Date: Sun, 05 May 96 07:27:34 EDT From: "Charles J. Stivale" <CSTIVAL-AT-CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU> Subject: Re: Fields and circles On Sat, 4 May 1996 17:30:16 -0600 (CST) Katya Mandoki said: >I also found the idea of concentric circles too simplistic, but being >reminded by Cindy of a field revolving around capitals (economic, >symbolic etc.) perhaps we could, after all, picture Bourdieu's concept of >field as centripetal. I couldn't understand her idea of the >periphery, rather than the center, what would define the field. If fields >are defined by capitals, they can't be but centripetal, and the habitus >can be interpreted as the magnetic force keeping the field together in >its process of reproduction. I too am taken by Cindy's formulations regarding fields, and was able to conceptualize it in terms of an annual academic conference organization, the Midwest Modern Language Association (USA), that I am studying in terms of fields (and sub-fields). In this analysis, I want to understand how, within the field of literary and language studies, groups within different sub-fields (e.g. French, Spanish, English, American, etc.) acquire symbolic capital over several decades and how certain groups become more peripheral (in this case, the foreign languages) than others (e.g. American Studies and its array of interest groups such as Pop Culture, Women's Studies, etc). However, it seems to me that the centripetal force is not the sole one acting upon these relations, that there is necessarily a centrifugal force as well, with the point of adhesion/tension perhaps being the aforementioned "magnetic force" of habitus. > >Stanley Fisher's "interpretative communities" seems to me as an echoing this >idea: communities revolving around a "symbolic capital" of what in reception >aesthetics (Jauss, to be exact) conforms an "horizon of expectations. I believe the reference is to Stanley Fish. The sentence 'communities revolve around a "symbolic capital" of .. an "horizon of expectations"' seems to assume some uniformity in such communities and horizon, when it would seem that the struggle/tension for capital and position within a field precludes precisely such uniformity. Just some thoughts. I continue to be surprised how certain aspects of Bakhtin (e.g. the dialogics of struggle) intersect with Bourdieu. Charles J. Stivale, Detroit USA ********************************************************************** Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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