More questions on Bourdieu's book

1. Bourdieu's explanation of how the differences in social, economic, and cultural capitals make the different tastes of the classes is complex but useful in various ways. His study of this social mechanism of the different tastes among the classes is based on systematic and structuralist approaches. Not only he adapts Saussure's ideas to explicate the meaning of the symbolic representations of consuming cultural goods by each class, his structuralist view is in fact revealed when he defines habitus, life-style, and taste (p. 170 -175). However, it could be expected that there would be many criticisms on such structuralist approach in sociology. What kinds of criticisms have been made in this particular study? In what ways, this approach would be beneficial or harmful in understanding and investigating the differences of classes?

2. As he states that "sexual properties are as inseparable from class properties" (p. 107), Bourdieu sees sex as a (secondary) variable to determine the construction of class. Although women in the 1970s when the survey was conducted were still in lower positions in social spaces, it is true that women were growing in power. Still, most of the surveys have focused on men and their tastes and their cultural appropriations, and Bourdieu interprets and analyzes the different mechanisms of tastes among the classes on the basis of the men-centered survey. How do you think that this aspect would limit the scope of this study? Bourdieu argues that taste "naturalizes real differences, converting differences in the everyday class of acquisition of culture into different of nature." (p. 68) If the taste of men in consuming whatever cultural goods is different from the taste of women in consuming the same cultural goods, is this because of the differences of nature between men and women? How do you think that this argument is applicable in the discourse of feminism? Or what do you think about his argument on this particular matter?

3. On page 144, Bourdieu interestingly points out that the young working-class people (in France), whose social identity and self-image have been undermined by a social system and an educational system, can find no other way of restoring their personal and social integrity than by a total refusal. What did the young French people do or what kinds of refusal expressions did they make? How is this account different from the one about the youngsters who have made their own subcultures in England? Similarly, America went through the civil movement during the 1960s, which focused on the racial and sexual issues. How did the young, working-class, African-American, and women refused the social system in America during the period?