Lea Perez Marasigan

Instructor, Sociology

UP Los Banos

Central concepts in Bourdieu’sFramework A central element in the analytical framework of

Bourdieu is the examination of the on-going and continuous competition for valued resources (CAPITAL) and the relations of domination and subordination found in the various FIELDS and in the wider SOCIAL SPACE.

CAPITAL (Generative) Resources that are valued and that are

object of struggle

There are various forms of capital Economic- money and property rights (considered to

be superior capital)

Social- what you can get from whom you know

Cultural- knowledge and skills Objectified: knowledge and skills transformed into

material products, ie. Cultural goods Institutionalized: knowledge and skills that are certified,

i.e. Diplomas, recognitions Embodied: including linguistics (habitus)

FIELD Fields are arenas for struggle for valued resources like the

academic field, field of the arts. Social Space as meta-field.

Within fields, some have more resources (dominant) than others (subordinate).

Likewise, some fields have more ( and qualitatively more potent) resources (field of power) than others in the social space.

Fields as spaces of inequality and exclusion but exclusion is misrecognized as not being exclusion because the outcome of exclusion is considered legitimate.

Since legitimation is central, the struggle for resources takes place in the context of struggles for legitimation (of competing arbitrary powers representing competing cultural arbitraries).

Power and dominance are imposed through symbolic violence, violence misrecognized as not being violence. (i.e. Diploma as sign of giftedness, competence).

Exertion of arbitrary power and dominance is never unmediated by legitimation. Never pure/ naked power.

Arbitrary because there is really no ontological/ metaphysical basis for dominance of particular group or individual.

FIELD

That is why the exercise of power is always accompanied by the imposition of a cultural arbitrary. Cultural arbitrary sets cultural standards, cultural hierarchies, ex.

“cultured”, good tastes, right accent. Legitimizing cultural arbitrary and the realization of worthlessness

of what the excluded have. Arbitrary because it is never pure reason. Cultural arbitrary is never completely constructed, always has an

“objective basis” in an arbitrary power. Cultural arbitrary and arbitrary power always go together.

Practices of individual partly accounted for by location of that individual in field given specific historical circumstances: conservation, succession, submission, subversion.

Struggle is continuous, no such thing as permanent domination.

FIELD

HABITUS Dispositions (tendencies, inclinations) as a form of capital

“Systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can objectively be adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them” (Logic of Practice, 1990).

Examples of dispositions: bodily deportment (i.e. Accents and matigas nadila, pagdadala ng sarili) (bodily thus durable, not conscious thought); actions, patterns of thought

Reproduction focuses a lot on relation to language Relation to language as cultural competence beyond vocabulary, beyond saying

the right words but the manner of articulation. Consequences: “… the relation to academic language--- a relation which reverential, or casual,

tense of detached, stilted or easy, heavy-handed, ostentatious or measured, is one of the surest distinctive signs of the speakers social position” (p. 117)

HABITUS AND FIELD Habitus formed within particular fields/ social space

Dispositions/ Habitus is acquired (to speak of habitus is to say that the individual is collective, socialized subjectivity); primary pedagogical work, schooling

Habitus as having a good sense of your place in the field and in the larger social space, and having a good sense of what to do given your social location and having a good sense of your trajectory. (Subjective evaluation of objective probabilities).

Habitus predisposes but predisposition is not destiny. Men make their own history but not of their own choosing.

Habitus likely to reproduce the field and the outcomes are legitimized.

Symbolic power refers to the transformed, misrecognized, transfigured and legitimated form of other forms of power. (Domination concealed beneath the veil of an enchanted relation).

Notion and sources of symbolic power come from three symbolic systems: as structuring structures (subjective structures), structured structures (objective structures), and instruments of domination (ideologies and division of labor).

Dominant class fractions, whose power rests on economic capital, aim to impose the legitimacy of their domination through symbolic production or through conservative ideologies.

SYMBOLIC POWERRecognition of Legitimacy and Misrecognition of Symbolic power

Language is crucial in the formation of institutions, for it makes possible the operation of naming, classification and giving representation of world. The very act of naming, classifying and representing help establish the structure of the society. (Language as structured and structuring, instituted and yet capable of institution=to endow).

The social condition of effectiveness of legitimate language and discourse lies in the fact that its authority comes from the outside; from a person entrusted with delegate authority.

SYMBOLIC POWER

The specificity of the discourse of authority consist in the fact that it is not enough for it to be understood (in certain cases it may even fail to be understood without losing its power), and that it exercise its specific effect only when it is recognized as such. (illusion, or belief in the game)

Rituals of social magic are part and parcel of misrecognition/ concealment of symbolic power and violence. The social function of rituals is to consecrate, legitimate or institute.

For rituals to be effective it should be known as legitimate and presupposes recognition of authority. It also follows some conventional elements, legitimacy of the speaker (delegated by an institution and does not act on his own), public manifestation of authority, appropriate discourse, ceremonial etiquette, code of gestures etc. Ritual symbolism is not effective

SYMBOLIC POWER

How symbolic power is legitimized and misrecognized?

Rites of consecration or institution are to sanction and sanctify a particular state of things, or an established order. To institute is to give social definition, an identify or impose boundaries. It is an act of communication as much as it is to signify to someone what his identity is. (‘Become what you are’ is the principle behind the act of institution). (Rites of institutions ex. graduation, oath taking, “tuli”)

Delegation a recognized institution guarantees and endows you a particular authority and power.

Strategies of condescension are those symbolic transgressions of limits which provide at one and the same time, the benefits that result from conformity to a social definition and the benefits that result from transgression.( ex. Erap eating with the peasants with his bare hands, French Mayor talks to the people in their dialect)

Strategies of Euphemization and Censorship are consist in imposing form as well as observing formalities. The metaphor of censorship is the structure of the field which governs expression by governing both the access to the expression (deprivation) and the form of expression (self-censorship).

How symbolic power is legitimized and misrecognized?