Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 23:57:59 -0600 From: Minoru Sawada <msawada-AT-students.wisc.edu> Subject: a couple of questions Hello everyone, I am a doctoral student at the Department of Curriculum & Instruction of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US. I need a help from you about a couple of questions I would like to have below. It would be appreciated if someone of you could answer or have comments on even only one of them and email me. I cannot type italics nor some French style like accent aigu or others here, so please be patient. (1) I have a Japanese translation of the article written by Bourdieu titled =B3La Construction Sociale du Sexe,=B2 but strangely enough, there is no citation of this there. Could someone of you tell me where the article was originally published in French? I could not find it in Actes, though I might have missed it. And I would be happy if I could know whether there is any English translation of it or not. (2) David Swartz referred to =B3Report of the College de France on the Future of Education=B2 in his brilliant new book on Bourdieu, but is there any English translation of =B3Propositions pour l=B9Enseignement de l=B9Avenir=B2? This is also cited in Bourdieu and Wacquant=B9s Invitation to the Reflexive Sociology as well, but what it indicates is =B3Principles for Reflecting on Curriculum,=B2 which was translated into English and published in the Curriculum Journal in 1990, but these two are different from each other. =B3Propositions pour l=B9Enseignement de l=B9Avenir=B2 was originally published in 1985 in France. I have a copy of this original version, but I would like to get its English translation. I would appreciate it if someone of you could give me a helpful information about this, and in addition about those English translations of Bourdieu=B9s articles that were published after 1997--I only have a copy of his lecture on gender at Berkeley--or that cannot be seen on the World Wide Web page on Bourdieu. (3) Next, please allow me to have a very basic question. It is about Bourdieu=B9s concept of the total volume of capital, as seen in the rectangular charts of social space in his book Distinction. It seems that the issue of different kinds of capital, especially the relationship between cultural capital as dominated in the field of power and economic capital as dominant there has been relatively often discussed, but the notion of the total volume of cultural and economic capital has not. I understand what it means, and what I want to make clear is how the notion was generated and designated. This topic might be for almost everyone too easy to take up, but to someone like me who is not familiar with statistics in general nor correspondence analysis, it does not seem self-evident, at least because it does not appear clear how the total volume of capital can be calculated. Is it nothing that can be directly calculated, but something like hypothetical concept designated to explain the different sets of positions in the chart of social space as a result of correspondence analysis? It seems at least that there is nothing like common unit or criterion to integrate cultural and economic capital quantitatively; it appears very difficult to statistically quantify various indications of cultural capital and impossible to simply add the volumes of two different capitals without any unit common to them. I think I read Distinction all over but I might have missed some explanation of these. I would be grateful if someone of you could resolve this quite naive question or show me what part of what book or article I should look at. (4) Finally, I would like you to hear you about what I am now thinking about. I am grappling with some socio-historical work on the genesis and the structure of the curriculum field in the United States. My main concern is with what might be called critical curriculum studies or critical educational studies in the country. It has not been rare that the words "curriculum field" are used in the academic place involving educational studies in this country, but I am trying to analyze to the "field" in terms of its Bourdieuian concept--as one of the apparently same sorts of studies I know Ladwig=B9s Academic Distinction(1996)--although my research has many kinds of limits regarding sociological tools I am able to apply there. Though it might be that I should be abstinent about this, I am also interested in that level of discussion which might be called "ought" or "ought-to-be" beyond the level of analytical discussion, that is, what to do faced with the reality of the reproduction of educational/social inequality. In the critical curriculum field as a subfield of the curriculum one, this problem has been discussed mainly in terms of some sort of populism. The criticisms of Bourdieu=B9s discussion on social/cultural reproduction which are found in the field have been too often superficial and they have not take enough account of his discussion of cultural production such as scientific and literary field. Among such populist discourse is that by Henry Giroux. He criticizes reproduction theories in that they lack the understanding of the productive/active aspect of the school; those theories do not show us what schools should be. Then, he thinks it is necessary to build a new theory of schooling/curriculum, taking in the fruits of postmodernism. In his view, we should conceive the school to be an arena for cultural struggles, and the school should be =B3designed to empower students to be critical and active citizens=B2. For him, those who have a very important role are =B3teachers as transformative intellectuals=B2--who teach for social transformation-- or as =B3emancipatory authority.=B2 The elements he emphasizes here are =B3popular culture=B2 and what he calls =B3the politics of difference.=B2 And this kind of discussion has been becoming influential in part of the critical educational studies. I admit Giroux=B9s argument has what we should appreciate positively, but it does not seem to me that it can contribute to some genuine realistic resolution of the problem of inequality or its reproduction. In fact, there is more than a little gap between his perspective and that which can be found in =B3Principles for reflecting on the curriculum=B2 by a committee partly chaired by Bourdieu and =B3Propositions for the education of the future=B2(1985 in French) by a committee of College de France where Bourdieu had the most important role. I just now used the words =B3realistic resolution=B2. I am wondering here whether it cannot be said that any realistic resolution of the problem is always partial and any realistic viewpoint of its resolution is necessarily =B3ambiguous=B2 if it is true that =B3something real is relational.=B2 I know this way of thinking is dangerous, because I might unwittingly contribute to legitimizing some scholastic or intellectual point of view; actually Bourdieu points out the =B3ambiguous=B2 posture of intellectuals toward the problem of class struggles or social inequality. However, the populist approach should be termed =B3ambivalent,=B2 according to the definition of the word by Merleau-Ponty. He says, =B3Ambivalence consists in having two alternative images of the same object, the same person, without making any effort to connect them or notice that in reality they relate to the same subject and the same person.=B2 In other words, to be ambivalent means to have opposite emotions of one and the same thing, but we should keep in mind that when somebody shows =B3ressentiment=B2 about something/someone, s/he is unconsciously very often attracted by or wants to appropriate the thing/person involved. Here we may refer to the Freudian concept of =B3negation=B2 or =B3disavowal=B2 (=B3Verneinung=B2 or =B3Verleugnung=B2), though I do not know which is appropriate in this case. Therefore, it can be said that polarizing two opposites and putting too much exaggeration on either of them without awareness of one=B9s own practical interest is generated by some ambivalent posture. Therefore, populism as well as elitism as opposed to it can be regarded as some ambivalent posture. Both of these seem unrealistic ways of the resolution of the problem. To the contrary, Boudieu=B9s notion of culture or the viewpoints shown in =B3Propositions for the education of the future=B2 might be thought of as =B3ambiguous=B2 if we are allowed to look at them from the viewpoint that is not analytic but rather constructive and propositional. According to Merleau-Ponty, not only is it that =B3ambivalence is a refusal of ambiguity, but that ambiguity is ambivalence that one dares to look at face to face.=B2 In short, to be ambiguous means to admit one=B9s own ambivalence, in my words. My discussion might be a little confusing, but this point seems to related to Bourdieu=B9s discussion on =B3the ambiguity of reason=B2 in his new book Meditations Pascalliennes, which I did not read because I am not able to do in French. At another place, he argues over =B3Real Politics of Reason.=B2 Does not this mean that the politics of, by and for reason which itself is a historical and social product is necessarily something ambiguous? And is it not that one typical form of refusal of this ambiguity or real politic is forcing on ourselves alternative between elitism and populism? I would like to understand if this question is relevant or not. I would like to thank you for your patient reading of my not good English, though it might be that this humbleness itself should be an object of our sociological gaze. At any rate, I look forward to hearing you. ************************************************* Minoru Sawada Research Assistant and Ph.D. Candidate Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison 503-I Eagle Heights, Madison, WI 53705-2033 Phone/Fax: (608)231-1028 ************************************************* ********************************************************************** 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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