Bauman and Bourdieu...

On pages 130-131, Bauman writes: "If the privilege of 'never being bored' is the measure of a successful life, of happiness and even of human decency, and if intense consumer activity is the prime, royal road to victory over boredom, then the lid has been taken off human desires; no amount of gratifying acquisitions and enticing sensations is likely ever to bring satisfaction in the way once promised by 'keeping up to standards'. There are now no standards to keep up to -- or rather no standards which, once reached, can authoritatively endorse the right to acceptance and respect, and guarantee their long duration. The finishing line moves on together with the runner, the goals stay forever a step or two ahead. Records keep being broken, and there seems to be no end to what a human being may desire. 'Acceptance' (the absence of which, let's recall, Pierre Bourdieu defined as the worst of all conceivable kinds of deprivation) is ever more difficult to attain and yet more difficult, nay impossible, to be felt as lasting and secure....From everywhere, through all communication channels, the message comes loud and clear: there are no precepts except that of grabbing more, and no rules, except the imperative of 'playing your cards right'. But if winning is the sole object of the game, those who get poor hands deal after deal are tempted to opt for a different game where they can reach for other resources, whatever they can muster."

In light of what is happening in this country at this time, I am at once mesmirized and choked with fear and disappointment. It's like watching a horror movie - I don't want to watch, but I can't look away.

Moving on... while waiting for my copy of Bourdieu to arrive, (and frantically seeking a library copy to tide me over, ) I came upon a book by Grant McCracken entitled Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management. (2005). I thought that one article on museums and culture, and another on what culture has to do with creating value were thought-provoking as I journey into a topic that's quite new to me. The museum and culture chapter talked about how museums see themselves / react when people leave "unmoved." Or, as McCracken says, "...the fact that visitors do not embrace Culture does not mean that they are without culture."

Chapter 4 - Swartz/Bourdieu... This chapter (more commentary to come, of course,) explores (66) three ways that Bourdieu separates himself from Marxism - [symbolic interests] extending economic interest to noneconomic goods (66); [power as capital] extending the idea of capital to all forms of power, whether they be material, cultural, social, or symbolic (73); [symbolic violence and capital] and emphasizing the role of symbolic forms and processes in the reproduction of social inequality (82).

"Bourdieu challenges both the Marxist theory of superstructrure and idealist views of cultural life by proposing a theory of intellectuals that emphasizes the specific symbolic interests that shape cultural production " (94.)

"Bourdieu's general science of the economy of practices attempts to reapproriate from the idealist/materialist bifurcation of human life the totality of practices as fundamentally interested but misrecognized forms of poweror capital....(his) sociological project is a study of the political economy of the various forms of symbolic capital....he focuses ...on symbolic producers who specialize in creating symbolic power...(and) he also thinks of his sociology as an instrument of

struggle against the various forms of symbolic violence" 94).

(more to follow...)