High School as social space.

After last weeks blog post I spent a lot of time thinking about the practical applications of the concepts I pointed out by Pierre Bourdieu. I spent some time reading further into his work to try and get a better understanding to help me come up with a clearer idea of how I want to portray them. 

To recap really quickly, in my last post I discussed Bourdieus ideas on Social Space, Habitus, and False Dichotomies. Basically a social space is the same thing as the field in game theory. This is the area of play, with individuals that have roles depending on their position on the field. Habitus is the linking point between your position and your actions. The habitus is determined by your experiences, the current conditions in your situation, and your own judgment. This allows for the social structures that structure action to be structured by action. Then that leads into the last concept of a false dichotomy. A dichotomy is something that is divided into two opposite ends. A false dichotomy is when something is divided or two ends opposing each other but in actuality they don’t. The example from before is structure and action. The structure determines actions and the actions determine the structure so even though they are opposites to each other they both exist together. That is what makes a false dichotomy.

After having some more time to think about this and do a little more reading I believe I have found a few good ways to depict these concepts through photos of the social world. I will probably post other photos on the same subjects in future blogs but for right now this is what I have come up with.

The first of these concepts that I will talk about in the social realm is Bourdieus concept of social space. Social space is a fairly easy concept to under stand and has been include in many other theories by many other theorist. The most recognizable form of social space would be game theory. The reason why game theory is called game theory is because the analogy to a sports game often times works the best to describe this. Basically there is a field that has actors in it. There are sets of rules on the field that influence the actors actions. But the actors actions are also influenced by the constantly  changing situations and variables. Because of this actors can slightly use their freewill or judgment to determine their actions. So actions in a game and in the social world are slightly determined by the social institutions, you place in these institutions, your perceived role in your position, and your own freewill. I feel that the best way to describe the social space besides using game theory would be thinking back to high school.

For this part I wanted to get a picture of the high school I went to, but Im encountering difficulties with that due to obvious reasons, but I should be able to get a photo for next weeks blog. Anyway the relationship I draw from social space to high school is this; growing up in high school every knows that there are kids in different groups from you. High school is so divided that its constantly used in media interpretations for movies and TV shows. Its just kid trying to figure out who they are in this world, and high school acts like the space, stage, or field necessary for them to practice their positions. This is why I feel like high school is a perfect example. Kids at that age create obnoxiously large barriers between their groups in order to emphasis the differences between them and make themselves as individuals more defined. All of these groups that exist, exist in the social space of high school. There are so many roles to be played. There are the jocks, stoners, music groups, emo kids, scene kids, nerds, thugs, book worms, hipsters and probably many more that I can’t think of. Everyone in high school finds a group, or a click to fall into, so that they can define who they are. The school acts like the field, the rules of high school effect how the kids interact and their roles are somewhat limited to the field of the school. After High school they enter into new fields with new roles and new players, so they develop different roles and groups to identify with. 

I would like to end this blog by setting myself up for next weeks by talking about habitus.  If the social space is high school, and the players in high school have roles or positions to interact then it would be assumed that every interaction could be predetermined based on how the social space of high school dictates that the groups interact. This is not true though. There are cases where kids from different groups interact with each other. They also blend into different groups. This is because of habitus. Their habitus is affected by the social structure of high school, the positions the individuals fall into, and their own decisions. This leads to more flexibility between groups in high school and a more realistic idea of what high school is really like. Its true that there are well defined groups but that doesn’t mean that they static. Finally to end this blog I want to add in a picture I took that I think would represent the notion of habitus very well. Not in terms of high school but if habitus were to manifest into a physical form. I wanted to go in depth about my explanation for choosing this picture but I have decided to post the picture now and let you think about it over the week until I post my next blog and go into detail with my thoughts.