File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_2000/bourdieu.0001, message 16


From: "Paul Dillon" <dillonph-AT-northcoast.com>
Subject: Re: comprendre
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 18:14:08 -0800


Simon,

Your post certainly made me laugh although that meant I was laughing at
myself  since I use statistics, charts, etc. and also cite people when I
quote them or use a concept I first learned from something they wrote.
Actually, I like this aspect of academic writing since it allows me to
follow various threads, discover new writers, and sometimes previously
unknown literatures and discourses that speak to something that concerns me.
But I also recognize that citing often has the functions you point out.

As to " the use of statistics, charts, and other such trappings and
paraphernalia of scientificity  " I tend to see quantitative methods as
additional tools.  Perhaps you're right about Bourdieu's use of statistics
in Distincion at some level, but he was working with survey material and I
can't think of how you would have him analyze so many surveys (1000+)
without some recourse to quantitative methods.  Bourdieu uses statistics
descriptively and makes no pretension to mathematically "model" social
reality.  I statistical analysis very useful for assimilating and also for
demonstrating certain kinds of patterns, even modeling can be suggestive
although I don't think social fields or habitus could be meaningfully
represented in a mathematical model, like the rotational mechanics of a
galaxy, and I'm sure Bourdieu doesn't either..

What do you think.

Paul H. Dillon



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