Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 09:44:36 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Re: "Who Told You How?": A Sociology of Email


On Wed, 16 May 2001, bourdieu-digest wrote:

> bourdieu-digest        Wednesday, May 16 2001        Volume 01 : Number 455

> Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 23:19:49 +0100
> From: "Mark Freestone" <mark-AT-dangermedia.org>
> Subject: "Who Told You How?": A Sociology of Email

> The glorious irony is that the list submits unremittingly to the sort of
> 'field of struggle' analysis which Bourdieu effects so brilliantly. Academic
> capital takes on 'internet capital' (a knowledge of how to out-maneouver
> your opponent with ASCII), the 'establishment' takes on the 'heretics'.

I think that what's different about lists is a general uncertainty about
what's at stake in the struggles that they engender, plus the fact that
what's at stake varies so much among the different conributors.  I guess
that this is the consequence of their not constituting an institution in
any but the weakest of terms, while still generating a public space, and
one that is open to almost anyone, anywhere, with access to a computer and
some basic literacy.

A list such as this one then becomes defined by its proximity to some
other institution (the academy), and some of the terms and strategies
common to that institution are then imported into the debate--as part of
some process of general misrecognition?

(Whatever, it's clear we haven't got much further on the Bourdieu/Leibniz
question!  I think perhaps the problem with the original question was
that it was not explained *why* anyone should care about this relation
between the two; as such, it came across as a classic piece of academic
scholasticism, and was duly pounced upon.)

> - --Mark

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Spanish and Portuguese
University of Manchester
jon.beasley-murray-AT-man.ac.uk

http://www.art.man.ac.uk/spanish/jbm.html
http://www.art.man.ac.uk/lacs/

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