This essay is going to further exemplify the notion of symbolic power, and encompass it to the social phenomena of homosexuality in a dominant heterosexual environment. Bourdieu uses the term symbolic power to refer
Explain and offer an evaluation of the concept of symbolic power and the associated idea of symbolic violence. In your answer, either briefly apply the concept of symbolic power to illuminate some social phenomenon or critically discuss how the concept of symbolic power has been applied in a study of a social phenomenon. There are plenty of social phenomenon which you could discuss, from education systems, language, the media, politics, class, consumption, gender, sport, university and so on.
"The specificity of symbolic violence resides precisely in the fact that it requires of the person who undergoes it an attitude which defies the ordinary
alternative between freedom and constraint". (Bourdieu & Wacquant,
992, p. 168).
For Bourdieu, the notion of symbolic violence (or in some cases symbolic power) is central to understanding how social class inequalities are reproduced (Bourdieu & Passeron,1977, p. 179)The different classes and class segments are engaged in a symbolic struggle properly speaking, one aimed at imposing the definition of the social world that is best suited to their interests. In essence it represents the way in which people play a role in reproducing their own subordination through the gradual internalization and acceptance of those ideas and structures that tend to subordinate them. It is an act of violence precisely because it leads to the constraint and subordination of individuals, but it is also symbolic in the sense that this is achieved indirectly and without overt and explicit acts of force or coercion. This essay is going to further exemplify the notion of symbolic power, and encompass it to the social phenomena of homosexuality in a dominant heterosexual environment.
Bourdieu uses the term symbolic power to refer not so much to a specific type of power, but rather to an aspect of most forms of power as they are routinely deployed in social life (Bourdieu 1991 p.27). In the routine flow of day to day life power is seldom exercised as overt physical force: instead it is reconstructed into a symbolic form, and thereby endowed with a kind of legitimacy that it would not otherwise have. (Bourdieu 1991 p.27). It has an impact that dominates the whole social landscape; as a result, it seems so natural that there is misrecognition, and the underlying arbitrariness becomes difficult to see. In this way, symbolic power moves from being a merely local power (the power to construct this statement, or make this work of art) to being a general power, what Bourdieu once called a 'power of constructing [social] reality' (Bourdieu 1991 pg 166). A key concept on further understanding the notion of symbolic power is the notion of habitus, to Bourdieu habitus stands for an "embodied understanding", a system of 'durable transposable dispositions' i.e able to learn and function given the probability of encountering situations not originally fashioned for the habitus. Through dispositions practices, perceptions, attitudes that are 'regular' are generated without being consciously coordinated or governed by any rule', which incline agents to act and react in certain ways.
Habitus is comprehensible only in the context of a specific field: a field of action in which particular types of capital are at stake and particular types of disposition (or habitus) are fitted for success (Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L 1992). Thus the concept of 'symbolic capital' in Bourdieu is almost always specific and local, meaning any type of capital (economic, cultural, and so on) that happens to be legitimated or prominent in a particular field. Each field in a simpler sense is where a game is played, it is only possible when given players 'know-how' to play ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Habitus is comprehensible only in the context of a specific field: a field of action in which particular types of capital are at stake and particular types of disposition (or habitus) are fitted for success (Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L 1992). Thus the concept of 'symbolic capital' in Bourdieu is almost always specific and local, meaning any type of capital (economic, cultural, and so on) that happens to be legitimated or prominent in a particular field. Each field in a simpler sense is where a game is played, it is only possible when given players 'know-how' to play are able to participate, it is a site of struggle as the players have carrying abilities to play the game for example, market, profit, capital (Bourdieu, & Passeron. 1977). The game analogy forces us to conceptualize "the rules of the game" from a practical viewpoint. The rules of the game are embodied as a readiness to respond skillfully to the ever changing nature of the game. It makes no sense to say that Pete Sampras needs a rule book (or ever read one for that matter) to play tennis. Another elemental concept is that of Illusio it is the fundamental belief in the stakes of the game that allows a game to be played at all. It is an investment in a field, understood properly as an inclination and an abililty to "play the game" (Bourdieu 2000 pg 164-205). For as many fields that exist there is a specific illusion. Illusio is that ability to understand the rules of the game as well as being able to reproduce the investment (skill) on the field.
Sexual prejudice often goes misrecognised, as the dominant heterosexuals undermine the minority of homosexuals. There are two main reasons for why a discourse on sexuality would need to be created (Foucault 1979). First, the late 1800s were a source of emerging "disciplinary societies," orderly and corrective authoritative control relies on the power of normalizing ideas to control people's bodies and actions by controlling their sexual thoughts, feelings, and identities (Foucalt, 1979). Thus, the homosexual was "invented" for the purpose of defining, stigmatizing, and ultimately regulating "otherness" as a means of establishing and reifying procreative sexuality and the subservient role of sexuality to capitalism; in this sense, homosexuals are unique, as few groups of people have been created for the sole purpose of vilification (ibid.). Second, migration patterns across Europe were resulting in rapid population growth and a new emphasis on understanding bodies and intimacy emerged; it was discovered that by controlling sex, one could also control the behaviors of both individuals and populations (Foucault, 1979). Political influence, the education system as well as social structures lead to the homosexual social groups being the outside "other".
As earlier in the essay the notion of misrecognition, the heterosexual groups are so normal that there is misrecognition, inevitably through politics and the government's constant implications of the 'nuclear family' barrages our daily lives, the other "homosexuals' seem to be unnatural, a phenomena, the world has not openly experienced. Take Singapore for example, where social space is not ontological, but constructed and reinforced as heterosexual (Kean 2004). Specifically, an analysis is made of the roles of statistics, educational content and legal tools in fortifying heteronormativity. Conflict arises as there is a clash of interests between different groups who struggle to gain over a field's capital, for dominance. The government's refusal to allow any alternative nuclei of influence organization or power to arise that they will persistently reduce to allow any organized gay voice to be heard.
The spatial practices of homosexuals are therefore reliant on unequal power relations and what are seen may not be their absolute lived experiences and desires, but rather 'techniques of the self' that reinforce heteronormativity (Thorp 1992). In relations to Bourideu's, habitus, heteronormativity also shapes the habitus of heterosexuals and may work to reinforce discriminatory attitudes towards homosexuals, thus leading the latter to perform the closet in their common spatial practices. However, heterosexuals' habitus may not just be reinforced-but also altered-by accumulated experiences in a 'field' that contains different geographical contexts, especially in contexts where overt expressions of homosexuality are increasingly commonplace (Bourdieu 1991). Such expressions need and should not be confrontational, of course, but smaller manifestations in public spaces that traverse against heterosexual hegemony-expressions that may be transposed from representational spaces onto public space. In Australia for example where the prime minister condones and fails to comment on many gay and lesbian issues, even when homosexuality is evidently becoming more 'open' and the conflict in fields, through non violent protests, law suits against unequal treatment and gay rights activists are evident in the largely heterosexual society. The freedom of homosexuality in Australia is clearly more than Singapore, yet there is a constant underlying pressure and a labeling of being the "other". Symbolic power as Bourdieu explains is not the use of physical violence, it is the way of dominance through which individuals, like robots are made to obey certain patterns in life, which are made to be 'legitimate' and if they are not followed, the law then decides that punishment.
These social classes, according to Bourdieu, recognize themselves in reality (classes are therefore not only discursive constructions) because of "distinction." Distinction is the simultaneous recognition of unity and difference, recognized through taste (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Through taste people are able to give them a sense of one's place. This is espcially important as it generates of recognition to be able to make known the members of an individual's social group while recognizing who remains outside of it. In this sense dominated groups must discover ways of negotiating their way around, under and over legitimate taste as defined by intellectual, economic and cultural elites. However this in turn makes the 'other' with varying tastes more obvious, empowering the dominant groups even further. In this Bourdieu elimates the ideology of an individual creating him/her self. Rather it is the dominant discourse that sub consciously creates a self identity. In a sense that if your tastes don't match then you are seen to be outside the sphere of normality and dubbed as the other, this is what is happening to the homosexual majority.
In conclusion, symbolic violence is the means of imposing meanings as 'legitimate by concealing the power relations which are the basis of its force' and at the same time communicating a logic of disinterest. With retrospect of the homosexual community around the globe it is obvious that symbolic violence is plays a large part in society, as there is constant conflict between groups in order to gain over a field's capital for dominance.
Reference List
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power.
Cambridge: Polity Press
Bourdieu, P (2000) Pascalian Mediations. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (pp.164-205)
Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J. (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.
London: Sage.
Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L. (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Foucault, M (1979) The history of sexuality / Michel Foucault; translated from the France
by Robert Hurley. London: Allen Lane
Kean L. (2004). Issue: Volume 41, Number 9.
Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group pg 1759-1788
Moi, T. (1991). Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu's Sociology of Culture. New Literary History, 22, 1017-1049.
Thorp, J. (1992). The Social Construction of Homosexuality. Phoenix, 46(1), 54-65.
