How are social distinctions reproduced? Bourdieu on class and culture.

1
Lecture 10

• How are social distinctions reproduced? Bourdieu
  on class and culture.

2
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?vi0XknwXqLDofeature
  related My generation
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vBzIwRpFDZ8I
  Substitute

3
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/A
  rticle.asp?ContributionID7959823
• http//www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jd6rc Laurie
  Taylor, Thinking Allowed, 01/04/2009 from 12-22
  mins interview with Prof Tony Bennett

4
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

5
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

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Theory of practice habitus

• Bourdieus 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

7
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 20041)

8
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
  Bourdieus 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, peoples 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 24750).
• (Dumas et al 2005885)

9
Theory of practice cultural capital

• Bourdieu expands Marxs 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 20042)
• 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

10
Economic capital
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Social Capital
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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 Bourdieus 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 2004105 )
• 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 2004106)
• 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

15
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 Bourdieus own use of the concept and, more
  importantly, we respect to what we see as its
  inherent potential. (Lareau and Weininger
  2004106)

16
Habitus and bodies

• The notion of habitus also appealed because of
  the centrality of the body in Bourdieus 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
  persons) relations to bodily appearance, as
  coined by Bourdieu and used in this paper.
• Bourdieu (1984), using late-1960s data from
  France, argued that peoples 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 2005884)
• 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

17
Habitus and bodies

• These studies suggested that womens 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 2004884)
• 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.

19
Dumas, Laberge, and Straka findings

• There was a strong contrast between the
  disadvantaged and the privileged womens
  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,
  womens social positions and their social
  conditions of existence shape their habitus and
  engender social differentials in relations to
  bodily appearance. (Dumas et al 2005897)

20
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 2005897)

21
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 Boltanskis (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 2005898)
• 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.

22
ESRC study - Cultural Capital and Social
Exclusion A Critical Investigation

• Used Bourdieus 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
  Bourdieus 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/V
  iewAwardPage.aspx?awardnumberR000239801
• Tony Bennett , Mike Savage , Elizabeth Bortolaia
  Silva , Alan Warde , Modesto Gayo-Cal , David
  Wright Culture, Class, Distinction Routledge, 2009

23
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