Pierre Bourdieu

This is my first time diving into the theories of Pierre Bourdieu so I'm excited for what will come out of this. I knew nothing about him up till recently. I saw that he was a French Sociologist who was heavily influence by the works of Weber, Durkheim, Marx, and many others, so I figured that he might be an interesting theorists to study. So far I have not been disappointed. In fact I think Bourdieu might be one of my favorite theorists. I guess I can just relate to him well. I feel like a lot of what he believes coincides with my own personal beliefs or that his theories just make perfect sense to me. In any case, since this is my first blog post about Bourdieu I wanted to cover my first thoughts and impressions of his work so far. In my next blog I do plan on adding photos and more sources, but for now I'm going to keep this as an overview, first response, and list of possible concepts to use to illustrate his work.

The first concept that I noticed, and found a strong connection with is his thoughts on "False Dichotomies" (Calhoun et al. 2012:327). The basic idea behind this is that there are thoughts or ideas that have total polar opposites. A well known example would be liberalism and conservatism. Both sides have particular views on the way government should operate which are total opposites of each other. The particular dichotomy that Bourdieu refers to is that of social "structure and action" (Calhoun et al. 2012:327). Social structures would be the forces of a society that exist externally to an actor and provide force to guide their actions. For example the social structures might influence what clothes you wear and the kind of music you listen to. Action however refers to the individual actors freewill and power to make their own decisions. The reason why Bourdieu looks at this as a false dichotomy is because he believes that even though structure and action are separate from each other, they are both connected to each other. He sees the social structures as influencing the individuals actions but at the same time the individuals actions are recreating the social structure. This blend of structures and action in a coexistence is virtually identical to the theoretical work of George Herbert Mead in symbolic interactionism. Bourdieu relates this dichotomy to, the next concept I will discuss which is "social space", through "habitus" (Calhoun et al. 2012:328).  

Habitus is essentially the blended mix of social structure and action. "Habitus refers to embodied knowledge, especially the ways people learn to generate improvisations" (Calhoun et al. 2012:329). The social structure would be that knowledge we possess of the would through past experiences and socialization. Action would not be dictated by the rules of social structure though, it would have some flexibility due to the individuals freewill which is why social structures can change over time. Bourdieu then uses habitus to link "positions" and "practices" (Calhoun et al. 2012:328). A position would something like ones job, income level, social class, education and etc. In the social world these positions are displayed through practices like the way you dress, car you drive, and places you eat at. The way that habitus works with these two concepts is interesting. Habitus is first your socialization which teaches you about your position and others positions. This provides the playing field and tells individuals in a position what practices are required. The second part of habitus allows the individual flexibility in their practices for their positions. This is what enables the social structures to change over time. This will lead into the last concept I want to discuss in this blog which is "Social Space and Symbolic Space" (Calhoun et al. 2012:335). 

The Social Space would be the positions you occupy in the social world. Each position possesses a relationship to other positions. Sometimes positions are closer to others, which is because they have a similar habitus or socialization. The symbolic space is the practice that each position values and uses to depict itself. Its through practices that people of different positions can distinguish themselves from other positions. Bourdieu makes this distinction clearer when he introduces "Cultural Capitol, Economic Capitol, and Capitol Volume" (Calhoun et al. 2012:338).  Economic capitol is obviously wealth. Wealth allows us to send our children to schools that will help to socialize them into the positions we want for them and allows us to practice through actions that will distinguish our position. Cultural capitol would be the knowledge of you position. Knowing what types of beverages to drink and how to speak are forms of cultural capitol. Capitol volume would be the total amount of cultural and economic capitol combined. These forms of capitol are used by Bourdieu to illustrate his theories on classes, socialization, and actions. 

For now, this should do as a brief overview of a few concepts from Bourdieu's work. In my next blog I will begin to further illustrate these concepts with photographic evidence from the social world to depict these concepts. I will also introduce more concepts that are just as important and influential from Bourdieu. I will also bring in more sources of Bourdieu's work in order to gain a better overall view and reaction to his concepts. I hope this brief overview served as a good framework and introduction to my writing on Bourdieu and will help me to further develop and illustrate his theories in my future blogs. 

References 

Calhoun, Craig, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, and Indermohan Virk. 2012. 

Contemporary Sociological Theory. Third Ed. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.