world.




(quote 7)

“[habitus is] the dialectic of the internalization of externality and the externalization of internality” – Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.

“[habitus is] the disposition of structured and structuring dispositions which is constituted by practice and constantly aimed at practical … functions.” - Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.

It is practice that mediates between habitus and the social world – it is through practice that habitus is created – and it is as a result of habitus that the social world is created.

While habitus constrains thought and choice of action – it does not determine them.

It is lack of determinism which makes Bourdieu other than strictly structualist.

Habitus “suggest” what people should think and what they should choose to do. The habitus provides principles by which people make choices and how they use those choices within their social worlds.

Field

Another important term for Bourdieu is “field”.

There are a number of ‘fields’ in the social world – some examples are: artistic, religious, economic.

(quote 7)

‘Field’ – is a network of relations among objective positions within it. These relations exist apart from individual consciousness and will. They are not interactions or intersubjective ties among individuals. The occupants of the positions may be either agents or institutions, and they are constrained by the structure of the field. Each field has its own specific logic and all generating among actors a belief about the things that are at stake in a field.

Bourdieu sees the field as an arena of struggle. Individuals and collectives see to safeguard or improve their position.

The field is a kind of competitive marketplace in which various kinds of capitial (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) are used.

Explain: cultural capital

The positions of various agents in the field are determined by the amount of relative weight of the capital they possess.

Bourdieu even uses military imagery to describe the field:


(quote 8)

[Field is] an arena of strategic emplacements, fortresses to be defended and captured in a field of struggles. – Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.

Bourdieu is concerned with the relationship between habitus and field – the field conditions the habitus – whereas the habitus makes up the field as something that is meaningful, that has sense and value and that is worth an investment of energy.

Applying Habitus and Field

it is important to understand that Bourdieu does not want to just develop an abstract theory and that the other half of his project is applying this theory to empirical concerns.

In his book Distinction:

High and Low culture.

Anthropology looks at both.

B. links tastes for refined objects with taste in basic food flavours.

Taste – helps to unify those with similar preferences – and to differentiate those with different tastes.

Though ‘taste’ people differentiate between objects and therefore classify themselves.

Two interrelated fields involved in ‘taste’:

Class relations and culture relations

These fields are played like a game.

However, social class profoundly effects one’s ability to play this game – the higher social classes are better able to have their tastes accepted and to oppose the tastes of the lower classes.

B. sees culture as a kind of marketplace or economy – where they utilize cultural capital rather than economic capital.

This capital is largely a result of people’s social class origins and their educational experience.

What they drink –
What newspaper they read –
What car they drive – Mercedes: gain Volkswagen: Loss

Changes in cultural products result in changes of taste – and visa a versa.

Field (cultural products) and habitus (taste) – it is a dialectical relationship where each conditions each other.

Changes in taste result from a struggle between opposing forces in both cultural (old fashion vs new fashion) and the class (dominant vs dominanted) arenas – however, B. says the main struggle is in the class arena and that the cultural struggle is secondary.

So a cultural struggle between artists and intellectuals may be a reflection of struggles going on between factions within the dominant class.

The important thing to see is that B. gives a lot of importance to class struggle – but does not reduce it to merely economic concerns – but sees class as defined by habitus as well.

In as sense B. work can be seen as a return to the Marxian concern between theory and practice.