Bourdieu Praxis –Social divisions.

Pierre Bourdieu
Taste as a sociological construction, arbitrary.
Homo Academicus ( 1988)
Language and symbolic power (1991).
Bordieu is an empirical sociologist,he provides data as well as abstract sociological theory.
Even though Bordieu’s work is quite varied its all meant to hang together in someway, there is a real attempt to understand the ordinary life. A fascination with society, how you get on in it and the obstacles.
Bear this perspective in mind, you can understand bordieus how do you do sociology through the perspective of structure V’s agency. It is a main theme that runs through sociology.
This refers to the problem of working out why social forces that are a product of the way society is organised and their relationship with individual agency( conscious decisions to act) it’s a theme that runs through Durkheim and Marx it is a central problematic. People behave according to their beliefs and desires, the sociological problem is where do the desires the preferences the choices that we think are free come from. Those choices are shaped or even determined by wider society and its specific place in History. Society historically received its cultural capital from the church now though capital is received by the individual agent through education therefore the school and the church give us two forms of capital, economic and cultural. The field of power is precisely this arena where holders of the various kinds of capital compete over which of them will prevail. At stake in these struggles amongst the dominant (oft mistaken for confrontations between ruling and subordinate classes) is the relative value and potency of rival kinds of capital, as set in particular by the going «exchange rate» between economic and cultural currencies
The problem has always been that no-one is ever sure what the right balance has been. The emphasis is on either wider social forces or should the emphasis be on the conscious human being.
Why is society like it is?
Tension is between individuals , individual freedom and community this is connected to Hegel who bequeathed to Marx who bequeathed to the Frankfurt school, the meta narrative, the story of the human subject achieving freedom, it wasn’t negative freedom, freedom for hegel involved a communities impact on the individual. Hegel saw that when society is fully rational the choices an individual makes will co-incide with what society says they should do.
This is what history is about indivdual freedom being constrained by community.
In sociology Marxist are accused of emphasising the structure.the base determining the superstructure.
Ethnomethodologists are accused of focusing on the volunatristic actions of individuals.
Bourdieus approach reconciles this Structure agency dichotomy.

Pierre Bourdieu
Key concepts
Practice/praxis
The visible daily social life that we all encounter.
His theoretical model of practice aims to explain activity/action.
It’s a methodological model of activity.

Fields/markets ( social Space)
Field as harker et al explains isn’t like a field with a fence around it or just a kind of area, its more like a field of forces, influences.
Areas of social life can be conceptualised as fields of forces.
Within these fields people struggle for advantageous positions. They are multi dimensional. Day to day individual activity. People try to transform the sociological fields they find themselves in while others try to maintain the status quo against change.
Your position in the field is determined by the allocation to your of capital , which may or may not have value in the field depending on the capital you are given. Its like a game where there are rules some people can play and win within the rules others want to change the rules.

Habitus( body hexis)
The habitus is a system of durable, transposable dispositions which function as the generative bases of structured objectively unified practices ( B Algeria, 1960 (1979))

Field is constituted by power distributed among social positions that correspond to symbolic points in the field.
Eg. Intellectual field-various positions in it eg academic , student, academic treaties correspond to academics, political slogans correspond to students etc. different roles with different corresponding artefacts, these all make up the field.
Ultimately fields are sites for struggles for more capital, its all about acquiring more CAPITAL.
Intellectual field. In homo academicus, the process by which educational fields in france are stacked , set up so as to favour certain classes and types and to perpetuate that situation. On the surface what you have is a meritocracy but it doesn’t take into account the social capital that is unevenly distributed, and thus continues to favour those with a certain social capital.

What does the quote from ‘Algeria mean. It means how we are sposed to act, talk respond and carry ourselves ( dispositions) are acquired between the interaction of the individual in the social world and their particular history or trajectory through life, these dispositions function within a field. Dispositions only have value within a field. In terms fo Action structure debate a lot of what is contained in the Habitus operates at a sub conscious level it cant be consciously controlled , its natural behaviour. The habitus isn’t wholly voluntaristic but neither is it wholly external and structural either, is a dispositional structure in the body that inclines you to behaviour but doesn’t determine specific behaviour it only works within.
Primary socialisation is a key factor in developing habitus.
Primary dispositions ( basic Habitus) always reflect the social conditions under which they were acquired. From a working class background we pick up certain conditions of speech that reflect the circumstances under which the condition was acquired. You can a tell a lot about a person by how they speak, we are attuned to what speech patterns and the wee mistakes they make, we reveal a lot about ourselves by what we do, we bear the marks of the trajectories of life. Pysical bearing can project something about who you are. Bordieus point is that we bear the marks of our background in the way we are the way we speak.
These things are durable they are difficult to get rid of her- Pygmalion.
Speech difference s in class.
There is something strained and strange about the speech of the middle classes, who may be closer to the disposition of the working classes and yet they emulate the upper classes this becomes quite funny, hyper correctivity reflects the conditions underwhich the habitus was acquired.
Ethnomethodology –passing, its difficulties, projecting a natural habitus that isn tyour own.

Not only are these dispositions durable but they operate in fields where they weren’t originally acquired.
Bodily heexis- the way the dispositions are physically realised in the body, it refers to ways of walking , eating, laughing, for example a particular accent is due to a certain way of moving the tongue, and ultimately the physical body is trained in these things that become our habitus. A child learning to speak is training the body, its not a natural organised thought process that leads to speech but the ability to move the tongue and form the mouth.
The key to this theory is explained as this different positions of the mouth they are conceived in terms of class and sexual identity, male workers are more likely to adopt the open mouthed style as opposed to wc women who are more likely to adopt the closed pinched mouth, there is a tension between the field and the habitus, working class in a middle class field. The Pinched style is viewed as being both middle class and feminine, men can only adopt the pinched bourgeois if they also adopt the effeminate. Some linguistic products are valued more highly than others in some markets/fields, it’s a skill to develop linguistic products for each market we find ourselves in . Different people have different linguistic capital and can better produce the products for different markets. Linguistic violence- used by those in positions of power, they rarely have to use physical violence due to their way of using language to convey obedience and compliance.
POSH people are quite adept at producing the linguistic products that are necessary to negotiate their way through life they have power and command, the have the common touch, they can produce linguistic products that have value in a different market, the more you can do this the better your life chances.

Capital( symbolic, cultural and materiall)
The logic of struggles is the logic of capital. Capital for B includes material things as well as more abstract or untouchables such as prestige status and authority(symbolic capital) as well as stuff called cultural capital ( culturally valued patterns of taste and consumption)- can also include goods-art.
Something becomes capital when it presents itself as rate or desireablel, sought after ( whatever it may be) and possession of such capital can have certain value dependent upon the field at hand. A certain type of Male hardness exemplified in rugby can have a high value.
Capital of one kind can be exchanged or transformed into another.
e.g. money can be transformed into other forms of capital.
Formula = practice = (habitus + Capital) + field.
Capital( Symbolic, cultural and material)

The most important form of capital is symbolic capital it is perceived as authority and this legitimates the other forms of capital, often symbolic capitall, authority, prestige, status hides or masks how it was originally acquired, it makes them seem as natural attributes but they can ultimately be traced back to material capital.
Formula Practice/action=(habitus + Capital)+ field.
S.McGonigal