Hip & DIY consumerism week, websites etc.

Re Walker, Handmade 2.0:

Buy Handmade

Craft magazine/Getcrafty

Some local Etsy shops:

rosybird

Tattoo Annie

Fasten Collective

Handmade Nation stuff:

blog

promotional merchandise at Etsy

official website



opening credits stop-motion sequence

***

Re Walker, The Brand Underground:

Things Walker discusses:

aNYthing

Barking Irons

The Hundreds

Beautiful Losers (Wikipedia)/official site of the film

Other t-shirt stuff online:

Threadless

Tcritic

***

Updated 10/15, examples for class...



A Threadless design, "The Communist Party"





IBM commercials discussed by Frank, "Why Johnny Can't Dissent," p. 40

Two works by the graffiti artist ESPO:



A roll-down job in Queens, NYC.



Nike Air Force II ESPO

Article on DIY Craft Movement

Hey there,
I just thought I'd share this article from The Leader that I came across. It's all about the Do-It-Yourself craft movement and the documentary Handmade Nation that is set to come out in early 2009.
------------
Crafty lady brings DIY spirit to the nation
Allison Hellweg
http://media.www.uwmleader.com/media/storage/paper980/news/2008/10/02/Featuresnews/Crafty.Lady.Brings.Diy.Spirit.To.The.Nation-3469369.shtml
------------
Enjoy.

More questions about Club Culture

1. Thornton listed the differences between mainstream ideologies and subculture ideologies with a schema on P115. Is it an indication that Club culture holds its distinction based on discrimination towards mainstream ideologies? How to understand the relation between such a distinction and discrimination? And does this schema accurately and inclusively reveal all the differences between club culture ideologies and popular ideologies? Among the 12 factors, which do you think is most essential one for these clubber and raver to identify “US” from “THEM”?

2. According to Thornton, even though clubber or raver claim their culture as classless, they use subcultual capital as the linchpin of an alternative hierarchy “in which the axes of age, gender, sexuality and race are all employed in order to keep the determinations of class, income and occupation at bay”(P105). To be specific, “despite their discourses of liberty, raves had distinct demographics-chiefly white, working-class, heterosexual and dominated by the lads.”( P25) And there are 3 principles in the organization of club: self-selection, routes of communication, and door policy (P110-114). At this point, can we assume club culture has comparatively more "autonomy”? Can we say that club culture maintains absolute “classlessness”? And can clubs and raves democratize youth culture? Why/ Why not? Considering its social meaning, does the “hierarchy” in club culture equal to “class” in mainstream culture to indicate status? How to understand the relation between the two from the perspective of social logic of cultural capital and subcultural capital?

3. Thornton talked about various media (mass media, micro media, and niche media) involved in the formation of club cultures. On P90, Thornton mentioned a typical club whose culture is outlaw but its antagonist “is not the police but the media who continually threaten to release its cultural knowledge to other social groups”. So positive tabloid coverage is “the subcultural kiss of death” (P135). On the other hand, “mass media ‘misunderstanding’ is often an objective of certain subcultual industries, rather an accident of youth cultural pursuit.” (P136) Does it mean that club and rave can take advantage of or even seek for negative reporting and avoid “positive tabloid coverage” for its further development? How can clubs and raves invoke the negative reporting against positive coverage? How can they control the tongue of media coverage? Is it risky for subculture to get media involved?

Club Questions

1. Thornton continues throughout the book to define youth culture in the music scene. “Youth tend to have specialist music tastes with strong preferences for hip-hop, indie, or hardcore dance.” (20) Is her statement about the music taste of youth relevant today? Do they really tend to have specialized taste? Pop music? Thornton discusses in her analysis of the club scene that legal drugs such as liquor are used to symbolize the accomplishment of adult status and illegal drugs used to reject adult culture. Does this mean that to be a part of club culture you need to rebel against the adult norms in society? Are youths really thinking this deeply about their recreational usage when partaking in the club scene? Is the use of illegal drugs just the result of the curiosity of youths for the unknown combined with the feeling of invincibility that is often experienced by young people in terms of their conception of their own mortality?

2. Thornton opens up chapter two with a discussion on authenticity which leads into the way production and consumption of music has evolved over time. It’s interesting to think that before recorded music, the only music was live and in person. “Initially, records transcribed, reproduced, copied, represented, derived from and sounded like performances.” (27) This got me thinking of a few moments in my brief existence when I have purchased an album of a band I heard on the radio or was referred to by someone, and then shortly after, attended one of their shows. To my complete and utter disappointment the live concert version of their music sounded like crap which led me to quickly abandon those bands. Have you ever found yourself experiencing something similar? Is it important that the live experience is similar to what has been recorded? Is this the driving force of authenticity? “In the process of becoming originals, records accrued their own authenticities. Recording technologies did not, therefore, corrode or demystify ‘aura’ as much as disperse and relocate it.” (27) Do you agree with what the author is saying and how is this significant to the evolution of how authentic music is defined today?

3. In chapter 3, Thornton is attempting to define the mainstream through the guise of her ethnographic experience with clubbing. I found myself questioning how authentic and true her portrayal really was considering that it was largely out of character for her to participate in the things that are representative and definitive of the club culture she is describing. She says in her conclusion, “for many youthful imaginations, the mainstream is a powerful way to put themselves in the big picture, imagine their social world, assert their cultural worth, claim their subcultural capital. As such, the mainstream is a trope which betrays how beliefs and tastes which ensue from a complex social structure, in turn, determine the shape of social life.” (115) Is this conclusion valid in terms of her ethnographic experience and scholarly research? Does Thornton’s conclusion represent what is the mainstream today in terms of club culture and youth?

Just an interesting article I'm posting

http://nymag.com/anniversary/40th/50666/

I am reading this in my current issue of New York Magazine. It's so interesting and relevant to some of our discussions.
Hope you enjoy it.
Molly

Is it a joke about drugs or sociology?

Decide for yourself on page 89! I know, that makes four questions, and now I'm setting the bar all high for everybody else. But I'm going to give that one to y'all for free, no strings attached. Ok?

Thornton takes great care to point out that discotheques “tend to duplicate structures of exclusion and stratification found elsewhere.” (25) Even within the subculture, hierarchies are present. There are exclusive VIP lounges, differences in drug quality, and a clubber’s inclusion in future events is based on connections made within the current club. Thornton begins her first person account with “Kate”, a woman we quickly learn is highly connected in the club scene. Kate is able to take Thornton to places she never would have gained access to on her own. How is Thornton’s ethnographic study colored by her immediate inclusion in the VIP community of the club subculture? Do you think this affects her work as a whole? What problems or benefits could this have created within her research?

Thornton repeatedly refutes the binaries that have been utilized by scholars within the sociological study of subcultures. At one point, she argues that the “multiple opposition” created by Hebdige in Subculture (i.e. Hebdige’s assertion that subcultures are reacting against the dominant as opposed to within it) is “an orderly ideal which crumbles when applied to historically specific groups of youth”. (93) To Thornton, these binaries do not allow for the intricacies of subcultural participation. Relating this idea back to the specific groups discussed in Subculture, do you think that work would have benefited from Thornton’s analysis?

Through her interpretation of Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term subcultural capital, which she defines as the “means by which young people negotiate and accumulate status within their own social worlds.” (163) Why is it important that Thornton chose to create the idea of subcultural capital instead of working within Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital? What are the differences between cultural and subcultural capitals?

Indie rock questions

1, I consider indie rock began to separate itself from alternative rock when Nirvana tried to have some impact on the mainstream, which later became commercialized and marked a big success and others stayed underground. As Johnson says “Economic profit is normally disavowed (at least by the artists themselves), and the hierarchy of authority is based on different forms of symbolic profit…” (Quoted; Hibbett, 57). However, Hesmondhalgh argues that “the logic of the music industry as a cultural system is towards internationalization, because of the economies which accrue to very big, as opposed to moderate, sales…but such economics are not enough in themselves to explain what happened in indie in the late 1980s”. Is the economic situation of the band can be a criterion to define whether it is in the group of indie rock bands or not? And how can the band keep the balance between the profits from mass audience or just the band itself, for example some from the sales of albums or some just make profit from tickets income? Are there any specific boundaries within all indie rock bands between those bands are commercialized and those are not?


2. As the musicians and fans gradually remolded the alternative rock or rock music into a new form of serious hardcore, the whole process is shaping the music genre which became indie rock more predictable and testosterone-driven. Hibbett also says “indie rock requires its own codes, i.e. cultural capital, and therefore can be used to generate and sustain myths of social or intellectual superiority”. (57) By saying this and gives the example of “Soyouwanna Fake Being an Indie Rock Expert?” , how to connect people’s factual knowledge and their social savvy if the goal is just “faking” rather than Bourdieu’s “being” somebody else? Is the also a way to say that some of Bourdieu’s distinctions between classes are so static that people don’t even have a chance to change or even to fake?


3, In the 1990s, the indie music divided into different subgenres like indie pop, dream pop, math rock, space rock, sadcore and so on. How can those subgenres maintain their own positions and make the underground phenomenon in a balanced situation? In Hongkong, Taiwan and mainland China, the concept of indie was explored too much by those songwriters and audience. A song called The Lament of Indie indicates how embarrassing the place indie music is in the current Chinese music industry and how they are struggling to survive. When talking about the regional identification, does the whole indie music will face the problem of searching “an artistic ‘elsewhere’”(Hibbett, 65) or just indie rock in this case?

Underground Music

Hesmondhalgh says that “one of the successes of the post-punk independents in the 1980’s was there ability to set up a network of distribution which enabled not only musicians to get signed to their labels, but also to string other companies and musicians across the country to reach a much wider public than would have otherwise been possible” (37). Hesmondhalgh later implies that they were unable to maintain such successes later into the 1990’s. This may be true of independent mainstream, but is this necessarily true of all independent music (which I will refer to as underground music)? Increases in smaller record labels that press DIY albums and networking sites, like Myspace, have allowed bands to create music and travel the world playing to audiences outside of where they live. Does an underground label have to sell 100,000 records to be successful? Can’t it be successful in just putting out great music? Isn’t that the point of Indy/Underground music?

It seems like all of these articles talk about how Indy music has positioned itself against mainstream music and mainstream culture. I wonder how much of this is actually conscious on the part of musicians and listeners? Hesmondhalgh says on page 38, “the post-punk independent sector set itself determinedly against these commercial methods.” Are underground musicians really “reconciling conflicting aims towards being different and being popular?” (Hesmondhalgh 52). Furthermore, I have never thought, “wow… in this album that sounds like it’s recorded live, the artist is exposed to us, caught naked in the act of his creation” (Hibbet 62).

Last time we talked about Indy culture possibly being like high culture according to Bourdieu. All of the articles talk about image and the cultural capital as an entrance into underground music scenes. “Collecting and studying old rock bands is a rite of passage for young men (and women) entering the scene” (Bannister 85). Soyouwanna.com advises on how to “fake being an indy rock expert” (Hibbet 56)…presumably so you can fake your rite of passage to enter the music scene. Do these examples support another social structure in which Bourdieu’s definitions of taste and cultural capital can be applied? Is this what Hibbett is arguing? Does he prove this?

INDIE ROCK more questions

(1) Hibbett discusses the DIY ethic as a demystification of the record-making process for those who identified themselves as existing apart from mainstream popular music, e.g. major label pop. (Hibbett, 62) However, many indie artists were willing to “compromise” in order to reach larger audiences by signing to a major label or using a “top” producer. Within the indie rock culture, this type of move was often criticized as too “slick” or “too pop” or “selling out.” Is it “closer to the truth” to be less professionalized in the production of rock music in order to fit the definition of “indie?” When something “sounds indie” what does that mean? Could Nirvana have had such wide-reaching success (even if on DGC) if that album had been produced with a more DIY, lo-fi production, e.g. Bleach? Is it a necessary part of being considered “indie,” to be identified as “popular” only within a subculture that praises an “unfinished” sound? Why would its cultural value be lost once it became part of a larger commercial effort?

(2) Hibbett remarks that, often, definitions of “indie rock” are determined by “particular understandings of an artistic genre shaped by the conditions of one’s own experience.” (Hibbett, 59) In my personal experience, as with Hibbett’s, to define “indie rock culture” can depend greatly on ones relationship to a specific regional scene. Where one resides can greatly color the experiences relating to accessibility and awareness of certain record stores, clubs, bands, etc., and therefore defining“indie rock” would be in terms that are specific to a region. For example, I was a musician and observer/participant in the independent rock scene in Boston/Cambridge, MA in the early 1990’s. The local media (WFNX, college radio, and the Boston Phoenix – the alternative newsweekly) played an integral part in building the “scene” and shaping perceptions by defining who the major “players” were - (top DJs, journalists, local indie rock band “royalty”), often setting the parameters for what belonged in the category/genre of “indie rock” – at least in Boston during that specific time. During that era, I also visited Seattle, and found that the Northwest "scene" had a very unique and different indie rock culture, with a hierarchical structure of clubs/papers/bands that had a defined “indie” differently, even though the culture functioned similarly. Indie rockers in Seattle were unaware (and fairly uninterested) in many bands that were seen as “crucial” at the time within the Boston scene. How could regional identity play into the idea of what defines indie rock?


(3) In Bannister’s article, he points out the White, geeky, nerdy male as a center point of indie rock canonism, and calls indie guitar rock a “tightly bounded space/genre.” (Bannister, 91) This is an interesting diversion from the norm of what one usually thinks with regard to the relationship between rock music and masculinity, in that sexuality was not the focal point. Rather, Bannister brings to the forefront the “asexuality” of indie guitar rock, saying that it’s a reaction to 1980’s “hypersexualized mainstream” but also that, perhaps, it was reacting to feminist claims that popular music was sexist. (Bannister, 92) Specifically, with young, White males as the indie guitar rock creators and "scenesters," where is this lack of sexuality in their live performances and musical output coming from? What is it a reaction to, if anything? Does indie guitar rock, as a genre, speak to class or gender issues in any specific way?

Indie Rock Questions

Ryan Hibbert suggests that to consumers of “high art,” which according to Bourdieu would presumably be the legitimate art consuming members of the bourgeoisie, “indie rock would be relegated to the nebulous and ‘inferior’ world of popular mass culture.” But to indie rockers, high art would likely be relegated to the doldrums of the meaningless dominant culture. Hibbert goes on to explain that while indie rock and high art may have different meanings to very different people, and may have stemmed from different circumstances, they both operate on the same functional logic, i.e. both indie rock and legitimate art (or any other “indie culture”) set out to shun large audiences in favor of smaller ones, sacrificing economic capital in exchange for cultural capital in the process, in order to be recognized as “not A”? (Hibbert, 57). Are the arguments posed by both Hebdige and Bourdieu the same, only focused on different subcultures? Are all indie cultures and subgroups interested in obtaining exactly the same recognition from different people?

An important concept discussed by Hibbert is his interpretation of cultural capital, which as far as I can tell is translated into hipness, the currency of cool. Hibbert acknowledges that there is something inherently monetary about being cool. “Cultural capital can cease to have value as it becomes increasingly accessible” (Hibbert, 64). By this principle of rudimentary economics, the more concentrated the cultural capital is in one small group, the more it is worth. But if it becomes widely used or accessible, and the market becomes flooded with one kind of cultural capital, then it loses its value. Considering that there is no physical representation of this currency, how can the solvency be determined? Is obtaining cultural capital really a job, with hard work transformed into acceptance and popularity in a group that values it? Bannister comments on this as well, detailing the work and reward that goes into finding an obscure record (Bannister, 81). But the record is inherently worthless unless a group of people has determined that it has indie cultural value. So is it worth anything to people who don’t care about its cultural value, or is the value of cultural capital relegated only to the indie communities that covet it?

There is an interesting logic that we must buy into in order to place indie music in a different category than popular mainstream music. All bands, indie or mainstream, have a desire to get their music out to the largest number of appreciative fans as possible. So inevitably, the determination to create a dearth of indie talent free from the control or influence of the mainstream public will only end up creating a new indie mainstream that will then be subjected to the same indie/mainstream dichotomy that produced the initial separation. I suspect this is why I get frustrated when dealing with members of an indie crowd, because there seems to always be some person who knows more about the indie music than anyone else, and considers everyone else a mainstream indie fan. There is mainstream indie, and there is indie indie, and so on. So is there something contradictory, or outright irrational about determining the value of an intangible object by its “scarcity”?

Indie rock articles, illustrated

David Hedmondhalgh, "Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music Genre"

Crass



Crass, "Bloody Revolution"

Flux of Pink Indians

The Sugarcubes



The Sugarcubes, "Birthday"/"Deus"



My Bloody Valentine, "Soon" (DH writes page 46: "The deliberately 'formless' studio experiments of MBV are far removed from the traditional rock song.")



Primal Scream, "Loaded" (DH continues, same page, "PS's 1991 album Screamadelica was the most successful attempt to fuse dance rhythms with a rock sensibility during the dance boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s....")



Oasis, "Supersonic", epitome of Britpop (DH page 48: "Oasis was marketed from the start of its deal with Sony as an authentic British rock act for the global, or at least the US, market...")

Ryan Hibbett, "What is Indie Rock?"

Lou Barlow


Lou Barlow, "Brand New Love"

Sigur Rós



Sigur Rós, "Glósólie" (RH, page 65: "SR aspires toward a self-contained, transcendental beauty")

Godspeed You! Black Emperor



Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "The Dead Flag Blues" (RH, same page: "a sound at once threatening and majestic."

So You Wanna Be an Indie Rock Expert? (pp. 69-73)

Bourdieu, day 2

This pair of images is to illustrate the comparison Bourdieu makes between the taste for Renoir (L) and the taste for Kandinsky (R) on p. 292. Here he is contrasting distributions of capital within the dominant classes: +econ/-cult (L) and +cult/-econ (R).

more Bourdieu questions again

1. According to Bourdieu, people’s tastes and life style are strongly tied in with their social positions. To illustrate this point, Bourdieu examines three main classes and their typical life styles. He connects “the sense of distinction” with the dominant class (professionals or executives), “cultural goodwill” with the petit bourgeois (small business owners or clerical workers), and “the choice of the necessary” with the working class. What do you think of such class-tastes pattern he states? Given that the book was written 20 more years ago and the mass survey data he collected was from the 1960s and 1970s, do you think such class-tastes mode is still well-applied to today’s society? If not, what are the changes and what factors could possibly result in these changes? I personally think that in today’s much more complicated society, the boundaries of such class-tastes mode are gradually mixed or blurred. What do you think regarding this?

2. According to Bourdieu, taste of food is an important indicator of social classes as he believes that lower classes are more likely to choose high-fat or poor quality food and higher classes are more likely to choose fresh vegetables or lean meats. I found this point is not necessarily true at least from people I know. As health promotion is increasingly emphasized through nowadays media, more and more people become aware of eating healthily and living in a healthy life style, and this does not have to have something to do with social classes. I can think of many examples of people around me living healthily and having classic tastes of food, but they are not necessarily from what Bourdieu calls higher classes. What do you think of regarding this point? Do you think that the taste of food still plays as an important indicator in representing social classes as what Bournieu states?

3. According to Bourdieu, people’s aesthetic tastes are more likely to be influenced by their social origin than accumulated capital over time. Young people’s perception is heavily shaped by “definitions that their elders offer them” from the early stage of life (Bourdieu, 477). What do you think of this point? How do you understand that many parents don’t appreciate their children’s clothing styles or their children don’t like their parents clothing styles? Between inherent cultural capital and acquired cultural capital, which one you think it’s more influential in shaping people’s aesthetic tastes in contemporary society?

Even More Bourdieu Questions

Cultural capital, unlike economic capital (and to some extent educational capital), is not easily quantifiable. Despite its arbitrary nature, cultural capital is valued in similar ways as physical assets. At times Bourdieu complicates his statistical results by pointing out the potential problems with “objective” findings. Yet, I wonder if the problem with this runs deeper. By assigning quantifiable value to an otherwise nebulous category how is Bourdieu shaping the way we think of cultural capital from the beginning? Can critiques of monogamy, especially the notion of “starvation economies” put forth in The Ethical Slut, provide other ways of approaching the concept? How might thinking of cultural capital as infinite rather than a scarce commodity impact Bourdieu’s analysis?

Even in this book, the working classes are treated unfairly. While Bourdieu discusses bourgeois taste for 61 pages and that of the petit bourgeois for 54, he only devotes 24 pages to working class tastes. How can we account for this? What tastes and life styles are we not hearing about? Did the survey design encourage this by structuring legitimate taste as presence and vulgar/popular taste as lack? Can we discuss the popular taste without reference to legitimate taste?

Bourdieu writes, “the most fundamental principles of class identity and unity, those which lie in the unconscious, would be affected if, on the decisive point in relation to the body, the dominated class came to see itself only through the eyes of the dominant class” (384) What does he mean by “unconscious” class unity and/or identity? How does this correlate to his other claims that the creation of a habitus is an active yet socially constrained process? Does occupying a marginalized social position exclude one from an active role in identity formation? Other than his attention to magazines earlier in the passage, what is the significance of the body here? How does physicality figure into class identity?

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?

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?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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).

Bourdieu, day 1

Where might these images fit in the taste preferences of the classes Bourdieu describes and analyzes?

***

The following videos are to illustrate Bourdieu's examples of legitimate, 'middle-brow' and 'popular' taste on pages 16-17.



The Well-Tempered Clavier (legitimate)



Rhapsody in Blue ('middle-brow')



The Blue Danube (popular)

Reading Questions for Bourdieu(1-259)

1. On p. 14, at the very bottom, Bourdieu starts on how secondary factors(composition of capital, social trajectory, age, place of residence)vary with different works(almost like he's giving some leeway to agency). But then, in the next sentence, he says as one moves toward works that are least legitimate, age becomes the dominant independent variable(and seems to push one to their natural place). Would it be logical to assume that he's saying someone near the bottom rungs of the class ladder, for instance, would abandon any affinity they had towards a work of high taste, and embrace works more in alignment with their class position when they reach a certain age? Do less legitimate forms of culture vary more with age, or class(in terms of accessibility)?

2. The crux of the book so far, as I can understand it, is that those born into a position of high cultural capital will maintain that position throughout their entire life, that cultural capital(inherent and acquired) is a self-reinforcing mechanism. Bourdieu seems rather ambiguous as to the role of human agency in French society. Given that, what institution do people affirm their agency through as they progress from a small to child to adult? What might Bourdieu suggest as the ultimate constraint on any progress made through that institution?

3. Last week's class discussion revolved largely around punk as the abrasive, atonal, and revolting counterpoint to middle-class cultural standards. While Distinction doesn't specifically address different counter-cultures and their attendant social enclaves, Bourdieu does give a pretty damning assessment of their existence, essentially saying their greatest feat will be reinforcing dominant values. On p. 251, he says "The latter(counter-culture) merely contest one culture in the name of the other...in doing so they fulfill the traditional role of a cultural avant-garde which, by its existence, helps to keep the cultural game functioning." Do you agree with Bourdieu? Are counter-cultures essentially waiting to be appropriated? Is one's inborn cultural capital(class) too dominant of a trait to be displaced by anything encountered in the social world?

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?

Reading Questions: Bourdieu (for 9/17)

1. Bourdieu states that “A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded” (p. 2). But let’s take a step back and ask: How can we define art? In Theatre 100 I was taught that there are three ways to define art: 1) Art is what we’ve been told art is, 2) Art is what we expect art to look like, and 3) Art is what moves us personally. Would Bourdieu agree with any or all of these definitions? Given the above quote, do you think Bourdieu argues that the class one belongs to affects how he/she views art? Would a change in a person’s class change his/her definition of art?

2. Bourdieu argues that the social and educational system (in France) have “fobbed” off the working-class with a “worthless piece of paper”—the diploma (p. 144). After receiving their diploma and getting less than desirable jobs, some members of the working-class decided to stop working for a while as a way of dealing with this issue (p. 146). What are they trying to prove by quitting their jobs? (See p. 155). How is this working-class similar and different from the subcultures Hebdige examined? How would the working-class youth in Britain deal with the situation of not getting a suitable education and job? Would they quit working for a while and continue to think if they wait change will happen, or would they try other ways of rebelling?

3. When discussing sports and the life-styles of the spectators and players, Bourdieu notes that the game of rugby represented a “cult of manliness and the taste for a fight” (p. 213). Bourdieu points out that rugby shows “working-class strength in its approved form (self-sacrifice, ‘team spirit’ and so forth),” yet it is sometimes played by members of the dominant class who also tend to make an “aesthetico-ethical investment” in the game. Would playing and investing in sports be considered an exception to keeping the lines drawn among the social classes or a blurring of the lines (i.e., upper class members can play working-class sports, but you wouldn’t see working-class members playing golf)? Is fan culture a class in itself? What class(es) would play “alternative soccer”—the game in which women and men play together with limited or no regulations concerning appropriate dress and rules of the game? (See p. 222 for description of this sport).