File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9711, message 42


Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 13:48:09 -0800 (PST)
From: Dennis R Redmond <dredmond-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu>
Subject: M-TH: Re: Bourdieu etc.


On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Rob Schaap wrote:

> According to Garnham, Bordieu 'argues that the dominant class, as part of
> the wider historical movement towards the use of symbolic power as the
> preferred mode of domination, has increasingly shifted from economic to
> cultural capital as its preferred mode of accumulation...' 

Only in the sense that financial capitals of all kinds (credit, in the
broadest, most socially inclusive sense, i.e. everything from a doctor's
diploma and the drawing power of rock bands to Michael Jordan's
superstar status) are increasingly mediated by global innovation-rents,
via those lucrative transmission-belts of bourgeois ideology, the mass
media and the transnational consumer culture. In fact, from Bourdieu's
perspective you could argue that pro basketball is the prototypical global
niche market, with its corporate (NBA and company owners) overclass,
middle-level managers (stadium bureaucrats, marketing, coaches) and an
aristocracy of labor (player-workers who are self-motivated, world-class
and highly trained professionals). This does explain many of the peculiar
microideologies associated with global B-ball: for instance, players are
constantly exhorted to be "role models", i.e. make sure African
American and workingclass youth toe the corporate line; some do, most
don't. A few lucky players cash in their chips via marketing, become
entrepreneurs in their own right, or ascend to the level of coaches. Of
course, virtually noone actually gets to join Phil Knight and the other
rentier overlords of sports. This doesn't mean that the NBA doesn't create
wondrous use-values in its own right, e.g. a well-played game, MJ in the
paint, Cobe Bryant spinning rings around San Antonio's point guards, but
that these are incidental products of what is really a vast marketing and
sales machine.

-- Dennis



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