Social Space and the Genesis of Groups (Group 1)

INTRODUCTION TO "SOCIAL SPACE AND THE GENESIS OF GROUPS: Marielle Mortimer

Bourdieu’s model on the study of social life incorporates the concepts of social space and the origin of groups to examine human relations. He explains how social space as a social structure controls individuals and groups through the amount and type of capital given to each member. By declaring his stance on the way social and economic capital is used to categorize people, Bourdieu challenges Marx’s theory on the claim that social groups—Proletariat and Bourgeoisie—are solely formed through the means of economic production. He goes on to explain how classes of groups do not “exist” but are in fact created by the individuals who hold the most authority—the ones holding the most symbolic capital.

Bourdieu uses the concept of habitus to clarify what and how individuals become classified. Habitus is the product of capital distribution where skills, habits and disposition are deeply ingrained in oneself. Through habitus different view points are expressed, and the difference in these perceptions and actions are what cause for social differences and class categorization.

The break from Marx’s theory on social groups is then outlined in steps. First, Bourdieu breaks away from the propensity to hold substance over relationships. Secondly, he states that we need to break away from the use of “economism” to categorize social relations because of its causation of reducing the multi-dimensional space to solely the means of economic production. Lastly he addresses the problem of Marx linking intellectualism with the class that holds the most economic capital, which he will go into further detail in his paper.

THE SOCIAL SPACE: Marielle Mortimer

Bourdieu explains the idea of social space to be a socially constructed space that contains the agents (individuals) that participate in it, and more importantly their relations within the space. The constructs used to shape social space are seen through different kinds of power or what is also known as capital. The idea of capital is then expanded through his work by his division of the different types of capital. The more “objectified” version of capital that pertains to material property and economic means is what he later comes to call “economic capital”. The other version of capital described pertains to the more “embodied state”, in which experience plays a part in shaping the person which Bourdieu calls “cultural capital” (p. 677). For example, teachers may not exactly have much economic capital, but they do hold a high property of cultural capital. He also mentions further different types of capital such as symbolic and social capital, however these two types are embodied within both economic and cultural capital, which are the two primary power distributors.

Developing further into the concept of social space, Bourdieu defines the space to be multi-dimensional with every action taken place having interconnected relations. The first dimension in which he claims to be the most important pertains to the gross amount of capital overall. Having a mass amount of either economic, cultural, or both forms of capital, an individual is left with a better social position in life than the person with little capital, as described as the “unskilled worker”, “small merchants”, and more job descriptions that label individuals as “low” on the social hierarchy scale (p. 678). Through habitus—the “space of disposition”—Bourdieu summarizes that “each class of positions [...] corresponds a class of habitus”, which become the ‘tastes’ or social conditions that individuals are prescribed according to their accumulated capital by society (p. 678).

Comment: Diana Choi I believe social space is noticeable anywhere even at clubs/bars. People from upper class are considered "VIPs" and treated differently. Their social capital is established when people reserve tables at the VIP lounge for them and received complimentary advantages (free drinks, free charges for inviting friends, etc.) In terms of cultural capital, the people from upper class already know what kinds of alcohol to order, what kind of clothes to wear, and most importantly, how to behave in that particular setting.

HABITUS AND CLASSES ON PAPER: Curtis Seufert

Habitus is a “structuring (differentiating) structure” and a “structured (differentiated) structure”: it as a “structured structure” in that it is “structured” by access to economic and cultural capital, and a “structuring structure” in that it then “structures” or ‘defines’ what it means to have cultural or economic capital: what having this capital looks like is also guided and defined by habitus itself.

Habitus most visibly defines “taste”, be that literally in food, or figuratively in art, sports, activities, and other associations. It defines what having capital 'should look like' in a number of ways, and is also defined by it as well, circularly. People with different levels of economic and cultural capital have different kinds of habitus (almost different “classes” of habitus), such as hipster being born to artist parents: likely your habitus will be informed by high cultural capital, but less economic capital, but also distinct (as a kind of “language” through which people understand social positions, and that one can find themselves either ‘at ease’ with a kind of language, or totally baffled by it despite best efforts to follow).

Bourdieu notes "class" as existing theoretically, as a way to define and categorize and discuss inequality in social theory, but that it’s not an “actual” class being defined, that there are difficulties with defining a real-world set of “classes”, despite its use in discussing how people are likely to associate with groups (and again, in speaking theoretically). His solution to this is hinted as being partly the concept of habitus, but he discusses this more later.

For Bourdieu “alliance between those ‘closest’ is never necessary," and yet "alliance between those most distant from each other is never impossible” in this " space of relationships” (p. 679). This is a kind of going against Marxist notions of allying with “different classes” and “class/false consciousness”, more like what DuBois (in his discussion of how White working class allied with White owners instead of fellow Black working class). Bourdieu applies the notions to real examples Bourdieu gives, such as where the fairly tenuous basis of “national identity” can be used as a ‘link’ between people, within a space of relationships, in a time of crisis, for example. He notes that this social world and space of relationships can be constructed, perceived, etc. in different ways based on different perspectives (vision) and modes of hierarchy/inequality (division), BUT, argues that groupings (alliances) based in capital distribution similarities are much more stable than other kinds of groupings.

THE SYMBOLIC ORDER AND THE POWER TO NAME: Tina Jiang

There are two extremes of how a title can be given out, one end being the insults, and the other end the official nomination. Insults are from “individual perspectives and self-interest that lack the ability to force recognition.” On the other hand, official nominations are given by the agents of the state, which have authority and a legitimate viewpoint that is created by the “collective consciousness”.

Bourdieu talks about the value of titles and how these titles are able to provide people with “material and symbolic advantages associated with them.” One example of material advantages would be that at some work places, people who have the title of “full time” receive a lot higher hourly wages or more benefits than people with the title if “part time”, even if the two groups are doing the same work.

Titles given by the agents have symbolic effects. The example Bourdieu gave was that people would turn down a position with a high pay but a mediocre title, and accept one that has less pay and a “prestigious” title. That title is able to give that individual symbolic advantage by placing him/her higher in the hierarchy of his/her field and thus creating a power relation.

Also, people always try to add ambiguities in their titles that suggest a higher position to their own. An example would be a sanitary engineer versus janitor. The common perspective is that engineers work with very complex systems, therefore when telling someone that his/her occupation is a sanitary engineer, people would think that there is a lot more complexity to it. However a sanitary engineer is just a more professional term for janitor. Furthermore, when people hear the word engineer, all sorts of positive values and perspective are already being attached, like a high educational degree, hard-working etc. Meanwhile some perspectives for janitors are low socioeconomic status, low educational degree and more. Furthermore, engineers are also recognized and highly valued by agents of the state, which gives the word "engineer" even more values. Therefore when someone says that they are a sanitary engineer, the person receives a lot more respect compared to telling someone that they are janitors.

PERCEPTION OF THE SOCIAL WORLD AND POLITICAL STRUGGLE: Yi Lin Huang

Bourdieu argues that the perception of the social world “is the product of a double social structuration,” with ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ sides. The ‘objective’ side is the social structure produced by the agent, which is considered ‘subjective’. The social structure becomes objective as agent “express the state of the symbolic power relations.” and define the ‘common sense’ of the object world. In other words, agents actively impose their positions of the social world through a process known as “work of representation” (680). Because a collective group of agents can define people’s mindset, this becomes a type of social power which turns political. It is the “quasi-magical power to name and to make-exist by virtue of naming.” that agents struggle to earn that enables them to internalise and create objective social structures (681).

Linking this to habitus, Bourdieu believes that the “sense of the position occupied in social space is the practice mastery of the social structure”. Agents in power produce methods of classifying social groups by using explicit physical differences and special segregation through ethnic groups and regions/neighbourhoods, calling it the “Distinctive sign” (intended to be perceived as legitimate differences in society). These symbolic transfigurations are produced by agents internalizing and enforcing their views on social world. It is the differences in social space that “function symbolically as a space of life-styles”. Eurocentric/western perspective through colonialism is one of the most prominent form of how in which continuously imposes its view globally. The following quote explains how Bourdieu calls Eurocentric/western agents the percipi and the practice of colonialism, the percipere.

“The authority which underlies the performative efficacy of discourse about the social world … percipi, a being-known- and being-recognized, which makes it possible to impose a percipere.” (682).

THE POLITICAL FIELD AND THE EFFECT OF THE HOMOLOGIES: Emily Posthumus

Bourdieu explains that the process by which political affairs become a struggle between opposing social groups is entirely dependent on the nature of the relationship between the dominated and the dominant agents. Although critical of Marx’s narrow focus on the social sphere of economic relations, this section shows Bourdieu’s support for conflict theory (as well as poststructuralism) as he suggests that the dominated classes of multiple social spheres must combine together in order to develop the means to finding representation in the world.

For Bourdieu, this social action is achieved through homology, or parallel disposition, between the dominated groups across social spheres, as the unification of their cultural capital will allow them to access an objective world view where they can identify the structures that preserve the status quo.

“Institutionalized instruments of representation” (p. 686) are especially useful in advocating one’s interests because they are congruent with the social structure and thus inherit an immutable role, making them difficult to deconstruct. For example, trade unions are an important part of representing the working class’s interests because they combine people’s cultural capital across social spheres in an effective manner to oppose owners of production (the dominant in the economic social sphere) and have a strong structural element that would be extremely difficult for elites to appropriately deconstruct.

In conclusion, homology between groups of different social spheres is an important part of the political struggle as the fusion of cultural capital gives them the means to objectively identify their social structure, and consequently use that structure’s means to represent their interests.

CLASS AS REPRESENTATION AND AS WILL: Ivan Xiao

Bourdieu examines the power held by “the authorized spokesman” (the President, the Pope, etc.) through the explanation of the process of representation. The “spokesman” is essentially the “mandated representative” of a group, who “receives from the group the power to make the group” (p. 686). This “spokesman” acts as a surrogate for the individual voices within a group, uniting their actions as one man, state, or identity. Through this process a “man (a government official, a delegate, etc.) can identify himself, and be identified, with a set of men (the Nation, the Church, etc.)” and this as a result, creates a cycle in which one cannot exist without the other (p. 686). However Bourdieu states that it is this “circular relationship” that creates political alienation, as isolated individuals aren’t able to unite and create a group in which to make their voices heard within politics (p. 686). Concluding that “one always has to risk political dispossession in order to escape political dispossession”, alienated groups and individuals will always have to give up authority towards another in order to gain power (p.686).

This process of representation is exemplified in the most recent US election and the protest of the current President. In the struggle to nominate a “spokesman” that represented the values and voices of democratic voters, Trump was able to win presidency, as people weren’t able to unite under Clinton. Many democrats felt that the best “spokesman” for them was Sanders and refused to “risk political dispossession in order to escape political dispossession”, resulting in the overall loss of political influence for the democrats and their voices (p.686). As Trump has taken office, we have seen continued protests as many people within the country refuse to acknowledge him as the “spokesman” for the nation. The many individuals who continually chant, “he is not my president”, essentially deny him “the power to make the group” (p.686).