USA Africa Dialogue Series - Getting Radical About Inequality

On 7/18/17, 8:44 PM, "Bisi Falola" <bisifalola@gmail.com> wrote:

>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opinion/inequality-pierre-bourdieu.html
>?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share
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>A French philosopher looked at power struggles. Understanding his
>thinking might also provide some insight into President Trump.
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>Getting Radical About Inequality
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> <https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-brooks>
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> David Brooks
><https://www.nytimes.com/column/david-brooks>
> JULY 18, 2017
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> I¹m not in the habit of recommending left-wing French
>intellectuals, but
>I¹m beginning to think that Pierre Bourdieu is helpful reading in the
>age of Trump. He was born in 1930, the son of a small-town postal
>worker. By the time he died in 2002, he had become perhaps the world¹s
>most influential sociologist within the academy, and largely unknown
>outside of it.
>His
> great subject was the struggle for power in society, especially
>cultural and social power. We all possess, he argued, certain forms of
>social capital. A person might have academic capital (the right degrees
>from the right schools), linguistic capital (a facility with words),
>cultural capital (knowledge of cuisine or music or some such) or
>symbolic capital (awards or markers of prestige). These are all forms of
> wealth you bring to the social marketplace.
>In
> addition, and more important, we all possess and live within what
>Bourdieu called a habitus. A habitus is a body of conscious and tacit
>knowledge of how to travel through the world, which gives rise to
>mannerisms, tastes, opinions and conversational style. A habitus is an
>intuitive feel for the social game. It¹s the sort of thing you get
>inculcated with unconsciously, by growing up in a certain sort of family
> or by sharing a sensibility with a certain group of friends.
>For
> example, in his surveys of French taste, Bourdieu found that manual
>laborers liked Strauss¹s ³The Blue Danube² but didn¹t like Bach¹s ³The
>Well-Tempered Clavier.² People who lived in academic communities, on the
> other hand, liked the latter but not the former.
> Continue reading the main story
><https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opinion/inequality-pierre-bourdieu.htm
>l?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share#story-continues-2>
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> David Brooks
><https://www.nytimes.com/column/david-brooks>
> Politics, culture and the social sciences.
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> Moral Vacuum in the House of Trump
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> Your
> habitus is what enables you to decode cultural artifacts, to feel
>comfortable in one setting but maybe not in another. Taste overlaps with
> social position; taste classifies the classifier.
> Photo
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> Pierre Bourdieu in Paris in 1991.
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> Credit
> Pierre Olivier Deschamps/Agence VU/Redux
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> Every
> day, Bourdieu argued, we take our stores of social capital and our
>habitus and we compete in the symbolic marketplace. We vie as
>individuals and as members of our class for prestige, distinction and,
>above all, the power of consecration ‹ the power to define for society
>what is right, what is ³natural,² what is ³best.²
>The
> symbolic marketplace is like the commercial marketplace; it¹s a billion
> small bids for distinction, prestige, attention and superiority.
>Every
> minute or hour, in ways we¹re not even conscious of, we as individuals
>and members of our class are competing for dominance and respect. We
>seek to topple those who have higher standing than we have and we seek
>to wall off those who are down below. Or, we seek to take one form of
>capital, say linguistic ability, and convert it into another kind of
>capital, a good job.
>Most
> groups conceal their naked power grabs under a veil of intellectual or
>aesthetic purity. Bourdieu used the phrase ³symbolic violence² to
>suggest how vicious this competition can get, and he didn¹t even live
>long enough to get a load of Twitter and other social media.
>Different groups and individuals use different social strategies,
>depending on their position in the field.
>People
> at the top, he observed, tend to adopt a reserved and understated
>personal style that shows they are far above the ³assertive,
>attention-seeking strategies which expose the pretensions of the young
>pretenders.² People at the bottom of any field, on the other hand, don¹t
> have a lot of accomplishment to wave about, but they can use snark and
>sarcasm to demonstrate the superior sensibilities.
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>Sometimes,
> the loser wins: If you¹re setting up a fancy clothing or food shop you
>go down and adopt organic and peasant styles in order to establish the
>superior moral prestige that you can then use to make gobs of money.
>Bourdieu
> helps you understand what Donald Trump is all about. Trump is not much
>of a policy maven, but he¹s a genius at the symbolic warfare Bourdieu
>described. He¹s a genius at upending the social rules and hierarchies
>that the establishment classes (of both right and left) have used to
>maintain dominance.
>Bourdieu didn¹t argue that cultural inequality creates economic
>inequality, but that it widens and it legitimizes it.
>That¹s
> true, but as the information economy has become more enveloping,
>cultural capital and economic capital have become ever more intertwined.
> Individuals and classes that are good at winning the cultural
>competitions Bourdieu described tend to dominate the places where
>economic opportunity is richest; they tend to harmonize with affluent
>networks and do well financially.
>Moreover,
> Bourdieu reminds us that the drive to create inequality is an endemic
>social sin. Every hour most of us, unconsciously or not, try to win
>subtle status points, earn cultural affirmation, develop our tastes,
>promote our lifestyles and advance our class. All of those
>microbehaviors open up social distances, which then, by the by, open up
>geographic and economic gaps.
>Bourdieu
> radicalizes, widens and deepens one¹s view of inequality. His work
>suggests that the responses to it are going to have to be more profound,
> both on a personal level ‹ resisting the competitive, ego-driven
>aspects of social networking and display ‹ and on a national one.
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> Follow The New York Times Opinion section on
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> A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 18, 2017, on
>Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting Radical About
>Inequality. Today's Paper
><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html>|Subscribe
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> Continue reading the main story
><https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opinion/inequality-pierre-bourdieu.htm
>l?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share#whats-next>
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>Sent from my iPad

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