Essays on Bourdieu

Bourdieu’s Concepts of Capital and Habitus and Contemporary Class Differences

Introduction Since 1986 when Bourdieu published his book with the concepts of cultural capital and habitus, many social changes have happened, primarily driven by changes in technology and new ways of interactions. For instance, compared to thirty years ago, it is now easier to break the glass ceiling of social stratification because there is a bigger social spread. Many rich people interact with people from humble backgrounds on the internet, and, since the class is not the first thing that comes up when these relations start, people from higher classes discover that they are interacting with people from the ...

INEQUALITY IN BRITAIN

Introduction Social stratification is about the different social classes and relative positions of social groups within a given country or community. In most societies, it has to do with the level of wealth each social category yields, but there are several concepts and theories that relates to it. This includes level of education, norms, social activities and preferences as well as the expectations society places on certain people within each class which leads to taste and the formation of identities. As a result of this, there is the famous “Top 1%”, the upper class, the upper-middle, the middle class, ...

The term “pop culture”, has largely been used as an all section of the world that we live in: the manner in which life is inherited, practiced and passed on to the descendants. Popular culture can have a significant impact on the lives as well as the attitude of various people, partly because it often provides meaning and insight in various ways. The fact of popular culture is the power it has in influencing people especially youngsters. In addressing the issue of popular culture, Danesi “Popular culture: Introductory perspectives” (201) indicated that the values of society are transmitted through ...

Among all kinds of art, maybe only music is able to put the listener into the world of certain period and make him or her not just aware the processes in the piece of music, but feel it and live in its atmosphere. Music is the strongest emotional impulse of life. Every man listens to the most favourite genre or genres. The classical music has the reputation as the highest point in the world of sounds. Though, this attitude puts classical music in a dramatically ignorant place (Sandow 2). In any case, this music is supposed to have not ...

Introduction

The paper is a case study that focuses on subculture theories. As such, the paper will take an application approach where the theory is explored in the context of Pachuco subculture. The subculture relates to Mexican-American gang which developed in the 1930s (Sanchez, n.d.). The subculture was characterized by delinquent behavior thus forming a suitable case to apply the subculture theories.

Understanding the Emergence of Pachuco Subculture

Bourdieu argues that there are four forms of capital namely social, economic, and cultural and symbolic. To understand the emergence of the subculture, first, the social form of capital is applied. According to Bourdieu, social capital refers to ...

Tourists Relationship with Food and Drinks

Introduction According to Dale (2006, p.2), tourism involves activities of people travelling to take vacationsin places that are outside their typical environments. These vacations do not exceed one consecutive year. Tourism is driven by several factors such as leisure, business, or any other purpose (Dale, 2006 p.2). The definition indicates that tourists move away from their usual homes to a destination where food, drinks, and culture are different.Food and culture are strongly linked. Food choices reflect the identity of the eater (Hurh and Kim, 1998 p.72). Human beings tend to adhere to taking familiar foods and drinks because of ...

Gender and Culture

Gender is a characteristic of differentiation, which helps us group humankind and other animals in specific groups. There are only two types of gender that are male and female gender. Having in mind that culture is the norms and values of an individual way of life. I will show the values of either gender and compare the conventional practices. Give the similarities thereafter, and show the stereotypes that may have been used to guide the practices of the gender in question; I will also discuss the responsibilities of each gender. Moreover, I will give my perspective on the validity ...

Education has done little to improve social mobility. To what extent does this statement provide an accurate reflection of the role of education in contemporary Britain?

Introduction

The impact of education on equal opportunities and social mobility has been an important concern thoroughly explored in the field of sociology. An early British sociologist of education, Olive Banks, systematically tackled the issue of how an educational institution that establish hierarchy in schools in accordance to a hierarchical labour market could bring about 'parity of prestige' or, in simple term, equal opportunity (Irvin, 2008). There are conclusive sociological findings which reveal how ...

The Field Of Struggle for State Power to Understand Of Ethnic Group in the Southeast Turkey

The Kurdish community is a minority group living in Turkey. They are believed to be the largest ethnic group that are not recognized by any state. Because of this reason, they have been involved in a continuous struggle with the government of Turkey. They have been fighting for the right to be recognized and appreciated by the Turkish government (Kaya, 2011, p.15). This paper will give an insight look into the causes behind the struggle in relation to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the field.

Pierre Bourdieu was a sociologist, philosopher, and anthropologist from France. He was born on August 1930 and ...

Introduction

Civic engagement entails the various ways that the residents of a place are involved in so as to better the living or welfare conditions of others. This is aimed at shaping as well as determining the future of that particular community. Traditionally, civic engagement has been viewed and limited to the youth but successful community development projects have reflected the importance of involving every stakeholder. Precisely, civic engagement is the making of a difference by combining the efforts and skills of the community members then allocating them the necessary resources to make that difference. This is in an effort to promote ...

The understanding of truth is an intriguing concept that has been the subject of many explanations and theories over the years. Many attempt to define its meaning and how to distinguish truth from other concepts. Truth can thus be considered a shifting, provisional, subjective and temporary concept. Its meaning varies depending on context and a variety of other factors. The attempt at understanding the concept fully remains elusive and incomplete. This analysis focuses on an effort to analyze truth; this occurs through the exploration of various types of truth. An understanding of the concept will help in knowing the role of ...

Abstract

This paper presents theory and practice of French sociology in practice after Pierre Bourdieu and the impacts that his work had to sociologist and the society at large, as a preparation for a journal article. It had started by analyzing the life of Bourdieu when young who hardly known in the society who advocated for purely scientific view of sociology and was against sociologically oriented journalism developed by his mentor Raymond Aron. Bourdieu was not known unlike other intellectuals in society of the time. However, him together with his co-writer Jean-Claude Passeron gained instant fame after they wrote two provocative books ...

How does the level of social awareness distinguish the historic preservation movement in the United States?

In the 1960s, people had a unique view of social awareness. The view of people to the community meant that everything around them had to have been in place for as long as they can remember. The definition of social awareness during this time was the consciousness of an individual to their neighbors and the history they shared. It was a matter of who lived here and whether that person was born in a place or was he or she a “newcomer.” Another key aspect of social awareness during this time was in the economic status of individuals with each social class having ...

In the fourth chapter (“Cultural Works and Cultivated Disposition”) of “The Love of Art Bourdieu”, the author continue with the argument that access to cultural works such as the ones exhibited in museums is a privilege of the more cultivated individuals in the society. The authors argue that the reason for this is that unlike the less cultivated individuals in the society, there is stronger “cultural need” in the more cultivated individuals that prompt them to visit museums and fulfill this cultural need. A cultural need is the propensity to consume rare objects such as the ones exhibited in the ...

Sociologists have proposed various theories that explain the social organization and the socialization of the people in the community. These concepts attempt to explain people’s habits and situation under which they develop their behaviors and lifestyles. Understanding the concepts and arguments proposed by these theories is essential to apply them accordingly in addressing social dilemmas in the community. The paper reviews two social concepts— the Habitus and Rationalization by discussing each model, comparing and contrasting them while critiquing the arguments that they make.

Rationalization

Rationalization is a major sociological concept that seeks to explain why different people behave differently within ...

- Graham Murdoch’s citizenship framework versus that of Anna McCarthy Though this question calls for a compare and contrast of Graham Murdoch’s citizenship framework versus that of Anna McCarthy’s the two articles complement each other nicely. Graham Murdoch’s modern ideal framework for understanding citizenship argues that as an American life evolved from the simple to the modern society of today. Anna McCarthy’s The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950’s America’ describes the understanding of citizenship as a medium to a growing society of free people. The two insights complement each other well citizenship is ...

Bourdieu argues in his framework for understanding taste and hierarchy that judgments of taste are influenced by one’s social position. He puts forward his argument by combining social theory and information gathered from quantitative surveys, interviews and photos. He attempts to bring together difficulties like how one can understand the subject within structures that are objective. Bourdieu attempted to reconcile the impact of external social structures and subjective experience of a person. According to Bourdieu, further states that habitus is not a result of either free will and is not determined by structures. It is created by a form of ...

Communication

Compare and contrast Graham Murdock's framework for understanding citizenship as a complex ideal of modernity with Anna McCarthy's framework for understanding citizenship as a Cold War discourse for governing. Identify the central conceptual framework for each. Compare how each is concerned with neoliberalism. Identify one strength and one weakness in both frameworks. Graham Murdock’s purpose was to highlight how television fulfills the rights and representations of the citizens through his framework of modern citizenship (Murdock, 2010). Amongst the many rights that a citizen is entitled to, right to information, right to experience and right to participation should be fulfilled by ...

There is great disparity in educational opportunities based on social an economic background in France. Likely, there is a similar pattern in education throughout the Western world. Bourdieu & Passeron shows conclusively in his essay Inheritance the cause and effect relationship of social class on opportunities in education and prior knowledge going into education. Their primary source for their essays where from a series of surveys which were carried out by the Centre de Sociologie europénne Bourdieu & Passeron were most surprised at how social class created interests in individuals more than individual preference. He found that “in the absence of organized ...

Gender is a social construct, not tied to sex in any neat, definitive manner and hence, amenable and open to (re)construction in order to challenge power relations. This paper explores gendered power relations in Euripedes’ Medea and Sophocles’ Antigone, in an endeavour to explicate upon how such relations manifest themselves in the text, and thereby, shape, influence and contribute to an understanding of the overwhelmingly misogynist and patriarchal social reality of ancient Greece. The paper also seeks to take issue with the use of language as mediating an elucidation and plurification of meaning/s in the text, and aiding in ...

SUMMARY

BOURDIEUSIAN THEORIES The very famous French sociologist & philosopher, Bourdieu, gave theoretical ideas with researches done, that relates to everyday life. His theories were the ones meant for practice and his contributions to sociology were incredible as it was both theoretical & had practical evidences. When it came to people or groups he refused any idea other than uniting the society & its people. He was completely against the idea of giving someone extraordinary importance vision, that usually comes into a picture imposing itself whenever it comes to a discussion between individual & society. Being a writer means inserting oneself completely into the literary ...

Humans have contributed to the development of advanced systems and platforms in a number of ways. From the early inventor of locomotive engines to the inventor of open source software, technological evolution has taken many turns. In this process, remains the hacker who participates in hacker virtual communities to improve and come up with new things, normally in unconventional and unorthodox manner. A hacker is not always the one who brings systems to a standstill causing disruption and inefficiencies in the daily operations of individuals and organizations. Rather, they are computer programmers, designers and software developers who exhibit enhanced computer skills ...

The notion of human action has undoubtedly been one of the major centres of investigation and debate within the sociological arena, especially in the latter part of the 20th century. Among the ‘unification of theories and theorists’ whom are known to have presented their accounts and explanations on human agency, lies Pierre Bourdieu and his theory The Habitus theorem: cognitive structures through which people deal with the social world. In this theorem, Bourdieu’s to explain the culmination of our status or position in the social structure that an individual is part of as well as knowledge, mannerism, schemes ...

Report of a Research Article on Social Marginalization

Report of a Research Article on Social Marginalization This paper is a brief report of the research article by Lynam and Cowley (2007) entitled “Understanding marginalization as a social determinant of health.” The paper will also include innovative suggestions on how social marginalization can be addressed.

marginalization are highly associated with poor physical and mental health over the life time and contribute to health inequalities. More troubling is the fact that a recent research study conducted in Britain indicates that the effects of social marginalization are cumulative and individuals belonging to ‘ethnic minorities’ are at high risk. The current study sought to ...

Challenges of homelessness and drug addiction are common in the contemporary society. Jeff Schonberg and Philippe Bourgois researched on heroin injectors and crack smokers in san Francisco. These scholars noted that the drug addicts in the streets of San Francisco generated income through panhandling, day labor, burglary and recycling. The model of collecting information included the use of black and white photographs, field notes, theoretical analysis and vivid dialogue. It is noted that drug addicts isolate themselves from the mainstream society because they lived in their own self-made cocoons. The “inhabitus” are sharply segregated, and their activities mainly trigger ...

Coordination in organizations, especially healthcare centers, requires elevated levels of micro level designs. The coordination occurs in a tri-dimensional way that touches on the programming approaches, feedback mechanisms, as well as relational coordination angles. Coordination harmonizes various actions of the organization to form a single element (Feldman and Pentland, 2003). The ordeal involves forming portions of right quantities in line with the design schemes available. Several approaches determine the harmonization technique. Two approaches are discussed in this essay. The programming approach is often relevant in situations of high certainty in the organization. In healthcare sector, high certainty often involves areas like ...

Abstract

Social inequality is simply how different categories of individuals are prescribed by the society. The society uses basic characteristics such as gender, sex, education, and ethnicity among other factors in order to categorize an individual. The social inequalities determine the access to limited goods such as market labor force, education, health care facilities, and other forms of participation in the society. Different forms of social inequalities are constructs of geographical distribution, and status within the country, however, cultural aspects, mostly integrated with cultural identities, of society are perceived to be the major contributor of social inequality. Discourses have, therefore, ...

A picture is worth a thousand words, is a phrase that indicates the complexities and detailed analysis that one can get from a well-taken picture. Every second, lots of photographs are taken around the world—according to Geoffrey Batchen Americans alone take about 550 snapshots per second (8). Photography is one of the greatest inventions in modern history, which made possible to capture the moment that people want to remember. As technologies developed, quality of photography has been improved and types of equipments became diversified. However, one fact that has not been changed, in all ages, people took photographs to store their ...

Part 1

Bourdieu in the sociological theory says that we should think of the society as being organized or stratified as a 3-D space (Dillion, 2009). These dimensions include volumes of capital, size of capita and changes in properties of these components defined by time. Every society is characterized by different classes and their subcomponents. These classes are arranged depending on their volume of different capitals; economic, social, and cultural capital. The hierarchical distribution of these classes is determined by differences in ownership of capitals (Dillion, 2009). Bourdieu views linguistic capital as key component of ...

In Bourdieu’s “The Myth of Globalization and the European Welfare State,” Bourdieu creates a strong ethical argument for the tearing down of the globalization myth, which can bring about a welfare state in Europe due to foreign competition. Bourdieu argues for a fight against this outlook in order to account for the “social costs” of economic theory, most certainly a move toward ethics over sheer economic success (p. 39). It is ethically sound to follow Bourdieu’s suggestions, as the long-term effects of economic decisions on a society are often not as fully explored as they should be.

Bourdieu argues that ‘To fight against ...