Constructed+Society

__Last Week:__ I was very pleased with how last week went. It seemed like the discussion on Friday was more fruitful and I received some good feedback from your class meeting on Wednesday. So I propose that we run this week the same way. I’ll lecture on here on Monday, ya’ll meet on Wednesday, and on Friday we’ll log on from 10-11 and have a discussion based on the questions that John, Cameron and Tony come up with for us. Tom, Amanda and Alex will be reviewing the chapter. And my goodness, there is a lot to review. What do you think about breaking it up so that Tom and Amanda cover Giddens and Alex reviews Bourdieu?

__Constructed Society:__ Ultimately, every sociologist that we have studied here is interested in answering the question: how does society exist? Or, more specifically, what mechanisms allow society to perpetuate itself? The theorists we are studying today are no different. Giddens wants to understand how behaviors are re-created, and Bourdieu wants to understand how inequality is re-created. Let’s start by reviewing, broadly, Giddens. Tom and Amanda will provide us with the details in regard to definitions of terms and whatnot.

__Giddens: Two Sides of the Same Coin:__ I enjoy cooking. In fact, I really enjoy cooking and I really enjoy the satisfaction that comes from taking care of people by providing them with food. I do all of the cooking in our house and I love nothing more than having people come over to our house and eating my food. My husband loves football. He loves playing football, he loves watching football, and during football season he will spend what seems like an entire day watching/playing football. So, during football season we often have people over to our house and Jake watches football while I cook a big meal and serve everyone. Could ANYTHING be more June Cleaver than that???? How is it that two sociologists, who are very aware of gender norms, wind up enacting gender norms and ENJOYING it??? Honestly…. When Giddens tries to answer this question he does so by examining a larger issue … does the structure make me like cooking (by relegating me to womens roles?) or do I have free will in choosing to enjoy cooking? The answer is **both** … or **neither** … because Giddens argues that it is a chicken and the egg scenario. That is, the social structure and my free will are opposite sides of the same coin … they the same, but in different phases. As Allan states: “social structures and agency are recursively and reflexively produced: they are continuously brought into existence at the same moment through the same behaviors” (p. 389). What does this mean for my cooking skills? It means that every time I cook a big meal for SundayFunday (that’s what football Sunday’s are called) I am engaging in the creating of food (a choice, my agency) that also recreates the meaning that women do the cooking. So did the social structure make me do this? Yes and no … because the social structure implies that there is a social actor (me and my guests) … which implies that the structure needs people, or structure is caused by people acting. But my actions don’t have any meaning without the social structure … which means that people need the social structure, or that people are caused by the structure giving us meaning. So the question of free will and agency is, according to Giddens, a false one. The real question is how did our behaviors become patterned into a social structure in the first place? Well, this happens via time-space distanciation. (and yes, I think this is a stupid term for a concept that is rather simple…). Okay, so the idea with time-space distanciation is that our behaviors in two different circumstances (say my apartment before I was married and my home now) appear patterned because they are really a continuation of one another. So before I was married my friends and I used to get together and cook big meals and now I enjoy getting together with a different group of people and cooking big meals. The reason I do this, and its social meaning, come from the same source … although it appears as though I am in two different circumstances, Giddens is arguing that really it is the same circumstance … and all my other girlfriends are in similar circumstances … and we see one another doing the same thing (cooking) and presume that this is just “what women do.” But really, it is a choice that is given meaning from the social structure. Meaning is another important thing for Giddens. So before I was married, when I was in graduate school, I did so much cooking with friends because we were broke and liked good food. So the best way to get good, cheap food is to make it yourself. This explanation for my cooking behavior is an example of my **discursive consciousness**, or my “ability to give a reasoned verbal account of our actions” (p.394). The truth is, however, that some of my cooking routine is based on my **practical consciousness**, or ways of behaving and being that we cannot verbally explain. For example, if I am hosting people I never serve myself first. I don’t know why … its just how its done. It would be weird if I finished cooking and then got myself and plate and walked away … except that my friends wouldn’t care, its not like we’re that formal … I have no way of rationally explaining this except to say that that is how its done. So I do it too. Both our discursive and our practical consciousness are reflexively related to the social structure --- that is, they are inspired by the social structure and also re-create it. Giddens is a bit confusing when just reading, so we’ll do some discussion on his work on Wednesday. In the meantime I want to move onto Bourdieu.

__Bourdieu:__ Remember I said that Bourdieu is concerned with how inequality is re-created. While others have argued that inequality is re-created through a specific process of domination (think slavery or feudalism), Bourdieu uses the term **symbolic violence**. Basically, he argues that there are four types of capital in society (social, cultural, symbolic, and economic). Symbolic capital is the ability to “use symbols to create or solidify physical and social realities” (p. 414). Cultural capital is “the informal social skills, habits, linguistic styles, and tastes that a person garners as a result of his or her economic resources” (p. 415). People who are high in symbolic and cultural capital can use them just like you would use dollar bills. You can trade them in society for respect, access to elite circles, jobs, and other resources in society. Think about status on campus. Who has social power among the students? What hints or clues might those people offer (ways of speaking, clothes, etc) to indicate that they are worthy of esteem or status? The symbolic violence is that not only will the culture and symbols of elite people be valued in society, but the culture and symbols of non-elites will be degraded. So we venerate Mozart, many of us don’t even know Astor Piazolla, who’s work influenced Latin American orchestral music for decades. The point is that we have no reason to believe Mozart was so much better than Piazolla, but rather one worked in a musical style that was accepted by the European and American elites, while the other is a victim of symbolic violence.

__Discussion Questions for Wednesday:__ Again, get together in groups of 3 or 4 and pick one question. Discuss it amongst yourselves and then post the fruits of your labor on the discussion tab of this page. 1. Pick a behavior that you do that is stereotypical for a person of your status (gender, race, or class). Explain how it is both inspired by the social structure (norms) and re-creates the social structure (meaning). How did it come to be routinized in your life, i.e., in what variety of circumstances do you engage in the behavior? 2. Imagine yourself greeting these different people: a same-sex friend, an opposite-sex friend, a stranger, President Minnis, your Mom. What kind of greeting would you offer each of these people (a handshake, a hug, etc). Which of these choices can you explain via your discursive consciousness and which can be explained via your practical consciousness? Explain. 3. The chicken and the egg dilemma is an impossible one … because in order to have an egg you need a chicken to lay it, and in order to have a chicken you need an egg to hatch it. Explain how the debate between a free thinking social actor and all controlling social structure is similarly impossible to resolve. 4. Identify an instance of symbolic violence in our society. Who benefitted and who did not? How does this example recreate inequality?