Lecture 10

How are social distinctions reproduced? Bourdieu on class

and culture.

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How are social distinctions reproduced? How does class work?

• Bourdieu on cultural capital, habitus;

• Do middle class older women treat their bodies differently to working class ones?

• Are there class differences in culture in UK?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0XknwXqLDo&feature=related My generation

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzIwRpFDZ8I Substitute

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Sources• Reading: Jenkins, Richard (1992) Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge.

Chapter 3. 301.01 Bou/Jen• Theory texts:• Bourdieu, Pierre 1989 Distinction : a social critique of the judgment of taste

London : Routledge, 301.44 BOU • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990 Reproduction in education, society and culture

London : Sage, 370.1 BOU • Bourdieu, P. “Structures, Habitus, Practices” .chapter 20 in Calhoun, C. et al

(2002) Contemporary Sociological Theory, Oxford: Blackwell.• Examples of attempts to use / operationalise his ideas• Alex Dumas, Suzanne Laberge, Silvia M, Straka (2005) “Older women's

relations to bodily appearance: the embodiment of social and biological conditions of existence,” Ageing and Society 25(6):883-902 http://ejournals.ebsco.com/Article.asp?ContributionID=7959823

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jd6rc Laurie Taylor, Thinking Allowed, 01/04/2009 from 12-22 mins interview with Prof Tony Bennett

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How does class work

• Classics– Marx, social relationship to means of production– Weber, relationship to market, contrast with status

• This semester– Hidden injuries of class, social psychology of

inequality – work does things to people– End of class, social construction rather than social

ascription, post-modern plastic identity

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Bourdieu

• Intellectual problems Bourdieu sets out to solve.

• Structure and agency, how to incorporate social institutions without presenting people as cultural dupes – rule following robots.

• Role of class in modern France and in particular education and culture

• Key concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘cultural capital’. [social capital]

http://200.55.210.205/portal.herramientas/mt/jjbrunner/archives/bourdieu2.jpg

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Theory of practice: habitus• “Bourdieu’s reputation as a sociological thinker is

underpinned by his application of what he calls a ‘theory of practice’. In which he attempts to theorise human sociality as the outcome of the strategic action of individuals operating within a constraining, but nonetheless not absolutely determining, context of values.

• The term Bourdieu coins to describe this is ‘the habitus’ (Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory 72-95): ‘an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular condition in which it is constituted’ (95).

• Habitus is the mechanism by which cultural norms or models of behaviour and action particular to a group or class fraction are unconsciously internalised or incorporated in the formation of the self during the socialization process.”

• Jeff Browitt, (2004) “Pierre Bourdieu: Homo Sociologicus” in eds. Jeff Browitt and Brian Nelson Practicing Theory: Pierre Bourdieu and the field of cultural reproduction. University of Delaware Press pp. 1-12

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Theory of practice: habitus

• These ‘dispositions’ amount to a form of social understanding and function as a pre-reflective background or cultural conditioning … Habitus, [is a form of] ‘symbolic domination’, that which situates us either the submissive or the dominant social hierarchies, radically limit our practical capacity as agents to transform the social world. These culturally conditioned predispositions to act in certain ways should considered more as ‘unreflective practical habits’, which shape the way we act and think in different social contexts, or ‘fields’.” (Browitt 2004:1)

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Habitus• “Habitus refers to socially acquired, embodied systems of

schemes of disposition, perceptions and evaluation that orient and give meaning to practices (Bourdieu 1984: 17).

• The internalisation of the social and material ‘conditions of existence’ is central to Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory of practice. The conditions of existence shared by a particular class of agents generate a habitus, comprising ‘schemes of dispositions, perceptions, and appreciations [evaluations] ’ (Bourdieu 1984: 197).

• The habitus, in turn, orients social practices and lifestyles. In other words, people’s social conditions of existence produce classificatory schemes that constitute the principles of their vision and division of the world and that shape their perceptions and desires (Bourdieu 1998: 8; Laberge and Kay 2002: 247–50).”

• (Dumas et al 2005:885)

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Theory of practice: cultural capital

• “Bourdieu expands Marx’s idea of ‘economic capital’ to encompass all forms of power that enable individuals, groups or classes to cement or reproduce their position in the social hierarchy.” (Browitt 2004:2)

• ‘economic capital’ (money and property), • ‘social capital’ (networks of social influence), • ‘cultural capital’ (learned dispositions of taste and

judgement) and • ‘symbolic capital’ (classificatory categories at the service

of legitimation), • All represent forms of power and domination

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Economic capital

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/media/Bank-of-England.jpg

http://www.photohome.com/pictures/texas-pictures/houston/bank-of-america-1a.jpg

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Social Capital

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http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/g20/image/attachement/jpg/site1/20090401/00221917f7600b3d243b32.jpg

http://web.mit.edu/zbt/www/social/social.jpg

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Cultural Capital

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Symbolic Capital

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Cultural capital• “Cultural capital is widely recognized as one of the late Pierre

Bourdieu’s signature concepts… The concept of “capital” has enabled researchers to view culture as a resource – one that provides access to scarce rewards, is subject to monopolization, and, under certain conditions may be transmitted from one generation to the next. As a result, emphasis on cultural capital has enabled researchers in diverse fields to place culture and cultural processes at the center of analyses of various aspects of stratification.” (Lareau and Weininger 2004:105 )

• “Bourdieu developed the concept of cultural capital in the context of his educational research, and it is in the sociology of education that it has had its most sustained impact on English-language audiences.” (Lareau and Weininger 2004:106)

• Annette Lareau and Elliot B. Weininger (2004) “Cultural Capital in Educational Research: A critical assessment”. pp. 105 – 144 in D. L. Swartz and Vera L. Zolberg (eds) (2004) After Bourdieu. Kluwer: Netherlands

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Cultural capital and the sociology of eduction

• Lareau and Weininger suggest “…that a dominant interpretation, resting on two crucial premises, has emerged concerning cultural capital.

• First, the concept of cultural capital is assumed to denote knowledge of or competence with “highbrow” aesthetic culture (such as fine art and classical music),

• Second, researchers assume that the effects of cultural capital must be partitioned from those of properly education “skills,” “ability,” or “achievement.” Together, these premises result in studies in which the salience of cultural capital is tested by assessing whether measures of “highbrow” cultural participation predict educational outcomes (such as grades) independently of various “ability” measures (such as standardized test scores).

• We find this approach inadequate, both in terms of Bourdieu’s own use of the concept and, more importantly, we respect to what we see as its inherent potential.” (Lareau and Weininger 2004:106)

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Habitus and bodies• “The notion of habitus also appealed because of the centrality of the

body in Bourdieu’s theory. In Distinction, Bourdieu (1984: 190) argued that:– the body is the most indisputable materialization of class taste, which it

manifests in several ways. It does this first in the seemingly most natural features of the body, the dimension … and shapes … of its visible forms, which express in countless ways a whole relation to the body, i.e. a way of treating it, caring for it, feeding it, maintaining it, which reveals the deepest dispositions of the habitus.

• The quotation encapsulates the multiple references and meanings of the phrase ‘ (a person’s) relations to bodily appearance’, as coined by Bourdieu and used in this paper.

• … Bourdieu (1984), using late-1960s data from France, argued that people’s relations to their body are deeply anchored in their social and material conditions of existence – which are fashioned by their economic and cultural capital.” (Dumas et al 2005:884)

• Alex Dumas, Suzanne Laberge, Silvia M, Straka (2005) “Older women's relations to bodily appearance: the embodiment of social and biological conditions of existence,” Ageing and Society 25(6):883-902

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Habitus and bodies• “These studies suggested that

women’s tastes and practices vary markedly according to their positions in the social structure. Bourdieu (1984: 202) stated that for women: the interest the different classes have in self-presentation, the attention they devote to it, their awareness of the profits it gives and the investment of time, effort, sacrifice and care which they actually put into it are proportionate to the chances of material or symbolic profit they can reasonably expect from it.

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Habitus and bodies• Bourdieu illustrated this point by describing

how women of different social classes varied in their valuations of the body, beauty and body care. His research showed that working-class women were less inclined to value and invest in bodily appearance than women from the upper class, who placed a greater value on beauty and expended greater efforts to enhance it. Upper-class women attributed moral value to a well-groomed appearance, which created distance between them and women whose appearance they perceived as neglectful.” (Dumas et al 2004:884)

• Dumas, Laberge, and Straka tested out these ideas by examining through in depth qualitative interviews with older women from different class backgrounds how class and age intersect in the ways they treat their bodies.

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Dumas, Laberge, and Straka: findings

• “There was a strong contrast between the disadvantaged and the privileged women’s relations to their bodily appearance, which corroborated earlier findings from a few studies that mentioned peripherally the differentiation among older women (Boltanski 1971; Bourdieu 1984; Featherstone 1987). In Bourdieusian terms, women’s social positions and their social conditions of existence shape their habitus and engender social differentials in relations to bodily appearance.” (Dumas et al 2005:897)

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Dumas, Laberge, and Straka: findings

• “Because working-class older women are not far removed from economic hardship, the value that those in our sample placed on beauty and cosmetic care was moderated by other priorities. For most, the rewards that they might have gained from their appearance were negligible in relation to their negative wellbeing for other reasons. Although they were very aware of the gap between their appearance and social norms of beauty, they were generally satisfied with their appearance, given the constraints imposed by their conditions of existence. Their lives of hardship required them to internalise the tastes imposed by their social conditions. As Bourdieu pointed out, such tastes can be explained by processes that make a virtue out of necessity (1984: 175).” (Dumas et al 2005:897)

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Dumas, Laberge, and Straka: findings

• “Conversely, older women from the intellectual-bourgeoisie had more economic and cultural capital, which gave them the freedom to engage in various bodily appearance practices without compromising their wellbeing. Furthermore, their superior economic and cultural capital also gave them the temporal freedom to value and engage in autoplastic and behavioural practices, which corroborates Boltanski’s (1971) conclusion that, in comparison to others, the upper classes have a longer time horizon for the maintenance of the body, and subscribe to preventive attitudes and behaviour. Many of the intellectual-bourgeoisie participants accorded a high value to bodily appearance practices that had inner-body aims, and they believed that their future-oriented outlook would be rewarded late in life.” (Dumas et at 2005:898)

• However the study also showed that in later life for the oldest women class differentiation was diminished as it was overshadowed by an age habitus.

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ESRC study - Cultural Capital and Social

Exclusion: A Critical Investigation • Used Bourdieu’s concepts to examine relationship between class and

culture in the UK. Large national survey and smaller studies. Set out to examine amongst other debates:

• 1. It has been questioned whether cultural practices are as centrally implicated in class practices of distinction in other countries as Bourdieu’s study suggested they were in France where the place accorded assessments of cultural competences has been accorded a particular significance in the French education system that is not matched elsewhere.

• 2. It has been argued that the significance of classed forms of cultural divisions has declined significantly since the 1960s owing to the levelling influence of television and the rise of new forms of cultural ‘omnivorousness’ which reduce any sense of clear separation of strongly differentiated class cultures.

• http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/ViewAwardPage.aspx?awardnumber=R000239801

• Tony Bennett , Mike Savage , Elizabeth Bortolaia Silva , Alan Warde , Modesto Gayo-Cal , David Wright Culture, Class, Distinction Routledge, 2009

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Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion: A Critical Investigation

• Taste for ‘modern’, ‘avante-garde’ art is limited to an elite

• Working class watch more television; upper classes say they watch less television.

• Working class less engaged in cultural activity; theatre, museums, cultural life restricted to home.

• Upper class more likely to be “omnivores”