From: "Glen Fuller" <g.fuller-AT-uws.edu.au>
Subject: RE: Bugging me: where is the excluded?
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:44:20 +1000


Hey Pam/All,

My interest is in those that do not simply lay down and think, "Shucks,
I don't have the required knowledge of the 'correct' cultural field to
participate with any authority. I will a little nap." 

A 'permanent underclass,' as you describe, is only permanent for as long
as the 'under' (below or 'beside' the dominant) and 'class' (as a
grouping) is constantly enacted and performed. It seems a bit odd that
practice (of which discourse is only one example) is referenced against
beholders of symbolic capital (a dominant) which privileges a few, many
more think that it privileges them (but may not), and yet another small
group realise that they will never be subject to such privilege. How
does this group react? By happily remaining subservient to some foreign
dominant? Or by working to construct their own forms of symbolic capital
(a separate hierarchy)? Like two big cogs (well, a little one and a
really big one) that just happen to continually meet each other as they
turn.

I need to read the Bourdieu-Eagleton piece, but I hardly think that the
'rap enthusiasts' would privilege what Bourdieu may have described as
the dominant symbolic in that (Bourdieuian conception of the rap or
popular music) field over their own conceptions of what has symbolic
capital.

My point is that so called 'popular cultural forms' (if popular cultural
forms are defined in someway as insufficient relative to some dominant
dominant) don't need to change anything, if they can be described as
popular cultural forms, then the change has _already_ happened. Doesn't
the social topography that Bourdieu sketched radically change if it not
taken from some bourgeois POV (where the 'dominant' is dominant)?

Some interesting feminist readings of Bourdieu touch on what I am
talking about, here:
http://les1.man.ac.uk/sociology/conference/table.htm 

In particular this one:
http://les1.man.ac.uk/sociology/conference/skeggs.pdf

And to a lesser extent, this one:
http://les1.man.ac.uk/sociology/conference/rulesofengagement.pdf

Ciao,
Glen.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of Pam
Stello

In response to Glen's post:

>what happens with those who are
> excluded from accruing various capitals because of race, ethnicity, 
>age,  class, or gender.

Bourdieu argued (in a conversation with Eagleton, 1992: 119) that
because legitimate knowledge in the different fields is determined in
relation to the dominant conception at any moment in the field of
cultural production (which is dominated by symbolic capital), on average
it is unlikely that popular culture can change the structure of the
dominant culture. Bourdieu and Eagleton discuss Rap specifically in this
conversation. I think it is the dominant position of the field of
cultural production over all the other fields in terms of symbolic
capital that makes it unlikely that popular cultural forms can gain the
symbolic profits it needs to create change. From reading this, I think
that for Bourdieu, people who are excluded from accruing certain
capital, as you write, become a permanent underclass. I am curious if
others know of places in his work where this is not the case?



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