February 8, 2011: Discussion Questions: Taste and Distinction

[Emilie Dubois]

Douglas Holt, 1998, “Does Culture Capital Structure American
Consumption?” Journal of Consumer Research, 25:1-25. (Also reprinted
in
Schor and Holt, The Consumer Society Reader (New Press 2001.))
Schneider, “In and Out of Polyester, Desire, Disdain and Global Fiber
Competitions,” Anthropology Today, 10(4):2-10.
Tuba Üstüner and Douglas B. Holt, “Toward a Theory of Status
Consumption in Less Industrialized Countries.” Journal of Consumer
Research: June 2010.

[Emilie Dubois]

Bourdieu presents the equation that yields certain practices across
classes through social conditioning with the formula: [(habitus)
(capital)] + field = practice (1990, pg. 101). In short summary, he
argues that habitus develop in individuals as a set of dispositions
that structure action or "the conditionings associated with a
particular class of conditions of existence". These actions take on
sustainable collective form when a "set of agents is placed in
homogenous conditions of existence imposing homogeneous conditionings
of dispositions capable of generating similar practices; and possess a
set of common properties, objectified properties, sometimes legally
guaranteed (as possession of goods and power) or properties embodied
as class habitus (and, in particular, systems of classificatory
schemes) (1990, pgs. 109, 101).

This method of thinking about group behavior immediately reminds me of
the discussion we had during the last class meeting. How has the
organic food movement broken down, or alternatively, been constrained
by class habitus? If the commonly referenced term "ethical
consumption" is problematic precisely because it marks those unable to
buy into - both figuratively and literally - its goals, then where are
the practical sites of habitus creation for this narrow vision of
sustainable consumption located? If we could control for economic
feasibility, then what are the homogenous practices that enable the
consumer's capacity to feel as though he belongs and knows how to
function within the movement away from blind consumptive excess
towards a more sustainable alternative? By extension, what types of
social support or "homogeneous conditionings of dispositions" must
exist for him to perceive this alternative as "natural" and his
participation in it as inevitable? What type of project could trace
the contours of the sites and groups back through the bifurcation
process described by Bourdieu to identify mechanistic systems of
variables? Both Monique and Tom's projects point out that the
likelihood to consume with an eye towards sustainability or express
concern over climate change varies across different classes, but what
are the key variables whose presence significantly increases the
normalization a habitus of building sustainable lives? How could a
researcher isolate that system of variables to manipulate its yield of
sustainable behavior across differently distinct groups?


On Jan 28, 4:39 pm, Emilie Dubois <emilie.anne.dub...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Shan]

In Bourdieu’s analysis, schools come off badly. Rather than being
sites where students are helped to “open their minds” (a phrase used
by many teachers as a primary goal of formal education), the schools
described by Bourdieu are conservative tools of enculturation that
help ensure class divisions, enforce social domination, and preserve
the societal status quo. This analysis may shed light on the reasons
why schools are such hot sites of political disagreement (witness the
heated arguments over the history curriculum in Texas, where the
school board sought to use textbooks without a “liberal bias” and so
chose history books that omitted much information about slavery and
racial divisions in the United States); apparently, schools are about
social control as much as they are about any kind of learning.
Bourdieu’s work might also help us to understand the gridlock we are
experiencing around school reform as well as the perennial complaints
that schools aren’t doing their jobs and have become mere diploma
factories, as Bourdieu himself suggests. It seems our ostensible and
idealistic goal of developing capacities, encouraging creativity, and
opening young minds is in direct conflict with the actual social
practices operating in our school system overall. What Bourdieu's
argument implies is that, as educators, we are hypocrites.

At the same time that I tend to agree with Bourdieu’s points on
matters of education, I wonder what might happen to change this
pattern. Although the author’s analysis is robust, we have yet to
encounter in “Distinction” any substantive consideration of the
mechanisms for change that might be possible despite static or
repetitive and repressive conditions in the educational system. Even
as schools operate to enforce hierarchies of taste and to promote the
practices that continually reinvest these hierarchies with meaning, is
it possible to throw a wrench in the system? How might Bourdieu
suggest we go about doing this? When we are dealing with entrenched
structures of power reinforced by unexamined social practices, do we
need more than an uncovering of the structures and processes to effect
change (if, in fact, we can effect change at all)?

[maria grinko]

On page 208 Bourdieu says "Thus, the spaces defined by preferences in food, clothing, or cosmetics are organized according to the same fundamental structure, that of the social space determined by volume and composition of capital." Later in the chapter, he uses sports (and suggests the purchasing of toys) as further examples that this idea (that one MO determines preferences in everyday choices across a spectrum of goods/services) applies to most of the choices we make. Would this make sense if we looked at the consumption of "green"/"eco-friendly" goods and services? How would these purchases fit into a coordinate-plane thing like the one on page 186 (which uses food as an example)?

[L Carfagna]

After reading Bourdieu, I am left with questions about barriers to
change in American society and the dialectic of structure and agency
in his argument. First, take the example of consuming clothing that
is sustainable (whether in method of production, transportation,
whatever). In my experience, the movement to buy these products seems
to be grounded in a form of distinctive taste like Bourdieu
describes. That is, it takes a certain amount cultural capital in
order to articulate and arguably appreciate these goods. Economists
might argue otherwise and indicate pricing and availability as
determinants of a certain class of consumption, however as Douglas and
Isherwood argue, economists have no true mechanism for analyzing
taste. If sustainable products are part of the solution, then the
reflexive consumer seems like a necessary condition of that solution.
Perhaps, this is why scholars like McRight and Dunlap have focused
their attention to the anti-reflexivity of the American Conservative
movement in reference to anti-environmentalism. While these scholars
aren't addressing consumption, it seems like their argument could be
extended. It seems possible that the powerful actors in the American
Conservative movement have successfully harnessed a critique of
sustainability that has mobilized their constituents into anti-
reflexivity that rests in class contention. I wonder, is my
assessment of consuming sustainable products wrong? It seems like it
is grounded in cultural capital, whereby Bourdieu would cite the
"perceptual and evaluate schemes that are available for general
application" which "inclines its owner towards other cultural
experiences and enables him to perceive, classify, and memorize them
differently" (28). Is it possible to reform "taste" and not fall into
traps of class distinction? Further, is consumption just one side of
this? How do we change production, or is the intimate relation
between production and consumption too dependent on the taste of the
consumer? This last question seems unlikely - but the source of
change then becomes more structural and less out of individual
(rational?) action.

On Jan 28, 4:39 pm, Emilie Dubois <emilie.anne.dub...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Tom Laidley]

Re: Schools

I often find that Bourdieu's point about the inculcation of taste via the educational system are somewhat misread (at least in my opinion- I'm sure there exist arguments that contradict my reading of it). I say this not in reaction to the point made here, but simply to some of the things I read that wield Bourdieu's theory to advance their argument. At the risk of drawing a straw man, I'm left with the impression that people come away from this feeling that any attempt to convey more legitimate knowledge is destined to become a farcical (and symbolically destructive) reproduction of class strata. To take this contention to it's logical conclusion would be to assert the most radical form of cultural and intellectual relativism- i.e. that 'accepted' knowledges are just as worthwhile as unaccepted ones, etc. While personally I think this is extremely problematic (not to mention destructive in practice to those marginalized groups these theories are ostensibly trying to protect and champion), I'm not sure it really aligns with the theory anyway. And though we unfortunately cannot get Bourdieu's take on it, I doubt he would endorse the straw man reading I convey above. To break it down into blunt terms, I doubt Bourdieu is contending that Chopin is the artistic equivalent of (to use a more contemporary American example that even the most ardent cultural relativist would likely disavow) the Insane Clown Posse. He's merely saying that those children with higher levels of economic and cultural capital- through both the educational system and their upbringing- are brought up knowing how to consume and discuss the former with an ease not available to those poorer kids (in both economic and cultural terms). I think the real conclusion we're left with is not to say that schools shouldn't teach Shakespeare and Chopin for fear that they're berating children with a more refined aesthetic, but that they should go out of their way to socialize kids so that they aren't uncomfortable discussing Chopin or strolling around an art gallery, and this in turn will help level the playing field (perhaps not completely) and give them the requisite cultural tools to play along with those that have the advantages from birth.

To quote from a eulogy of Bourdieu written by Katha Pollitt in the Nation after he died:

"Take, for example, his attack on the notion that making high culture readily available--in free museums and local performances--is all that is necessary to bring it to the masses. (In today's America, this fond hope marks you as a raving Bolshevik, but in France it was the pet conviction of de Gaulle's minister of culture, André Malraux.) In fact, as Bourdieu painstakingly demonstrated in Distinction, his monumental study of the way class shapes cultural preferences or "taste," there is nothing automatic or natural about the ability to "appreciate"--curious word--a Rothko or even a Van Gogh: You have to know a lot about painting, you have to feel comfortable in museums and you have to have what Bourdieu saw as the educated bourgeois orientation, which rests on leisure, money and unselfconscious social privilege and expresses itself as the enjoyment of the speculative, the distanced, the nonuseful. Typically, though, Bourdieu used this discouraging insight to call for more, not less, effort to make culture genuinely accessible to all: Schools could help give working-class kids the cultural capital--another key Bourdieusian concept--that middle-class kids get from their families. One could extend that insight to the American context and argue that depriving working-class kids of the "frills"--art, music, trips--in the name of "the basics" is not just stingy or philistine, it's a way of maintaining class privilege."

[Gerone Lockhart]

Question: What are the mechanisms by which social origin and
education shape taste?

[Tom Laidley]

Re: Habitus and Sustainability

Simply put, I don't know, nor do I suspect anybody else can with any degree of confidence either. The reason, as I see it, is that Bourdieu's theory hinges substantially upon reproduction, while concepts like climate change, 'sustainable' material goods, etc. haven't been around long enough (and currently simply aren't popular enough) to gauge whether they're inculcated generationally as values or dispositions. In applying his theory to things like this, it's probably best to get a glimpse of the cross-sectional nature of how his system of aesthetic and normative differences can be brought to bear on these concepts, while resisting the urge to engage with the reproductive aspect of habitus. The habitus can be valuable in showing us how certain groups may be socialized (via education, growing up in certain families, access to economic capital, etc.) into valuing concepts which are commensurate with sustainability in a really broad sense, but again, I think these concepts are so new that we have to wait a little while to see if they can position themselves (e.g. a 'less growth' orientation, or a predilection for 'sustainable' goods) in the fields of consumption in themselves and not by proxy. Plus, it's made even more complicated by the propensity for the importance of how people consume rather than what they consume, and the absolute dearth of empirical data related to consumption generally, to say nothing of 'sustainable' consumption.