Session 1: Key concepts
Note on pedagogy:
For us learning has little meaning unless it produces a sustained and substantial influence on the way we think, act, and feel. Towards meeting this objective, we drive the classes through discussions that help us a simulate a natural critical learning environment. In that environment, we learn by confronting intriguing, beautiful, or important problems, authentic tasks that will challenge us to grapple with ideas, rethink our assumptions, and examine our mental models of reality. In this process, you have complete control over your education and need to work collaboratively with others.
Reading
Chapter 1 p. 1-5
Chapter 2 p. 21-27, 36-43
Lecture Note
**Map**
I started the class by showing the participants a map of the road from Kunnmangalam to IIM Kozhikode. I asked them the question, will they walk the way next time they come to campus? I asked them whether the information about hill was available on Google Maps. They said no, and we agreed that it is an imperfect representation of the geographical world, and it is imperfect. I warned them that so are the representations of the social world. They are all imperfect.
**Social world**
I then asked the participants what they meant by the social world. We arrived at a meaning that the social world consists of social members, institutions, and concepts we have created and recognized. This means that it includes many tangible and intangible concepts. This can be easily contrasted with a psychological world in which only the individual is present and the concepts and dreams he possesses. To serve our purpose, we do not need to define it concretely. We just need to have an awareness of what is a social world. By understanding the social world around us, we will indirectly define the abstract and fluid concept of the social world.
**Representations our social world**
We discussed who wants to learn about our social world. All of us are curious about the society we live in; we want to know on a routine basis what rules govern the organizations or institutions we participate in? In what ways do the people around us organize our behavior? We want to learn it because we want to organize our behavior in response to this understanding.
The above question of who wants to learn about the social world partially gets answered if we can answer what the different representations of the social world. Though difficult to engage in the corresponding thoughts initially, most of the class was able to understand how films, photographs, maps, tables, mathematical models, journalist articles, etc., are all representations of the social world. We even practiced making certain examples of the social world by clicking a screenshot, recording the audio etc.,
I spent some time with routine and scientific ways of representing the social world. Many scientific regimes are responsible for representing and interpreting the social world for others.
**All representations are wrong**
The above discussion got us into a place where some representations are wrong; some are better. But, we need to understand much above that all representations are wrong. Just like there is no perfect map, there is no perfect representation of the social world. Just like the perfect map is not useful, the perfect representation of the social world is not useful. All representations are abstractions and, hence, not complete. All representations use set concepts, tools, and assumptions to derive their representations. For example, what are the different concepts and tools underlying the creation of maps? However, the theories of cartography involve a wide variety of competing concepts and tools to make such maps. The map which we see is made of one of them and it is incorrect or incomplete from the perspective of other concepts.
Similar to the differences in concepts and tools used to understand the world are the lenses that we wear while observing or making sense of the world. Our own personal dispositions or biases make us view the world in a particular way, and this will result in a way of representation that is unique to us. The lenses we wear while viewing our world are shaped by many socio-cultural factors and our experiences in the social world. Why we Indians view white-skinned people as more intelligent or beautiful because of the different lenses we wear in our daily lives.
An example of simple misrepresentation is evident in what we learn about the physical world in our primary school, high school, and schools of higher degrees. A student in primary school is taught first that the earth is a sphere, only to correct it later that it is an ellipse, and further corrected again in higher classes. Similarly, one is taught to believe in the representation of the matter protons and neutrons only to correct later that it is quantum. These examples make it clear that multiple representations of the social world are possible, and we are well aware of them. Another analogy to think about representations is using the analogy of 'Frozen remains.'
Different representations of our world are, as a result, incompatible with each other. The theoretical lenses guiding them and the concepts and tools used to understand them are different, leading to this incompatibility in representation. Different representations also differ in the intent and media. The intent is the purpose of creating and sharing the representation. A Google map is made with the intent to help motorists and, therefore, is not usable for the purpose of walking. You will not get to know whether it is a hill or not through the map. The representations also differ the in the channels used to create and share the representation; google map is created in the media of Android app development, while a physical map is created using the physical tools of cartography such as calipers and drafting tables.
Similarly, there are different ways to represent the social world. Those who do this representation work with diverse concepts and tools to do their work. Therefore, none of the existing or yet-to-come representations of the social world are perfect. Yet, we are going to understand and learn the concepts and tools used by Pierre Bourdieu, with an understanding that it is incorrect and imperfect. However, it helps us to understand that representation of the social world is possible and allows us to use his tools and concepts for the creation of our own representation of the social world.
**Why Bourdieu**
There are a number of more specific reasons why Bourdieu’s work is so important. First, he made a major contribution to the debate about the relationship between structure and action, which re-emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s as the key question for social theory.
Second, and by interesting comparison with, say, Anthony Giddens, that contribution has consistently been framed by an engagement between systematic empirical work—whether relying on ethnography or social survey approaches—and reflexive theorising. It is the tension between these two aspects of Bourdieu’s work that makes it so interesting: ‘theory without empirical research is empty, empirical research without theory is blind’.
Finally—although it would be possible to provide further justifications for writing a short introduction to his work—Bourdieu is, by virtue of the three points mentioned above, enormously good to think with. His work invites, even demands, argument and reflection. If one makes the initial effort, it is, I suspect, impossible to remain neutral about what he is saying. Whether one agrees with him or not there is something to be learned, something to be turned to good purpose in one’s own work, and irritating, persistent problems—creative sociological doubts—which are impossible to ignore. He raises tricky questions and helps to provide some of the means by which they may be answered. Bourdieu’s work offers the patient reader a tremendously useful intellectual resource. (From Jenkins p10)
**What we need to know about Bourdieu**
France had a notable intellection tradition involving René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Pierre Bourdieu can be added to it by the depth of this thinking and the breadth of his work.
One of the major influencing factors of his work is the blend of empiricism. Most of his thoughts are backed with ethnography, statistics, etc.,
**Camps before Bourdieu**
One of the important camps of representation is collectively identified as objectivism or structuralism. According to this view, individual behavior can be identified and explained through objective structures such as caste, race, age, lifestyle, etc.
The opposing view is based on individual decision-making in which the individual is believed to be capable of making their own choices. The view is called subjectivism.
Session 2: Methods and tools
Reading
Chapter 2 p. 21-27, 36-43
Lecture Note
**Field**
According to Bourdieu (1990), a field is a social arena in which struggles or maneuvers take place over specific resources or stakes and access to them. Thus, a field is a structured system of social positions that are occupied by individuals or institutions. In the most simple terms, one can think about the field as the context in which action takes place; however, the term is more complex because we need to make use of different characteristics such as discourses, institutions, values, rules, and regulations along with the people and social position in that field (Webb et al p21).
Three things to note on the field area
1) Field produces action, or discourses and activities.
2) Field is characterized by the struggle for capital.
2.1) Deciding what is the capital in the field.
2.2) Struggle in distributing the capital in the field.
2.3) There are different forms of capital - social, economic, cultural, and symbolic.
2.4) All forms of capital are rare or scarce.
2.5) What constitutes capital in different fields may vary. (for example, refer to the family company in Webb et al p22-23 )"
3) A field is also characterised by the social positions in it.
3.1) Not the relation between power, social position, and possession and determination of capital.
It is easy to understand. Therefore, pre-industrial societies had a relatively limited number of fields when compared with much socially differentiated current society (Jenkins, 2006, p. 84). There are fields within fields, and each field can be characterized by its own structures, positions, and relationships between them. There is an educational field and an economic field; within the former, there are academicians interacting within a field; the field of students is different from the field of academicians.
In each field, agents occupy different social positions characterized by different sources of power and different forms of capital. The same person will occupy different social positions in different fields, and their power and influence through capital also vary across these fields. Different fields value different forms of capital, economic, symbolic, or cultural. Economic capital is related to goods and their economic value, while symbolic capital refers to the symbolic value of the goods, such as conveying status, prestige, or authority; social capital (various kinds of valued relationships with significant others) and cultural capital refers to culturally valued tastes, behavior and consumption patterns. Agents are part of the social struggle to acquire these various forms of capital and power. According to Bourdieu, the social strategies that we observe result from the interaction of the social struggles in the fields and the agent’s habitus.
**Habitus**
Habitus is the values and dispositions gained from our cultural and social history. Many times the habitus attained in one field are translated to the other field. For example, the notion of gender as attained in the household field gets translated to or imbues meaning in a wide variety of social settings.
Since we identify our bodies, Bourdieu even includes the mind as part of the body, as the brain is part of the body, as the legal and personal identification in our society; Bourdieu sometimes refers to the relationship between field and habitus to form bodily dispositions, he calls it bodily hexis. Academics have a bodily hexis that is different from boxers. Our body is disposed of in a particular way, and as a result, the way it responds to contexts is different. Imagine you beating an academic and a boxer and the difference in the bodily reactions involved from these two people. Similarly, bodily hexis is different between marketing academics and practitioners. One is signaled by a lack of surety on any of the marketing concepts, while the practitioner is 100% sure of the marketing concepts and their effectiveness.
The images of the academics and sportspeople and how, when they change their fields, the body hexis would feel awkward and unfit to the expectation and social positions in that field can be easily understood.
Aspects of habitus:
1)our beliefs constructed through habitus
2)habitus are transposable across fields
3)constitutes in the moment of practice, as the 'feel for the game'
4) operates at a level of partially unconscious
5) habitus shapes the subjective expectation of objective probabilities
6) Social structures and rules are often inscribed into our habitus, thus amounting an explanation to objectivism/ structuralism and how it works
7) Similarities in cultural and social history produce a collective consciousness
8) Habitus makes one person certain possibilities unthinkable or forget
**Practice**
Practices are produced in the encounter between habitus on the one hand and the constraints, demands, and opportunities of the social field on the other hand.