Bourdieu II:
Fields of Cultural Production –and- Habitus
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Monday, April 16th
Instructor: Sarah Whetstone
Readings and Key Concepts
• “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The
Economic World Reversed”
– Art/literature as fields of cultural production
– Fields in relation to other fields
– Fields as sites of struggle
• More on habitus!
• Class Activity: “Homeless in El Barrio” –
by Philippe Bourgois, in The Weight of the
World (Bourdieu)
What is Art?... some popular answers
• “Internal reading” – Art is given significance through
reference to other works of art or periods of style
• “External reading” – Art is produced for consumer demand
• “Art as pure creation” – Art is a pure expression of the
artist’s creative intention
• “Reductionist vision” – Art is merely a reflection of
dominant class interestes and aesthetics (Ruling Class,
Ruling Ideas perspective)
• Bourdieu: Art is a field of struggle! Artists occupy
distinct social positions with access to capitals that
shape both the kind of art they make and how much
power they have in the field of art.
The Field of Art and Literature
The capital one possesses determines status and position in the field
“The structure of the field is … nothing other
than the structure of the distribution of the
capital of specific properties which governs
success in the field and the winning of the
external or specific profits (such as literary
prestige) which are at stake in the field” (291).
Economic, social, cultural, or symbolic capitals, which people have different
levels of access to
Actors struggle within the field to obtain and mobilize the capitals
required to maintain and defend their positions.
Art and Social Capital
“[The making of] literary or artistic works, is
inseparable from the space of literary or
artistic positions defined by possession of
a determinate quantity of specific capital
(recognition), and at the same time, by
occupation of a determinate position in
the structure of the distribution of this
specific capital” (291).
Art and Cultural Capital
•How, in the clip, was cultural capital
displayed?
•In this example, how might cultural capital
distinctions reinforce class positions?
•Can you think of an example where
language is a major form of cultural capital,
in another field?
Relational Sociology: Fields within Fields
• Fields are situated in relation to
other fields
• Relative space both within
fields and between fields
• Fields are “autonomous” to the
degree that they follow an
internal logic operating
independent of other fields.
• Bourdieu argues that art is
situated within a field of power
relations, itself situated in a field
of class relations.
• What does this mean for how art
gets produced? How does it
affect the value we attach to art?
• “Art for art’s sake” vs.
Commercial art (293)
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POWER
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ART
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Field of Class Relations
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Field of Forces, Field of Struggles
• The literary or artistic world is a field of forces–
positions and position-takings
• Also a field of struggles– contestation over
meaning, value, and claims to legitimacy. Actors
in the field must defend their positions.
• The strategies people use to defend their
positions in the field depends upon their
position in the field of power relations
• “What can be constituted as a system for the
sake of analysis… is the product and prize of a
permanent conflict… the unifying principle of
this system is the struggle” (292).
Struggles for Dominant Principles of
Hierarchization in Art and Literature
• Heteronomous principle
– Favored by economic and political elites
– Bourgeois art, art for commercial production, commodification
of art
• Autonomous Principle
– Art for art’s sake
– Audience is other producers (other artists or writers)
– Pursuit of business devalued– profit not important,
independence from economy emphasized
– Pursuit of power devalued– condemns honors and status
distinctions
– Pursuit of professional credentials devalued– lack of training
considered a good thing
– Failure gets recognition, success seen as “sign of compromise”
The Struggle Continues…
• Autonomous artists with high levels of “specific
capital” face pressures of cooptation from
heteronomous artists.
• Heteronomous artists with low levels of symbolic
capital align themselves more readily with the
interests of economic and political elites.
• The struggle is about imposing the legitimate
definition of art and literature: “Who is legitimately
entitled to designate legitimate writers or artists?”
(295)
• Struggle is not stable– ongoing struggle for the right
to claim legitimacy. Historically contingent, socially
contextualized.
The Struggle to Define the Artist:
Who is really an artist?
Autonomous Producer– High
cultural capital, questionable
economic capital
“We can't do anything to change the world
until capitalism crumbles. In the
meantime we should all go shopping to
console ourselves.” — Banksy
Heteronomous Producer–
low cultural capital, high
economic capital
“There's been million-seller books and millionseller CDs. But there hasn't been, until now,
million-seller art. We have found a way to
bring to millions of people, an art that they can
understand.” -- Thomas Kinkade
Discussion: Positions, Practices, and Capital in
the Fields of Cultural Production
• Why does Bourdieu say that the fields of art and
literature are so distinct from other social fields?
(296-297)
• Why, then, is there so much struggle to define
authenticity or legitimacy in the art/literature
world? (299)
• What, according to Bourdieu, does an artist need
to have to occupy an “economically risky”
position, ie, to stop caring about economic
concerns in the production of their art? (302)
~Habitus~
• The “site of interplay between structure and practice”
– Links positions in social space with the particular
practices actors within those spaces engage in
• System of dispositions, shaped by early experience, that
“generate & organize” practices throughout life, which
become like enduring “habits” within the person
• Habitus is deeply embedded within the person
– Embodied – physically enacted!
– Flexible and durable– guides patterned action, but also improvisation
• The way society becomes deposited in persons in the form of
lasting dispositions (tendencies toward action, thought,
feeling)
• Examples: Career expectations, who to marry, how to raise
kids, whether or not to talk about politics at dinner…
~Habitus: Interplay between
structure and practice
Social positions in a field
Habitus– deeply rooted, but flexible
guidelines that “orient” the person
toward a particular way of seeing
and being in the world.
HABITUS
Practices: actions, behaviors,
choices, etc. that signal your
social position
The habitus mediates between positions and practices.
Understanding Habitus
• Habitus captures the social as it operates through the physical
body– Mostly active pre-consciously (p. 279, 286-7)
• On 281, Bourdieu quotes Durkheim, saying “In each one of us… is
contained the person we were yesterday.” Habitus is all of our past
experiences, conditioned by the social environment, as they are
expressed in our present practices.
• Habitus tends to reproduce dominant structural relations– why?
• Bourdieu’s notion of “social groups” cuts across class, race, gender,
etc. to organize groups of people by similar types of “habitus” (283284). Multiple forms of experience shape the development of the
habitus.
– How does this notion of “social group” complicate Marxist and
Weberian notions?
Habitus is the way we see the world-- it
shapes our expectations, hopes, and desires…
“The art of estimating and seizing chances,
the capacity to anticipate the future…or
even to take a calculated gamble… are
dispositions that can only be acquired in
certain social conditions… Like the
entrepreneurial spirit or the propensity
to invest, economic information is a
function of one’s power over the
economy” (288).
Group Activity: Habitus in “El Barrio”
Using your copy of “Homeless in El Barrio,” apply
Bourdieu’s theory of habitus to Ramon’s life.
1) Describe the social position Ramon inhabits– what is life
like in El Barrio? Does Ramon have any economic, cultural,
or social capital?
2) Describe Ramon’s “practices”– how does he behave, what
actions or choices can we observe in the piece?
3) Describe Ramon’s “disposition”– how do you think he views
the world? Link the development of Ramon’s habitus to his
life experiences: How does Ramon’s everyday behavior
reflect an embodiment of social structure?
Bourdieu video links
• Art is a social process
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND7Ugj
XHenY&feature=mr_meh&list=UU03HVuY
jWXtfdQ7ewbghS5Q&lf=plcp&playnext=0
• Art and cultural capital – distinctions
create boundaries
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBn28i
NcpBA&list=UU03HVuYjWXtfdQ7ewbghS
5Q&index=13&feature=plcp