File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_1999/bourdieu.9912, message 61


Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 17:49:21 +0100
From: Karl Maton <karl.maton-AT-dtn.ntl.com>
Subject: A little matter of Bourdieu


In this email, I'm picking up on a number of recent postings ... several
emails in one.  

First,
Picking up a couple of points which Ziggy raised ...

Ziggy Rivkin-Fish wrote:
> In short, I have no solutions, only questions. However, it does seem to me
> that:
> 1) Habitus is not a thing, but a network of loosely connected networks of
> expectations and habituated behaviors. Any social situation provide lots of
> cues that "trigger" particular networks of the habitus as particularly
> salient. This formulation allows seemingly incongruent behaviors (from a
> role theoretical and institutional point of view) to take place, and also
> allows for creative uses of "less salient" aspects of habitus in response
> to various situational flows. Think of a male CEO making a sexual innuendo
> to a female senior manager during a business meeting:
> Multiple reactions are possible, including ignoring the remark as not
> fitting the situation, challenging it for undermining her as manager, using
> a standard rejection strategy identified with more casual social
> interactions etc. The combinations are endless, but nevertheless will draw
> on some habitual logics, even if they are not strongly identified with the
> business meeting as a setting or business as a field.

I agree, as I think will most people on the list, that habitus is not a
thing, though being a network or networks is a different issue unrelated
to its ontology.  Ontologically, I'd see habitus as a hypothesised
generative mechanism (along the lines of Bhaskar's use of this term). 
As such, what Ziggy describes as 'triggers' are enabling or evoking
conditions.  (I don't disagree here).  What interests me, though, is the
question of what the empirical realisations of the habitus, namely
practices, can tell us about the habitus of someone.  If we can see only
the differences between someone's practices at any moments in time or
different contexts, and then attribute these empirical differences to
different networks or habituses, we're not really doing much more than
giving a name to a bundle of practices.  If we cannot say what the
structure of someone's habitus is at any point, then how we can tell
when a different structure or habitus is in play?  

My point here may be confused by the issue of what the thread is aiming
to do.  On the one hand, there's the question of discussing the logic of
practice.  On the other hand, the issue of whether habitus as a concept
can be operationalised in empirical research.  Habitus as it presently
stands seems to me perfectly adequate in any philosophical discussion of
the former (wherein one can talk of fuzzy logic etc), but not much more
than a useful metaphor in the latter.  Unless we can say that the
structure of someone's habitus, as realised by their practices, is X
(rather than W, Y, or Z), then we're just using the term as shorthand in
empirical description.  

Thus, I don't take issue with the description above of various options
being available etc.  My question is whether habitus (again I emphasise,
as it is presently defined) can allow us to do much more than add
another layer, albeit more subtle and suggestive, of empirical
description.  I believe that Bourdieu's approach is extremely useful for
highlighting the need to go further than endless empirical description.  

> 2) Habitus's multiple networks are associated but not determined by
> different fields. However, social interaction never takes place in a field,
> but at most an interactional setting that is heavily associated (and
> reinforced) by field specific forces.
> Again, the business meeting might be heavily determined by business logics
> of profit, investment, etc. As well as institutional props ranging from
> attire, furniture, codes of ethics, to language. But anyone who has been to
> any kind of meeting of any sort knows that they never "succeed" in
> filtering out "non-business" elements. Indeed, if they could succeed, real
> business would probably be impossible in the first place (But the illusion
> might serve its own functions though: to legitimate for example that gender
> discrimination does not occur, since it's strictly business).

On a different note ... I think I understand what Ziggy's getting at
here.  Social interaction is of a different kind to the sort of
relations Bourdieu is describing as structuring a field - one doesn't
need to ever meet others in a field with which one has relations.  I'm
slightly troubled by the notion of eliding 'field specific forces' with
a field as a whole.  I agree that there are all sorts of non-specific
issues in play, but they are in play in the field, rather than existing
outside it.  Hmmm.  I'm not sure whether I'm being nitpicking or not, as
I think Ziggy's point is very interesting.  Will have to give it some
thought.  

--------------

Now I know where the expression reindeer games comes from ... most
festive and apposite for the time of year.  (I received my first Xmas
card on the first of December).  

On this note, may I send a very warm festive greeting to everyone on the
list.  
There's been some symbolic violence at times, but I find that it is
through listservs that one often finds ideas that one didn't know one
had and can guage the uses and misuses of ideas.  So, thanks to everyone
who has participated, and my warm encouragement to all lurkers to join
in, whatever you have to say.  

-------------

> Sorry debbie,
> Sorry if my remark had an edge to it.  But i must strongly disagree with
> your populism which is opposed to the scientific practice and habitus which
> Bourdieu is attempting to institute which is tied to language. Which is not
> anti-political, it occupies a different sphere and field and can be used
> within political discussions, as a tool for thinking, or in the personae of
> the public academic, but they don't and can't occur at the same at the same
> time-I think this is much of Bourdieu's critique of Sartre.  This again is
> not an opposition..you are the one who focuses on one Bordieu to the
> exclusion or others and flames others who might be following a different
> trajectory of research and interest.   This is an academic list and the
> theorist I mentioned are academics who have something to say and should be
> acknowledeged. And since this is a Bourdieu newsgroup, you should at least
> acknowledge Bourdieu's critique of plain simple everyday language that makes
> up the spontaneous sociology that is rampant in the mass media, the
> university and gets a lot of crap published etc. 

I'm not putting myself forward as some kind of referee here, but I think
there is a slight confusion going on, and Kent and Deborah may be about
to argue against positions not held by the other.  

Again, I'd emphasise that it is not simple everyday language itself
which is the problem.  Indeed, much of what I would describe as
spontaneous sociology is couched in extremely obscure and jargonised
terms.  It is what is being said that is just as important as how it is
being said.  This may be a matter of national context - the States may
be a different case.  But in British sociology, I think there is both a
valorisation of simple language and of simplistic ideas.  Simplistic
ideas may be, as I've said, couched in the most incredibly obscurantist
terms.  If difficult language were enough, then Weber, Durkheim and Marx
would be passed over as useless and the sophists of
philosophical-literary speculation would be on a pedestal.  (Oh, heck,
I've just realised that many of them are!).  Conversely, a term isn't
essentially or intrinsically 'jargon' - it is the use to which it is
put.  Much difficult language on writing acts as little more then
intellectual camouflage for common-sense.  

---------------
Hey, Tobin!  There I go, emailing a reply and I find you've already
covered what I was going to say.  Robert Merton wickedly called this
'preemptive plagiarism' (ha ha).  (On a tangent, has anyone read his
highly enjoyable _On the Shoulders of Giants_?).  

Tobin Nellhaus wrote:
>  
> While I'm here, Debbie and Karl M have a point about the distinction between
> "style and content," or perhaps we should say "diction and analysis."  For
> example, I'd say Marx has a pretty sophisticated analysis of capitalism, one
> that requires careful thinking, but he's also very readable (wasn't there a
> time when _Capital_ could be found in workers' homes?).  Anyway, not
> everyone on this list is an academic.
> 

------------
This is my last on the current thread.  We seem to have gone way
off-thread and into something which is not at all like discussion or
debate.  The list is about Bourdieu and his ideas and their use and our
use of them.  May I suggest, in a friendly manner, that when threads
become personal, that they then become emails between the two or more
persons in direct conflict.  Not only does this save others from having
dozens of emails in their Inbox (putting more money into the hands of
Internet Service Providers - personally, it is taking ages at present
for my emails to download), but it also can help to lower the
temperature by removing the amount at stake.  For example, Kent and I
had a brief discussion off-list which enabled us to see exactly whether
we were actually even disagreeing or not, and if so on what.  Lastly, it
also might avoid putting others off contributing to the list.  

Now, before I get flamed for making these suggestions, I emphasise that
they are merely that: friendly suggestions.  My question is: who does it
serve for us to be engaged in personal conflicts?  And I think that too
often academic debate is becoming personal.  

If anyone wants to have a go at me for suggesting all this, please do so
off-list.  My email is at the top and bottom of this post.  (i.e. don't
use the 'Reply' button or command as it will be sent to the list, and I
won't respond on this subject there).

Take care everyone and have a great new year,
May your computer not crash on Jan 1st!

With best wishes,

Karl 

Karl Maton
School of Education, University of Cambridge

Correspondence address:
108 Avenue Road Extension, Leicester LE2 3EH
Tel: 0116 220 1066
Email: karl.maton-AT-dtn.ntl.com

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and
the truth of the imagination
Keats
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