Subject: Re: Leibnitz
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 11:08:54 +0100


One more thing:

"... will know the difficulty of balancing the continuing responsibility to that
first moment of engagement with the exigiencies of the relatively autonomous
institutional positions we occupy now"

What is the single most distinct, loudest, clearest message coming out of
Bourdieu's work -- just about all his books, and blatantly in "Homo Academicus",
"The State Nobility", "Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture", "In
Other Words", and "Academic Discourse"? What is it? What? That the institutional
positions you occupy as academics have very little autonomy indeed.

>From "The State Nobility", p 5:

"Thus the sociology of education is a chapter, and not a minor one at that, in
the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of power, not to mention the
sociology of the philosophies of power. ... Given that, as established elsewhere
[Distinction], the structure of the social space as observed in advanced
societies is the product of two fundamental principles of differentiation --
economic capital and cultural capital -- the educational institution, which
plays a critical role in the reproduction of the structure of social space, has
become a central stake in the struggle for the monopoly on dominant positions.
    It was necessary to bury the myth of the "school as liberating force,"
guarantor of the triumph of "achievement" over "ascription", of what is
conquered over what is received, of works over birth, of merit and talent over
heredity and nepotism, in order to perceive the educational institution in the
true light of its social uses, that is, as one of the foundations of domination
and the legitimation of domination."

The idea that taking a consignment of packaged theory -- at a time when the
great American theory mills and plants have been ramping up production on an
unprecedented scale -- and salting it with some dilute Bourdieusian stuff,
should somehow make you exempt from these structures and processes is no doubt
the greatest misrecognition of all. Clearly, there is no limit to how brutal one
can be from a position outside academe, and no possibilty whatsoever of it
having any impact.

Regards
Simon










**********************************************************************
Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu