From: "Glen Fuller" <g.fuller-AT-uws.edu.au>
Subject: RE: [BOU:] Different common sense, not just distinct common sense...
Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 12:42:53 +1000



Hi Pam,

Pam wrote:
>My point in response to Cameron is that the 
>"up"/"down"division that you are seeing in the car culture and which
Boudieu 
>writes is based in the sexual division of labor,is a product of the 
>mathematical genius mythand its production of "universal" V.S.
"mundane" 
>knowledge hierarchies that works as an symbolic economy in the
university, a 
>gender economy that has 
>real material affects for different cultural groups that I am working
to 
>understand.As Bourdieu writes,the hierarchies
>created by the genius myth in the university and as they are mapped
onto 
>gender are systemic across fields. 

My query is exactly with this hierarchization. Why not 'horizontal
difference' instead of vertical distinction? This seems to be impossible
in B. conception of social space (even though he does call it multi
dimensional). Footnote 4 in "Social Space and the genesis of groups" is
a typical example of what I mean:

In some social universes, the principles of division that, like volume
and structure of capital, determine the structure of the social space,
are reinforced by the principles of division relatively independent of
economic or cultural properties, such as ethnic or religious
affiliation. In such cases, the distribution of the agents appears as
the product of the intersection of two spaces that are partially
independent: an ethnic group situated in a lower position in the spaces
of the ethnic groups may occupy positions, in all the fields, including
the highest, but with rates of representation inferior to those of an
ethnic group situated in a higher position. Each ethnic group may thus
be characterized by the social positions of its members, by the rate of
dispersion of these positions, and by its degree of social integration
despite this dispersion. (Ethnics solidarity may have the effect of
ensuring a form of collective mobility.)

---

Ok, for me this is problematic, the 'ethnic' minorities in this example
are going to happily participate in the symbolic hierarchy in which they
are told they are shit? Actually it is not even a matter of telling it
is just common sense that they are 'inferior'. I don't think they would
have a shared conception of 'common sense' with those who 'understand'
them to be inferior. Ethnic minorities are not really my thing, but the
'lower' class young adult males who seem to be the most probable to
occupy the hoon subject position I argue actively generate a line of
'distinction' exactly across this division of inferiority. It is only
inferiority from one conception (one POV), but for them it is a 'good'
thing (or 'bad' thing in the Run DMC sense alluded to earlier). The
'resistance' of the Hoon to (common) 'common sense' is not a resistance
at all, but an affirmation of a radically different common sense. And my
thinking is that if there is a different common sense (not just a
'distinct' common sense), that must mean there is a different symbolic
axis.

Ciao,
Glen.


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