Bourdieu's Capital and New Media

In seeking to understand the nature of mobile phone literacy practices as the activities of those involved in social practice, I have turned to the wider sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu. His theoretical approach proves useful in the context for it is concerned with the activities of everyday social life and how these are linked to established cultural, social, symbolic and economic forces. The force that organises social interaction is configured as a process of exchange and the unit of exchange is capital.

Bourdieu's use of the term 'capital' to describe social interaction and reproductions has resulted in accusations of 'economic determinism' being leveled at his work, configuring it as another branch of Marxism. However, as Swartz points out, Bourdieu distances himself from Marxism (and to a degree, economic determinism) in three distinct ways:
- "The first way Bourdieu distances himself from Marxism is by extending the notion of economic interest to ostensibly noneconomic goods and services." (1997, 66)
- "A second way that Bourdieu distances himself from Marxism is by extending the idea of capital to all forms of power, whether they be material, cultural, social or symbolic." (73)
- "A third way that Bourdieu distances himself from Marxism is by emphasizing the role of symbolic forms and processes in the reproduction of social inequality." (82)
In essence, Bourdieu's concept of capital moves distinctly away from a strictly system, to act as a system of exchange that functions as a part of everyday social life (in both formal and informal fields). The different manifestations of capital are by no means discrete and easy to seperate: they continually interrelate in social practice

Carrington and Luke (1997) offer a succinct breakdown of the four different types of capital:
"Symbolic Capital: Institutionally recognised and legitimated authority and entitlement requisite for the exchange and conversion of Cultural, Economic and Social Capital.
Cultural Capital [manifests in three forms, as follows]
- Embodied Capital: Knowledges, skills, dispostions, linguistic practices and representational resources of the bodily habitus;
- Objectified Capital: Cultural goods, text, material objects and media physically transmissable to others;
- Institutional Capital - Academic qualifications, awards, professional certificates and credentials;
Economic Capital: Material goods and resources directly convertible into money;
Social Capital - Access to cultural and subcultural institutions, social relations and practices." (102)

The relationship between these various types of capital is a complex one, linked to habitus and fields through the central nexus of symbolic captial. As a system of exchange, capital linked to the process of labour (Swartz, 1997, 74). This work is not always conscious, as the nature of symbolic capital and symbolic work indicates: symbolic power is a system of exchange which legitimates to capacity of an individual to deploy other forms of capital within symbolic systems. Through 'symbolic violence', "symbolic power is a legitimating power that elicits the consent of both the dominant and the dominated." (Swartz, 1997, 89) Symbolic capital is therefore important in the establishment of 'distinction' as the 'natural order of things' through the establishment and naturalisation of 'paired oppositions' (84-85). Symbolic capital, is thus the nexus through which other forms of capital gain strength and validity.

Bourdieu himself points out only three types of capital: "...capital can present itself in three fundamental guises: as economic capital...as cultural capital...and as social capital...." (1986, 243). This is not to suggest that capital only works across these domains, and indeed the picture is a lot more complicated that this, with a fourth form of capital - symbolic capital - as a necessary feature "...for the exchange and conversion of Cultural, Economic and Social Capital." (Carrington & Luke, 1997, 102). This is not to imply simply that one form of capital can be easily converted to another, and vice versa, as despite the economic connotations to 'capital', the conversion of types of capital into other forms of capital is not always possible.
"How the various capitals interconvert also poses a problem. One contribution by Bourdieu to the sociological study of power relations is the forceful demonstration that cultural capital, social capital, and economic capital can be interchangeable. Yet the interchange is not equally possible in all directions. Social capital and cultural capital are more closely related to each other than to economic capital." (Swartz, 1997, 80).

The relationship of capital to social life is connected to the inculcation of habitus, the structure of fields in which they are deployed and the legitimation of such capital through the establishment of distinction through 'symbolic violence'. Literacy and language clearly links into this process as a symbolic system, as does bodily hexis (Bourdieu, 1991). Both act as forms of exchange in human society, dominated by semiotic practices of meaning-making. The extent to which individuals are able to realise different forms of capital is determined at both an unconscious level (habitus) and conscious level (attaining educational qualifications), though this does not necessarily mean that such power can be realised in economic terms. Rather, capital should be understood as the fabric of exchange behind social activity, whereby individuals seek to derive some form of 'profit'; be it symbolic, cultural, social or economic.

As the relationship between capital as configured by Bourdieu and the use of mobile technolgies in everyday life is an evolving theoretical landscape, we are left with ever more questions and few answers. How are dispositions towards literacy practices configured as different forms of capital across multiple fields? As mobile technologies increasingly make inroads into 'established' discourses of literacy, how will the landscape of symbolic and cultural capital that surround them change? If mobile phones (for instance) are increasingly used to strengthen established social relationships, what is the impact for social captial? How can social captial be expanded using the increasing convergence of technologies and capabilities, in mobile technologies? How will the increasing use of mobile technologies at an everyday level have an effect on the types of distinction that emerge? As mobile technologies disappear through ubiquity into the fabric of our everyday lives, will we be able to draw a distinction between capital realised in mobile fields and those realised in traditional contexts? And even if we can, what purpose will it serve, if any?


References

Bourdieu, P. (1986). "The Forms of Capital." In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp.241-258). New York: Greenwood Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Carrington, V. & Luke, A. (1997). "Literacy and Bourdieu's Sociological Theory: A Reframing." Language and Education, 11(2), 96-112.

Moore, R. (2004). "Cultural capital: objective probability and the cultural arbitrary." British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(4), 445-456.

Swartz, D. (1997). Culture and Power: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Webb, J., Schirato, T. & Danaher, G. (2002). Understanding Bourdieu. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Poststructuralism and Objective Structures

In discussing my understandings of Bourdieu's theories and their applicability to my own research into the literacy practices of mobile technologies, with my supervisor, I have been given cause to reflect on my self-positioning as a researcher.

I must comment that when I first read the term 'objective structures' in Bourdieu's Language and Symbolic Power (1991) it did catch my eye. A small splinter in the back of my brain seemed to suggest that there was something 'wrong' here, something amiss, something that did not seem to gel with the rest of my poststructural leanings. Indeed, the very idea of something being 'objective' in any way shape of form, seems highly problematic to me, similar to describing the ocean as blue, when we actually know that this is a perceptual trick of light. This continual reference to 'objective phenomena' seems to be spread throughout Bourdieu's work, underlining his structuralist perspective. However, it remains something that I find difficult to accept.

So how am I to resolve this apparant contradiction between my poststructural beliefs and Bourdieu's identification of 'objective structures'? Can they fit together, or do they destroy each other as matter and anti-matter would?

Objectivity, in all its apparent forms may appear to be a 'truth', but such is the danger when one looks at one's own culture from within. I had always considered 'objective truths' within the field of social activities to be constructions of hegemonic discourses: 'truths' that could be changed, but only by those with the appropriate cultural and symbolic capital. In reviewing literature in this area (of which there is a mountainous amount) I was drawn to the work of James Paul Gee on Discourse Analysis.

The two central concepts at the heart of Gee's model of discourse analysis are "situated meanings" and "cultural models." (1999). With reference to both these concepts, there is a continual dependence on situational context for meaning-making. Let me take each of these concepts in turn, discussing their implications for my approach in dealing with the 'objective structures' identified by Bourdieu.

Situated meanings are based on a "pattern-recognition" (Gee, 1999, 48-52) model of the mind. It is based on an understanding that meaning is not an objective reality, but rather something situated in actual practices and experiences: "...meaning is multiple, flexible, and tied to culture." (40) Further, "...meanings are situated in relationship to history and in relationship to other texts and voices." (41) Meaning-making is thus tied up continually with contextual factors determined by the 'cultural models' at work in any given situation.

This concept in fact has a good deal in common with Bourdieu's understanding of the way habitus works for individuals in social situations, across fields. Indeed, as Schirato and Yell point out, cultural context is an essential component of Bourdieu's theories: "...practice, or what people actually do, is constrained by, and develops as a response to, the rules and conventions of a culture." (Schirato & Yell, 2000, 1). Both are based on an understanding of the deployment of dispositions, or actions, in response to a contextualised meaning. Through Bourdieu we might configure this relation as being one about how activities are conducted in response to a particular field, where the individual deploys responses according to their habitus, which is augmented by the 'capital' they have access to in that particular concept. It is here where his concept of 'objective structures' comes into play, as a determining aspect of social relations that helps define the capital that one is able to realise in certain contexts. Part of the structure of 'symbolic violence' is the necessary importance of 'misrecognition'. In this process "...agents are subjected to forms of violence...but they do not perceive it that way; rather, their situation seems to them to be 'the natural order of things'." (Webb, Schirato & Danaher, 2002, 25). It seems therefore that 'symbolic violence' is the way in which 'objective structures' may be maintained and gain their 'objectivity' in the mind of individuals. Whether or not we can equate 'objective structures' with 'cultural models' is a difficult and complex question.

At it's simplest level, Gee describes "cultural models" as being like "videotapes in the mind" (1999, 60-61), though he admits that this metaphor should not be taken too literally or simplistically, the situation being far more complicated that the description suggests prima facie (On a side-note, should we now be speaking of DVDs in the mind, or MPEGs in the the mind, avoiding the connotations of linearity that this metaphor suggests and instead moving to one that suggests we can skip to scenes without having to fast-forward through all the irrelevant 'stuff'? A rethink of the metaphor to consider.). Whilst cultural models may appear to be 'objective', this is only a result of Bourdieu's concept of 'misrecognition'. The distinction must be made though that whilst Bourdieu uses the concept of 'objective structures' as if they were external influences on social practice (well that's the implication), for Gee, the concept of 'cultural models' is always contextual and always linked to local cultural contexts. Cultural models are not an external construction of a society, but rather, shared understandings, shared Discourses (with a capital D) of individuals with similarly inculcated habituses. 'Cultural models can become emblematic visions of an idealized, "normal," "typical" reality...' (Gee, 1999, 60) yet is must be kept in mind that this is not an objective reality, but rather the construction of shared Discourses across a society. Therefore, just as with individual habitus there is variation, "Cultural models are also variable, differing across different cultural groups, including different cultural groups in a society speaking the same language. They change with time and other changes in society, as well as with new experience." (60)

Suggesting an alternative to Bourdieu's notion of 'objective structures' in order to reframe his theories in a more poststructural light, is a difficult, and no doubt, controversial move; though it is a necessary one I think. In his sociological work Bourdieu goes to great pains to be flexible, to lay open rules to breaches and difference. Therefore whilst he may say that individual interest is generally pursued at the unconscious or pre-conscious level, he still does not rule out conscious pursuit of 'interest': "There is, however, ambiguity in Bourdieu's work.... At times he admits conscious strategizing while at other times he insists on the unconscious character of interest calculation....Bourdieu is willing to recognize degrees of awareness of the interested character of some forms of action...." (Swartz, 1997, 70). It is difficult therefore to accept the place of 'objectivity', of strict certainty, within his theory.

I seek to move beyond any absolute certainty in the reality of social practices, to a more fluid understanding of social relations caught up in symbolic systems of power, 'cultural models', or 'Discourses'. As society and culture seems to move and change so rapidly - the massive impact of mobile technologies on social life is a dramatic demonstration of rapid change - we need a sociological understanding that is capable of accounting for these rapid changes, without getting caught up by principles of objectivity. I do not see this as leaving me at the mercy of unresolved and rampant subjectivism either: concepts such as Gee's 'cultural models' and the manner in which capital is continually reproduced as 'the natural' through Bourdieu's concept of 'symbolic violence', point to understandings of everyday life and the literacies involved therein, that can account for stability, as well as change.


References

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gee, J.P. (1999). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London and New York: Routledge.

Schirato, T. & Yell, S. (2000). Communication and Cultural Literacy: An Introduction (2nd ed.). St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Swartz, D. (1997). Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Webb, J., Schirato, T. & Danaher, G. (2002). Understanding Bourdieu. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Response to iPhone Release

With the release of the new iPhone yesterday (Jan, '07), I have been given cause to reflect about impacts on techno-literacy practices, due to its revolutionary new interface. Not only does it look really cool - sleek, uncomplicated - (on that basis alone I have decided that I WANT ONE!) but the interface is so different from all that has gone before it, that as stated in the media: "...the iPhone appears poised to revolutionise the way mobile phones are designed and sold." (The Age, Jan 10)

The first thing that I thought about when I saw the new design was how the input method was more like a computer than a mobile phone. Now I havn't used a Mac extensively since high school (at least 1995), but remember how menus were accessed, drag-and-drop features, and 'windows' well before I ever logged onto a PC. Features such as the ability to use a QWERTY keyboard, access internet sites and zoom in, listen to music and watch videos, send email and SMS, all point to this 'phone' being more of a mini-computer than a mobile phone, a shift in thinking that Marc Prensky has been calling for for a number of years (Prensky, 2004). When watching footage of the iPhone release, this was one of the features that struck me.

Another feature of the iPhone that seems really fresh is the fact that menus and features are accessed through an 'icon' interface. Whilst this feature has been common on many smartphones for a number of years, one still had to use the keypad or navigation buttons to scroll through and make selections. It is here, with the touch screen that the truely ground-breaking innovation of the iPhone comes into its own. The 'dislocation' between accessing phone features through clicking keys that correspond to a selection on the screen, is substantially diminished by being able to simply point to what you want on the screen itself. It seems to be a difference like that between handwriting and typing; which feels more human and 'tactile'?

I even found a website/blog where possible designs for the upcoming iPhone were displayed (http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/). It is interesting to note how a lot of the predictions subscribed to typical mobile phone or iPod design features (including keypads, navagation wheels, etc). And then there are some just plain 'far-out' designs. It is interesting to note though, that the touch-screen nature of the iPhone moves it dramatically away from previous model smartphones, making it closer to a PDA that you accessed with one of those 'stylus-pen' things. But here you get to just use your finger - point at what you want and it supposedly happens. I suppose it still remains to be seen what kinds of difficulties this touch screen producers

It also remains to be seen what effect this new design will have on individual dispositions with regard to communication. How will the 'apparant' easy of use of the iPhone influence dispositions towards modal selection for semiotically based activities? This is the area that really interests me. I have no doubt that the iPhone will take off extremely quickly - there is already the ready-made iPod market who will jump at this new device as a kind of 'up-grade' - but there will also be a large proportion of individuals that will be attracted to the iPhone due to its innovative design and features (not to mention the 'huge' screen size by comparison to other model phones!).

The effect of this interface design on the choices people make about everyday literacy events involved in communication and information retrieval/dissemination is of course a completely untested and unknown area. Sure, reading pathways will be somewhat limited (as with all phones) by those linkages laid down in the design of the product, however the ability of this device to access a wide range of internet sites opens up the possibilities for hypertext practices on the move in a very real manner. How will this ability to access a wide range of information sources at 'anytime' (take this idea with a pinch of salt of course) influence the decisions we make in everyday practice?

Will the apparent ease-of-use of the new interface have an impact on dispositions towards communication modes when using the iPhone? With the ability to use a QWERTY keyboard change the nature of SMS? Will the ability to send emails as easily spell the death of SMS to some extent? Will there be an impact on our dispositions towards making a phone call as opposed to 'txting' someone? Will the larger screen result in more extensive 'txt' messages or an increase in MMSing?

If the iPhone is taken up with as much enthusiasm as the iPod, what will be the results for the rest of the mobile phone market? With this device acting more like a mini-computer and presenting a functional convergence of technologies, a new expectation has just been set for the mobile technology market generally! I can't wait to see the response of other companies like Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, Motorola, etc., just as they responded to the iPod with their own portable music and media players. It is curious that Apple has called it an 'iPhone', when clearly the 'phone' is just one feature of many. The need to reconceptualise what we mean by a mobile phone or cellphone (or whatever other term is used), is clearly demonstrated with this new release.

It may be cliche to say: but the iPhone has set a new bar for mobile technology design, in terms of features, interface and design. The impact of these technologies on the literate practices of individuals in their everyday lives is of course yet to be seen or tested (in fact, the same could be said for most mobile technologies today in any case). I for one, am excited by this new release, this new innovation. Watching the impact across society and individuals should prove a far more interesting show than anything you could download and watch on it.


References

"Apple looks to reinvent itself." (2007, January 10) The Age.
Accessed on 11 January, 2007 from: http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/apple-looks-to-reinvent-itself/2007/01/10/1168105032307.html

Prensky, M. (2004). "What can you learn from a cell phone? - Almost anything!" Innovate!, 1(5). Accessed on 11 January, 2007 from: www.marcprensky.com/writing/

Vardarova, O. (2004). "iPhone Concept Blog." Retrieved 11 January, 2007 from: http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/