|
p.3 The Real is Relational
p.7 In a more general sense, the space of social positions is retranslated into a space of position-takings through the mediation of the space of dispositions (or habitus).
[JLJ - the situation faced in a social game leads a player to make a move based on a set of dispositions previously acquired by the player. Or that is one way to read Bourdieu's words. I feel soooo stupid not to have seen this before.]
p.8 The habitus is this generative... principle which retranslates the intrinsic and relational characteristics of a position into... a unitary set of choices of persons... practices... Habitus are generative principles of distinct and distinctive practices... But habitus are also classificatory schemes, principles of classification, principles of vision and division, different tastes. They make distinctions between what is good and what is bad, between what is right and what is wrong... but the distinctions are not identical.
p.15 In order to construct social space, in the case of France it was necessary and sufficient to consider the different kinds of capital whose distribution determines the structure of that social space.
p.25 "subjects" are active and knowing agents endowed with a practical sense, that is, an acquired system of preferences, of principles of vision and division... and also a system of durable cognitive structures... and of schemes of action which orient the perception of the situation and the appropriate response. The habitus is this kind of practical sense for what is to be done in a given situation - what is called in sport a "feel" for the game, that is, the art of anticipating the future of the game, which is inscribed in the present state of play.
p.31 Why does it seem necessary and legitimate for me to introduce the notions of social space and field of power into the lexicon of sociology? In the first place, to break with the tendency to think of the social world in a substantialist manner. The notion of space contains, in itself, the principle of a relational understanding of the social world. It affirms that every “reality” it designates resides in the mutual exteriority of its composite elements. Apparent, directly visible beings, whether individuals or groups, exist and subsist in and through difference; that is, they occupy relative positions in a space of relations which, although invisible and always difficult to show empirically, is the most real reality… and the real principle of the behavior of individuals and groups.
p.32 Social science should… construct and discover… the principle of differentiation which permits one to reengender [JLJ - regenerate] theoretically the empirically observed social space… all societies appear as social spaces, that is, as structures of differences that can only be understood by constructing the generative principle which objectively grounds those differences. This principle is no other than the structure of the distribution of the forms of power of the kinds of capital which are effective in the social universe under consideration – and which vary according to the specific place and moment at hand.
This structure is not immutable, and the topology that describes a state of the social positions permits a dynamic analysis of the conservation and transformation of the structure of the active properties’ distribution and thus of the social space itself. That is what I mean when I describe the global social space as a field, that is, both as a field of forces, whose necessity is imposed on agents who are engaged in it, and as a field of struggles within which agents confront each other… thus contributing to conserving or transforming its structure.
p.33 I introduced the notion of the field of power to account for structural effects which are not otherwise easily understood
p.34 The field of power… is not a field like the others. It is the space of the relations of force between the different kinds of capital or, more precisely, between the agents who possess a sufficient amount of one of the different kinds of capital to be in a position to dominate the corresponding field, whose struggles intensify whenever the relative values of different kinds of capital is questioned… that is, especially when the established equilibrium in the field of instances specifically charged with the reproduction of the field of power is threatened… Domination is not the direct and simple action exercised by a set of agents... invested with powers of coercion. Rather, it is the indirect effect of a complex set of actions engendered within the network of intersecting constraints which each of the dominants, thus dominated by the structure of the field through which domination is exerted, endured on behalf of all the others.
p.41-42 The state is the culmination of a process of concentration of different species of capital: capital of physical force or instruments of coercion (army, police), economic capital, cultural or (better) information capital, and symbolic capital. It is this concentration as such which constitutes the state as the holder of a sort of metacapital granting power over other species of capital and over their holders. Concentration of the different species of capital... leads indeed to the emergence of a specific, properly statist capital (capital etatique) which enables the state to exercise power over the different fields and over the different particular species of capital, and especially over the rates of conversion between them.
p.47 Symbolic capital is any property (any form of capital whether physical, economic, cultural or social) when it is perceived by social agents endowed with categories of perception which cause them to know it and to recognize it, to give it value.
p.56 The state does not necessarily have to give orders or to exercise physical coercion in order to produce an ordered social world, as long as it is capable of producing embodied cognitive structures that accord with objective structures and thus of ensuring the belief of which Hume spoke - namely, doxic submission to the established order.
p.57 Doxa is a particular point of view, the point of view of the dominant, which presents and imposes itself as a universal point of view - the point of view of those who dominate by dominating the state and who have constituted their point of view as universal by constituting the state.
p.76 Sociology thus postulates that there is a reason in what agents do… which must be found; this reason permits one to explain and to transform a series of apparently incoherent, arbitrary behaviors into a coherent series, into something that can be understood according to a unique principle or a coherent set of principles.
p.76-77 Illusio is the fact of being caught up in and by the game, of believing… that playing is worth the effort
p.78 Among people who occupy opposing positions in a field and who seem to be radically opposed in everything, there is a hidden, tacit accord about the fact that it is worth the effort to struggle for the things that are in play in the field.
p.81 in order to account for human behaviors it is necessary to admit... that they posit futures that are not aimed for as futures. The paradox of the human sciences is that they must constantly distrust the philosophy of action inherent in models such as game theory, which are apparently used to understand social universes resembling games. It is true that most human behaviors take place within playing fields; thus they do not have as a principle a strategic intention such as as that postulated by game theory. In other words, social agents have "strategies" which only rarely have a true strategic intention as a principle. [JLJ - again we see Bourdieu as the basis for Robert Chia's Strategy without Design]
p.82 Practice has a logic which is not that of logic, and thus to apply practical logic to logical logic is to run the risk of destroying the logic one wants to describe with the instrument used to describe it. These problems, that I posed 20 years ago, in Outline of a Theory of Practice, are brought to light today with the construction of expert systems and artificial intelligence: one sees that in practice social agents... possess extremely complex classificatory systems which are never constituted as such and which can only be so constituted at the cost of a considerable amount of work.
p.82 If my analysis is correct, one can, for example, be adjusted to the necessities of a game... without ever needing to give oneself such an objective. [JLJ - from earlier, "ends as such"]
p.83 Agents who clash over the ends under consideration can be possessed by those ends.
p.85 Symbolic capital is capital with a cognitive base, which rests on cognition and recognition.
p.85 the basic concepts which I see as indispensable for thinking about reasonable action - habitus, field, interest or illusio, symbolic capital
p.86-87 Why is it important to think in terms of habitus? Why is it important to think of the field as a space which one has not produced and in which one is born, and not an arbitrarily instituted game? Because it permits us to understand that there are disinterested forms of behavior which do not have as a principle the calculation of disinterestedness, the calculated intention to surmount calculation or to show that one is capable of surmounting it… When official representations of what man officially is in a considered social space become habitus, they become the real principle of practices.
p.88 If disinterestedness is sociologically possible, it can be so only through the encounter between habitus predisposed to disinterestedness and the universes in which disinterestedness is rewarded.
p.93 perhaps it is because I dared then that I can do what I do today
p.95 an initial property of the economy of symbolic exchanges: practices always have double truths, which are difficult to hold together. Analysis must take note of this duality… we can only understand the economy of symbolic goods if, from the outset, we accept taking this ambiguity seriously, an ambiguity which is not made by the scientist, but which is present in reality itself, a sort of contradiction between subjective truth and objective reality
p.97-98 The theory of action that I propose (with the notion of habitus) amounts to saying that most human actions have as a basis something quite different from intention… The best example of such a disposition is without doubt the feel for the game: the player, having deeply internalized the regularities of a game, does what he must do at the moment it is necessary, without needing to ask explicitly what is to be done. He does not need to know consciously what he does in order to do it
p.102 Symbolic alchemy… produces, to the benefit of the one who accomplishes acts of euphemization, transfiguration, or imposition of form, a capital of recognition which permits him to exert symbolic effects. This is what I call symbolic capital
p.102 Symbolic capital is an ordinary property... which, perceived by social agents endowed with the categories of perception and appreciation permitting them to perceive, know and recognize it, becomes symbolically efficient, like a veritable magical power: a property which, because it responds to socially constituted "collective expectations" and beliefs, exercises a sort of action from a distance, without physical contact.
p.120-121 The economy of symbolic goods rests on the repression or the censorship of economic interests… As a consequence, economic truth, that is, price, must be actively or passively hidden or left vague. The economy of symbolic goods is an economy of imprecision and indeterminacy. It is based on the taboo of making things explicit… Because of this repression, the strategies and practices characteristic of the economy of symbolic goods are always ambiguous, two-sided, and even apparently contradictory… This duality of mutually exclusive truths… should not be thought of as duplicity, hypocrisy, but rather as denial assuring… the coexistence of opposites
p.121 The economy of symbolic exchanges rests not on the logic of rational action or of common knowledge… but rather on shared misrecognition… Symbolic violence rests on the adjustment between structures constitutive of the habitus of the dominated and the structure of the relation of domination to which they apply
p.122 Because the economy of symbolic goods is based on belief, the principle of its reproduction or crisis is found in the reproduction of crisis or belief, that is, in continuity or rupture with the adjustment between mental structures (categories of perception and appreciation, systems of preference) and objective structures.
|
