| Man
and his century PIERRE BOURDIEU. A LIFELONG STRUGGLE WITH THE AGENTS OF IGNORANCE By Alexander Kustaryov |
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 Who
was Bourdieu's work intended to help?Not the well-established nor the big bosses, but the little people isolated from the rest of society |
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As an obituary, this article is a little late in coming, but it sits well in this "Man and His Century"
column, the natural place for any assessment of Bourdieu.
Bourdieu was France's most renowned and respected sociologist. And not just in France itself: he
was considered an honorary citizen of Germany, for example, if for no other reason than that his
thinking was so closely connected to the German socio-philosophical tradition stretching from Kant,
Max Weber and Simmel all the way to Heidegger. America (unlike England) to this day looks on
Paris as the world's intellectual capital. And Bourdieu has a good many followers in Russia – two of
his books have been translated into Russian.
Geniuses are born in the provinces, but come to Paris to die
Pierre Bourdieu, the son of a minor civil servant, was born in 1930 in Bearn. This also happens to
have been the birthplace of Henry IV, France's "people's king" who, in his close circle, was always
called "the Bearnais". Nor is it terribly far from the home of D'Artagnan. Bourdieu looked like a
typical Frenchman. In certain photographs he resembles Alain Delon. The French have a saying that
geniuses are born in the provinces, but always come to Paris to die. In this sense, Bourdieu had a
textbook career. He studied in Po, then spent some time working first in Algeria, and later in the
provincial town of Lille. He finally conquered Paris in 1964, and in 1981 took up the reigns of the
prestigious sociology department at the College de France. In 1993 he was awarded the Gold Medal
of the National Centre for Academic Research. This is France's highest honour for an academic.
Pierre Bourdieu was the first – and thus far the only – sociologist to receive this award. It marked the
end of his formal academic career, because in his later years he became more and more involved in
social projects.
There are two types of sociologists in this world. The first kind confine themselves to measuring
human collectives. For example, determining the beliefs and opinions prevalent in society. The
results of their research are mainly used by those who administer (or manipulate) society through the
relevant institutions (or organs) – deciding, for example, how many police officers there should be
on the street, or whether taxes should go up or down. This kind of sociologist is essentially serving
his masters.
The other kind of sociologists base their findings on the personal experiences of an individual living
in a society – in the system, the web or, to use Bourdieu's preferred terminology, in the space and
realm of social (human) relations. The results of this kind of research are intended to be used by us
as individuals, and they provide us with the tools necessary to plot a course through society or,
should we want them, principles by which we could actually influence the world we live in. And
who is this work intended to help? Not the well-established nor the big bosses, but the little people
isolated from the rest of society.
The monkey scientist
Bourdieu's sociology is consistently scientific in the most classical sense of the word. His passion
for the truth was greater even than his understanding that truth is, by its very nature, a relative and
ephemeral concept. He was driven by a zealous intellectual curiosity, a fundamental belief in the
power of logic and a readiness to accept unavoidable conclusions no matter how much they
conflicted with his own personal interests and emotional needs. One often encountered these
characteristics in 19th century scientists – Darwin, Pasteur, Mechnikov, Robert Koch, etc. These
people were ready to admit that they were monkeys, and to personally undergo medical experiments.
Following this tradition, Bourdieu put his own class – professional intellectuals – and, by extension,
himself, under the microscope. At first glance, it may seem to the casual observer that Bourdieu fell
into the trap of limiting his studies to an ivory tower world where a few hundred academics pottered
around, utterly divorced from the real world. But this is far from the truth. The area which
Bourdieu's research covered only seems insignificant in size. In actual fact, its density makes it
enormous – the principles of nuclear physics apply. And that is in terms of content. Structurally it is
even more significant, for it is the very mind of society. And the content and structure that we are
talking about combine in what we traditionally call "power", and what Bourdieu means when he
refers to "symbolic capital," or "cultural capital" – terms very specific to the sociology of Bourdieu.
Bourdieu's sociology is rooted in the national tradition. Frenchmen have been fascinated by this
particular social sphere for a long time. The father of this tradition is most likely La Bruyere,
although he stands alongside a plethora of moralists and diarists who concerned themselves with the
higher echelons and bodies in society. In the table of contents that open La Bruyere's Characteres,
we find such headings as the following: "Social Spheres", "Man's Virtues", "Opinions", "Fashion".
While in the text itself there are countless passages revealing the truth concealed behind all the
rhetoric, all the flattery, and the piety. We begin to see the self-interest that drives men's actions, the
social ambitions behind their public deeds. There is a discussion of the value placed on "social
position." This 18th and 19th century tradition makes a smooth transition into literature (the novel)
and reaches its almost clinical apotheosis in the work of Proust where it is barely recognizable.
Eventually the tradition moves effectively into the realm of sociology, to find itself embodied
brilliantly and persuasively in the figure of Pierre Bourdieu. And by this point, the sociologist's eye
is trained on smaller social units, such as the literary sphere, the art world, the world of academia
and, of course, bohemia.
Playing with fire
However, having decided to focus his interest on this particular aspect of society, Bourdieu was
playing with fire. By choosing to analyse society's intellectual practices – or, if you like, the class of
practising thinkers (academics, intellectuals) – he was engaging in the public washing of dirty linen.
"It is well known that no group loves an 'informer' especially, perhaps, when the transgressor or
traitor can claim to share in their own highest values. The same people who would not hesitate to
acclaim an objective view as 'courageous' or 'lucid' if it were applied to alien, hostile groups, would
be likely to question the 'sober' view of anyone analysing his own group. The sorcerer's apprentice
who risks looking into the local sorcery and its fetishes, instead of going afar to tropical climes to
seek exotic magic, must expect to see the violence he has unleashed turned against him. Karl Kraus
had more right than anyone else to formulate the following law: the more distant the objects of
objectivity are, the more likely they are to be approved and acclaimed as 'courageous' in the 'family
circle'. And indeed in the editorial of the first issue of his journal, Die Fackel, he says that anyone
who rejects the pleasure and easy benefits of long-distance criticism in order to investigate his
immediate neighbourhood, which everything bids him to hold sacred, must expect the torments of
'subjective persecution.'"
In Homo Academicus (1982), from which this passage is taken, Bourdieu cites the case of the
Chinaman Li Zhi and the fate of his Burned Book. Li Zhi was a renegade mandarin. He exposed his
class to the rest of society. His book was banned. Intellectuals, academia – they all have a habit of
believing that they are the observers, of looking down on everyone else in society. They see others as
savages, as pieces of broken crockery – that is, archaeological artefacts, lacking either consciousness
or soul. Bourdieu's sociology deprives them of the privilege of being the subjects. And he never
balks at the difficulty of the task before him. He never stoops to proclaiming himself better or wiser
than his subject. What he does is stand all of these relationships on their head, turning the examiners
into the examined and vice versa.
Capital culture and cultural capital
One of the most important tools in Bourdieu's intellectual arsenal is the idea of the capital of
symbols, or "cultural capital" – as opposed to "economic capital." We know what we mean by
economic capital: money, property and the like. Whereas cultural capital is a much harder concept to
define, because we see capital as something material – a "thing", as it were – while culture is a far
more elusive beast, just so much hot air. Not to mention the fact that, for your run-of-the-mill
intellectual combining the words "culture" and "capital" is nothing less than sacrilege. They simply
don't go together. But if one leaves behind the old preconceptions for a moment, everything
becomes crystal clear. Cultural capital is in essence one's standing within the cultural sphere:
prestige, status and, therefore power. It is similar to the market stature of a brand, to a company's
goodwill value. If this is what we take "cultural capital" to mean, then figures such as Solzhenitsyn,
Rostropovich – or at the other extreme, Madonna and Shirley Bassey – become cultural capitalists.
And the Bolshoi Theatre, Novy Mir magazine, and the London School of Economics are cultural
capitalist corporations. Further still, we have the cultural capitalist conglomerates: Russia's Ministry
of Culture, AOL – Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp and Vivendi Universal.
The idea of cultural capital that Bourdieu develops greatly enriches our view of the complexities and
inequalities within society and, as a result, establishes a new definition of dominance and of social
conflict. Just as money attracts money, Bourdieu argues, cultural capital and standing accumulate in
the hands of the few, turning everyone around them into followers, adherents and servants.
The constantly increasing interference and control that the media exerts over society does nothing to
promote equality in the sphere of cultural capital. On the contrary, it only deepens the unfair and
arbitrary level of respect for entities, and contempt for non-entities. The media (journalists) blatantly
demands cultural dominance and its power tends to tyranny. The production of "information" and
the glut of "communication" is not the same as the distribution of "knowledge." And the end result
is not freedom but subjugation.
It is difficult to quantify the standing that cultural capital gives someone. It's not about their
knowledge or qualifications. These measures relate to the workplace. But just as an engineer's
abilities can be converted into capital, capital can be made from erudition, thought, preaching, news,
anecdotes or simply a name – all the things that have no material form and have only symbolic
value. This is demonstrated particularly well by what happens to charismatic leaders. Just one idea
can bring them unheard of power – see Jesus and Mohammed. Essentially, any idea, any given
artefact provides its possessor with a certain amount of power. And Bourdieu believes that those
who are in possession of such ideas (whether their own or borrowed) take advantage of this fact.
Moreover, the actual generation and accumulation of idea-products is done in order to serve the
interests of the very people who are most concerned primarily with gaining as much power as
possible.
Bourdieu says, "There is no more unjust, no more cruel distribution of resources than the
distribution of cultural (symbolic) capital, i.e., the social importance allotted to people and the
justification of their existence (raisons de vivre)." And, moreover, "in the past, the power of cultural
capital was separated from political and economic power. But now, all of these powers are in the
hands of a small group of people who control the biggest media groups, or, to put it another way, are
in control of both the production and distribution of culture." Reading these words, one cannot help
but recall the old Soviet colossus. It is no exaggeration to say that, were it not for Bourdieu, we
would be far less familiar with this entire subject, and our understanding would be far more murky.
Now, if of course we are willing to open our eyes to it, his conception becomes an intrinsic part of
our habitus.
The individual is society
It is to Bourdieu that we owe our understanding of the "habitus". It is a little more difficult to pin
down exactly what we mean by this idea. Its meaning is very closely connected with a wider
philosophical context. The habitus is society as embodied in the individual's mentality. The
individual as the personification of a society. The individual in this sense is taken to mean a social
agent, whose actions realize a given society's programme, depending, of course, on the position that
given individual occupies within the society. In a manner of speaking, the individual is society. The
social individual is a person's habitus.
All the old terminology stems from the contrast between the subject, the individual, and the object,
society. Bourdieu avoids this. There is no individual, no subject in his sociology – only what he calls
an agent. Unfolding his habitus in the social environment is the practising agent. And society is
interpreted not as a collection of institutions and individuals, but as a collection of co-existing,
competing practices (it's hard to withstand the temptation to note that, in this interpretation, social
activity becomes, as it were, habitual activity.) The intention behind every agent's practice is
differentiation. Everybody wants to be different. And in the course of this process of differentiation
hierarchies begin to appear. This version of society takes into account economics, culture,
substructure, superstructure, material interests and "ideal interests" (as Weber might have put it) and
utterly does away with the fateful question of what is of primary importance and what is secondary.
It's as if the distinction between the violinist, the violin and the music has disappeared.
One might see Bourdieu's theoretical, philosophical views as the generalization of his own personal
experience. Bourdieu's intellectual work went from inertia to social activity, or through the logical
development of a living organism: Bourdieu the sociologist becomes Bourdieu the political activist
just as an acorn grows into a tree. If we have gained some kind of insight into the mechanics of
society, we have been given the ability to influence it. If, for example, we have understood the way
in which domination works, we can change it. We know that cultural domination, or the power
associated with symbolic capital, tends to be self-aggrandising, and that this is all the more likely if
we fail to understand the mechanism behind this power. This is why, argues Bourdieu, "sociolology
as a discipline is constantly having to defend its right to existence, particularly from attack by those
who need to lurk in the shadows of ignorance, where they can trade in their symbolic currency with
greater ease."
Sound familiar? It should, because knowledge is power. Or, to put it in Bourdieu's more exact
modern terms, knowledge is liberty. At this point it would be desirable to point out one important
proviso. In Bourdieu's scheme of things, it would seem that the power wielded by society's
dominant groups is based not on their knowledge, but on the ignorance of those they dominate. But
those in power are no less blind and no less prejudiced than those they subjugate – it's just that this
happens to be to the former's advantage. Moreover, they live in luxury and lead a sybaritic life in
their ignorance. Knowledge can only liberate people. Knowledge cannot be an instrument of power.
It's easy to see that, with views like this, Bourdieu must have been the sworn enemy of the mass
media and media-intellectuals. He considered them the agents of ignorance.
More left than left
Prior to the collapse of communism, Bourdieu, although "politically aware", was never really rearing
to get into the political arena. But then, in the 1990s came a wave of privatization, market de-
regulation, and globalization-Americanization resulting in a new wave of impoverishment and the
break-up of the social state. It just so happened that the most passionate and intellectually
sophisticated opposition to all of this appeared just in France. Pierre Bourdieu was practically its de
facto leader. He became more and more emotionally involved, and began to look a little like the
Sartre of the 1960s, Noam Chomsky or even Su-Commendante Marcos. Many of his students and
followers parted company with him at this point, unable to hide their irritation when they talked
about him. It began to look like Bourdieu was moving into a hyper-critical rigorousness, anarcho-
marxism and left-wing political correctness in his old age, a vulgar perversion of his own social
conceptions. His post-modernist companions began to suspect him of simplistic positivism.
Bourdieu campaigned for the creation of a pan-European movement against economic de-regulation,
against globalization in its current form, and against the power of transnational corporations. He
insisted that social movements should hold onto their spontaneous nature and never allow the
creation of a professional leadership. He insisted that all civil defence forces be federal without
exception, while avoiding forced unification as far as possible. And, to prevent the domination by
any one group, a kind of collectivist egalitarianism. He gave preference to direct action based on
concrete reasons. For him one very good reason was the threat of a new kind of unemployment: the
long-term, if not final, "exclusion" of the masses from the forward movement of society, which is
being driven now by the high-tech economy. Bourdieu always came out on the side of the
Miserables, as Hugo would have said, or what we now refer to, in large part thanks to Bourdieu's
light touch, as the excluded (les exclus).
All of this has earned him the label "left-wing." The pitiless way in which Bourdieu dissects those
who greedily feed on art (L'amour de l'art, 1966), as well as university lecturers and media-
intellectuals, is received with the greatest sympathy, however, in the more right-wing, or populist
right-leaning circles of England, America and Russia. This would seem to be a misunderstanding,
because Bourdieu belongs very firmly to that rigorously intellectual tradition that so irritates right-
wingers. On the other hand, the media-intellectuals, so despised by Bourdieu as agents of cultural
capitalism, make up a good number of these very same right-wing circles.
But left-wingers also find him hard to swallow, despite his hatred of neo-bourgeois habits. He
himself described his position as "more left than left." This self-definition creates problems for those
who have fallen under his intellectual spell and are happy to make use of his concepts, but who are
naturally suspicious of the left-wing historical tradition. Bourdieu might have answered by saying
that the old division of the political spectrum into "left" and "right" is an anachronism, and that,
rather than "left" and "right" between whose hands power simply changes hands, we need to speak
of upper and lower echelons. He might have answered that "politics is dead" and that we have
entered a time of "centrist synthesis" and so on. With his great intellectual capabilities and his
powerful imagination, he could easily have given us the grounds on which all of this is based. Not to
mention that he himself really believed it at times. But for some reason, he never abandoned the old
concepts. Was he just being stubborn, or was this evidence of Bourdieu becoming a cultural atavist
in his old age? Or was it a political move? No one seems to have ever asked Bourdieu. Or perhaps,
they simply didn't have the chance.
