Pierre Bourdieu's construction of meaning in relation to social practice, cultural signification, class status !

1. Pierre Bourdieu: structure and
agency
Genetic structuralism
Reflexive Sociology
(method)
Cultural Capital

2. [Linguistic] Structuralism
(revisiting lecture 1)
 Concerned with the underlying structure of meaning in language
(and human thought)
 Ferdinand de Saussure (1924) 'Course in General Linguistics'
 "language is above all a system of signs and therefore we must
have recourse to the science of signs if we are to define it
properly'?
 Semiology (Gr. Semeion - signs) - the science of systems of
signs
 ’Signs’ includes noises, gestures, conventions, practices, belief
systems, images, 'symbolic rituals, etiquette, military signals' etc.

3. Structuralism (2)
 the meanings of 'signs' is not natural nor do they have an intrinsic
meaning. Rather they are 'arbitrary', and signs are assigned
meaning
 This leads one to think about the functional rules and conventions
which govern the assignment of meaning to signs e.g. why
gestures are given their meaning.
 The 'arbitrariness' of signs differs according to their role/status as
sytems of communication - i.e. traffic lights vs literary texts and
advertisements.
 Each sign constitutes a 'signifier' and signified'. Semiology
concerned with the causal link between them (what causes them
to be linked, seeing as meaning is arbitrary).

4. Structuralism (3) Application to social
sciences
Claude Levi-Strauss (anthropologist) 1961. Trying to make
explicit the implicit knowledge that enables people to
communicate, interpret and understand one another's behaviour.
 Application of the construction of meaning in relation to power and
ideology (Roland Barthes - Myth Today).
 Application of the construction of meaning in relation to social
practice, cultural signification, class status (Bourdieu).
 How do signs become status symbols? What do these meanings
and processes say about the organisation of class, status and
hierarchy in capitalist society?

5. Three aspects of Bourdieu’s work
1. Influence of Structuralism on Bourdieu’s idea of ‘genetic
structuralism. Power relations are embedded in the tissue of
everyday life. See Bourdieu, P. (1993) Language and Symbolic
Power. Harvard University Press. Mass
2. Reflexive Sociology (method)
- theory must grow out of empirical research
- participant observation
- reflexive sociology
See Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice and Bourdieu, P.
(1977/1972) Outline of a Theory of Practice.
3. The symbolic capital of lifestyles in the field of cultural production
- class, commodities, power and culture
- habitus, field and capital (economic, social and cultural capital)
See Bourdieu, P (1974{1979}) Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste, Routledge, London

6. Key concepts
 Field
 Habitus
 Cultural capital
 Practice
 Distinctions and class

7. Reflexive Sociology (method)
 'Outline of a Theory of Practice' (1977{1972})
 Bourdieu’s hermeneutic (relating to the whole)
understanding of the way people read, understand, interpret
and live their everyday lives
 an objective analysis of the structures which frame, limit,
control and influence social life.
 links the objective with the subjective social spheres.
 Breaking down the traditional sociological dualisms
 Argued for complexity of people's activities as
simultaneously shaping and being shaped by the social
world.

8. Objectivism and subjectivism – the
problems
– ‘Objectivism‘(reproduction of the world via structures)
erroneously searched for grand explanations
– Critical of structural theories of the left (Althusserian Marxism)
and right (Parsons)
– ‘Objectivism erroneously adopts a mechanistic view of human
conduct, ignoring the extent to which social life is a practical
achievement by skilful actors’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 22-23)
– Subjectivism: (reproduction of the world by individuals)
– Critical of phenomenology and SI For assuming that social
relations and values emerged automatically from social
situations but were untouched by social structures, influences
or forces.

9. Agency …
 individuals exercised agency but within existing
social conventions, values and sanctions
 Individuals do not create the world anew
 Behaviour is socially constrained
 our social interactions are already influenced
by social predispositions, conventions, rules
etc.

10. …and Structure
 Structure (the field) social relations were not reproduced in a
vacuum, but as an outcome of power relations.
 The 'field' of social relations refers to the areas of social life where
strategies are used in the struggle for resources.
 Therefore, he viewed the relations between practice (what we do
in our immediate environment) and the field (the larger
parameters of power relations) as being intrinsically linked
 that sociological methods had to observe both of these dynamics
together.

11. Sociological method
 B adopted two sociological methods and rules which
would be attentive to the complex interactions between
social groups and social structures.
 Participant observation in which the researcher
– should be concerned with the different power relations shaping
social life, and the most receptive way to observe these was
by closely observing social practices
– Takes account of the way people skilfully improvise their social
roles or practices

12. Practice continued – reflexive
sociology
Reflexive sociology
– B concerned with the different power relations
between researcher and the researched
– Rejected researcher/researched divide
– Researcher is part of the social world and must
adopt a critical attitude to own practice

13. Practice
 Is neither unconscious or conscious - people know how
to act in daily activities
 People draw from doxa (doxic experience) - i.e. their
'taken for granted world beyond reflection' (1977).
 The social world into which we are born and in which
we operate in everyday life is already structured
 Each area of social life has its own social order
 We need unpack the nature of social rules, practices
and strategies and the intuitive, automatic way people
read and understand the social world in which they
operate.

14. Practice (2)
 we engage in the social world using a combination of
our 'practical sense' and 'doxa'
 agency involves individuals strategically engaging in
and manipulating the rules of the social situations -
playing a game
 going to university and studying for a degree can be
seen as a game with very definite rules
 Students students develop a 'feel for the game';, I.e
what are inappropriate, good and bad moves. They
develop skills to play the game intuitively

15. This is an example of ‘habitus’ at
work
 the second-nature, understanding of what is
happening, is crucial to understanding social life.
 B refers to it as habitus.
 Habitus; a set of dispositions resulting in particular
practices, improvisations, bodily attitude, gestures, etc.
which provide the 'feeling for the game'.
 Like Blumer and Giddens, but Bourdieu has a deeper
analysis of the meaning of cultural sings and meaning,
strategic action and class power.

16. Cultural capital
 Classical Marxism - the accumulation of profit widens the division
between those who own and control the means of production, and
those who rely on waged labour.
 B extends the analysis to everyday cultural reproduction and to a
notion of cultural power as a key sphere for reproducing class
domination.
 Access to higher education is a good example
 The cultural ‘goods’ with which students play the game of
University life
 University life overlaps with other social fields and other areas of
social privilege (private education or a good state school; family
situation; social aspirations; access to funding; 'ability' and
government policy).

17. Cultural capital (2)
 Getting a place at your chosen University is based on strategic
struggle to attain different forms of capital (the struggle to get to
University starts years before you sit your matriculations).
 Educational awards (degrees) are a form of cultural capital which
are ‘traded’ for money,good jobs, social prestige.
 Symbolic capital is one of the most significant forms of capital.
 Possessors of symbolic capital are not only able to justify their
possession of other forms of capital but are able to change the
structure and rules by which the field operates.
 Thus higher education can be seen as a valued commodity which
reproduces the three different elements of capital (economic,
cultural and social)

18. Class and the social sieve -
Distinction
 Pierre Bourdieu's attempts to understand social inequality and
why it is that people acquiesce to power and being dominated
without resisting.
 He did not find the answer primarily in economic classes or the
state, but in culture and ideology.
 And how social classes are reproduced through symbolic
domination and the education system
 Bourdieu, P (1974{1979)) Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste, Routledge, London
 The relations between ‘taste’ and class in French society. Survey
between 1963-8, 1217 subjects.
 People asked to specify their personal tastes in music, art,
theatre, home decor, social pastimes, literature etc.

19. Distinctions (2)
 B held that there still was a dominant valuation in favour of 'high-
culture' which is still used to express social distinction.
 ‘Good taste’ is dependent on a separation from the necessities of
daily labour.
 This distance is produced by the status of the bourgeois classes
as being separate from manual productive labour.
 class power and social inequality are reproduced at athe cultural
and social level.
 This occurred apparently without resistance or social conflict,
 Is class elitism evident in recent controversies about the BBC
‘dumbing down’, complaints about the 'illiteracy' of younger
generations and the establishment of 'Mickey-Mouse degrees‘?

20. Bourdieu’s contribution
 Linked the construction of ‘taste’ and cultural practice
to class distinctions
 It advances Marxist sociology.
 Develops the concept of economic, cultural,
educational and social capital within a unified
framework. Through this, a better understanding of
the reproduction of class and status
 Furthermore, it also advances Bourdieu's general
theory of society and social agency