Additionally, it serves to reproduce class distinctions. Bourdieu focuses on social, cultural, and economic capital that they are interplay among each other. Economic capital is the most efficient form of capital. Bourdieu defines it as a characterizing trait of capitalism. It can be more easily and efficiently converted into symbolic capital, which is social and cultural capital.
At the same time, symbolic capital can be transformed into economic capital. From this point it is easily be seen that, Bourdieu took effects of economy in the center of his analysis of modern society. It means, in a sense, he sees material or economic determination over culture and society. This reminds us Marx's theory of base and superstructure.
Although the economics is crucially determining, for Bourdieu, it is symbolically mediated at the same time. However, the undisguised reproduction of economic capital would reveal the arbitrary character of the distribution of power and wealth.
The function of symbolic capital social and cultural capital , as Bourdieu thinks , , is to mask the economic domination of the dominant class and socially legitimate hierarchy. This process occurs by the way of essentializing and naturalizing social position. That is non6economic fields articulate with, reproduce, and legitimate class relations through mis6 recognition.
For him, in this sense, status and class are interrelated. Bourdieu defines the process of obtaining from economical, social, and cultural production and reproduction by the individuals, groups, strata, classes, and societies as economic, social, and cultural capital.
On this point, economic capital is constructed on money income as the form of wages or profits. Social capital is the intensity of social relationship, which a person can rely on. Economical, social, and cultural capital constitutes symbolic capital if other people evaluate their possessions.
Bourdieu divides struggle into two types. The first one is real struggle, which is the struggle on distribution of economics, social and cultural capital among individuals, groups, strata, classes, and societies. This type of struggle occurs especially among classes, which rely on one or two types of capital. Bourdieu compares each fields to a market in which individuals and collective actors compete for accumulation of capital. He makes another analogy between individuals or collective actors for economical, social, and cultural possession and calls them as investment material.
In each market, the agent starts with a certain amount of capital and invests them. By this way, it has a chance to achieve in competition. For example, if an agent has more capital, this means it has more chance to be successful against to other agents who have less capital. It is crucial to remember that Bourdieu uses capital to refer to economic, social, and cultural things, such as money, web of social relationship, and education relativley.
Using Marxist sense, Bourdieu says, the conditions competition on these markets, economic, social and cultural, are not equal Bourdieu The main reason for this inequality lays on historical evaluation of markets from hierarchically structured societies, which are stratified into lower, middle, and higher estates. On the other hand, agents can find a chance to achieve higher position or more capital. Thus, in the each market, the balance may change over time. On that occasion, Bourdieu talks about a paradox.
In the each market, competition works in the direction of reproduction of inequalities, which was the result of traditional hierarchies and earlier phases of competition.
Networks of social relationships expand for everybody. Cultural education expands for everybody's use. In this way, economic, social, and cultural living standards rise for whole society. Nevertheless, at the same time the competition for higher status by gaining more capital is highly intensified. Bourdieu explains this paradox by using the following statements Bourdieu, : "Economic, social, and cultural reproduction are permanently pushed a higher level of economic wealth, social solidarity, and cultural education, but at the same time economic, social, and cultural competition shifts to higher levels, and increases the demand to achievement.
Competition intensifies, what appears to increase equality of opportunity The education that previously gave excess to top cultural distinction and top managerial positions is now a necessity for reaching middle6level distinction and appointments.
We do not approach more equality in this way but only a reproduction of inequalities on higher levels of achievement. This positions range and nature varies socially and historically. Bourdieu distinguishes three fields in the social space in which praxis takes place and society is produced and reproduced. They are the social field, economic field, and cultural field. The social field is made up of groups, strata, and classes.
The individuals belong to them according to their social origin, activity or dissociation and unfamiliarity with people. In this sense, the social production and reproduction of society is the production and reproduction of new relationships between people, associations, and dissociation, groups, strata and classes. This field also includes distribution and redistribution of them c. In the economic field, labor dealing with scarcity and competing for opportunities to acquire income, production and distribution of goods and services, and the exchange of goods and services are the process of building up wealth of society.
Economic production and reproduction implies the distribution of the products among individuals, groups, strata, classes and societies. The cultural field includes the acquisition of education, certificates, titles, world6views, product of arts, mass culture, sports activities, way of consuming, dressing, etc.
In this sense, cultural production and reproduction of society are the production of the elements of culture. This field also includes distribution of them. Each of these fields has their laws and each field guided by these laws. Actors play specific games on a certain field. These three fields also have some common features. All off them are the place of the production and reproduction of society for the distribution of their products.
The agents of societal praxis are also in competition over distribution of these products. Bourdieu puts his social analysis on the center of this competition or struggle. Each field is semi6autonomous and determined by its own determinant agents, accumulation of history, logic of action and forms of capital. On the other side, capital may be transferred to another field. These fields are immersed in an institutional field of power.
In other words, they may be transferred into the field of class relations. Moreover, these fields are the side of struggles. Power as a Main Force For Bourdieu , , power is the major force in social development and which relegates any other force to a secondary status. He has worked out a multidimensional view of power by differentiating economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital as power sources.
He does not separate the concept of power from the concepts of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital. From this starting point, Bourdieu explains how the agents transfer the symbolic power into economic, social, and cultural power to be successful against to other agents who compete for the same achievements.
Power is fundamental for Bourdieu as it is in Weber. The relationship of power constitutes and shapes social field. Then, it involves domination and differential distribution. Lastly, it is always used in social relationship whether consciously or unconsciously. Influences of Durkheim, Marx, and Weber on Bourdieu In his study of , Bourdieu did a case study of a society in transition from traditional to modern.
His focus was a cross6cultural change. In order to explain this cross6cultural change he used analytical procedures. Doing this he used and test validity of Durkheimian, Weberian, and Marxist theories of social organizations. In this study, he used mostly Durkheimian approach, especially conscience collective and transformation of mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. His primary concern was the tribes that were to protection internal social ability.
This concern was made crucial for the tribes by the poverty of their physical environmental and by the inadequacy of their technical resources. On this point, the social structures can be understood by locating human activity within the local ecological system. They were intent on retrieving the complexity of historical factors that shaped the progress of Durkheimian whilst simultaneously condemning the contemporary sociology which was incapable of appreciatory that complexity Both interested in historical account and reflection on the force of contingent institutional interference.
Bourdieu b believes that there must be clear6cut distinction between theory of sociological knowledge and theory of social system. At the same time, he uses Weberian approach in relation to Puritanism and capitalism by the way of transforming its religious doctrine, which is secondary status since it is dependent on the willingness of individuals to accept its concurrence with behaviors. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to… Expand.
View via Publisher. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Background Citations. Methods Citations. Results Citations. Topics from this paper. Citation Type. Has PDF. Pierre Bourdieu and the Practice of Resistance. Jeff Rose. A short summary of this paper. Download Download PDF. Translate PDF. He was a professor of sociology at the College de France. His early intellectual work on colonization and modernization in traditional Algerian society examined how individuals adapt to forms of domination, often becoming acquiescent albeit involuntary participants in their own subjugation.
While he was perhaps best known for his investigative frameworks of social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital, Bourdieu was also extremely prominent in the development of the understanding of habitus, a concept referring to hegemonic social structures that are embodied within human thought and behavior. Bourdieu felt that habitus was a bridging concept between the limited orientations of objectivism and subjectivism, and importantly, habitus has the capacity to provide both individual and collective frameworks for understanding the complex dynamics of uneven power relations in social life.
Habitus does not necessarily have embedded value to it, as it is not just the creation of the bourgeois elites or the capitalist holders of power within society. However, habitus often serves to set up durable relations of domination Bourdieu, , pp.
In fact, Bourdieu felt that our social personality is one that is created at least in part by interactions with the thoughts and actions of other people, both dominant and non-dominant people alike p. In regards to social relations, domination is not imposed by one group of individuals upon another, but is maintained indirectly, via institutions and practices which function with the complicity of the dominated. The question remains: what solution could be offered?
Further, how 1 Although a similar question might be asked of Marxism How is self emancipation possible if the dominant ideas in society are those of the dominant? Bourdieu felt that voluntarism placed too much reliance on subjective consciousness, and determinism overly anticipated the progressive development of objective conditions.
What is the location of agency within the framework of habitus? Practice as Resistant Action? Practices, in this sense, are logical actions that come from a habitus connected to a given field. Practices differ from performances in that performance is at the improvisational edge of practice.
Performances are always situation specific. What are possible articulations of practices for resistance to the dominating social structures that are governed and regulated by habitus? From this perspective, habitus might be a conceptually insightful method for uncovering, articulating, and decoding unjust power differentials in society, but it would lack the requisite applicability for progressive social change that I find desirable in critical theorists.
0コメント