Culture and Power

David Swartz - Culture and Power: The Sociology Of Pierre Bordieu. The University of Chicago Press, 1997. 340 lk

Selle asemel, et pureda pähklit, mida katkend Bourdieu enda tekstist kujutas, võtsin seminariküsimustele vastamiseks ette raamatu Bourdieu kohta ja kirjutasin lugemise käigus ümber enda jaoks kõige mõistlikumad vastused. Kuna need katkendid aitasid mul seminaris küsimustele vastata, on neil lisatähendus seoste kujul, mis said kantud samadele katkenditele paberkandjal. See on selline raamat, millest vähemalt need katkendid tuleks üle lugeda ja läbi analüüsida siis, kui olen Durkenheimi ja Weberiga paremamat tutvust teinud.
Seniks jätan siia need abistavad katkendid

Finally, one can observe Bourdieu adopting Bachelard's "applied rationalism" to argue for a social science situated between two epistemological extremes: idealism and realism. Bourdieu adopts a similar cognitive strategy to Bachelard's in an effort to construct an epistemological consciousness for the social sciences that transcends but incorporates within a broader framework the partial views of what he calls "subjectivism" and "objectivism". By subjectivism, Bourdieu means all those forms of knowledge that focus on individual or intersubjective consciousness and interactions. By objectivism he means all those forms of knowledge that focus on the statistical regularities of human conduct. Both his key concepts, habitus and field display a similar movement of thought. Habitus calls for moving to a conception of action and structure that breaks with and the transcends the traditional dichotomies of subjectivism and objectivism. Field follows a similar movement by situating individuals, groups, and institutions within a broader matrix of structuring relations.

From this initial research experience Bourdieu developed a more formalized conceptual reflection on the relations between internalized dispositions and objective structures. For him, a proper account of practices will require a conteptual language that calls attention to the complex interactions between internalized dispositions and objective structures. Actions will be theorized as a culturally mediated response to structural constraints and change. This problem became formalized in his key concept, habitus.

For transcending the subjective/objective dichotomy, Bourdieu proposes a two-step model of epistemological reflection that integrates subjectivist and objectivist forms of knowledge into a more comprehensive, third form of knowledge which he calls a "general science of practices". The first calls for breaking with subjectivist knowledge of social practices and the second for breaking with objectivist explanation.

As an alternative, Bourdieu advocates a "relational" or "structuralist" mode of thinking, which he identifies as fundamental to all scientific thought. This approach to the study of social life "identifies the real not with sunstances but with relationships". These are "invisible relationships" to the uninitiated eye, "becvause they are obscured by the realities of ordinary sense-experience". They must be construed by science as "a space of positions external to one another and defined by their relative distance to one another".

In spite of its autonomy, the realm of culture remains subordinate to the economy. Bordieu considers that "economic capital is at the root of all the other types of capital," such as cultural capital, social capital, and symbolic capital, and that these are in fact "transformed, disguised forms of economic capital." It is after all economic capital that makes possible the investment in cultural capital. Economic structures shape decisively cultural arenas though Bourdieu seldom sees that causal connection as direct.

The image of cultural capitalist is perhaps fitting for certain professions in the media, the arts, and academe, where individuals with valued cultural resources are able to convert them into economic rewards.

How Bourdieu thinks of symbolic power relates to how he conceptualizes all symbolic systems, whether they be art, religion, science, or language itself. In a sweeping synthesis of several different theoretical traditions, Bourdieu argues that symbolic systems simultaneously perform three interrelated but distinct functions: cognition, communication, and social differentiation.

Structuralist linguistics and semiology focus on the analogical transformation and permutation through which fundamental cultural polarities find expression across various symbolic systems. This type of analysis draws attention to the internal organisation of conceptual systems but leaves unattended the issue of the source of the sign systems. However, following Durkenheim, Bourdieu stresses the connection between social and cognitive structures. He writes that "the cognitive structures which social agents implement in their practical knowledge of the social world are internalized, 'embodied' social structures". Social structures become internalized into the cognitive structures of individuals and groups who then unwittingly reproduce the social order by classifying the social world with the same categories with which it classifies them.

For Bourdieu, symbolic power resides not in the force of ideas but in their relation to social structure. Symbolic power "is defined in and by a determinate relationship between those who excercise this power and those who undergo it - that is to say, in the very structure of the field in which belief is produced and reproduced".

The third way that Bourdieu distinguishes himself from Marxism is by stressing the specific contributions that "representations of legitimacy make to the exercise and perpetuation of power". He emphasizes that in almost all instances the exercise of power requires some form of justification. It is the power of domination through legitimation that primarily concerns Bourdieu, who maintains that it is the cement of class relations. This is of course the role that Marx assigns to ideology, and Bourdieu affirms this political function of symbolic systems. But Bourdieu stresses the active role played by taken-for-granted assumptions and practices in the constitution and maintenance of power relations. If his theory of practices extends the idea of interest to culture, then his theory of symbolic power extends culture to the realm of interest with the claim that all forms of power require legitimation.

Over time, Bourdieu's concept of habitus evolved from a normative and cognitive emphasis to a more dispositional and practical understanding of action. This shift in emphasis toward the dispositional and practical character of human conduct can be seen in the evolution of his conceptual terminology. An earlier term ethic gives way to ethos, which eventually becomes absorbed by habitus. The more recent language of "disposition" suggests a shift from a linguistic analogy to a perspective centered on socialization and body language.

Bourdieu uses his concept of habitus to make conceptually appealing transitions from micro- to macro-levels of analysis and to generalize through different domains of human activity. Its originality is to suggest that there may be an underlying connection or common imprint across a broad sweep of different types of behaviour, including motor, cognitive, emotional, or moral behaviour. Examples of habitus at work range from "the most automatic gestures of the apparently most insignificant techniques of the body" to very abstract conceptualizations. But this very appealing conceptual versatility sometimes renders ambiguous just what the concept actually designates empirically.

[(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice.

In light of Bourdieu's meta-sociological considerations, what alternative conception of social class does he offer? How does Bourdieu construct his "theoretical" classes? Like both Marx and Weber, Bourdieu thinks of social classes in terms of power and priviledge. But as Brubaker perceptively points out, Bourdieu's concept of class differs from that of both Marx and Weber. Though an affirmed materialist, Bourdieu does not define social class primarily in terms of location in the social relations of production. Nor does his social class represent Weber's "market situation." His constructed classes are defined in terms of "similar positions in social space" that provide "similar conditions of existing and conditioning" and therefore create "similar dispositions" which in turn generate "similar practices". Classes are sets of "biological individuals having the same habitus". In other words, he defines social classes as any grouping of individuals sharing similar conditions of existing and their corresponding sets of dispositions. He also assimilates the idea of social classes with the symbolic and social classification struggle for the "monopoly of the legitimate representation of the social world".