Pierre Bourdieu Views - Essay Example

?Pierre Bourdieu Bourdieu publicly held his view on masculine domination right up to his death and he broached what he referred to as ‘paradoxical’ break of masculine domination in several points. Bourdieu’s initial ethnographic studies show antagonism between masculine and feminine as the crucial classification and social division for the people in Southern Algerian Mountain. Moreover, Bourdieu formulated a model of masculine domination in developed capitalist nations with his writings including brief gender analyses that identified exclusions of women from the best grades in higher education and restricted from artistic field. His writings on distinction formulate the new model of social reproduction where ‘heirs’ certified their capabilities through exams before acquiring wealth. There are various perspectives in feminist and theoretical development in feminism across social sciences in the last three decades shifting from gender relations within the family, workplace and welfare states and differences between women and numerous identities. The unity in feminist theory is the view that gender is constructed socially thus this social construction is unequal since it produces and reproduces patriarchal structures of power through which men dictate and control women. Bourdieu believes gender difference to be inscribed in objectivity of social formations and subjectivity of mental structures. Thus, the dominant view of sexual division is expressed in all forms of discourse and practice; hence, sexual division appears to be a natural order since it exists in the embodied habitus and functions as a system of categories of thoughts, perception and action. Habitus is a system of dispositions learned through childhood and produces ‘a common sense world’, which becomes self-evident as it provides consensus on meaning of practices (Saugeres, 2009). Bourdieu points out that gender is constructed as two different natures, two systems of social differences inscribed in the body and mind that are dualistically opposed to the other. However, in this system what is socially perceived as male and masculine is considered superior and what is constructed as female and feminine is perceived to be inferior. Bourdieu empathises that symbolic domination never occurs in a conscious and knowledgeable way but rather in the habitus in which relations of domination are inscribed. Bourdieu’s theory is essential since it considers gender and looks at the relationship linking structure, practice and discourse. As widely documented, there are numerous social and economic changes transforming family life and patterns of male and female employment in many western countries (Saugeres, 2009; Fowler, 2003). Though, there have been huge increases in women engaged in employment in western countries, some aspects of gender inequality have been challenged with policies targeting these inequalities being put in place. Nevertheless, despite the changes in women labour market participation, gender division in the family has not been significantly altered with women primarily being responsible for taking care of children and performing unpaid work in the family. Despite equal opportunity legislation in western nations, on average, women have not gained equal pay for equivalent work. Women concentrate on low-paid, low-status employment with little chance of advancement in the gender segregated labour force (Fowler, 2003). Bourdieu argues that male domination is inscribed in social structures and people’s mental structures by its incorporation in an individual’s habitus. This domination is inscribed in institutions like family, government bureaucracy, educational system, literacy and labour market. Therefore, unequal power relations in which women are subordinated to men are reproduced in welfare regimes and state policies. Indeed feminist work indicate that welfare states can reinforce women economic vulnerability since sexual division of labour encourages discourses and ideologies like those of citizenship, masculinity, motherhood and femininity which shape the character of welfare states. Moreover, gender is constituted jointly with class, nation and race so that all the dimensions shape and is shaped by welfare policies and provision. Women especially single mothers living in public housing may have secure housing however, they tend to fall into the trap of poverty and unemployment, which is often difficult to untangle themselves. Moreover, women who escape domestic violence can end up in public housing with their children. Domestic violence is a social problem that is an outcome unequal gender relation and symbolises male domination over women within the family and public institutions (Fiske and Markus, 2012; Saugeres, 2009). Social art disappears in chapters that Bourdieu attempts to draw upon the historical analyses of the literary field with some propositions valid for the field of cultural production. Of all the propositions, the most asserted in the field are organized by two principles of hierarchy one within the field and the other external to the field. Within the field of cultural production, Bourdieu argues that at any time of struggle between the external principles, which favours domination of the field economically and politically, and autonomous principles, which leads most radical defenders to make temporary failure a sign of election and success a mark of comprise with the time. Bourdieu suggests in certain moments that social art is a disguised way of commercial art used by mercenary authors of commercial literature to make considerable income from their production while ensuring that they retain reputation as social writers (Zimbler, 2009). The consequences of under sting social art is nothing more than commercial art in disguise and a form inevitably subordinated by pure art thus it comes to be seen as a transient and insubstantial instead of a mode of literary production in its own right. Regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of the understanding it clearly links to the duality concept of the literary field that identifies external principle exclusively with market principle expressed throughout in language. Within Bourdieu’s writing, traces of dualism are evident everywhere and in the literary field is an economic world inverted and the hierarchy of genres in autonomous field is the inverse of the hierarchy of commercial success. Bourdieu analysis of the fundamental structures in the literary field repeatedly offer image of two repeatedly opposing and contradicting principles struggling for ascendancy with one basing on anti-economic pure art and the other exclusively basing on principle of the market for the literary and artistic industries (Saugeres, 2009; Fowler, 2003). Bourdieu’s theoretical approach analyses scientific knowledge and articulates explicitly on the four main occasions when he considers science as a topic of sociological investigation. Bourdieu offers two foundational axioms in his analysis of scientific knowledge production by first insisting that sociologists have to conceptualise science as occupying the dual location in the social space. He considers that science be examined in two-fold relation to the social cosmos and the social microcosm made up of scientific universe, which is a relatively autonomous world with its rules of functioning. This signals that science be considered with reference to the external and internal coordinates. The scientific field according to Bourdieu is an objective space defined by opposing forces struggling for scientific stakes under contestation between agents who hold dominant versus subordinate locations in the hierarchy. Bourdieu by setting out that science be examined in two-fold relations does not present the two dimensions in his explanatory model as equal, rather the object of investigation in modern science lies squarely in internal field dynamics. This is because the basic property in modern scientific fields is the autonomy of in respect to external religious, political and economic powers. Autonomy is relative and not an absolute condition because independence from external factors has a degree and achievement that exist through historical triumphs (Zimbler, 2009; Hanappi, 2011). Regarding science being an enclosed field, Bourdieu introduces another foundational axiom that elaborates scientific knowledge production through postulation of science field function according to divisive and agonistic logic. Bourdieu’s definition of the scientific field emphasises existence of struggle in different agents within a certain field and the same idea appears in his scientific wring as in his other works. As Bourdieu extends to the scientific world his claim that different position within a field hierarchy necessitate war of everyone against each other thus universal competition. In his account Bourdieu, considers the scientific field as the focus of more or less unequal struggle among agents unequally endowed with the field-specific capital. This leaves no choice but struggle between agents to maintain or improve position within the field thus setting in motion conditions necessary for competitive anarchy. This however does not mean that scientists assault each other at random but rather Bourdieu holds that antagonistic fractions in the field are always organised around well-positioned agents, due to the accumulated capital and agents poorly positioned by the virtue of comparative lack of capital (Speller, 2012; Camic, 2011). For Bourdieu, the struggle for position bears direct consequences to the production of knowledge within any given scientific field. Bourdieu considers that position taking arise almost independently of the agent’s consciousness and will but rather from relationship between positions. In his observation, the same point reappears subtly regarding the direct correspondence between agent’s positions be it dominant or subordinate in the field and the agent’s intellectual stance. Bourdieu writings portray scientific knowledge in sheds of light in contrast to the reception of his ideas by scholars in science studies. Bourdieu ensures that habitus and capital appear in his writings on science though they do not play a major role apart from support role, thus Bourdieu had an agonistic view of the internal dynamics of the field. References Camic, C. 2011, 'Bourdieu's Cleft Sociology of Science', Minerva: A Review Of Science, Learning & Policy, 49, 3, pp. 275-293. Fiske, S. T., and Markus, H. R. (2012). Facing social class: how societal rank influences interaction. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Fowler, B. 2003, 'READING PIERRE BOURDIEU'S MASCULINE DOMINATION : NOTES TOWARDS AN INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS OF GENDER, CULTURE AND CLASS', Cultural Studies, 17, 3/4, p. 468. Hanappi, D. 2011, 'Economic Action, Fields and Uncertainty', Journal Of Economic Issues (M.E. Sharpe Inc.), 45, 4, pp. 785-804. Saugeres, L. 2009, '“We Do Get Stereotyped”: Gender, Housing, Work and Social Disadvantage', Housing, Theory & Society, 26, 3, pp. 193-209. Speller, J. 2012, 'Reading and Reflexivity: Bourdieu's Faulkner', Paragraph, 35, 1, pp. 83-96. Zimbler, J. 2009, 'For neither love nor money: the place of political art in Pierre Bourdieu's literary field', Textual Practice, 23, 4, pp. 599-620. Read More