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P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Outline
1. Introduction
2. Bourdieu”s intellectual traditions
3. Bourdieu’s meta-theory of social life
4. The key concepts: habitus, position, field, capital, class
5. The contributions to sociology of education
6. The contributions to class studies
7. The insights on the role of culture in social life
8. Summary and conclusion
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
1. Introduction
• Bourdieu’s life and times (1930-2001): individuals,
generations, students’ movements, development of
sociology, emergence of cultural sociology, etc.
• B the academic and B the polemicist
• From ground-breaking works to teaching Sociology
• Reading B from different fields of enquiry to reading B
the Bourdieu way (thinking with B against B) or ‘Reading B,
Using B’
• The layout of our discussion
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
2. B’s intellectual traditions
a. Structuralism and Existentialism (philosophy,
epistemology)
• objectivism (universal patterns or structures) vs.
subjectivism (unconditional and unconditioned
freedom of the subject; binary oppositions in the
intellectual field in French society in B’s formative
years
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
• B as attempting to transcend that opposition; his exercise is
like incorporating the traditions into his sociological habitus,
and impose a conscious and critical reworking on these
internalized and institutionalized dispositions (Brubaker); in
other words, like any social practice, the practice of sociology
also has its inherent dispositions
b.
Ethnology and ethnography: B’s fieldwork experience
• ethnology is more about the Culture of a People, whereas
ethnography is more about the study of patterns of behaviour
and attitudes of a population; 民族學 vs.民族誌 ; one is more
anthropology, the other more sociology; one is more a
discipline, the other more a methodology
• B’s study of the Algerians in the late 1950s: more an
ethnology than an ethnography; but instead of a unified
Culture characterizing the Algerians, he found diverse cultures,
as distinct groups in the society think of themselves in relation
to other groups; a plurality of culture, of culture-staking groups
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
• B’s interest then is more about the displacement of the
traditional cultures of the Algerian tribes in the face of the
onslaught of modern culture; he made references, in a
Durkheimian fashion, to collective and communal
sentiments characteristic of a traditional society, and he is
interested in the consequences of the uprooting of that
‘harmonious’ and ‘taken-for-granted’ culture (which, unlike
Durkheim’s collective conscience, is embodied in the
individuals)
• While his ethnology brought him close to the tradition of
structuralist anthropology, he was not willing to see the
individuals as governed then by one set of values/culture,
and now, by another; for him, there are traditional values
embedded in new behavioiur; already, B emphasized the
contingent, open-ended but still overall-structured side of
social actions (habitus as inherited dispositions; as the
past in the present)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
• Also, unlike the anthropological approach, B is against the use
of ‘role’ as a set of cultural representations; it is too static
• B agrees that culture is a map where we find (locate and chart)
the routes of behaviour; but he also emphasizes the importance
of practical knowledge: it is only through practical knowledge –
like actual driving --- that we know the routes, as if the map has
now become part of our body (the place/road as in front of us,
left, right, behind us, etc.) (Outline)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
c. B as responding to the classical masters: B as marrying
Marx and Durkheim? B as indebted to Weber for the
substance of his theory? (B’s as inhabiting in the practices of
the masters?)
•
B’s question and approach is this: how do we or how should
we learn from the masters? Do we learn from them a body of
concepts, ideas and arguments? Or do we learn from them a
certain intellectual disposition? In other words, we could see
the past masters as craftsmen, who made something new out
of the materials (philosophy, economics, etc.) available to
them; we learn from them by watching them in action/practice,
and what we learn is more in terms of intellectual orientations
or dispositions: visions of the social world are framed (what
questions to ask? What aspects to attend to? What are the
basic units for meaningful analysis? Etc.)
•
B’s sociology is thus best presented not in terms of (a system
of) concrete concepts, propositions, etc., but as a distinctive
posture, ‘a theoretical stance’ (Brubaker), as nurturing a
certain way of looking at the world
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
3. B’s meta-theory of social life (or how do we
conceptualize social action: B as inheriting Weber
and reworking on the materials?)
a. The idea of social life as game: game implies
practice, mutual orientation, strategy and tactics,
and, of course, rules (rules of the game, and what is
at stake, e.g., is it about losing/gaining money,
status, face, honour? what are the rules involved?)
 from this initial conception of social action/practice and
social life, we could see B’s endeavours as – in one
respect -- about game, exchange and cultural meanings
(symbolic games) in an unequal world (Examples:
Chinese old saying and proverbs on reciprocity)
 from these exchanges, one could derive the logic of
practices (in this case, the logic of reciprocity/gift
exchange), but what drives this logic is not rules, and not
culture as such
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 if the exchange game is about honour, then B is arguing that
what is involved here is neither simple communicative action (tit
for tat, taking up invitation, returning favours, etc.) nor ritual
(where the rule of reciprocity or equal honour dominates and
infuses social actions)
 it is not rules that is the driving force of these exchanges; it is
a sense of honour, which is a cultivated disposition, ingrained
from early childhood, and inscribed in our thought schemas and
bodily postures
 in actualizing this sense of honour, one does not act
automatically, ritualistically or unthinkingly; instead, there are
strategies and tactics (e.g., if one wants to terminate the
exchange, one immediately returns the gift in the same amount;
or if one wants to shame the other party, one gives out a gift so
great that the other party could not possibly reciprocate); one
often plays with time; there is thus relative uncertainty and
unpredictability ----- this leads to B’s emphasis on practical
knowledge (social agents as virtuoso) and sense of the game
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 For B, rules (and norms) are like musical notes on a
score sheet; it is the dispositions that the player bring to
them that determines how – and how well -- he plays it.
• The above is to look at B’s construction from the viewpoint of
the player/actor/agent; in his construction, B is also characterizing
his own position in understanding/knowledge, in relation to two
other modes of understanding
 the ethnomethodological mode, which focuses on
subjectivity, on lived experience; but it could not discover the
conditions that make the lived experience possible
 the objectivist knowledge mode: points to objective
conditions, but misses the temporal character of human
behaviour (witness gift/exchange example); it ignores
‘misfiring’, ‘non-replies’ (could be intended), mistaken
intentions, etc.; neglects that social practices are always
tentative, open-ended and strategic
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 B’s own theory of practice: from the sin of omission in the
objectivist mode, B derived the idea that social actions/practices
are like symbolic gymnastics (it takes training, it takes
observance of the rules of the game, but it also takes something
more); there is also an ineffable character of social practices (like
listening to music, there are bodily movements and corporeal
effects)
 all this is outside the purview of rules, roles and objective
conditions (all the stock-in-trade of sociology)
 Implications I: in methodology (broad sense), one has to
execute a double break: break from native experience and native
explanations (we cannot take the objects’ accounts on their face
value); break from our own presuppositions and categories
 the break from objective/objectivist mode is important, for the
latter sees or constitutes practices as an object, as an
accomplished result; it does not see the generative grammar of
the practices; objective knowledge does not examine its own
conditions of understanding
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 That’s why B wanted to provide a theory of theory, a theory
of (theoretical) practice; by this, one could be more aware of
the principles we build into our relation with the object
 the example of gift exchange: it shows the generative
scheme in social practices; it shows how rules become part of
the body of dispositions; it shows what observer and agent
have in common, viz. the unknowing, ‘misfiring’, nature of
interactions
 Implications II: in terms of substance, B constructed quite a
unique language for studying social life; images and analogies
we could associate with social practices, such as style, art of
living, manners, strategic, playful, tempo and time, virtuoso,
performance
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
b. From game to structure
•
A schematics of B’s construction of a (meta) theory of social life
Socialization
Reproduction
System
Group
Fields/Capital
Stratification
Role
Doxa
Institutions
Individual
Game
Others
INDIVIDUAL --------------------------------------- SOCIETY
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 Games (from gift exchange to relations at work to
impersonal relations in the city) are the living tissues;
further up, we find the organs (structure and functions)
 At the basic level, we saw how B conceptualized
social life and social practices; the idea of dispositions
(as thought schema, as set of mental habits and bodily
feelings) is already there
 Doxa is, from the individual side, the taken-forgranted, preconscious understanding of the world and
our place in it; it is the way things are, though it is a
socially produced understanding, and it varies from
culture to culture, from field to field (Calhoun); it is a
pre-conscious understanding of role; from the society
side, doxa is encapsulated in institutions, which define
roles; but instead of separating individual from society,
role from institutions, B used doxa to refer to the
meeting of the two
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 Doxa is something more: first, by capturing the
society-in-individual, B highlights the symbolic control
of society over the individual; in any field, doxa
requires the individual to adhere to its way of working
(effective social being requires this much) (e.g. HK
Dream in the field of social mobility is about the belief
that one could leave behind one’s humble
background by one’s efforts; this could be a partial,
distorted understanding, but as doxa, it nevertheless
helps one to go on his everyday business with
motivation and certain effectiveness; doxa is thus
different from ideology)
 Second, when one adheres to the way of working
of a field, things are not equal; some benefit more
from this than others; thus middle class children
imbued with the HK Dream doxa could actually do
better than normal, while working class children may
only get disillusioned eventually
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 At the level of group and group formation, B constructed
alternative units/concepts to class, stratum, etc.: field and
capital
 Fields (to be tackled more systematically later) are distinct
domains with its own logic (doxa), types of resources (capital),
standards of evaluation, and practices in them are coordinated;
individuals and groups enter, inhabit and participate in these
fields by position-taking; their positions are related to one
another often in a hierarchy
 Artistic production, scientific activities, corporations are
possible fields; a field is not self-evident, pre-existing; it is
constructed (just as ‘ideal type’ is a construction in Weber) by
our conceptual interest
 Fields are thus more abstract and amorphous than class,
strata, etc.; but they are also more dynamic in that fields are
related to one another (through conversion of capital), and
individuals/groups’ position-taking in the field (space) becomes
an important issue (‘class’ often forgets the individual)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 At the level of integration (system), and reproduction
(socialization), B made two important observations:
First, society is regulated of course by rules, but not by
express regulation; there is no (and no need for) constant
institutionalized call to order: habitus and doxa have done
most of the work already; individuals’ habitus as inherited
dispositions (socialization) set to work in new, changing
circumstances
Second, more specifically, the system is integrated and
reproduced through the political function of domination in
and through performances of the communicative actions
(Outline, p.14)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Example: the Chinese Confucian gentlemen vs. the small
people (君子不與小人爭; 君子動口小人動手)
The classifying practices are attached with cultural
meanings; they point to or invoke differences which lead to
a series of interconnected characteristics: behavioural,
dispositional, and sense of worthiness; in other words,
judgmental
For B, this is domination in and through such classifying
practices; culture is such a game of making
distinctions/differences, and culture is also the resources
used in this game; this game is not neutral, harmless, or
equal to all
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
c. The role of self-conscious agents in this
construction: from the side of the individual, B sees
the individual as experiencing social structure in
action/practice; in these experiences, the individual
develops his ‘tool-kit’, which contains the previous
encounters/experiences; ‘tool-kit’ as both structure
and experience combined; in using/selecting from
the tool-kit, one is also adapting, adjusting,
transforming
d. The role of structure: from the side of structure, the
influence or effects of structure are only
activated/translated by the individuals
e. This is how B approaches the binary opposition
between individual – society, between structure –
agent, between free agent – mechanical structure
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
4. Key Concepts (bearing the earlier point about ‘Reading B, Using B’)
a. Habitus
• Dispositions (habitus 1), and dispositions to regulate products of
dispositions (habitus 2)
• Dispositions vs. rules, interests and pure subjectivity: unlike the
others, habitus is about continuous, piecemeal, adaptive
manouverings in social actions (new issues, new environment…)
• Dispositions which are subconscious, which could not bear
conscious and systematic articulation (no, and no need for, ‘What do
you mean?’)
• Dispositions which are internalized and institutionalized, that make
possible regulated improvisations (functions as a matrix of
perceptions, appreciations and actions)
• Habitus is thus practical mastery of the schemes of perception and
thought, it ‘in no way implies symbolic mastery’
• Habitus is thus durable and transposable dispositions; as cognitive
and motivating structures
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Habitus, cont’d
• In the world of habitus, it is practice and the immediacy and
intelligibility of practices that concern B
• habitus is shaped by the structure, and regulates the practice; it
is thus both objective and subjective at once
• Habitus as dispositions has its formative period (e.g., family
and childhood as the most dominant part of the past which
survives in the present); habitus as yesterday-in-today
• Thus, to say class (as structure) determines behaviour is only a
short-hand explanation; what is required is to see how the
structure is translated and mediated through individual’s actual
dispositions and practices (example: propensity for children of
lower-class background to abandon studies increases as
opportunity for higher education decreases: their habitus is such
that ‘those things are just not for us working class kids’, or ‘they
speak a different language, and why should we bother’
• The self-imposed (and not always consciously) brake on
ambition thus helps to reproduce inequality in the society
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Example: Structure – Habitus – Practice
B’s study of the Kabylia tribes in Algeria:
Structure: house (physical); M-F (sexual difference:
social)------all these have structures, i.e., certain
distinctions (and differences invoked), e.g., left –
right, external – internal, ability to impregnate – ability
to be impregnated, etc.
By observing how children roam around the house,
relate to mother and father, etc., B found these
activities as ‘structural exercises’ (some kind of
apprenticeship but not limited to copying of
practices), by which habitus as durable dispositions
is created, that orients the children in particular ways,
e.g., men talk and walk in certain ways, men are
responsible for certain affairs, women do such things
differently, etc.
The practices that result in these settings thus
partake of the symbolic meanings; the latter are thus
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Through habitus, the structure acts as structuring
structures; the structure finds a corresponding
structure in the mind (moral, cultural, ethical, etc.); in
turn, habitus becomes a structured structure
Habitus as different from rule, and different from
values (collective conscience in the latter assures
conformity and order, but for B, these things need
to be renewed, and also, values speak only to the
mind, but habitus also has a corporeal side (e.g.,
behaviour, deportment, like dancing)
By seeing habitus as that sphere/structure which
lies behind rule and norm, B could then see these
dispositions as enabling us to judge, to conceive,
to classify, to relate or distance ourselves; it is the
sphere which guides our cultural choice; it has
elective affinity with certain cultural practices and
performances; but this relation does not suggest
mechanistic or finalized determination;
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
b. Field
• a domain, containing some invariable characteristics, thus like
system, in a way;
• these invariable characteristics determine the logic of the
practices in that field;
• each field is relatively autonomous from other fields; a field is not
one with fixed and easily-drawn boundaries; instead of being a
physical or geographical phenomenon, a field is more like a field of
forces
• within each field, there are its distinct resources and valued
capital;
• capital and resources could be converted from one field to
another, but there is no fixed rate to the conversion;
• within each field, people could or would actively engage in
position-taking games, and doing so, generate situations;
• habitus and capital define the trump cards that the individual
could deploy in the field;
• the field is thus like a game, a site with struggle and strategy;
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
• in each field, there are dominant types of capital, and there
are things that are at stake
• in each field, there are perceptions/conceptions of the
social world (representations) as a hierarchy; there are also
representations of the hierarchical relations of this field with
other fields
• from the viewpoint of the individual, one could in one’s lifespan go through various fields; from the viewpoint of the
group, each field contains interactions of groups which are
empowered/constrained by their possession of the capitals
distinctive to that field
• finally, a field could be seen as consisting of both positions
and situations; situations are more about the given
characteristics (e.g., a peasant as having his material life
closely connected to the soil, and with that bondage to the
soil, he may develop certain religious orientations); positions
are more about the relations that connect one
individual/group to another (thus, peasant as different
from/in relation to city dweller)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Field, cont’d
• field is thus a unit of analysis, not taken superficially or
conventionally from existing approaches, e.g., society,
economy, or group, class, etc.
• it is a unit of analysis bound together by a logic (or some
general determining mechanism), and for B, this logic is the
logic of capital
• people in any field compete, struggle and strategize for
capital (and they would use their capital for this purpose
too); and for that particular field, there are distinctive
capitals at stake; there are, in other words, distinctive
interests, power and conflicts involved
• individuals in any field have intrinsic properties (e.g.,
belonging to a certain class, or having certain occupations),
but they also occupy positions in that field, and these
positions also have properties (how these positions relate to
other positions, how these positions relate to the actual
distribution of positions in that field, etc.)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Field, concluded
• thus, for B, field is like a social microcosm, within
which we find practices heavily bound up with
habitus and capital
• artistic production is a field, so is scientific
activities; high fashion is a field, so is the making of
popular movies (with the production of art movies as
a related field)
• if habitus helps us to see the agent not so much in
terms of a ‘finished’/’accomplished’ state of affairs
(with rules/norms/culture/class, etc., as the
determinants), as in terms of an active, generative,
adaptive orientation and posture to the social world,
then field helps us to characterize and structure that
larger social space
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
c. Capital and Class
Class first:
• for B, class is something that is internalized (in the form of
dispositions for a particular class) and something that could
be objectified/objectivated (class as structure is only
activated through actors’ actions)
• class is related to objective and real differences in material
conditions, market position and position in the relations of
production, but it is something not exhausted by these
conditions
• class is not something that has a single and distinct mode of
determination, i.e. no one single, however important, factor
could determine the nature of class
• class is best understood as a space of objective positions
superimposed by the space of symbolic goods (cultural capital)
and the space of habitus
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
• occupation is the closest indicator of class in terms of objective
conditions, but other networks of differences created by age,
gender, ethnicity, place of origin, etc. are also class-constitutive, for
they bring with them different (spaces of) symbolic goods (and the
valuations of them) and dispositions (habitus)
• there are thus internal differences in occupations-constitutedclass; no matter how refined we make these categories, they
remain statistical aggregates, and thus only ‘theoretical’ classes;
‘real’ classes exist in the superimposed spaces of objective
conditions, symbolic goods and habitus
• B’s approach is thus not ‘multi-dimensional’ (in the sense that he
brings in other dimensions to cross-cut with the economic
dimension); to him, class exists in a spatial matrix constituted by
objective conditions, cultural capital (which has its own economy)
and habitus
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Capital
• Like Marx, B argued that the ultimate factor of power is
capital; however, unlike most Marxist accounts, B’s
economic power is not exhausted by the material/economic
indicators (land, capital, occupation, etc.); economic power
(e.g., that of the landed aristocracy) brings with it a whole
array of (peasants’) debts of honour, tradition of alliances,
rights and obligations
• Economic power could be powerless (especially in premarket societies, where reciprocity/exchange is perceived
and conducted as purely social/political activity); more
often, economic power must be converted into symbolic
power (thus legitimate, as the order of things) before it
becomes really powerful
• Economic capital and cultural capital are different but
they inter-penetrate; there could be conversion between
them, but the conversion is not automatic and there is no
fixed rate of conversion
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Cultural capital
• Culture is not just an integral and integrating
characteristic of an individual/group, but is also a currency
(like economic capital), which could be used and invested
for reproducing or changing positions; it is a resource used
in practices
• B agreed that given a similar aptitude (ability), more years of
schooling as a resource/capital could bring more profits
(economic earnings); but he added that ability itself is also a
product of investment; this investment is non-economic in
nature, though it could bring about economic benefits
• Cultural capital (as a result and as a further means) is thus
about such investments
• Cultural capital takes several forms: (a) incorporated into
one’s habitus (e.g., one has the natural disposition to discover
and appreciate art); (b) as objectified resources (books,
pianos, works of art, reference books, cultural goods); (c)
scholastic/cultural credentials (e.g., ivy league as guarantee of
quality)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Cultural capital, cont’d
• what is distinctive about cultural or symbolic goods is that,
unlike material goods, one does not simply consume them; one
can only consume them by apprehending their meaning; with
cultural capital, one could then consume and appropriate these
goods
• cultural capital thus ‘denotes the ensemble of cultivated
dispositions that constitute such schemes of appreciation and
understanding’ (Brubaker)
• when the school curriculum is biased towards a middle class
culture/ethos, middle class children being cultivated with the
‘right’ schemes of appreciation and understanding could perform
better (in language, in literary texts, in being the ‘smart kid’)
• But for B, the transmission of cultural capital is not automatic;
there could be middle class homes (with all the books,
dictionaries, etc.) that do not activate and work on the capital;
like any social practice, it requires agency to activate the
potential
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Capital, concluded
• B suggested a two way matrix of capital: volume/amount
of (all forms of) capital, and types of capital (economic and
cultural); the intersection produces a space on which classes
could be plotted
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
5. Bourdieu’s contributions to class studies
a. The arguments of ‘Distinctions’
•
There are classes, of course, and in the first instance,
classes could be plotted on a social space of
objective positions (with indicators/criteria like
occupation, educational qualifications, etc.)
•
But classes not only have objective positions (intrinsic
properties of class membership); there are also
relational properties to them (classes, and groups
within them, as related to other classes on the social
space), and these relational properties may vary
across different fields
•
But there are some general relational properties:
there is hierarchical distance and difference among
the classes; these differences are also about the
representations held by each class (that these people
are my equals, we are on the same wavelength; or
they are social aliens; I feel uneasy talking to them…)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
• these representations (social/class imageries) are driven and
shaped by habitus (the natural and durable dispositions which
one ‘inherits’ by way of socialization), and are objectified in
attitudes and actions
• the imageries and the actions thus combine to construct
some class-specific and coherent life-style; ‘we do things this
way; they do things differently’; from eating habits to
consumption, from manners to educational aspirations; from
leisure activities to political views
• On the space of objective positions, B thus superimposed
the space of life style (with habitus being the driving force, so
to speak); both spaces of course are governed by the matrix of
economic and cultural capital
• (Refer to distributed figure)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
• Observations
 what people consumed (cultural products) and what they
practiced (decorating homes, choosing friends, etc.) happen
in this very French environment (i.e. intellectual, civilized,
refined, etc. tradition)
 the figure(s) should be approached loosely (figuratively)
rather than concretely (as if they suggest precise
connections); what is interesting lies in the ways the different
spaces superimposed on one another, and how items of
cultural consumption from different domains tend to ‘group’
together
 the first (vertical) axis suggests greater or lesser volume
or amount of overall capital; the more upward you are, the
more capital (regardless of composition), the more well-off
(materially and spiritually) you are
 the second (horizontal) axis points to the composition of
capital; those lying on the right are those with more
economic capital than cultural capital, and vice versa for
those lying on the left
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
 B drew a complicated picture: it is not music or art
as such that separates the classes; it is down to the
type (legitimate vs. middle-brow vs. philistine), the
extent (number of works); down to material (buying
art object) and symbolic consumption (going to
museums), and fashioning of one’s life style (from
home décor to friends) (also, example of rice or
other cultural goods)
 Inter-class and intra-class differences (in their
position-taking) are equally important for B
 Both objective class positions and social origins
(father’s background and mobility) are important
 Education is important (conferring educational
capital so as to appreciate culture), but it is not all
 Other factors like age, income also enter into the
picture
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Observations, cont’d
 the great contrast is of course between those at the top
and those at the bottom; here, it is between those who
have few and simple taste ordinary table wine, soccer…)
and those who have jet-set holidays, golf, music, etc.
 But even among those at the top, there is a great
distinction between those whose structure of capital is
different: those with more cultural capital are oriented
towards more intellectual taste and practice (chess, piano),
and those with more economic capital towards horse-riding,
champagne, riding, etc.
 the professions lie somewhere in between the two
 Similarly there is a contrast at lower range between the
primary teachers and the small shopkeepers/businessmen:
here the orientation is even more distinctly political, with
the former more inclined to vote for the left, the latter more
for the right
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Snapshots of class and lifestyle I
 The upper class (‘pleasant things are non-necessary
things’; works of art are ‘dreamt of for a long time, and are
always looked at with pleasure; ‘loving something means
having it with you’, hobbies (painting described as ‘ I like
twirling a brush) and artistic pursuits are considered ‘of no
interest’ and ‘prefer not to talk about them’; could not live
without the hifi system, which is a combination of different
brands, after some research; everyone, even someone
who earns nothing, needs music; the hifi system is as
necessary as my cooking stove; external appearance and
attire are of no concern: ‘people want to see me not for my
socks I am wearing or my tie… they invite me as I am’;
never read the critics and their reviews: ‘if there’s
something on that’s important, you’ll always know’; ‘some
people like wearing uniforms, belonging to this team or
club.. I am my own man; an individualist at all costs’…….
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Observations
 the qualities of disinterestedness, the ability to distance ‘being’
from ‘having’, and do not bother to show it; man of leisure, but
something not achieved; just born with it; all that is liked and
practiced presupposes a culture, which could not be bought
overnight or conferred simply by education
 the appeal to upper class taste: ‘the ostentatious, gratuitous
expense implied in the purchase of a ‘priceless’ object is the
most indisputable way of showing the price one is prepared to
set on things that have no price, absolute testimony of the
irreducibility of love to money which only money can buy.’ (p.280)
‘What is true luxury? Refinement; a necessity for those who can
afford it, and a key for those who, when they see it, train their
eye, their taste, and can find it in the simplest objects, a scarf, a
skirt… ‘ (artistic director of Christian Dior)
 lawyer, and son of lawyer; wife, daughter of an engineer;
inherited or born with a culture, which has ancient roots
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Snapshots of class and lifestyle II
 The executive class (relatively young, but ‘sourced’ from grand
bourgeoisie; both with good education, and both working; like things
‘snug and cosy’; have little interest in home-improvement, as taste
diverts them to other things; discriminating in furniture purchase
(‘seen a lot of mediocre stuff, and decided that we didn’t like it’), with
furniture shipped from London; discriminating look extends to work
(‘in my business (advertising), we are constantly classifying people,
there are social classes, castes, and it’s a matter of fitting a product
to the right caste’); ‘being too fashionable is not much better’;
dressed children in classic style, a simple pretty smocked dress, with
English overalls; distaste for the petite bourgeoisie, who ‘filled their
gardens with gnomes, windmills, and similar rubbish’); ‘the petite
bourgeoisie have no taste, it’s a phrase we often use, though we are
well aware that it’s racist’; parents would be more authoritarian when
it comes to judgment of pb’s taste, or lack of taste, but ‘we spoke up
for everyone’s right to have their own taste’; without being a wine buff
who can tell one year from another, ‘I’m the one who chooses the
wine’, when with colleagues; ‘hardly anyone knows how to choose
wine, so as soon as you know a little bit about it, you look like
someone who knows how to live’,
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Observations
 equipped with both economic and cultural capital; but
in this case, there is no appropriation of works of art (as
pure distinction); cultural capital instils a discriminating
and demanding taste, with money to boot (mahogany
furniture flown from London; ‘we only pay the VAT’)
 a cultural democratic outlook (‘we spoke up for
everyone’s right to have their own taste’) but to them, the
petite bourgeoisie have no taste;
 a cultural carnivore who knows the ‘classics’ (thus
prefer landscapes to still-lifes, impressionists to
moderns); less culturally arrogant (?) than their
predecessors
 like their predecessors, ostentatiousness is the
biggest sin; prefers understatement, as there is no need
to make an impression
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Snapshots of Class and Lifestyle III
 The petite bourgeois (keywords of lifestyle are
‘sobriety’ and ‘propriety’; proper in grammar in
language (‘I’d be really ashamed if I made mistakes as
obvious as that’), proper in dress (cannot see herself
strolling in jeans); ‘I like things to be tidy’; ‘I hate
pretentious people; ‘I can’t stand people who don’t
know how to behave…I don’t like being trodden on by
superiors… (also detests) people who are dirty’; (but)
respects people who are below her; ‘what I like in
songs is words that mean something..’
 this ‘very modest’ nurse captures some of the
essence of the class and lifestyle of the petite
bourgeois: a respect for order and for culture; concern
for propriety (from language to choice of friends)
 with the younger and wealthier members of the pb,
their cultural taste is a mixture, a dilution of ‘high culture’
(or what B called ‘legitimate culture, concretized in
museums and art collections)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Observations, cont’d
 for the pb, legitimate culture is not made for him and so he
is not made for it; the pb acknowledges culture, but does not
know much about it; thus popular arrangements of classic
works, film adaptation of classic drama or literature,
popularization as science, light opera as music, etc.; the
characteristic of all these is immediate accessibility and the
outward sign of cultural legitimacy
 the pb wants the home to be tidy, and he is engaged in a lot
of ingenuous (with some help from IKEA?) home-improving;
e.g., putting up mirror walls in the living room to make his
home look bigger than it is; it is often about ‘look’, and he
would go for ‘seconds’, ‘rejects’ (often ‘discriminately’ chosen),
etc., and convinces himself that they are cheaper and create
the same effect; it is often about ‘effects’
 the pb is torn between taste he is inclined to, and taste he
aspires to; the former is determined by the size of his wallet,
the latter by the mediated, popularized and diluted cultural
capital (which demands immediate accessibility and which has
the ‘effect’) he acquires
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
7. B’s insights, summarized
a. Social positions (class) – habitus – position-taking: what is
involved is choices that range from goods to practices; positiontaking is about these choices and their consumption;
dispositions mediate between the positions and the choices;
habitus thus makes sure that there is a corresponding structure
of habitus for every structure of differentiation (deviations); ‘to
each class of positions, there corresponds a class of habitus (or
tastes)’;
b. It is not just about what are being consumed and practiced, but
also how; this leads to style and distinction; distinction is not an
innate character or property; it is a manner, a bearing, a way of
showing oneself to the world; distinction is always a relational
thing; here habitus provides a unity of style; there is the same
‘signature’ to every thing (from music appreciation to children’s
education to views on entertainment) consumed or practiced by
a class; even if two classes consume the same goods, their
style (and their ‘signature’ views) will differ (piano lesson as
exposing children to finer things in life or piano lesson as one
more extra-curricular activity helping child to enter elite-schools
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Insights summarized, cont’d
c. Habitus thus both ‘determines’ or predisposes a class to certain
goods, practices and people, and provides a unity of style to these
activities and opinions (there are fine things in life that are worth
cultivating and pursuing --- and spending time on them; piano
lesson for my children is to expose them to these things; I also
have intelligent and witty people around me, and together we have
the most civilized and cultured gatherings…..)
d. Such habitus is a product of (objective) differences (from
occupation to income to education, etc.; occupation may be more
influential in shaping habitus, but the other factors also cut their
lines in the space), but habitus is also differentiating; we are not
only driven by our habitus to pursue certain things, to consume
certain goods, to choose certain friends; we are also marking
ourselves out from other people when we say this is good, refined,
respectable or vulgar, insufferable, cheap, etc.; this implies that
social life is a game where the players engage in the pursuit of
distinction (trying to achieve status, prestige, both material and
cultural)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Insights summarized, concluded
e. B is not simply saying that in this game, people are driven
by these interests (in Marx, people are driven by material
interests, if only despite themselves); the idea of
conspicuous consumption already contains this idea, so the
thesis is not novel
f. B wants to make a further point: our habitus makes it
possible for us to have both vision (we know what we like)
and division (we are different because some things or
practices are below or above us), but for this vision and
division to matter, to be socially pertinent, all players must
have some schema for them to tell the differences between
a Volvo or a VW, table wine or vintage champagne, Bossini
or Bulgari, etc. etc. (often we could not articulate the
differences, but we do know they are different, they are
distinct, and one is better/superior/more refined/more
expensive… than the other
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Insights concluded
g. From the above, B derived theoretical classes: objective
positions having affinity with certain lifestyle (and certain
outlook on life, on other groups and their goods,
practices..); these are classes in the stronger sense,
because these classes will seldom inter-marry, they would
not speak on the same wavelength, they would have
different political views, etc.; in other words, these are
classes that could be mobilized by political parties in
opposition to other classes
h. By seeing (Marx) class (objective, material-based) as
(Weber) status groups, B used the spatial maps of
positions and position-takings to tackle the issue of class
membership, class identification and class interests; for
him, class matters because (and only because) lifestyle
(and culture) matters, and the latter matters through the
symbolic gymnastics and contests that we all engage in
and that is mediated by our habitus (also see Chinese
entry, distributed)
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
A rather succinct way of characterizing B’s position in class
and cultural studies:
嗜好作為某一社會的行動者所進行的各種評判的總體, 它是全盤
化了的分類體系, 並且該體系有他自身的一慣性.
馬克斯講的是生產關係中的人得異化, 布迪爾講的是個人的利害
關係中的文化歸屬.
嗜好是一種具有個人化傾向的習性, 人們按照某種區分進行分類
的過程, 將忘記自己所使用的詞彙是某種理論的工具, 而且和語
言關聯的社會環境也被忘記在腦後, 遂漸地那些話語也融會貫通
為自己的嗜好
人與人之間的兢爭與其說是直觀的力量關係, 母寧說是以習性表
現, 並承受客觀評價的一種圍繞象徵性權力的關係
社會學/人類學新辭典, 第十頁
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
8. Conclusion (or what kind of cultural sociology B
represents?)
The kind of cultural sociology B demonstrates requires us
to:
 listen carefully to what people say (from home décor to
taste in music); what appears to be trivial could contain the
key to truth
 acknowledge that cultural and symbolic gymnastics
(from ‘I respect people who are below me’ to ‘I can’t stand
people who are dirty’) is very much part of our social and
cultural outlook, and these gymnastics are sourced from
some durable dispositions, and which could find their way
into the whole array of consumption practices that is the
lifestyle
 be skeptical about what static indicators could offer; the
symbolic and cultural value (thus ‘distinction’, and claim to
superiority) of a cultural goods is determined not by its
intrinsic properties but by the social use it is put to
P. Bourdieu: a Special Brand of Cultural Sociology
Conclusion, cont’d
 to note that occupations make a difference; but so do age,
education (type and prestige), social trajectory (class origins, and
career course); the structure of capital is as important as the
volume of capital, and within cultural capital, there is difference
between scholastic training and in-bred, ‘ancient roots’
upbringing in cultivating the ability/dispositions to appreciate
culture
 be reflexive, that one’s study is also an initiation and an
exposure of one’s culture/taste/dispositions (is the interviewee
putting me on? Is he snubbing me in the most genteel way? Is
he trying to please me or impress me by citing all these
composers’ works….); there is equally symbolic gymnastics
involved here
 to remind ourselves that this brand of cultural sociology is
more than anything else a suggested style, a posture for one to
engage in cultural studies; the contents it uncover are however
deeply particular (is the Japanese sake equivalent to chateau
red wine? Is the meaning (‘distinction) of golf club membership
the same in the USA and in Japan?....)