Bourdieu

There are many varying opinions towards the lower class, some believe they are lazy and others think they are earnest hardworking folk. In her book “Nickel and Dimed”, Barbara Ehrenreich takes a closer look at the lives and hardships of the lower class. Her goal is to bring awareness to the struggles of these people and while attempting to disprove negative misconceptions about these people. The author writes to an audience of privileged upper class people trying to prove just how difficult it is living in the lower class. Although Ehrenreich does achieve these goals, her arguments are weakened because she focuses more on her experiences rather than those around her. Despite living in similar conditions to these people, she isn’t getting the

One of the major causes of underachievement is the lack of economic capital, proposed by Pierre Bourdieu (1984), that a working class family possess. As item A states, ‘sociologists claim that factors outside the school, such as parental attitudes and parental income, are the main causes of working class underachievement.’ Children who belong to a working class background may not be able to afford the necessary equipment or meet the

“The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.” Marx (1848, p.74)

From the perspective of subcultural studies, small communities share distinctive, authentic, values which are underpinned by a specific combination of actors' capitals. In case of the swimming club Kometa, the resulting combination, upon being acknowledged by actors as of distinctive worth, is labelled as a sporting capital, a form of Bourdieu's symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1984, 1992; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). It is constructed by a desirable combination of social, cultural, economic or media capitals, created during everyday actors' practices, their rituals and affective relationships. Interpreted via Bourdieu's lens, sporting capital depends on inconspicious representation of actors's habitus (compare Wheaton, 2000). In addition, we can

In Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers displays how the economic status or social rank can indeed affect someone like Reno who is the main character but also to the other characters that are surrounded by her. From significant class differences causes this characters to experience mental distress and/or serve as a source of tension or conflict with others that is presented as oppression and resistance. This also can be referred by “Marxist Criticism”, which according to the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University, Marxist criticism looks closely at a character’s economic status or social rank and considers the ways in which the socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of a character’s experience.

It is fairly apparent that a number of political overtones dominate Emile Zola's novel Germinal, which is the 13th book of nonfiction within the writer's Les Rougon-Macquart, a 20-volume series of novels. The author published this work of literature in 1885, less than 50 years after Marx and Engels unveiled the Communist Manifesto which was still plenty of time for a number of the ideologies propagated in this manuscript to take hold of popular culture and political theorists alike. In fact, one could successfully make a claim that the central theme of Germinal actually revolves around the conceptions of class antagonism that is an inherent part of an exploitative, bourgeois society such as that depicted in the French coal mining town in 1860, the setting for Germinal. A thorough analysis of this literary work illustrates that there are several instances of class antagonism, which are central to the plot of this book and provide its primary theme.

As Marx’s states in his theory, when the working class becomes aware of their exploitation, this will result in a revolt lead by the proletariats. The major theories studied by Marx can be used to analyze the characters and situations presented in the film.

Comparing Sewell’s claim to Skocpol’s definition of the process of revolution, Sewell’s explanation is iffy. To start, there were no geopolitical pressures mentioned. There was a financial crisis of the state since France was going into bankruptcy, which led to tax reform. However, when the king called up the Estates General, the Estates General was not going to allow taxes to be imposed on the dominant class, which were the corporate institutions. Nevertheless, there was a state breakdown due to the financial crisis since a financial crisis can lead directly to a state breakdown. From there, there was a peasant’s rebellion, since they were the ones that were getting hurt the most from the rebellion, and the rebellion had the backing of the National Assembly to solidify their rebellion, which led to the revolution in France in 1789. This all matches Skocpol’s definition of a social rebellion, which is rapid and basic transformation based on state and class structures with the revolts coming from the lower classes. To Sewell, the class change is evident. The lower class, the peasants, had a rebellion against the upper class, the corporate interests. The state change was ideological, with a changing of ideology inside the National Assembly from a corporate ideology to the Enlightenment ideology pushed by the peasants.

Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital has been extremely influential, and has garnered a great deal of literature, both theoretical and empirical. Like Marx, Bourdieu posited that capital was the foundation of social life and dictated people’s position within the social hierarchy (Bourdieu 1986). According to Bourdieu, the more capital one possesses, the more prestigious a position one occupies in social life (Bourdieu 1986). In addition to that, Bourdieu extended Marx’s idea of capital beyond the economic and into cultural symbolism (Bourdieu 1986). Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital that refers to the collection of symbolic elements (e.g. skills, tastes, clothing) one acquires through being part of a particular social niche and his concept of habitus that refers to the physical manifestation of cultural capital owned by individuals due to life experiences are his major influential concepts that are very useful in deconstructing power in development and social change processes. However it must be recognized that these concepts also propagate social inequalities at the same time. This essay will closely examine his concepts of capital that comes in three forms - embodied, objectified, and institutionalised, and habitus in the fields of education and stratification have made of it. Bourdieu’s work will be analysed in the context both of the debate on class inequalities in educational attainment and of class reproduction in advanced capitalist societies.

Another example that highlights the conflict between the classes in the story is the scene where Tyler splices pornography into the films he airs. He uses his position as a projectionist in the movie theater to include split seconds of pornography into movies watched by the upper and middle class people. He enjoyed doing it because he had nothing to loose, he was the “the pawn of the world, everybody’s trash” (Palahniuk 106). He included pornography in the movies the upper class people watched just to get back at them by exposing them to pornography without their knowledge and consent. Exposing them to pornography without their knowledge was a way Tyler used to reverse the conventional roles of the society. The working class was proving to the upper class that they could oppress them if they want to and this was done through Tyler’s actions. Tyler used his position to do as he wished and the upper class people could do nothing about it rather, they watched the pornography in the movies.

Written by Gustave Flaubert and published in 1856, Madame Bovary tells a story about the life and death of Emma Bovary, a middle class woman living in mid-nineteenth century France. This novel is known as one of the best examples of literary realism ever written, and for good reason. Through his writing and attention to detail, Flaubert does an excellent job of giving the reader an idea of just how mundane everyday life was like in France during the mid-nineteenth century. Through the various characters in the novel, Flaubert is also able to portray many positive and negative characteristics he saw in the people living during this time. Of the many different characteristics and ideas that Flaubert uses to describe characters throughout the novel, I think that the many aspects he saw in the bourgeoisie class and materialism are uniquely important. I believe that the ways Flaubert uses the ideas and issues of materialism and similar principles he saw in the bourgeoisie to tell the story of Madame Bovary, to criticize the bourgeoisie, as well as show how harmful and destructive he believed these issues could be to a society.

Pierre Bourdieu was an acclaimed French sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher, who is still noted today as being one of the most prominent and influential intellects in recent years. He is famous for his contributions to many subjects and areas, and much of his work is still considered today as being classics. His work is considered to be some of the most innovative and groundbreaking bodies of theory and research in contemporary social science. He is still prominent today for his many great contributions to the field of sociology, and though he has many revolutionary concepts, this essay will focus on three; Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, and a key sociological factor these concepts help to explain. These three

     Marx describes the problem in great detail in the first chapter. He feels there is a problem between the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. The bourgeoisie were the oppressed class before the French Revolution and he argues that they are now the oppressors. The proletarians are the new working class, which works in the large factory and industries. He says that through mass industry they have sacrificed everything from the old way of religion, employment, to a man’s self worth and replaced it with monetary value. He is mad that the people of ole that use to be upper class such as skills man, trades people, & shopkeepers, are now slipping into the proletarians or working class. He

In The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas by Mark and Engels discuss that the ideas of a particular historical time are designed to serve the ruling class. This reading proves the presence of ideology within society to explain how it serves the ruling class. “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production…” (Marx and Engels, 1970, p. 39). Within The Beauty and the Beast, the prince used the working class in order to improve his way of life. This signifies that within this period of time, there was a limited amount of independence that separated the ruling and working class because of the control of the means of material production that the ruling class had over the working class.

In the 18th century, European society put an emphasis on social standing; each social class was expected to act differently, thus affecting the way one would get treated and the amount of opportunities available to them. In Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, food imagery and the way each character acts towards food reveals the distinctions between the various social classes and, more importantly, the mediocrity of the French bourgeoisie. However, Flaubert chooses not to focus on all of the social classes, but solely on the characteristics and mannerisms surrounding the middle and the high classes. Revolving the novel around middle-classed characters who represent the middle class, Flaubert criticizes the bourgeoisie through their desire to escape