More questions on Bourdieu's book, 2nd

1. In Chapter 6, Bourdieu argues that the new petit bourgeoisie invented new and renovated occupations by adjusting jobs to their ambitions rather than by adjusting their ambitions to fit already existing jobs (p. 358-9). Then, he introduces the jobs like marketing, public relations, sex therapy, and radio/TV producers as examples of such occupations. What kinds of new occupations in today’s society can you think of as the examples that took the similar footsteps with the new petit bourgeoisies that Bourdieu mentions? As the society keeps changing unceasingly, characteristics and qualifications or even the nature of jobs keep changing as well. What kind of jobs can you think of as an example of such a job whose nature, characteristics, and qualifications have been changed and so that they are not like what it used to be in the past? How and why have that job changed? What would that job mean in social space now and how it would be different from what it used to be in social space?

2. On p. 461, Bourdieu states: “whenever they[the dominated] emerge from doxa they are liable to fall into allodoxia, into the false recognitions encouraged by the dominant discourse.” (This statement is almost identical with Karl Marx’s ‘false consciousness.’) Bourdieu explains the risk of false recognitions in the realm of politics in particular. What other examples can you think of as the evidence of this argument? In what kind of everyday life experience do you see this false recognitions created/encouraged by the dominant class/discourse? Also, on p. 384 he mentions that the dominated class sees themselves through the eyes of the dominant class in terms of the dominant definition of the body and its uses. What kind of situation or experience would explain this argument? (In fact, this argument has been reintroduced in the feminist discourse in regard to women’s obsession with the body, especially in the Sandra Lee Bartky’s internationalization thesis.)

3. On p. 370, Bourdieu introduces an interesting term, “practical utopianism.” Through a rejection and refusal, the class who forms and lives in this “practical utopianism” is characterized as unclassifiable, excluded, dropped out, marginal, and anything rather than categorized in social space. But, what is exactly a practical utopianism? What would he mean by a practical utopia? How could this concept explain the subculture groups that Hebdige examines? What would a practical utopia be like for the subculture groups and what would they get from the site then?