Bourdieu

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Bourdieu
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Main Objectives

• Overcome Objective/Subjective dichotomy
• (also Structure/Culture and Macro/Micro)
• Through Practice
• Positions
• Dispositions (habitus)
• Position-taking (practices)

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Position in Social Space as Capital

• Economic capital economic resources
• Cultural capital various kinds of legitimate
  knowledge
• Social capital the extent of the valued social
  relations possessed by an actor
• Symbolic capital amount of honor and prestige
  possessed by an actor

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Habitus

• The mental or cognitive structures through which
  people deal with the social world.
• Internalized structure
• Structuring structure and a
• Structured structure
• Flexible and constantly changing

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Logic of Practice

• Is PracticalCan sustain confused and seemingly
  illogical means, in part because it is relational
• Is Not Formal RationalFormal logic of means-ends
  calculation is not how practical interactions are
  normally conducted

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Field

• Network of relations among the objective
  positions within it
• Exist apart from individual consciousness and
  will
• Actors in the field may be agents or institutions
  
• Fields do try to defend their turf

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Analysis of Field

• Three step process
• Trace relationship of field to political field
• Map objective structure of relations among
  positions within the field
• Determine nature of habitus of agents in various
  positions of the field
• (p. 270, Figure 19.1)

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Conflict?

• Strategies to maintain field dominance
• NOT conscious or preplanned
• ARE patterned and regular
• ARE guided by habitus
• Symbolic violence indirect form of violence
  practiced through cultural mechanisms (esp.
  education)

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Social Reproduction (MacLeod)

1. Distinct cultural capital within each social
   class
2. Schools value upper class cultural capital
3. Academic achievement translates back into
   economic capital
4. School legitimates the process my making
   hierarchy appear merit based

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Captial

• Economic capital economic resources
• Cultural capital various kinds of legitimate
  knowledge
• Social capital the extent of the valued social
  relations possessed by an actor
• Symbolic capital amount of honor and prestige
  possessed by an actor

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