From: "Simon Emsley" <S.Emsley-AT-unsw.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: PB and New Concepts
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 13:23:26 +1000


Dear Emrah,

I found your questions to the list very interesting and offer a response to
your second question. Having wrestled with the intersection of Bourdieu and
Marx in relation to the analysis the struggle for distribution of symbolic
capital in the post-war New Zealand state I have found myself facing the
same question. I have come to understand and appreciate Bourdieu's position
on class as much in terms of the questions he tries to solve as in regard
to what he actually manages to accomplish. 

My reading is that class is central, perhaps the central issue, for
Bourdieu. In respect to the habitus, it is explained as being historically
produced individual positions which serve individually and collectively as
structuring structures. Habitas is therefore central to the way Bourdieu
understands the social world to be determined. 

In some cases (I'm thinking of Language and Symbolic Power) his discussion
of the relationship between habitas and politics (and thereby class)
appears very close to a Marxist approach. However, Bourdieu's deliberate
isolation of the effects of the properties of social wealth (his idea of
capital) from the structuring effects of the circulation of wealth
particular to the capitalist economy tends to weaken an idea of class.
Class is transformed into `groups', while the elements governing the
identification of associations are much more arbitrary than in Marx. At the
same time, it may be argued that Bourdieu's approach is more open to the
empirical. This seems to be what he is saying in `Vive la crise', his
earlier criticisms of economically deterministic reading of Marx and in his
hostility to Althusser.

The central question then becomes `can an idea of class be usefully
retained independently of Marx's idea of Capital and its particular social
relations of production'? Bourdieu attempts to answer in the affirmative.
Your question (2) suggests he has yet to convince you on this subject. My
feeling is that once capital becomes `wealth' and the notion of surplus
value is discarded or put aside, that the question of what is driving
distributional struggles become circular: each social value indicates a
social cost. Bourdieu attempts to duck the issue of price and utility by
saying exchanges of social capital other than economic capital are only
approximations. The inference is that accumulation of social capital by the
dominant may occur across all fields in addition to those in the economic
sphere. Nevertheless, in saying the explanation of the social world is
`everywhere and nowhere', he echoes the ultimately futile neoclassical
explanation of value, that `prices come from prices'.

I have become increasingly wary of Bourdieu's approach, and understand it
as expressing a crisis in explanation at a certain level. The overly
generous application of the term field to delineate any specific area of
activity (bureaucratic, artistic, etc.) exemplifies this crisis in my view.
I want to bring up this issue for discussion on the list when I have time
to think my concerns on this through. 

Despite these criticisms, I think it's possible to find a lot of useful and
insightful things in Bourdieu. My own solution has been to read him as a
reflection on a particular reading of Marx, though I'm sure others on the
list would feel this was way out of whack. In any event, the practicality
of Bourdieu's approach must be found in its application to concrete
problems. All the best with your studies!

Simon Emsley
  
----------
> From: Emrah Goker <egoker-AT-Bilkent.EDU.TR>
> To: Bourdieu Forum <bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
> Subject: PB and New Concepts
> Date: Friday, September 18, 1998 4:50 PM
> 
>     Hi everybody!
>     I am from Turkey and have newly subscribed. I am preparing a master's
> thesis here in the Political Science Department on community
> politicization and "class culture" of Alevis, which are the second most
> crowded Muslim sect here in Turkey after Sunnis (Alevis are originally
> Shiites, like Iran). Bourdieu, which is 90% neglected in Turkish social
> science will be my main guide.
>     I have two questions to the list:
>     1) In _An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology_ Loic Wacquant somewhere
> talks about two recent innovations in Bourdieu's thought: One is about
the
> concept of _conatus_ replacing _habitus_, and the other is about
> _informational capital_ replacing _cultural capital_. Can anyone guide me
> to an English reference expanding on these two concepts (I have read a
lot
> of stuff about the good old habitus and cultural capital), or tell me
> briefly what they are?
>     2) Is "class" as Bourdieu conceptualizes it really a central tool for
> him? I know that _Distinction_ attempts an original class division of
> French society, but he seems to be sometimes at a loss to talk about
> classes, where he just points at how tastes or lifestyles are similarly
> structured in a field. Inequal distribution of capital types in a field,
> he acknowledges, lead to conflict and struggle, but can this be treated
as 
> a _class struggle_ in every field? Or am I totally wrong? (which would
> unfortunately mean that I have to re-read Bourdieu!)
>     
> Emrah Goker, Bilkent University, Department of Political Science, Turkey 
 	  
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