Pierre Bourdieu ( ) French sociologist, philosopher. Intellectual and activist.

Size: px
Start display at page:

Download "Pierre Bourdieu ( ) French sociologist, philosopher. Intellectual and activist."

Transcription

1 Forms of capital and power by Kees Boersma Pierre Bourdieu ( ) French sociologist, philosopher. Intellectual and activist.

2 Theory of Practice The total connection between man and the world/social reality. It is all about the way we look, act, talk, etc., i.e. the sum of all the acts through which man is enacted to the world outside.

3 Main method: ethnography

4 Theory of Practice 1) Social Field 2) Habitus 3) Form of Capital

5 FIELD A bar magnet is placed between two transparent sheets of plastic. Iron filings are sprinkled on the top then tapped lightly to make the field lines visible.

6 1. Social Field Sociological (Bourdieu): a structured social space with its own rules, schemes of domination, legitimate opinions and so on, relatively autonomous from the greater social spectre, in which people relate and struggle through a complex of connected social relations (both direct and indirect). The social field is a result of interaction between the specific rules of the field, agent s habitus and agent s capital

7 Theory of Practice 1) Social Field 2) Habitus 3) Capital

8 The habitus of the other, visible embodied history

9 2. HABITUS the person's beliefs and dispositions, and prefigures everything that that person may choose to do. The concept of habitus challenges the concept of free will, in that within a certain habitus at any one time, choices are not limitless - here are limited dispositions, or readiness for action. Habitus is primarily the product of a learning process which has become unconscious, which then becomes an apparently natural ability to move freely in a given milieu: internalization of norms.

10 Red, White and Blue

11 Example from the Netherlands

12 Old style

13 Protection from the ocean

14 River slots

15 City of Dordrecht

16

17 Theory of Practice 1) Social Field 2) Habitus 3) Capital

18 3. Forms of Capital - ECONOMIC (money) - SOCIAL (e.g. networks) - CULTURAL (e.g. diplomas, status) -

19 Social capital Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition or in other words, to membership in a social network.

20

21

22 Cultural capital Cultural capital can exist in three forms: - in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body, - in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realization of theories or critiques of these theories, - in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be set apart because, as will be seen in the case of educational qualifications, it confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee.

23

24 Inhabitant city of Dordrecht

25

26

27

28 Capitals and power The possession of various forms of capital predict your success or failure in a social field. The different forms of capital have different meanings in different context, but the basis of capital forms is economic capital. Economic capital can be used to improve social and cultural capital (e.g. expensive private schools). Social and cultural capital can be used to exclude others through what we call: symbolic violence.

29 Symbolic power - Habitus in organizations: inclusion, exclusion. It is important to know the rules of the game. - Symbolic power (by the use of symbols, language, etc.).

30 Praxis = (Habitus + Capital) x Field

31 Habitus-Praxis intervention If the internal dispositions be called habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) and if the species character of human beings with which they make sense, think and weave their social world can be called praxis then praxis intervention can be explained in terms of habituspraxis :unsettlement of habitus and its routine praxis (Madhu 2005). (see: Discussion: possibilities of Habitus-praxis intervention.