Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 23:10:34 +1100
From: Cameron Mann <csmann-AT-bigpond.com>
Subject: [BOU:] Cultural products, producers & consumers 


Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:33:35 +1100
From: flame1975 <flame1975-AT-bigpond.com>
Subject: Cultural products, producers & consumers
To: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU

Hi Glen,

I'd like to start with a go at your second one, which I don't think really 
makes it up as "a question" because it looks to me like you've done all the 
work answering it.

I'm not in a position to point to anything B. has actually written (can't 
see any books at all from where I'm sitting) but it seems that B's theory 
of practice easily accounts for what you're looking for.

To begin with, the only real way to have an problem with "consumers" also 
being "producers" is to think that consumers and producers are essentially 
different things. It's not very B-like to think of agents as things, and 
especially not as the kind of thing with some kind of 'essence' which makes 
it different to another thing with another kind of 'essence'.

Instead, we might think the agent as the 'site' of a set of dispositions 
which tend to produce certain practices (a habitus). We may identify these 
practices as those belonging to a certain 'type' of habitus (eg 
'producer'), and situate habituses of that type together in a part of a 
field. But THIS IS ANALYSIS. What we can see empirically is only the 
practices - so, if we end up with 'producer' practices in a 'consumer' 
habitus/agent or vice versa, then it is not a radical upheaval requiring 
new and fancy modes of analysis - it's just sloppy (or stubborn) labelling 
by the analyst.

It seems to me that the critical difference between 'producer' and 
'consumer' is not something particular to a kind of agent, or anything such 
that one can exclude the other. The difference must be empirically 
observable, and it is only in the timing. The 'producer' practices MUST 
precede 'consumer' practices.

If someone does something as a consumer that looks like they're being a 
producer (I think this is what you're concerned about with DIYers), then as 
long as you can point to the producer which precedes them, and the consumer 
coming after them... seems uncomplicated and legitimate to me.

As for the "process of objectification which, in present circumstances, is 
almost always the work of professionals"... I think "perhaps such 
activities were not popular when Bourdieu did his research" pretty much 
hits the nail on the head. Bourdieu words "in present circumstances" 
suggest that this characteristic is something he sees, rather than any kind 
of logical necessity. The world has been changing (education, technology, 
power/ethics), so now the
*cultural privilege/distinction and
*material/time wealth and
*power to legitimate
are spread around a lot more and (for better or worse) the "professional 
cultural producers" are clearly now just one site of the "process of 
objectification".

Finally Glen asked "If D.I.Y.'ers... have the power to produce cultural 
products, do they also have the power to legitmate the taste constituted by 
the object?" I think the issue here is a question of scope. The habitus 
will try to execute strategies to produce advantages - including 
legitimating its taste. How much power the agent has will influence how 
broadly it can legitimate its taste within (or beyond) a field. At the same 
time, how LEGITIMATE that taste already is, will contribute to the power to 
influence taste.

In a dynamic world of dynamic fields & dynamic agents, the "sanctified" 
taste is always already a little behind the perfectly legitimate taste.

Cam
--------------------
csmann-AT-bigpond.com
"what you do for now, will it do for now?" - SFK


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