Mini Conference

 Each of the panelists has taken Bourdieu’s concept of practice as a starting point for exploring a certain field.

 This concept allows us to link the subjective world of lived experience (beliefs, objectives, judgments, tastes, skills), with the “objective” world of social structure (economy, culture, technology educational system, drug industry)  The panelists’ research focuses on practices of the individuals they are studying:  tv characters involved in the drug trade  low income students using technology, and  Argentinian students involved in school based social protest movements.

 Bourdieu allows us, however imperfectly, to escape the dualism between objectivity and subjectivity.  Habitus occupies a space which constitutes mediated action between cognition, attitudes and embodied practices which have been shaped by fields.  Following Marx, Bourdieu places class at the apex of social life not only in shaping the habitus of the actor but in the negotiation and distribution of power within fields.

 Donovan Quan an undergraduate from Brooklyn College explores the self presentation through clothing and other props of four characters on the TV series Breaking Bad. In a sense he has the perfect captive audience for his study. However interesting these characters are they are confined to very specific actions which constitute a perfect staged performance. We know only that which is strategically revealed about the characters in this imaginary universe; and what we don’t know also shapes our knowledge of these actors. Bourdieu’s concepts for the most part fit without a problem.

 Cassidy Puckett is a PhD candidate at Northwestern University. Her study of technical competence or digital adaptability looks students of lower socioeconomic status who behave in very different ways in response to what they do with technology, how they arrive at strategies, their knowledge level, learning style, values and how they feel, think and act. She returns to Dewey’s concept of habit, abandoned by sociologists, to explore whether it is better equipped in dealing with individual level phenomena of which habitus falls short, not adequately encompassing agency as a dialogic and interactive process, socially situated yet agent-driven.

 Gabriela Gonzales a PhD candidate at the State University of New York Stony Brook chose to use Bourdieu instead of state level theories which do not include and allow the potential to fully incorporate power dynamics from other interacting fields. She sees Bourdieu’s theory as liberating in that it allows her to consider student activists whose agendas shift according to the response of those they are in communication with, the political and economic situation of Argentina, and a host of other demands. Bourdieu allows her to see how fields can overlap and shift in her analysis of social movements in an educational context.