File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_1999/bourdieu.9903, message 71


Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 08:32:31 -0600
From: Deborah Kilgore <kilgore-AT-unix.tamu.edu>
Subject: Re: AW: Bourdieu and love


Bourdieu talks about love in "Distinction" briefly and it is here that
he mentions how it involves the decoding of habitus:

"Taste is a match-maker; it marries colours and also people, who make
'well-matched couples' initially in regard to taste.  All the acts of
cooption which underlie 'primary groups' are ... sign reading operations
(particularly visible in first encounters) through which a habitus
confirms its affinity with other habitus.  Hence the astonishing harmony
of ordinary couples who, often matched initially, progressively match
each other by a sort of mutual acculturation.  This spontaneous decoding
of one habitus by another is the basis of the immediate affinitites
which orient social encounters, discouraging socially discordant
relationships, encouraging well-matched relationships, without these
operations ever having to be formulated other than in the socially
innocent language of likes and dislikes" (p. 243).


serge.gnos-AT-azag.ch wrote:
> 
> Daniel Gaxie's "le cens caché" certainly strenghtens this thesis. he claims,
> that similarity in habitus and social positions hightens the chances of
> attraction and eventual mariage. 
>but if i remember it right, he abstains
> from an analysis of love as such. it seems that neither he nor bourdieu in
> "la domination masculine" are overly concerned with love. can it be, that
> love simply cant be analysied sociologically? because if love is simply an
> unconscious decoding of a habitus and the recognition of a similarity, then
> how do we explain hate? it seems to me, that hate cannot be reduced to the
> unconscious recognition of a difference in habitus.
> 
Bourdieu goes on to say on page 244 how the habitus limits our thoughts
and makes us even love those limits.  Consciousness raising, to Bourdieu
in this text, allows us to detach our knowledge & love of our destiny
from our recognition of it as such, allowing us to hate it.  

> a similarity in habitus certainly inforces the chances of falling in love,
> but it cant be the only explaing factor for the consciuos or unconsious act
> per se. finally, and the dynamics in the concept of habitus underline it,
> there is a always a choice, certainly determined, but still a choice. the
> question seems, if we meet somebody we could potentialy fall in love with -
> the habitus of the other person being similar to ours - the how come we this
> person and not another which has also a similar habitus?

i think there is an additional growing together (mutual acculturation)
that occurs given the opportunity, but i still imagine other than the
deserted island scenario, at a sociological level it is likely that
initially falling in love occurs with those who travel in one's social
circle and share one's disposition.

anyway, i'm not explaining it as well as b. in "distinction."

> serge


regards, 


***********************
Deborah Kilgore     
Texas A&M University
Fue tan bello vivir cuando vivias!
How lovely it was to live while you lived!
- Pablo Neruda, from "Final"
**********************************************************************
Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005