Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 20:49:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Henry Farrell <farrelhj-AT-gusun.acc.georgetown.edu>
Subject: Bourdieu's Standards


---------- Forwarded message ---------
Jeffrey Feldman wrote:

>As I understand it, Distinction constitutes Bourdieu's position
>on standards.  All forms of capital (cultural, educational or
>otherwise symbolic, etc.) function within constraints roughly
>contiguous with the notion of class.  The standard is not so
>much recognized as incorporated, and by corporate I mean not
>the contemporary business connotation, but the definition
>offered by anthropology (from Maine) that a corporation is an
>enduring group.  

>Along these lines, on habitus Bourdieu suggests:

>"Since the habitus, the virtue made of necessity, is a product
>of the incorporation of objective necessity, it produces
>strategies which, even if they are not produced by consciously
>aiming at explicitly formulated goals on the basis of an
>adequate knowledge of objective conditions, nor by the
>mechanical determination excercised by causes, turn out to be
>objectively adjusted to the situation." (In Other Words, p. 11)


If I understand him correctly, this is a misinterpretation of Bourdieu's 
use of the idea of incorporation. Bourdieu doesn't derive incorporation from 
Sir Henry Maine or anybody else of the sort, and isn't referring to 
classes or the social world as such. Rather, he's referring back to the 
Latin root of incorporation (corpus = body) and the idea that habitus 
consists of a set of bodily predispositions. In the essay which Jeffrey 
mentions, Bourdieu is trying to distinguish himself from theorists of 
rationality such as Jon Elster, and is proposing that habitus is not a 
form of rationality, or a consideration of interest (or even illusio) but 
is rather a prerational set of dispositions which reproduce the "rules of 
a game" within a sort of bodily hexis of the individual.
 Habitus isn't a form of reason, 
but is instead similar to the "knowledge" of a football player, who 
doesn't rationally consider the best way to score a goal, but instead 
apprehends the game as a field of vectors, forces and possibilities.

Re: Dititi's questions, there can be as many forms of cultural capital as 
there are subfields within culture. The capital of each field is formed 
by illusio, or the (arbitrary?) belief that the capital of the field is 
worth fighting for. Furthermore, not only are there contests within 
fields, but the rate of exchange between different sorts of capital are 
also continually contested. As far as I'm aware (I'm open to correction 
on this as there are vast sections of Bourdieu's work that I haven't 
read) there is no universally dominant species of capitalism. THis leads 
to problems for materialists (Marxists etc) as it seems to imply an 
idealist account of how capital is formed and changes in value.

For people who are unfamiliar with Bourdieu's work, I'd recommend 
the opening section of Bourdieu & Wacquant's "Invitation to Reflexive 
Sociology." This is a reasonably digestible "authorised" (in a weak sense 
of the word) introduction to Bourdieu's aims and theory.

Henry Farrell, Centre for German and European Studies/Dept. of Govt, 
Georgetown University.