Following our discussion last
class on Bourdieu’s practice theory and how it cannot sufficiently explain
social change and transformation, I wish to take forward that discussion to
today’s class and ask questions which are inspired by my area of interest - media
and communication. Reading Calhoun’s article on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus
and field pushes us to think about how far can we push Bourdieu’s ideas if we
are dealing with complex self regulating societies? (As Calhoun argues,
Bourdieu’s theory works fine if we are dealing with a simple society like a
Kabyle one, but what happens when we are looking at more complex societies. Bourdieu’s
concept of capital, Calhoun mentions, envisions capital without capitalism)
The one question that constantly
bothered me while reading Calhoun and Hoy: how can technological innovations be
accommodated within the concepts of habitus and field? Innovations, especially,
scientific and technological innovations, in the first place, cannot be exhausted
by explaining them as unintentional structured social actions being structured
by a certain habitus that informs scientists engaging in a scientific activity
(Bourdieu in his “Homo Academicus” [I’ve not read the work but I’ve read what
others say it contains] tries to place the academicians in their particular habitus
and looks at them as the products of that habitus; and how their questions
however radical they might have been, but they are informed by a certain habitus
that predisposes the academicians to ask certain questions by mapping the
possibilities within the field). Let me transpose this idea to technological
innovations and see how the concepts of Habitus and Field work or do not work
there.
Once some technology is innovated
and that technology gets diffused among people resulting in a change in the
social setup, how can we explain this change within the ambit of Bourdieu’s theory
of practice? [To make this point clear, let me take examples of technological
revolutions. Print revolution, it is argued, solidified national feelings and
facilitated the integration of society into nations. We are for a while now
witnessing digital revolution. Internet, it is known, had its beginnings in the
US Defence. It was definitely not invented to pave the way for outsourcing
business operations. The possibilities that internet offered triggered changes
elsewhere. Digital piracy threatens big capitalist publishing empires]. At the
risk of sounding a technological determinist, I want to consider how we can accommodate
Bourdieu’s concept to explain technologically induced changes that transform
society. If change for Bourdieu was not radically different from the habitus and
field that the actors were anchored in; and it is only a rupture (but rupture
with a history) within the system that tries to destabilize the system; and
change is just a realization of the possibilities that can be thought of within
a particular field and habitus whose primary aims are to reproduce themselves
and conserve through misrecognition; and change is something that is secondary depending
on the realization or recognition of dominance within a field; or change is
something that is the result of the external contact with an altogether
different habitus and fields, how can we look at technologically induced
changes which are not the result of any of these processes? Is Calhoun right in
pointing out that Bourdieu’s theory is too general to account for these complex
changes? Or should we try and see technology as a possibility that was already
dormant in a particular habitus and field waiting to come out and destabilize
the system? If yes, how do we do that? If we do that, will it not mean that the
kind of change I’m talking about, and the technology instrumental in bringing
it about always had a history, and that the innovation of any technology is not
a break but a continuation? Who steers technology? Agents? Structure? What happens
when its effects are felt in the field/s which the innovators did not
contemplate to transform to begin with?
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