From: "Simon Beesley" <simonb-AT-beesleys.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Homology 
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 21:07:07 -0000


John Evans,

Thank you for providing the extract from your thesis. It's more illuminating
on Bourdieu's notion of homology than anything else I've read. One thing I
don't understand is how the homology holds up in the retranslation from the
space of social positions to the space of behaviours/position-taking. To
stick with your diagram, the relations between a, b, and c are determined
not their habitus but by their objective social positions (and measurable by
such factors as economic and social status, degree of dominance or
subordination, etc.); so the "in-betweenness" of b represents more less the
fact that a b-agent belongs to a group below the dominant a-agent group and
above the c-agent group. Now, when it comes to the relations between their
respective behaviours a', b', c', it is far less easy to see that the same
relations hold. It is not enough to say that each agent's position-taking is
distinct or different -- the thesis requires that each should also stand in
the same
relation to each other as in the social positions (i.e. b' < a', b' > c', a'
> c'), and further that the relations between behaviours/position-taking
(consumption, taste, etc.) should be determinable independently, without
recourse to notions of habitat or space in social position. Naturally, with
behaviour such as consumption, one can see how the homology does hold up --
since consumption may be determined not solely by habitus but also by the
agent's resources (which are in turn connected with his social position).
But with almost every other form of habitus-related behaviour (or
position-taking) it seems a little arbitrary to say it stands in the same
relation to the
behaviours in other habiti. Granted,  they are perceived as standing in
the same relation from the perspective of all three agents (so all three
would agree on identifying each other's dress style or musical tastes, for
example, as belonging to groups a, b, and c), but is this enough to
establish the homology?

That there does seem to be an ambiguity here is shown by the ambiguity in
your phrasing in this sentence:

"For example, the in-between-ness property, which is claimed to keep the
behaviour (taking a certain position: exhibiting a style, expressing a
certain taste, or consuming certain goods etc.) of agent B (in the position
of the petit-bourgeois, say) in between (or at least different) from that of
agent A (the position of a member of the most dominant social class) and
from that of agent C (the position of a member of the most dominated social
class).

Surely, for the invariance between positions and behaviours to hold the
relation between A's and B's behaviour *must* be one of inbetween-ness and
*cannot* as you suggest be "at least different". If the relation betwen
these two behaviours were merely "different" that would be compatible with a
new set of relations in which C's behaviour had the property of
inbetween-ness, or which in none had the property but all were different.

I may have got the wrong end of the stick here. I am certainly more
enlightened than I was before I read your extract, but still somewhat
confused.

Regards
Simon Beesley


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