It is always interesting for me to think of the concept, culture. Being an international educator, I often give an easy example to students by comparing a culture to an iceberg. There are visible part above the sea (i.e., cultural elements that you can see such as clothes, arts, theater, music, etc.) and invisible part (i.e., beliefs, values, family relationships, friendship, power distance, hierarchy etc.) underneath the sea, which all form a big picture of an iceberg. Every cultural element, both visible and invisible, is an important component of a culture and interrelated with each other. Based on this example, I often advise students who are going overseas to keep the complex dynamics of culture in mind. Chapter one was insightful in that it gave me a concise idea of Bourdieu's argument from a different perspective, and made me think about a culture in play. Culture is a basis of human communication, and also a factor that creates social distinctions and power relations in a social order. People's interests contained in all cultural symbols and practices are affected by both internal and external factors, and manifest in a social structure of hierarchy or social differentiation. Action, power, stratification, and social power are the keywords underscording Bourdieu's argument.
Chapter four focuses on Bourdieu's arguments which distinguish themselves from Marxism. First, Bourdieu broadened the idea of economic interest that is inclusive of both materials and symbolic or nonmaterial pursuits of people. Relatedly, human action is explained to be a strategy to pursue all of these interests, which is conducted at a taken-for-granted level. It is not goal-oriented but more practical and dispositional. Second, Bourdieu claims that cultural, social, and symbolic resources are taken advantage of by people for the purpose of holding their social status. Bourdieu aruges four types of capital that are exercised as one's power in a society: 1) Economic capital (money and property), 2) cultural capital (including work of arts and music that is consumed by appreciating the meaning and embodied in people; objectified form that implies books and instruments that need to be used with certain abilities; and institutuionalized form such as educational credential system), 3) social capital (acquaintances and networks), and 4) symbolic capital (collective belief; a capital of trust). Lastly, Bourdieu argues that symbolic power is excercised in relation to social structure. As Swartz (1997) states, "Dominant cultural standards of any social order are fundamentally arbitrary" (p. 86), and all cultural systems have been built on to meet certain interests and activities of particular groups. Inequality is therefore argued to be perpetuated in a social order.
Chapter five turned out to be more interesting as I could interrelate Bourdieu's concept of habitus to many educational cases that I have observed. I thought about the impact and educational effect of study abroad (or cross-cultural education) where students broaden their perspectives and find a different world outside of their own culture (at all levels of family, school, and society) that used to set or restrain their possibilities. It can be argued that these students have been freed from the original framework of structuring structure in a way. (And for now, I will put aside the argument that study abroad is only for those people who can financially afford or who are privileged with opportunities.) Students are indeed affected and raised to perform in a structure that generates one's actions and assumed possibilities. Whether they realize it or not, students are vulnerable to limitations that are not set by the internal self alone, but in correlation with external factors underlying a societal structure. To what extent educators can serve to let them break through the limitations then? Is it feasible at all? Are educators not overlooking the possibility that they are actually involved as part of the driving actors of societal differentiation unconsciously or unwillingly? This is hard to admit, but I could not help but to feel more humble through exploring Bourdieu's argument.
Chapter six explores the concept of field which is explained as "arenas of struggle for control over valued resources" (p. 122). Again, economic and cultural capitals are key distributions that are being fought over in fields, forming a social hierarchy. Our actions are the products on the basis of fields and capitals that have been competed, mediated, internalized and transformed to emerge as societal differentiation.
Well... The entire reading was quite interesting, but at the same time, still difficult for me to clearly articulate the concepts. My understanding still needs to be examined for sure. I am looking forward to the class!
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