Lecture Notes
What is theory?
In the world right now there are thousands of students taking classes that are about only theory, smart people are writing books about theory. Some people spend their careers studying only theory.
So we will have to be brief here, because this is an introductory course.
Sociological theory is the ‘queen of sociology,’ as philosophy has been called the queen of the sciences.
Sociological theory involves the analysis, critique, and development of the ways in which we think about and discuss social reality.
The American sociologist C. Wright Mills argued, in “The Sociological Imagination,” that
the facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success and the failure of individual men and women. When a society is industrialized, a peasant becomes a worker; a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman. When classes rise or fall, a person is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a person takes new heart or goes broke. When wars happen, an insurance salesperson becomes a rocket launcher; a store clerk, a radar operator; a wife or husband lives alone; a child grows up without a parent. Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.
Yet people do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction. The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary people do not usually know what this connection means for the kinds of people they are becoming and for the kinds of history-making in which they might take part. They do not possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of individuals and society, of biography and history, of self and world. They cannot cope with their personal troubles in such ways as to control the structural transformations that usually lie behind them.
So C. Wright Mills argued that people need, or at least can benefit from, a “sociological imagination,” or a way of thinking about the world in terms of large-scale processes and historical changes.
That is Theory, but what is A Theory, and how do we know one when we see one?
One definition of a theory is: A theory is a statement of how and why specific facts are related (this is on page 22 of the textbook).
Theories are general, not specific like facts.
Theories are important because when we try to explain things, no matter who we are, we use theories, although we don’t always know what theories we are using. We’re usually not reflective about our theories.
Philosophy and theology are, basically, concerned only with theory. Sociologists and theologians ask, what is time, what is reality, what is truth, does God exist, etc, etc.
Theory is important in sociology too, but sociology is different from philosophy and theology because in sociology, theories are about people and societies and culture and history, not truth, time, reality, god, the devil, etc. Sociological theories are about real things that we all experience in our lives, and that we tend to think are important.
Also, sociological theories are about how things are, i.e. how societies actually work, not how society should work. Sociological theories are almost always explanatory, not normative.
e.g. Karl Marx on religion as “false consciousness”
e.g. Emile Durkheim on suicide and social integration
Classical Theoretical Perspectives
The theoretical perspectives we turn to now are a little more general than theories.
These are basic images that guide thinking and research. Here are some of the classical theories. These are considered classical because they are not new, but they are, for the most part, still talked about.
(and keep in mind that some of them might be wrong…they might be bad ideas)
Functionalism
Claude Henri de Saint-Simon… biology, Darwinism, organicism, scientific positivism in 19th-century France à Auguste Comte, considered the founder of sociology
Functionalism is one of the oldest theoretical perspectives in sociology. It began with August Comte, the French thinker who coined the term Sociology.
The basic image here is of society as a system or organism.
e.g. a human body
The imagery comes from biology
Both societies and human bodies have different levels of organization
| Whole Body Organs, e.g. Brain, Heart, Hand Cells Molecules Atoms | Nation Groups, e.g. ethnic groups, professions, organizations Families Individuals |
The molecules, cells, and organs of the body work together so that the body functions.
We don’t know what our cells and organs are doing, and our cells don’t “know” what the rest of the body is doing (e.g. they don’t know where we are walking, what we want to do today)
But our cells and organs are functional for survival
In the same way that bodies have organs and cells that are needed for the functioning of the whole body, societies have institutions that are functional.
E.g. governments
Laws
The family
Greetings
A division of labor
Professions
Why do we have these things? Because societies need them to function and survive
How does this work?
How does social change happen?
- August Comte: differentiation, complexification, evolution
3 stages of society
1. theological—militaristic communities led by priests
2. metaphysical—legalistic, ruled by lawyers
3. positivist—scientific, industrial, ruled by sociologists
2. Herbert Spencer (from Darwin): Natural selection
From Charles Darwin, one of the most important scientists in history
In America, the sociologist Herbert Spencer used Darwin’s evolutionary ideas to explain not only how societies worked, but how they should work.
Spencer coined the famous expression “survival of the fittest” (p. 84 of the reader)
Has anyone heard this expression before?
What does it mean?
For Spencer, Darwin’s theory of evolution was perfectly applicable to human societies.
“Natural selection” ensured that the best institutions and people succeeded in societies. This is good for everyone because it is good for the whole society. Processes of natural selection, when left alone, ensured that the best forms of government would survive, the best religion would survives, the best ideas would survive, and the best people would survive and succeed.
For Spencer, and for many other thinkers (mostly in America and England) these processes are natural and inevitable, and when left alone would lead to progress for all of humanity.
Thomas Malthus provided a more pessimistic view of the human consequences of natural selection.
Malthus was a demographer and political economist who argued, from Darwin, that there were ‘Laws of Population Growth’: population increased at a geometric rate, while food increased at an arithmetic rate:
Starvation and conflict over scarce resources were inevitable
How would functionalism explain universities? Why are we here?
This explains, e.g., wealth and poverty. In a free capitalistic society, people who are wealthy become so because they are better than other people at something. And the whole society will improve if these people are allowed to succeed and other people are allowed to fail.
This is sometimes called Social Darwinism
Politically, it is associated with free-market ideologies: weakening central governments and lowering taxes on the wealthy
Why would social Darwinists want to lower taxes on wealthy people?
Why would they want to make governments smaller?
The Davis-Moore thesis
stratification is beneficial, good for society, ‘functional’
society is complex, jobs are complex, and the best people need to be placed in the most complex and important jobs (e.g. president, operator of a nuclear power plant, heart surgeon)
therefore modern societies need to be Meritocracies
The Conflict Perspective
If functionalism were your only sociological theory, it would probably seem pretty good. It was a dominant theory in the 19th century in America and Britain, and it is similar in many ways to neoclassical economics, which is a dominant approach to economics today—again especially in America and Britain.
Functionalism has a lot to recommend it: it provides a coherent set of explanations for societal development, it is ambitious and broad, and it links sociology to other sciences.
Functionalism has been mostly rejected by sociologists because of its innate conservatism, its post hoc style of explanation, and its inability to explain much of social life.
* * *
The next perspective, the conflict perspective totally rejects functionalism.
In the conflict perspective, societies aren’t like biological organisms at all.
Instead, societies are arenas of inequality that generate conflict and change
Forms of inequality include:
Class
Race
Ethnicity
Gender
Money
Power
Prestige
The focus here is on social divisions
Privileged groups try to keep their privileges, and pass them on to their children
Non-privileged groups sometimes resist, sometimes do not resist
This perspective is, again, radically different from functionalism
Question: What would each say about university education?
The conflict perspective is associated with two famous German thinkers:
Karl Marx and Max Weber
* * *
Cultural Theory
The next classical theoretical perspective is cultural theory, although you should note that the way I’m presenting this is a bit different from what’s in the book.
This is the newest of the classical theoretical perspectives, although in sociology it’s at least a hundred years old.
In this perspective, societies are guided not, or not only, by functions or conflict,
But also by shared values, symbols, ideals, ideas, beliefs, religions, and rituals
Cultural theory is associated with Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, and also with anthropology
In cultural theory, scholars pay a lot of attention to language, symbols like flags and statues and national anthems, rituals like national holidays and religious rituals, and lots of other kinds of symbolic and ritualistic behavior.
They also pay a lot of attention to cultural difference between and within societies. This perspective is very international—probably more international than the functionalist or conflict perspectives.
So if we ask our usual question of why we have universities, cultural theory provides different types of answers. For cultural theory, education is like a religion, and we build universities because we believe in education.
Secular education is part of our value system.
Also, we build universities so that we can socialize children to have the right kinds of beliefs and attitudes.
It’s important for universities to have rituals like graduation ceremonies and symbols like diplomas, in order to make the experience of graduating meaningful to the students and parents.
The Transition to Modenity: Capitalism and Urbanization
Explaining Industrial (and Postindustrial) Societies
Sociology has always concerned itself with industrial and postindustrial (or modern and postmodern) societies.
Early sociologists (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and others) were particularly concerned with the transition, that is the change, to industrial society. Why did this happen? How? Is it positive or negative?
These questions are not of only historical interest. Why else would questions about the transition to industrial (and postindustrial) societies be important? (A: some countries have not made the transition)
- Ferdinand Toennies: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft social relations (1887)
President of the German Society for Sociology until he was ousted by the Nazis in 1933
Gemeinschaft – tight-knit communities, intimate relations of kinship, friendship, trust, reputation
Often translated as “community”
e.g. rural villages, farming communities
Tonnies argued that Gemeinschaft relations were organic, natural, healthful
Gesellschaft
modern urban relations – impersonal, based on money and prestige, and on rationality, efficiency, and instrumental value
Often translated as “”society”
Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society
(1893, from his doctoral dissertation)
Durkheim was especially interested in morality as a social phenomenon
He wanted to understand how people could remain socially integrated in a modern, capitalistic society
He was not romantic, as were Marx and Toennies
He was not interested in developing a critique of modern society. Rather, France had been humiliated by Germany in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, and Durkheim and many of his peers wanted to support France and to modernize it.
Mechanical Solidarity, in which everyone knows everyone, and people are tied together through similarity
People work together (e.g. in the fields), and they share culture and “collective consciousness”
Organic Solidarity, here Durkheim reverses Toennies’ use of the term organic. For Durkheim, organic solidarity is like the solidarity of the heart and the liver. They are highly specialized, and work together.
People operate in complex webs of interdependent relations.
People cultivate individual differences for the good of the whole.
People do not necessarily share culture or a “collective conscience” as in mechanical solidarity.
OS arises from the natural development of the division of labor, although this can lead to anomie and over-individualization.
Georg Simmel
Brilliant itinerant German social theorist who wrote on an extraordinary number of topics.
Like Toennies and Durkheim, he argued that there was something fundamental about the transformation from rural life to modern urban life.
He argued that society is an event, it is interaction of individuals in groups
He developed a geometry of social life, an analysis of the “web of associations” that, for Simmel, make up society. Simmel’s ideas have reemerged almost 100 years later in the form of network analysis.
In modern societies, people have larger social, occupational, and associational networks. This leads to individualization, as people are more likely to develop social networks that are unique.
Simmel wrote about many topics: money, fashion, commodity fetishism, alienation—but his writings on the city are among his most influential.
Karl Marx
this is the Marx lecture, so if you don’t know much about Karl Marx, here’s your chance
his most famous books were The Communist Manifesto and Capital
1) theorist of the relationship between capitalism and class conflict; this was his first major concern
2) the second major concern was alienation
lived 1818-1883
Ph.D. in philosophy in Germany
became a newspaper editor and writer
unlike most philosophers at the time, he thought you needed to understand society to understand ideas
unlike most academicians, he wanted to change society, not only to understand it better
1) capitalism and class conflict
Marx wrote his articles and books during a time when the British Empire was at its strongest, when the Industrial Revolution had made Britain, a medium-sized island nation, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world.
At the same time, most British citizens were part of the proletariat, the factory workers, who were terribly poor, worked in polluted factories all day (remember there were no weekends), had no homes or lived in slums, and rarely lived past 30.
At the same time, aristocrats, industrialists, and capitalists, who owned the factories, were unimaginably rich.
They lived lives of luxury in mansions with hundreds of servants.
Marx saw society, not only British society but all societies, as based on conflict between social classes.
He saw societies as made up of a base and a superstructure.
The base is economic; it is the mode of production of goods and services.
The superstructure is nearly everything else: the government, religion, culture, the family, and ideas
Social change occurs from the base, from the mode of production of goods and services. Whoever controls the mode of production controls the society, including the government, religion, culture, the family, etc.
So for example, British capitalists were able to control virtually all of British society because they were able to control Britain’s economic base. If they did not like a person or an idea, they could buy that person, or have that person put in jail or eliminated, because they were in control of the government. They could buy politicians…They could pretty much buy or control whatever they wanted.
Marx thought that this was true of horticultural and pastoral societies, agricultural societies (e.g. slavery in ancient Egypt; the European feudal system), and now of industrial societies. He thought this was true of every form of society that came after hunter and gatherer societies. Hunter and gatherer societies were communist because they shared their wealth and did not have social classes or class conflict.
So economic classes struggle over control of the means of production. But in industrial societies, the proletariat is much, much larger than the capitalist class. And they are terribly poor, and they generally know that the capitalists are amazingly rich.
If the workers got together and attacked the capitalists and took control over their factories, they could gain control over society.
So why don’t they revolt?
Marx had trouble with this question, and his answer was what he called false consciousness.
False consciousness is a kind of confusion about how society works. For example, poor workers blamed themselves for their poverty, when they should blame the rich capitalists. Because there’s really very little
they can do to improve their lives.
Capitalists create false consciousness in the proletariat because they control the schools, the church, the press, and the whole “superstructure” of society. They control these things because they control the means of production. They control pretty much everything.
For the proletariat to revolt, false consciousness would have to be transformed into class consciousness. Workers would become aware that they were in the same economic class, and would organize themselves to challenge the capitalists.
How would the proletariat switch over from false consciousness to class consciousness? A revolutionary elite group of intellectuals would help them.
Also, capitalism would collapse due to its internal contradictions. Capitalists do everything possible (like what??) to increase profits, and would be driven to reduce wages so much, to pay workers so little, that the workers would be forced to start a revolution.
2) Alienation
This is an important idea for Marx. It comes from some of his earliest writings, which were much more psychological than his later writings.
He was concerned, as many people were, with the change from farming and craftwork to factory work
ciftcilik, zanaat à industrial work, factory work
Consequences of factory work
de-skilling of work
routinization
boredom
workers see themselves as a commodity, as something capitalists can buy and sell
workers see themselves as machines, not as full human beings
Alienation (separation, or distancing) from the products of work
factory workers do not see the products of their work. they get no satisfaction from their efforts
Alienation from their friends and families
workers are not allowed to socialize with friends
they work so long that they have little time left for their families
Workers cannot grow or evolve as human beings. Work should allow people to evolve and improve themselves. Instead, workers can only learn and grow as human beings during their leisure time.
This can only get worse, as capitalists try to make bigger profits.
Revolution
The only way for workers to escape from alienation is to revolt, to start a revolution against capitalism.
Workers would take over the factories from the capitalists, and would replace capitalism with socialism
Socialism would be a humane, equal economic system that preserves social ties. Workers would take care of each other, and everyone would work for the good of the society.
Marx thought this revolution would occur in England first, because England was the most advanced industrial country.
Eventually it would happen everywhere else. For Marx, it was inevitable.
Was he right?
Did socialist revolutions occur?
Where?
What happened in England?
Thorstein Veblen on the leisure class (p. 25)
Son of Norwegian immigrants to the U.S.
Contributes to the development of “institutional economics,” a less individualistic, rationalistic approach to the economy
Influenced by Functionalism, Social Darwinism and evolutionary thought generally
Emphasizes instincts for emulation, predation, curiosity, parental behavior
Most famous for ideas of “conspicuous consumption”
“conspicuous leisure”
“conspicuous waste”
Max Weber
Much influenced by Wilhelm Dilthey—argued (against Marx and others) that human history is fundamentally different from the material world—the subject of the natural sciences
Human history is shaped by contingency, spirit, consciousness, culture
Sociologists should try to interpret history to capture the way it is experienced subjectively by other people in other times and societies
Strict causal arguments are not appropriate for the study of human history, culture, society
What Weber thought about Marx:
capitalists versus proletariat idea was too simple
really Three dimensions of inequality
Class -- $
Status – social prestige, social honor expressed through “styles of life” (stande)
Power – ability to make people do things despite resistance
The rationalization of society
What does rationalization mean? Life becomes more rational, subject to means-ends reasoning.
Weber lived in the 19th and early 20th century, mostly in Germany, but he took a long trip to America too.
He knew almost everything you could know about history, but in both countries, he felt strongly that a great shift was taking place in society.
This was not just a change in technology, not only industrialization.
The shift was from tradition to rationality.
What does this mean? Are people who follow traditional ways of life irrational?
Tradition: sentiments and beliefs passed from generation to generation
Rationality: Disciplined calculation of the best means to accomplish specific ends
So these are different ways of thinking and living.
The rationalization of society affects more than just technology or industry. It changes the whole way people think, what they believe, and the ways they live their lives.
Rationalization does not happen to individuals one at a time, so much as it happens to whole societies, or whole segments of societies, at a time.
It happens in Northern and Western Europe and North America first.
e.g. England, Holland, Germany, America
But Weber is similar to Marx, because Weber is also concerned with the social and psychological alienation that is associated with capitalism and industry.
In a famous line, Weber likens modern organizations to an “iron cage” tightening around individuals. People are left with little freedom to be creative or unique or to enjoy life or be social.
What is an organization?
social group
specific goals
division of labor
formalization
Modern organizations, from the government to Microsoft or MacDonalds or IBM, are supposed to be the ultimate examples of rationalization, of means-ends reasoning.
So many people think these organizations are good and rational. They make people work hard. Even Marx thought that capitalist organizations uproot people from the “idiocy of village life”
For Weber, capitalist organizations have “purely technical superiority” over all other organizations because of their
“precision, speed, unambiguity, continuity, discretion, unity, reduction of costs…”
Max Weber on Modern Organizations
Weber was concerned that Germany was lagging behind Britain—a question of comparative development—and wanted to understand why, and then to improve Germany’s position
3 Types of Legitimate Authority
(these are “ideal types”)
(and these are true for all time)
(authority is the ability to make people do things despite resistance)
1. Charismatic Authority
authority from personality, charisma: e.g. religious leaders, popular politicians, kings
any problems with this kind of authority?
succession, irrationality, incompetence
2. Traditional authority
authority from sacred traditions and leaders
e.g. a man is elected president because his father was president
e.g. a man is anointed king because his father was king
any problems with this?
lack of charisma, irrationality, incompetence
3. Rational-Legal authority
Authority based on specialized learning
rule by experts
technical ability
exams
career ladders
meritocracy
any problems with this?
lack of charisma, rigid hierarchy and inequality
For Weber, modern organizations, and especially capitalist organizations (corporations), must move from charismatic and traditional forms of authority to rational-legal authority. Rational-legal authority is more efficient, faster, better; and in capitalism, the older forms cannot compete.
Pierre Bourdieu on forms of capital
Maitre penseur, recently died
Our last major conflict theorist
Rejects Marxist approaches, hopes to be rid of them once and for all
Did early research on Kabyle tribe in Algeria during the revolution against French rule.
Used quantitative techniques, highly professional as a sociologist.
Politically active: spoke out often against ‘neo-liberalism’
Ideas of:
“Social space” and “power field”
Forms of Capital and their Transformation
Habitus: bio-cognitive imprint of the social environment
Economic capital
Social capital
Cultural Capital
Transformation (conversion) of these
Position in social field/space is relative
Predicts tastes, likes and dislikes: e.g. size and position of TV in house
Habitus: why working-class men don’t like keyboard work, stockbrokers
Pierre Bourdieu, Snobs, and Omnivores
Distinction (excerpt)
Pierre Bourdieu is perhaps the most influential sociologist alive today. Like Foucault before him, in France he is widely regarded as a “master thinker,” although he is unlike Foucault in that he is a tried-and-true sociologist, who uses numerical data and advanced statistics in his research.
For the purposes of this course, we’ll cover some of his work on Structure, Habitus, and Social Space, and then we’ll move on to Michele Lamont’s revision and extension of his ideas.
Social Space and Social Classes.
Bourdieu's Opponents:
(1) A break with Marxists: (I.e. 'objective' reality). Bourdieu is interested in RELATIONSHIPS, on more levels than just the economic, and argues that how people
interpret and make sense of their relations matters (this is the subjective element).
He also has s definite focus on POWER STRUGGLES.
Social Space: A geographic/mathematical metaphor for how people are arranged in society. Bourdieu defines social space as:
"a (multi-dimensional) space constructed on the basis of principles of differentiation or distribution constituted by the set of properties active in the social
universe under consideration, that is, able to confer force or power on their possessor in that universe." (p.229).
The points to keep in mind with this def:
(1) Social space has multiple dimensions (ex economic, educational, cultural, etc.: n dimensions) These dimensions can usually be categorized as a form of
Capital.
(2) "...constructed on the basis of principles of differentiation or distribution..." This mean that how
much and what kind of the particular capital one has is the basis for sorting along the dimensions.
(3) "...by the set of properties active in the social universe under consideration, that is, able to confer
force or power on their possessor in that universe." The quantity or quality (i.e. point 2) of a given good only matters to the extent that the good in question
is 'active' in the social world of interest. This part of the definition implies an element of contextual specificity. Two groups' relative position depend on the
particular 'field' that is active. If we're dealing in the economic field, then the relative position of $$ matters, if we're dealing with the educational, then
that's what matters. [note, that this discussion is about one dimension at a time, Bourdieu does not think that way - this is for illustration only, the point is that in
some struggles, the relative value of a given dimension will change.].
Power follows from the ability to mobilize capital.
The social space is a field of forces -- the system of relations, alliances, and power struggles. His vision of social space is NOT one that is (necessarily)
static, but instead constantly infused with power struggles. Thus we see the world as a system of 'objective power relations.'
Is this paranoid? Overdramatic??
This allows us to see the social world in two ways, as the positions themselves thusly: (take culture and econ as examples)
Hi Culture
|
| A
|
|
Poor ---------------------------- Rich
|
| B
c |
|
Low Culture
In this picture, the three groups are arrayed on these two dimensions (thus C is poor and holds mainly 'low culture' values, A is rich with 'high culture' , etc).
Because these positions are at the same time relations, because domination follows from the ability to utilize this capital, we could instead view this picture
as:
A -> B-----> C
\ _____/
Where A dominates (a little) B, and both B and A dominate C. What Bourdieu wants to claim is that these systems of relations are in constant contest -- not ONLY
in who gets to be WHERE, but what having a certain quantity/distribution of a good GIVES you, ie what it MEANS.
The dimensions are the elements that give power (education, money, social contacts, etc) in general, these elements form types of CAPITAL. The four
general types of capital for Bourdieu are:
1.Economic Capital: How much money one has.
2.Cultural Capital: The systems of value and meaning a person can draw on, what counts as 'good' for a group. (the main distinction is between
high and low culture for Bourdieu, thus the difference between a person who listens to Garth brooks and goes to the bowling alley every weekend versus a
person who reads Shakespeare, drinks fine wine, and goes to the museum all the time).
3.Social Capital: The set of relations one can draw on: who you know that MATTERS.
4.Symbolic Capital. : the extent to which one has the power to institute, to NAME, to define who is who. Symbolic power rests on RECOGNITION, i.e., give or take, legitimacy (Weber).
Bourdieu argues that each of these types of capital is transformable (to some extent), i.e. able to be converted and reconverted, one to the other. Thus if you have enough money you might get to know a new
set of important people, etc.
The two dimensions along which each type of capital are arrayed is Volume and composition. Thus the AMOUNT of money one has, and the TYPE of
money matter (i.e. cash vs stocks vs gold vs land).
Classes on Paper:
On the basis of the distribution of the various forms of capital, we can find groups of people who have 'similar' distributions. These are 'classes' in the
logical sense -- people who occupy the same cell in a cross-tabulation. BUT, we can't necessarily assume that these classes are self-recognized. This is the
long standing differentiation between classes in-themselves vs. classes for themselves.
What exists is a space of relations, out of which may or may not emerge a class per se.
We can compare this to Marx’s theories of class, in which he assumes that groups form from similarity, but it does not explain how the groups form. Instead, through a theoretical ‘slight of hand’, the
essential questions are spirited away:
We don’t ask about the political work needed to organize and created a self-recognized, mobilized class
Don’t explain how the formal ‘classes’ of social scientists are related to the actual, living classes in society.
Classes and class fragments develop “habituses”—roughly but not quite subcultures
The Perception of the social world and political struggle.
One must account for how actors see the world to make sense of how they act. That is, we ned to look to the social construction of identity.
One's perspective in the world is due to two things:
1) 'Objective': People see the world differently because they occupy a different space in the world.
2) 'subjective': The tools brought to bear, the language used, are all the products of previous struggles, and influence the meaning of the very dimensions
that people array themselves along.
Thus, not only are people seeing the world from different spaces, but the very view of that space, the relevant value of any given quantity/quality
distribution is different depending on a group's past history of struggle.
While Bourdieu argues that people TEND to accept the position they find themselves in, there is social change, and it comes from struggles for power related
to (1) and (2).
in an earlier essay, Bourdieu writes
“Knowledge of the social world and, more precisely, the categories which make it possible, are the stake par excellence of the political struggle, a struggle
which is inseparably theoretical and practical, over the power of preserving or transforming the social world by preserving or transforming the categories of
perception of that world.”
These are social categories: racial, social class, economic categories, that change over time
So being able to define the dimensions of status, to identify the subject of political debate and shape the way issues are seen to be related are all symbolic actions,
and they are the means through which politics are carried out. Thus, being able to control these means gives one control of political outcomes. The power of
naming is crucial.
Examples:
? Political rhetoric about abortion: proponents use ‘right-to-choose’ language, opponents use ‘rights-to-life’ language.
? Use of the word ‘Liberal’ in presidential campaigns
Symbolic Capital: Any capital when it is perceived by an agent as self-recognized power to name, to make distinctions.
It follows that objective power relations reproduce themselves in symbolic power.
The power to create titles
Citizenship is bestowed by the government,
The definition of ‘adult’ or ‘graduate’
“It is the most visible agents, from the point of view of the prevailing categories of perception, who are the best placed to change the vision by changing the
categories of perceptions. But they are also, with a few exceptions, the least inclined to do so.”
Why? Because they benefit from the current arrangement. That those in power control the means to power creates a cycle, whereby they reenforce the power
that they have. Bourdieu refers to this as the “circle of symbolic reproduction”.
Symbolic power rests on legitimate recognition your brother-in-law can’t declare you a graduate of the university. The title ‘graduate’ can only be made by
those with legitimate control of symbolic power.
Symbolic order and the power of naming.
Symbolic power can be arrayed along a dimension of intensity/legitimacy:
Insult Official Naming
I-----------------------------------------------I
Low power High Power
We can think about the proliferation of titles in current work and occupations. This rise (sanitary engineer, executive assistant, vice president, e.g.) follows FROM the
desire of groups to NAME THEMSELVES, and thus make their own distinction. The move in contemporary society to provide all with a new name, is a struggle for legitimate power. Racial epithets are the imposition of place by a ruling class on a
ruled class, and when the POWER associated with those epithets can be reversed, then the group has gained the symbolic upper hand.
e.g. minority groups referring to themselves in terms of racial “slurs”—not just the N word—Chinese, Jews, immigrants in America (greenhorns, FOBs)
Bourdieu points out that rewards separate a title from a task. Thus, a part-time person doing the same work as a full time person will likely be paid less (even by the
hour) than the person who officially occupies the position. Or, for example, a nurse and a doctor often do exactly the same things, but the doctor will make
more.
Because symbolic power is a useful power, something that can be used to gain resources in multiple dimensions, it is clearly the subject of controversy.
Groups fight over the right to control the naming process.
“Every field is the site of a more or less openly declared struggle for the definition of the legitimate principles of division of the field.” (p.242)
Alliances in the Political Field
Those who occupy similar, but distinct social spaces (or who are in similar, but distinct patterns of social relations) tend to form alliances (though, again,
not necessarily).
How do people at the bottom of a symbolic power system gain capital to change the present point of view?
Bourdieu says it happens through alliances with those who have the ability to control symbols. For example, the intellectuals will ‘embezzle’ symbolic power for
the workers. These alliances occur where there is a similarity in their position in the structure, across dimensions of the structure. Thus, workers are the
dominated group in the production/economic realm, while intellectuals are the dominated group in the cultural realm. The one helps the other because of the
similarity of their situation. For Bourdieu, this was Marx’s error: to look only within the economic realm for the emergence of classes.
Critiques of Bourdieu (general)
too agonistic, too focused on struggle and competition
isn’t Bourdieu himself an example of why he is wrong?
too Parisian, too French, and perhaps too old
