Transcript Bourdieu in practice Introduction

Mini Conference
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Each of the panelists has taken
Bourdieu’s concept of practice as a
starting point for exploring a certain
field.
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This concept allows us to link the subjective
world of lived experience (beliefs, objectives,
judgments, tastes, skills), with the “objective”
world of social structure (economy, culture,
technology educational system, drug industry)
The panelists’ research focuses on practices of
the individuals they are studying:
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tv characters involved in the drug trade
low income students using technology, and
Argentinian students involved in school based social
protest movements.
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Bourdieu allows us, however imperfectly, to
escape the dualism between objectivity and
subjectivity.
Habitus occupies a space which constitutes
mediated action between cognition, attitudes
and embodied practices which have been
shaped by fields.
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Following Marx, Bourdieu places class at the apex of
social life not only in shaping the habitus of the actor
but in the negotiation and distribution of power
within fields.
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Donovan Quan an undergraduate from
Brooklyn College explores the self presentation
through clothing and other props of four
characters on the TV series Breaking Bad. In a
sense he has the perfect captive audience for his
study. However interesting these characters are
they are confined to very specific actions which
constitute a perfect staged performance. We know
only that which is strategically revealed about the
characters in this imaginary universe; and what we
don’t know also shapes our knowledge of these
actors. Bourdieu’s concepts for the most part fit
without a problem.
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Cassidy Puckett is a PhD candidate at
Northwestern University. Her study of technical
competence or digital adaptability looks students of
lower socioeconomic status who behave in very
different ways in response to what they do with
technology, how they arrive at strategies, their
knowledge level, learning style, values and how they
feel, think and act. She returns to Dewey’s concept of
habit, abandoned by sociologists, to explore whether it
is better equipped in dealing with individual level
phenomena of which habitus falls short, not
adequately encompassing agency as a dialogic and
interactive process, socially situated yet agent-driven.
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Gabriela Gonzales a PhD candidate at the
State University of New York Stony Brook chose to
use Bourdieu instead of state level theories which
do not include and allow the potential to fully
incorporate power dynamics from other
interacting fields. She sees Bourdieu’s theory as
liberating in that it allows her to consider student
activists whose agendas shift according to the
response of those they are in communication with,
the political and economic situation of Argentina,
and a host of other demands. Bourdieu allows her
to see how fields can overlap and shift in her
analysis of social movements in an educational
context.