"Bourdieu offers in his _Outline of a Theory of Practice_ [1972]...a methodology for understanding the fundamental and dynamic unity of the conomic and social realms that Marxist sociology had tended to hold apart. Bourdieu's work is based on an ethnographic inquiry into the Kabyle people in Algeria, an inquiry which set out to describe the organization of social practices of all kinds without reducing them either to mere epiphenomena of economic relations or to the actualization of rigidly structured codes and symbolic rules. Bourdieu aims to describe, on the contrary, the dynamic struturing of practice. This leads him to two formulations which areto extended in later work on the sociology of modern culture: the habitus and symbolic capital. The habiuts is defined as a certain set of structures and habitual ways of understanding which are charactyeristic and constitutive of a society or group. The habitus is not a set of abstract rules of conduct or representations of the world; rather, it is the structure of social disposition or propensity, which organizes practice without governing it. The habitus is best seen as a 'strategy-generating principle' in a culture, rather than the principle which governs forms of strategy in ADVANCE (Bourdieu, 1972). This leads Bourdieu to his analysis of symbolic capital, which he defines as the ecnomic gathering, exchange and circulation of non-material forms and processes, seeing them simply as the dissimulations or secondary effects of economic interest more narrowly defined, or onthe other, see them as autonomous from and irrelevant to economic motives and interests[....]
This refusal of the distinction between the allegedly immediate use-values of art and culture and the exchange-values that such forms gather in social life lies at the heart of Bourdieu's most influential contribution to the sociology of culture, _Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste_....Here , Bourdieu begins from what he describes as a systematic transgression of the distinction between the experience of art and culture which a Kantian traditino definied as disinterested and the vulgarly economic interests and motivations of everyday life. The book analyzes the tastes, preferences, and cultural judgements of different classes in French society during the 1970s to show that art, and the forms of cultural competence needed to appreciate it, have very clear and distinct social and political values. The possession of such competence constistues in fact what Bourdieu calls "cultural capital [....] The ideology of the distinctiveness of esthetic experience is not just an effect, but also an enactment and guarantee of the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege in class society; the distinctness of such experience from ordinary social life confirms those structures of distinction that define and maintain social life as a whole." (p. 359-360). Sorry for the long passage, but it's clearer than I probably would be. best, Jayson
>I confess that in my [pomo] ignorance, I don't even know anything about
>Bourdieu's
>social capital. If if is of importance, let me know. I have a brief
>section in a
>new book that I am completing that compares the other forms of
>social/moral capital.
>I would be happy to show you if you are interested.
>
>Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
>
>> Michael,
>> Interesting. But which kind of "social capital" is
>> Senior's "moral capital" related to anyway? That of
>> Bourdieu or that of Loury-Coleman-Putnam?
>> And, although the concept may be sort of there, the
>> term "social capital" is not.
>> Barkley Rosser
>> On Thu, 28 Jan 1999 15:43:40 -0800 Michael Perelman
>> <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
>> >
>> > > 1) Bourdieu was the first to coin the term "social
>> > > capital."
>> >
>> > According to Senior, England was successful because "the intellectual
>>and moral
>> > capital of Great Britain far exceeds all the material capital, not only in
>> > importance, but in productiveness" (Senior 1836, p. 134).
>> >
>> > By the way is David Yaffe, the same fellow that wrote marxists stuff a few
>> > decades ago?[
>> > --
>> >
>> > Michael Perelman
>> > Economics Department
>> > California State University
>> > michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
>> > Chico, CA 95929
>> > 530-898-5321
>> > fax 530-898-5901
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --
>> Rosser Jr, John Barkley
>> rosserjb at jmu.edu
>
>
>
>--
>
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
>Chico, CA 95929
>530-898-5321
>fax 530-898-5901
I know I'm art-i-ficial But don't put the blame on me I was reared with appliances In a consumer society[...] I wanna be instamatic I wanna be a frozen pea I wanna be dehydrated In a consumer society... --X-ray Spex (1978)