Pre-class: Bourdieu

Upon my first reading of Bourdieu, I gathered that he is interested in the relationship between one's educational upbringing and preferences in "cultural practices," which include art, music and literature. He claims that there is a "socially recognized hierarchy of the arts, and within each of them, of genres, schools or periods, corresponds a social hierarchy of consumers" (250). By this, I think he means that we as a society classify each other based on our interests. This reminds my of what Hebdige was saying about high and low culture. According to Hebdige, an example of high culture is an intellectual, classic Greek or Roman sculpture, as opposed to the culture of NASCAR, which is seen as low culture. Bourdieu says that "taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed" (251). I'm not exactly sure about what this quote means, but I think Bourdieu is saying that we as a society love to make assumptions about people based on their interests, education level and upbringing. Bourdieu goes on to talk about television's power in the mass circulation press in his piece, "On Television." He talks about the power of news media, and claims, "they are always telling us what we 'should think' about what they class 'social problems' such as violence in the inner city or in schools. The same is true for art and literature... [to] promote social conformity and market values" (254). I think he is concerned with how television is used as a tool to spread hegemonic values. I look forward to learning more about Bourdieu in class today.