From: "Simon Beesley" <simonb-AT-beesleys.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Homology 
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 12:33:06 -0000


John,

You wrote:

>Thus if under transformation significantly more a'(i) and b'(i) migrated
> from one type of taste to the other than a'(i) and c'(i), and if
significantly
> more c(i) and b(i) migrated from one group to the other than c(i) and
a(i), then
>the in-between-ness property would be demonstrated. Such a fuzziness
(migration) seems to be part of the rationale for the whole habitus
>notion..........

I am still rather hazy about the concept of homology, not to mention
in-between-ness as well (this surely being just one relational property
among
others such as as at-the-top-ness and at-the-bottom-ness). In whatever
sphere you
identify the relations between agents or between their behaviours, you need
to employ the same axis or scale before being able to talk of homologies.
The scale Bourdieu uses most uncontentiously is the scale of dominance (or
degrees of possession of capital within a field). How the same scale can be
 applied to the position-takings of the same agents, even analagously is
 mysterious to me. What your diagram doesn't bring out is that Bourdieu
generally tends to talk about homologies holding between different fields,
 whereby agents in one field occupy the same position vis a vis each other
 as they do in another field. I can make sense of this if it's unpacked in
 terms of capital (e.g. the suggestion  in Homo Academicus that there
 is a rough and fuzzy homology between class position or degrees of
 capital in the social field and academic/intellectual capital). But when
such position-takings/behaviours/distinctions as cultural consumptions,
tastes, aesthetic preferences are treated as the second set of relations in
the homology, I can't see that any scale is available or at least any scale
comparable to the one by which agents are related in terms of their class.
If you merely
show that agents belonging to a particular class in one field, share the
same
behaviours/position-takings in another field (or, possibly, that they tend
 to accrue the same amounts of capital in another field) -- if you merely
 show this, you have not demonstrated a homology, not in the 'relational'
 sense we've been discussing.

The only exception would be in aesthetic matters where as Agnes points out
Bourdieu seems to be committed to a scale of 'objective' aesthetic values
(which
is fine by me):

"I still cannot stop being sceptical about Bourdieu's neatness of
homological
relations, especially in the fields of production and consumption (homology
between the position of agents in the field of class relations and the
position
in the field of production of the objects they consume: to a low position
 corresponds the consumption of a 'low' object or to an avantarde position
 correspond the consumption of an avantgarde objects etc. as is clearly
expressed in Bourdieu's Le Couturier et sa Griffe)."

Clearly, Bourdieu wouldn't want to grade the objects in terms of their
characteristic
consumers -- so that high art is just and no more than what the dominant
class
consume. That would be circular and would make the homology trivial.

Going back to the man himself doesn't actually shed much light for me. I
would
quote a passage from Distinction on 'The Logic of Homologies' (page 233,
Routledge
edition, but I've already taken up too much space in this forum.

Regards
Simon


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