Bourdieu Part Two: Questions

“Cultural omnivores,” which I believe we talked briefly about, are people who describe an interest in all types of culture including, in Bourdieu’s terms, the legitimate, middle brow, and popular. How would these cultural omnivores fit into Bourdieu’s classification scheme? Would it depend on the omnivore’s disinterestedness? Their family size? Education? (Is omnivorousness mainly autodidactic in contemporary American culture?) Where do you think cultural omnivores fit?

Bourdieu’s examples and classifications seem to work well in France and would probably map easily on to countries with related cultures, but how well would Bourdieu’s classifications and analysis work in vastly different cultures? i.e. Sub-Saharan African culture. Is Bourdieu’s analysis relevant throughout history? i.e. Is there legitimate and popular Aztec culture? Can Bourdieu’s analysis apply to a global scale or is there a point when culture becomes too heterogeneous for such classification to work effectively? i.e. Are the legitimate cultures of New Guinea and France equal in their legitimacy? (I bet the French wouldn’t say so). In essence, what are the limitations of Bourdieu’s work?

Bourdieu seems to think that tastes reinforce class divisions. That is, consumer desires maintain class divisions. Shouldn’t Bourdieu more fully acknowledge the interests of cultural producers of reinforcing class boundaries through taste? In this world of narrowcasting and the profit imperatives of mega media conglomerates, doesn’t it make financial sense to reinforce class divisions through taste thereby maintaining diverse and expanding markets on which to capitalize? Why else would we see conglomerates buying independent film studios and record labels only to try and keep them as ‘indie’ as possible as opposed to buying them out to reduce competition to mainstream films and albums?

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On a related indie-culture note, the Cream City Collectives (a community space for all types of people to get creative and work towards progressive social change) is having their two year anniversary block party this Saturday the 27th from 4-9pm on Clarke st. and Fratney st. A new art exhibit created by participants at this year's crimethinc. convergence is also premiering that night (indie culture x 1000).