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http://iss.sagepub.com/ The Saussurean Influence in Pierre Bourdieu's Relational Sociology

Willem Schinkel and Jacques Tacq International Sociology 2004 19: 51 DOI: 10.1177/0268580904040920 The online version of this article can be found at: http://iss.sagepub.com/content/19/1/51

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The Saussurean Inuence in Pierre Bourdieus Relational Sociology

Willem Schinkel
Erasmus University Rotterdam

Jacques Tacq
Catholic University of Brussels abstract: In this contribution the relationship between Pierre Bourdieus theory of class and semiotics is claried. It is therefore focused on the relational logic that underpins his analysis in Distinction. It is argued that Bourdieus relational logic stems for a large part from Saussure. The differences Bourdieu identies as signifying classes do so only as arbitrary signs and not because of any intrinsic qualities. Furthermore, it is argued that this relational logic is a necessary completion in Bourdieus analysis, because of his rejection of Kantian aesthetics, in which an immediate understanding of intrinsic quality is a central point. Both the Kantian and the Saussurean inuence are given in the title and subtitle of his work: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. This clarication of Bourdieus chief methodological principle shows how Bourdieu, who, in his later years, became more and more engaged in public debates, has always been a critical thinker. keywords: Pierre Bourdieu relational sociology Saussurean semiotics

Purpose of this Contribution

This article is a discussion of Pierre Bourdieus theoretical starting points. It is therefore a contribution intended to help clarify Bourdieus work. In doing so, it is meant to be an addition to work which, to name a few, Richard Jenkins, Derek Robbins and Loc Wacquant have undertaken.
International Sociology March 2004 Vol 19(1): 5170 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) DOI: 10.1177/0268580904040920

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1 However, the stress is here on Bourdieus relational logic, which is, methodologically, of chief importance in Bourdieus analysis. It is however often misread. This leads to simplifying accounts of the theory of distinction. Also, many criticisms made on the part of Bourdieu seem to be based on a misunderstanding of what is to Bourdieu less a theory than a method. Though Bourdieus relational perspective has been given attention, for instance by Vandenberghe (1999), it has mainly been shown how this perspective stems from Bachelard and Cassirer. Here, we want to stress the importance of Saussurean semiotics (semiology) in understanding Bourdieus analyses. It is shown how Bourdieus use of Saussurean ideas helps him to formulate a social critique of the judgement of taste, and so to give Kants aesthetics a sociological bearing. It is our opinion that an understanding of Bourdieus relational mode of analysis is vital in understanding the nature of his most recent work. In the last years before his death, Bourdieus publications became more and more critical, even very harsh in tone, as the title of one of those publications, Contre-feux 2 (Bourdieu, 2001), suggests. A clarication of the chief underlying methodological principle of Bourdieus work shows that there is no radical rupture in his oeuvre. Bourdieus analyses have always been critical. The change in his later work is a change in tone, not in mode of analysis. Bourdieus work has to be seen in the light of two main views that underpin most of what he has worked on throughout the years. The rst is that he wants to create a compromise between one-sided objectivist and subjectivist social theories. This means he wants to gain an understanding of the social determination of humankind without using an oversocialised conception of man in doing so. It also means that he has become increasingly critical of his structuralist roots, criticizing both Saussure and Lvi-Strauss. His habitus concept stands for a way of bringing the actor back into the picture, without falling into the opposite trap, that of methodological individualism. In trying to overcome this dichotomy, he sometimes refers to his own work as being a kind of genetic structuralism.1 In the preface to Practical Reason, he opposes his theory of action to the more extreme theses of a certain structuralism by refusing to reduce agents, which it considers to be eminently active and acting (without necessarily doing so as subjects), to simple epiphenomena of structure (Bourdieu, 1998: viii). His second main starting point can be summarized as follows: he wants to have an open mind with regard to his own modus operandi, his own methods and presuppositions. What he would like to do with his own work is to, in a way, make a connection between theory and practice by means of a critical relationship to the object of study, and his practical, as well as critical use of social science comes close to the way in which Marx 52

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Schinkel and Tacq The Saussurean Inuence in Bourdieu described, or rather prescribed, the role of philosophy in his Thesen ber Feuerbach, to which Bourdieu does indeed refer now and then.

The Discussion with Kant

Bourdieu has a discussion with Immanuel Kant. In several of his works, he reacts against Kants views on the a prioris of the judgement of taste. It is in this light that the subtitle to Distinction, which tells us the book is a social critique of the judgement of taste, has to be seen. Kant laid down his ideas on judgement in his third critique, the Critique of Judgement (Kritik der Urteilskraft, Kant, 1985). After having started his epistemological threefold investigations of the pure and the practical reason, this third critique leads him to investigate what makes the aesthetic judgement possible. It is this part of Kants Critique of Judgement, and not the teleological part, against which Bourdieu reacts.

Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft

In this third critique, Kant tries to discover how we know which categories we have to connect to which sensory impressions, coming from a world which is a noumenon, which we will never know an sich, and of which we cannot speak at all. He makes a distinction between two types of judgements, depending on the relation between the general law and the specic, individual occurrence. When the former precedes, Kant calls the mechanism by means of which the particular occurrence is classied the determinant judgement. When the universal principle is deduced from the individual particularity, this happens through what Kant calls the reective judgement. And it is this reective judgement which is at the core of Kants investigation in the third critique. Kant connects several propositions to this reective judgement. The rst is that he says that the judgement of taste is characterized by disinterestedness. We can, to put it in simple words, take pleasure and experience a sense of aesthetic beauty from a work of art2 without wanting to possess it. The judgement of taste is thus autonomous, it is not clouded by notions of interest. Second, Kant presupposes an understanding without concept to be present in the aesthetic experience. This experience is not a cognitive process. We do not understand the logic linking an object to the sense of beauty we derive from looking at it; its beauty is simply supposed to be a characteristic feature. He furthermore states that we experience the beauty of an object through a sense of purposiveness without purpose. He gives the example of the antelope, which we perceive as a gracious and beautifully moving animal, instead of thinking about the banal purpose of its being built so beautifully, being that that is simply the best way to keep out of the grip of predators. Lastly, Kant states that in 53

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1 the aesthetic experience, we attribute a kind of exemplary necessity to beauty of the object of our aesthetic experience. We say: This is a beautiful painting, instead of: I think this painting is beautiful, or: To me, this is a beautiful painting. This experienced necessity is due to the sensus communis, which can be seen as the underlying principle we silently address when we assume a more general validity to our aesthetic judgement. For if we didnt share some basic intuitive feeling of this kind, we couldnt claim a more general validity for our judgements.

Bourdieus Critique on Kants Aesthetics

In several of Bourdieus works, he criticizes Kants aesthetic theory. In The Love of Art, Bourdieus argument is as follows: The sociologist does not intend to refute Kants phrase that the beautiful is that which pleases without concept, but rather he or she sets out to dene the social conditions which make possible both this experience and the people for whom it is possible (art lovers or people of taste) and thence to determine the limits within which it can exist (Bourdieu and Darbel, 1991: 109). It can thus be seen that his intentions of setting out a social critique of the judgement of taste become apparent in his work as early as 1969. In De regels van de kunst (Dutch translation of Les Rgles de lart) he again attacks Kant. He calls the charismatic ideology which holds that the love of art is a kind of love at rst sight an illusion, albeit a well-founded illusion. What may be the case, Bourdieu suggests, is that there are certain cognitive acts of understanding present in the reective judgement, thus making it look, for those who have the cultural competence for this to happen, as if the reective judgement is indeed an experience of love at rst sight, for the prerequisite acts of understanding are carried out without cost. The contemplation thus existing involves an appreciation which an unconscious cognitive act precedes, which makes it look like there is an appreciation that is pure. As he says in his Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception: any art perception begins with a conscious or unconscious deciphering operation (Bourdieu, 1993a: 215). Elsewhere, he states that the pure perception of the different forms of art is a social institution (Bourdieu, 1994: 362). A work of art is made up as a signier, a certain amount of cultural competence is required. In his critique of Kant, as formulated in Distinction, it becomes apparent that the basis of his critique on Kant is the fact that different classes have different tastes and cultural preferences. He states in contrast to Kants aesthetics, which presupposes disinterestedness in the aesthetic judgement as dening the Good, that: Working class people, who expect every image to full a function, if only that of a sign, refer, often explicitly, to norms of morality or agreeableness in their judgements (see Bourdieu, 1996: 41). Working-class people have a functional taste, in 54

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Schinkel and Tacq The Saussurean Inuence in Bourdieu which disinterestedness is not apparent, and which does not presuppose an understanding without cognition. The aesthetic judgement as described by Kant can then, according to Bourdieu, only be found among (part of) the upper class, and even there the mechanism through which it works is different from the way in which Kant presupposes it to be, for it is already noted that Bourdieu holds that cultural knowledge, education and habits are a prerequisite of such a judgement. Moreover, the aesthetic judgement is one characterized by historicity, and by a pre-reective act of understanding, which stands in sharp contrast with the a prioris Kant ascribes to the reective aesthetic judgement. These are the things Bourdieu supports with statistical analyses. In the end, what Bourdieu holds of Kants aesthetics is, as he says in the postscript to Distinction, that it is a kind of aesthetics in which . . . the ethos of the dominant class is expressed (Bourdieu, 1996: 487).

Distinction
What is important to keep in mind when reading Bourdieus 1979 work on the class structure of France, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, is that it does not lend itself to what can be called a substantialist reading (Bourdieu, 1998: 3). Questions concerning whether or not Bourdieus analyses are perhaps telling for France, but have no general bearing, have frequently been raised (see, for instance, Archer, 1993; Lemert, 2000).3 But, as Wacquant has argued, such questions miss the point. In terms borrowed from Bourdieu, he states such misunderstandings are due to the fact that the interpretation of foreign social theory is mediated by the structures of the national intellectual eld (Wacquant, 1993). Distinction does not claim universal validity as such regarding the state of affairs in France, but it does have more generalizability when it comes to the way the classes are construed. A similar analysis, Bourdieu claims, holds for a country like Japan. It is, according to Bourdieu, not the specic way in which the French class structure exists that can be said to have a more general validity, but the relational logic behind it, and the view that the social space is a playground of symbolic violence. What is important is the way in which action is structured according to class, and class according to action. It is, for a proper setting of Bourdieus line of thought, necessary to explain a few key terms used (and invented in this context) by Bourdieu.

Habitus
The habitus is a key concept in trying to understand Bourdieus argument. As a theoretical concept, it is the crux of his theory. The habitus forms a set of perceptual schemata through which an individual sees and 55

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1 interprets reality. To be exact, in his Outline of a Theory of Practice he denes it as an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constructed (cited in Jenkins, 1992: 74). So the habitus forms an acquired through socialization, not inborn, set of dispositions. It generates an individuals behaviour and is (combined with the external constraints of the eld) responsible for the typical way an individual acts and understands, without the individuals conscious knowledge and understanding of his or her habitus. It does so by means of a transformation of historical effects into future expectations, and thus actions. The dualistic element is, however, that although the habitus generates behaviour, it is itself also formed by what Bourdieu calls the objective social conditions of existence. It is for this reason that Bourdieu speaks of the habitus as a structuring structure; it is structured by conditions of existence and, at the same time, it structures reality and thus those very same conditions of existence (the habitus is the interiorization of the exteriority, and it functions as the exteriorization of the interiority). Or as he states in The Logic of Practice: The habitus is precisely this immanent law . . . inscribed in bodies by identical histories, which is the precondition not only for the co-ordination of practices but also for practices of co-ordination (Bourdieu, 1990: 58). In Practical Reason, Bourdieu stresses the mediative role of the habitus in the space of social positions. Here, he seems to be putting habitus and taste on a par: To each class of positions there corresponds a class of habitus (or tastes) produced by the social conditioning associated with the corresponding condition and, through the mediation of the habitus and its generative capability, a systematic set of goods and properties, which are united by an afnity of style (Bourdieu, 1998: 78). The class habitus of the members of a class is dened in Distinction simply as systems of classicatory schemes, or as conditions of acquisition of objective properties (Bourdieu, 1996: 101, 109). In the conclusion to Distinction, he then once more describes the schemes of the habitus, as being beyond the reach of introspective scrutiny or control by the will (Bourdieu, 1996: 466). So he makes it clear that the habitus not only is acquired by means of socialization and is as such not easily subject to change,4 but that it is also something one is not aware of, operating at a subconscious level. He does, however, seem to create something of a paradox here, since he has stated in Rponses that the notion of habitus expresses rst and foremost the rejection of a whole series of alternatives into which social science has locked itself, that of consciousness (or of subject) and of the unconscious (cited in Robbins, 2000: 26). So it can be questioned what the real prot of introducing another concept, in this case that of the habitus, really is.5 It could be argued that the habitus is of chief importance for Bourdieu in distantiating himself from structuralism, whereas some of its characteristics 56

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Schinkel and Tacq The Saussurean Inuence in Bourdieu seem to make a case for a structuralist interpretation after all. His own conclusions from the characteristics of the habitus seem to give ground to such criticisms, for he says in The Logic of Practice that the habitus makes questions of intention superuous, not only in the production but also in the deciphering of practice and works (Bourdieu, 1990: 58). Still, the criticism of determinism in Bourdieus analysis made by some (Alexander, 1995;6 Garnham and Williams, 1980; King, 2000; Readings, 1996), usually fails to recognize that Bourdieus is a self-proclaimed genetic structuralism (as mentioned earlier), and the generative role of the habitus certainly breaks with a total absence of a subject. Whereas the habitus can be seen as the dispositions, the concept of the eld denominates the positions individuals (agents in the more structuralist sense) occupy in the social space. Although not much used in Distinction, it is a key term when trying to understand Bourdieus thought, especially in relation to the concept of practice. The eld stands for the structure of positions occupied by agents. It can best be compared to what is usually seen as a world, such as an artworld. But Bourdieu stresses that elds are characterized by struggles and symbolic violence.

Capital
Another concept stretched by Bourdieu beyond its usual meaning, is the concept of capital. Bourdieu distinguishes several types of capital. The most important ones are cultural capital, economic capital, social capital and symbolic capital. Cultural capital denotes the cultural capacities a person has. It can also be called cultural competence or cultural knowledge. Educational capital can be seen as cultural capital, restricted to that part that is measured by qualications. Educational capital can thus be seen as the educational luggage a person carries with him. An important part of it is linguistic capital, which is so important because there exists, in the upper class, such a thing as the legitimate linguistic disposition, just as there is a legitimate aesthetic disposition. By cultural capacities the total level of knowledge of what cultural tastes are legitimate, as Bourdieu calls it, is denoted, which means the knowledge of which cultural practices and preferences are commonly regarded as high, and which are regarded as low. He states that it is not sufcient to refer to linguistic capabilities and schooling (educational capital) to explain a persons cultural capital. To explain the aesthetic disposition of a person is to relate his or her cultural competence to their past and present conditions of existence, since these conditions are the preconditions of generating that persons aesthetic disposition, of reafrming it, and thus of accumulating cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1996: 53). Economic capital stands for capital in the more common sense of the word, which simply means the amount 57

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1 of nancial resources and luxury goods a person has. Social capital can be seen as the social background and network of a person, e.g. a persons family. It can be shown to be the condition and the effect of successful management of the capital collectively possessed by the members of the domestic unit (Bourdieu, 1998: 70). In the case of the Kabyle tribes he investigated, Bourdieu could, for instance, conclude that an advantageous marriage would signicantly increase a persons amount of social capital. Lastly, symbolic capital stands for the degree to which a person holds a reputation for competence and an image of respectability and honourability (Bourdieu, 1996: 291). Symbolic capital often exists as another form of capital that is not recognized as such (Bourdieu, 1993b). A ritual such as the Potlatch, which is among others practised by the Northern American Tlingit Indians, and which can be seen in terms of what anthropologists call a total social phenomenon, is a good example of an exchange of symbolic capital. For it serves as a way of gaining status to give property away to the guests at the Potlatch, which is centred around a persons death and funeral (though the former can precede the latter by two years). It is not the economic capital that counts, but the symbolic value it holds in giving it away. Now that the key concepts in Bourdieus analysis are introduced, a picture of how he views the interrelationships between the concepts can be established. This is perhaps best done by focusing on his theory of practice. To put it briey, action (praxis) comes from a combination of dispositions and positions, which can be put into a formula as such: [(habitus) (capital)] + eld = practice (Bourdieu, 1996: 101). So practice is explained as a function of a combination of dispositions or properties, and positions. The way the perceptual schemata of people are structured, their possession of various forms of capital, the positions they occupy, and the characteristics of the network of their positions (eld) account for their practice.

The Classes
On the basis of a thorough survey-analysis, Bourdieu, in a selection on educational, economic and cultural capital, clusters the three groups which he calls classes: working class, middle class and dominant class. He distinguishes the people in these classes as having distinctive life-styles. In France, the relative weights of economic and cultural capital in forming the classes have been the greatest. So they are distributed from those who are best provided with both economic and cultural capital to those who are deprived in both respects (Bourdieu, 1996: 114). Bourdieu states that in the cultural faction of the dominant class, the legitimate aesthetic disposition becomes apparent. By legitimate he means 58

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Schinkel and Tacq The Saussurean Inuence in Bourdieu to say that it is this cultural taste that is generally regarded as being the noble or high kind of taste. It is characterized by a kind of aristocratic asceticism, which expresses the sober, noble and intellectual character of this kind of cultural preferences and practices. This is of course the kind of aesthetic disposition referred to earlier on in Bourdieus critique on Kants aesthetics. To acquire such a disposition, one has to have a fair share of cultural capital. In other words, one has to be a member of the cultural faction of the dominant class. Bourdieu states that the aesthetic disposition is of chief importance in constructing the classes, for of all the objects offered for consumers choice, there are none more classifying than legitimate works of art (Bourdieu, 1996: 16). What is important to keep in mind, is that Bourdieu does indeed speak of the legitimate aesthetic and linguistic disposition as existing among members of the dominant class. He does so, because the dominant taste has, as such, been established as the best taste, e.g. the natural gift of recognizing and loving perfection (Bourdieu, 1996: 68). There exists a recognition of the legitimacy of the dominant taste, also in other classes. Bourdieu therefore speaks of the ideology of the natural taste, meaning that the really existing cultural differences are transformed into natural ones, and are therefore legitimized. This is the illusio that legitimately divides the social sphere into classes. Thus, the aesthetic is mainly understood by Bourdieu in relation to domination and symbolic violence (Berard, 1999), and this perspective, central to the connection between cultural studies and class analysis, to some corrupts the idea of the aesthetic; Jameson (1991: 132) even speaks of Bourdieus blanket condemnation of the aesthetic as a mere class signal and as conspicuous consumption. But though Bourdieus perspective may be critical, it simply refrains from any essentialist reading of the aesthetic. As Lash has noted, unlike idealist aesthetics or a theory of aesthetic reexivity, which both connect a particular to a universal, Bourdieus view on the aesthetic connects a particular to another particular (Lash, 1994). Returning to the dominant class, a few last important features that need to be addressed here are the fact that Bourdieu speaks of the dominant class in terms of it being a relatively autonomous social space, and the fact that the relationship between the two distinguished class factions is a symmetrical, but inverse one. He holds that as cultural capital rises among members of the dominant class, their economic capital can be seen to decline. So the relationship is one of inverse symmetry, which in the end accounts for two polar ideal types of class factions: the cultural faction, characterized by a dominant possession of cultural capital and a limited possession of economic capital, and the economic faction, characterized by a large amount of economic capital, and a small share of cultural capital. 59

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1 In the middle class, this legitimate taste is thus equally regarded as being superior, although middle-class members dont really have a feel for the game (sens pratique), as Bourdieu calls it. They have a recognition of this taste and the cultural choices which accompany it, but they dont have the knowledge of the precise activities associated with the legitimate taste (Bourdieu, 1996: 319). They lack familiarity with the legitimate culture, although they do recognize it as being the legitimate culture. For this reason, Bourdieu speaks of the taste of the petite bourgeoisie as being characterized by cultural goodwill. They try hard, but they dont succeed, and their efforts are always unmasked. Members of this class will, for instance, be prone to visit large exhibitions of, for example, Rembrandts paintings, like there was some time ago in Holland, but they dont know that to be really culturally up to date, they should be seeing exhibitions of works by Jeff Koons or Joseph Beuys. In contrast to the legitimate taste of the dominant class, middle-class members have what Bourdieu calls a middle-brow taste. It is here that the concept of distinction comes into play, because members of the middle class will keep on trying to act by means of conspicuous consumption7 like members of the dominant class, be it either members of the intellectual (cultural) or of the economic faction within that class. They do not, however, have the economic capital or the cultural knowledge to effectively do so. Therefore they fail in trying to mirror the actions and preferences of the dominant class. And even if they did succeed in copying the habits of the dominant class, then the members of that class would simply invent new habits, casting off their old ones that were copied, which would have become useless to them in keeping their desired distance to the classes below them. Thus, both dominant class and middle class exploit means in either trying to maintain or to lessen the distinctions and thus the distances between them. What needs to be immediately added here, is that the theory shouldnt be simplied in a way in which it has often been done in more popular accounts. For Bourdieu, the distinctive behaviour is not a deliberate strategy of members of the middle and dominant classes (like conspicuous consumption was for Veblen), although it may be looked upon from the outside as functionally rational behaviour. It is behaviour generated by the habitus, which is structured according to the objective social circumstances. Lastly, the working class is characterized by what Bourdieu calls the choice of the necessary. Working-class members cannot afford any luxuries, nor do they have the knowledge of the legitimate cultural preferences and practices, and therefore their aesthetic disposition is an entirely functionalist one, as opposed to the purely formal one belonging to the legitimate cultural taste. This functional aesthetic is more than that: it is even a rejection of all-too-posh activities or goods. Working-class members value not 60

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Schinkel and Tacq The Saussurean Inuence in Bourdieu being too conspicuous. Their functional aesthetic coincides, when it comes to cultural preferences, with a popular taste. Furthermore, their habitus is one of a realistic nature: born a penny, youll never be a pound (free translation of a Dutch proverb). The social space of the classes that becomes visible in this analysis is a space of conict and class struggle. There exists a dominant class, which tries to secure its elitist character, and to make elite selection criteria as inaccessible to middle-class members as possible. On the other hand, the middle class is wound up in a constant struggle to keep up appearances, and to rise on the social ladder. For Bourdieu, mobility is possible for middle-class members. But its direction varies between factions of the middle class. Some rise, some fall. Moreover, complex situations may occur when some of the newly gained economic capital among members of the middle class is cashed in8 and swapped for cultural capital. But for the most part, Bourdieus theory is a theory of reproduction. It is therefore also a theory of stability. But one of stability through struggle, and therefore the critique of the theorys lack of space for change is illfounded, for reproduction does not mean no change. Passeron has noted that such a conception of change depends on a Hegelian assumption of change as occurring through some internal contradiction (Passeron, 2000), whereas change is possible without such contradictions, or certainly as a reproduction, instead of an Aufhebung of these contradictions.

Habitus: The Connection between Individual and Class

The habitus is the crucial element in Bourdieus analysis, linking individual members of classes (and class factions) to those classes. It is not, as de Certeau has argued, a theoretical construct (a fetish of the habitus) made up to account for blurred statistics (de Certeau, 1984: 5660). For each class, Bourdieu has statistically distinguished a normally distributed habitus. This means that he can indeed speak of several groups of people, linked to economic positions, behaving in a similar way and having similar cultural preferences as thus forming several classes in society. Likewise, the learned appreciation of art differs from class to class. The problem he seems to run into, however, is due to the fact that he defined the habitus as schemata of perception and as being the result of the interiorization of the exteriority, the objective social conditions of existence. How then, one could say, is it possible for members of all classes to have similar schemes of classification, which is something they have to have in order to be able to see the distinctions between those classes? Bourdieus solution to this lies in dividing the habitus into more general schemes of perception and more class-bound schemes of 61

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1 perception. He furthermore states that the general schemes are products of the dominant class, which manages to establish its own life-style(s) as being objectively pure and noble. The actions of the dominant class thus become the ofcially recognized attributes of dominance. One question remains to be answered here. How does the life-style of the dominant class come to be seen as legitimately the best way to live? It is the system of education which legitimates the dominant habitus, and thus the existing social order.9 Children from the dominant class possess the legitimate linguistic disposition, which is characterized by a distantiated use of language and a primate of form over content. There exists a kind of self-selection, which leads to an elimination without exams. This in turn makes sure that the myth of the autonomy of education, as Bourdieu calls it, in which everyone has equal opportunities in the system of education, is kept alive. Those who dont make it are said to be naturally less talented and intelligent. According to Bourdieu, this is the way in which, through an institutionalization of the dominant habitus, there exists a reproduction of social and cultural differences. He calls this le racisme de lintelligence. Bourdieus class theory is thus a theory of reproduction, the key to which lies in the concept of the habitus, which ensures a reproduction of objective conditions of existence. It does so, precisely because it is itself a product of those very same conditions of existence. Preferences that are apparent in a persons environment are thus incorporated in his or her own mind by means of socialization, and in this way, there exists a perpetuated kind of homology between preferences and conditions of existence, one strengthening the other. And this homology is, in turn, responsible for the reproduction of the classes themselves, for people within a certain class are more prone to meet, and stay, with people that are also a member of that class. In Bourdieus theory, people from class to class dont mingle a lot.

Saussurean Semiotics
Langue et Parole Saussure and the Sign
Saussures argument is rather complex, and it cannot be fully understood without briey touching upon his ideas on linguistic structure. He asks the question what linguistics analyses, or rather, what it should analyse. He states that the problem for linguistics is that its object is, like in any other science, not given in advance of the viewpoint. It is, he says, rather the viewpoint adopted that creates the object, and there is no way to tell a priori which way of looking at it is superior. The solution for this problem lies in taking the linguistic structure as an analytical starting point in linguistics. What Saussure does is distinguish between a social and an 62

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Schinkel and Tacq The Saussurean Inuence in Bourdieu individual part of language. The rst, langue, never exists completely within an individual, it is the social part of language, it is the whole stock of linguistic signs together, a reservoir, a sum total of all individual manifestations of language, parole. According to Saussure, the sign is a combination of two things a signied and a signier. Barthes (1993) has stressed the fact that a sign is therefore a triad, consisting of a signied, a signier and the sign as such, as an associative total of these rst two. The signied stands for the concept, that which is represented by a sign; the signier is, for Saussure, the sound pattern, or the signal involved. He then denes the linguistic sign as having two fundamental characteristics, the rst being that the sign is arbitrary, and the second that the linguistic signal through which a sign is transmitted has a linear temporal character. He states that language does not present itself to us as a set of signs already delimited. . . . It is an indistinct mass, in which attention and habit alone enable us to distinguish particular elements. The unit has no special phonic character, and the only denition it can be given is the following: a segment of sound which is, as distinct from what precedes and follows in the spoken sequence, the signal of a certain concept (Saussure, 1983: 102). These are some of the essential assumptions which have paved the way for many structuralists and poststructuralists. The fact that the sign is arbitrary, combined with Saussures denial of the basic function of words as being names, is a negation of the idea put forward by correspondence theories like those of the early Wittgenstein (in the days of his Tractatus), or of Suzanne Langer, in which a more nomenclaturist view of language becomes visible. To Saussure, such a naming-relationship is not of primary importance, and a signier is certainly not connected in any real way to any particular signied. A signier rather derives its meaning from the fact that it is not any other signier from within the same system of signiers. It is the principle of difference, which attributes the right signied to any particular signied, and this process is based on convention. The principle of difference is the most important principle in the connection between signier and signied, and this idea has had a major impact on structuralism after Saussure. After all, he himself states: Everything weve said so far comes down to this. In the language itself, there are only differences (Saussure, 1983: 118). As soon as one sign is compared with another, only differences matter. Signs are in opposition to each other (Saussure, 1983: 119). A signs value can furthermore be seen as a collective meaning, or a collective representation of a connection between a signier and a signied. After all, langue exists only in the collectivity, and since signs are arbitrary units, a collective agreement on their values has to exist.

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1

Distinction and Saussurean Semiotics

A Relational Logic: The Title Distinction Explained
For Saussure, the linguistic system is indeed a system, and signs derive their meaning through their relations with other signs in the total structure of signs. A sign therefore gets its value depending on the simultaneous existence of all the others (Saussure, 1983: 113). The rules of arbitrariness and of difference Saussure inicts upon the sign are crucial here. This means, for example, that meaning is given to the letter A by noticing that A B, C, and all other signs. Relations between such signs are therefore differential relations, and this way of attributing a value (and therefore a meaning) to a sign has been called the principle of differentiation, or a relational logic. The relational aspect of Bourdieus work has been highlighted as stemming mainly from Cassirer (Vandenberghe, 1999), but to a large extent, it is Saussures linguistic theory which methodologically substantiates Bourdieus relational view. In The Logic of Practice, Bourdieu makes it clear that he agrees to a large extent with this basis of Saussurean semiotics: every element receives its complete denition only through its relation with the whole of elements, as a difference within a system of differences.10 Now if difference is replaced by distinction, it becomes clear in which light his main work has to be seen. The different life-styles, and the consumed goods that come with them, may be looked upon as signs which underline (each by signifying one class of habits, and therefore a class in the widest sense of the word) the existing class differences. In Practical Reason, Bourdieu expresses the interpretation of the title of his work. He states that the very title of Distinction is meant as a reminder that what is commonly called distinction, is nothing other than difference, or a distinctive feature. This is a relational property, which exists only in its relation with other properties (Bourdieu, 1998: 6). A paragraph in the book with the heading: The Real is Relational again illustrates this. What Bourdieu expresses in this passage is the relational logic by means of which the distinctions (differences) between classes get their meaning, and he stresses the fact that the manners and life-styles to which these distinctions refer do not have an innate quality giving them the meaning they have. There is nothing natural about these differences, and the only thing that gives them meaning is the fact that they are indeed differences in relation to each other. In other words, they are arbitrary signs; they do not have any natural meaningful qualities in this respect. In Distinction itself Bourdieu states how classes and class-related behaviour are recognized: It is no accident that each group tends to recognize its specic values in that which makes its value, in Saussures sense, that is, in the latest difference which is also, very often, the latest conquest, in the structural and genetic deviation which specically denes it 64

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Schinkel and Tacq The Saussurean Inuence in Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1996: 247). Different things lets say this in general derive their value not intrinsically, but only because of the fact that they are different. So the values attributed to class habits dont come after distinctions between different habits have been made, in other words, as a logical consequence; they come with them. The three-dimensional social space is then a struggle for dominant schemes of classication and thus a struggle for better objective social conditions of existence. Bourdieu explains, in the conclusion to Distinction, again that this happens by virtue of differences, which facilitate a separative power, a distinction, . . . drawing discrete units out of indivisible continuity, difference out of the undifferentiated (Bourdieu, 1996: 479).

Bourdieu and Saussure: A Case of Eclecticism

Language and Symbolic Power offers a review of the Course in General Linguistics. Here Bourdieu conveys that he is critical of Saussure, but that there has been an inuence on him: initially the work of Saussure, and then, at the point when I became aware of the inadequacy of the model of speech (and practice) as execution, the work of Chomsky, which recognized the importance of generative dispositions, seemed to me to present sociology with some fundamental questions (Bourdieu, 1991: 33). Robbins (2000: 82) indeed states that at the end of the 1950s, Bourdieu had read, and even lectured on Saussure. In Language and Symbolic Power, he refers to Saussures distinction between internal and external elements of linguistics, and he says that doing this is a dangerous enterprise. Bourdieu, however, wants to break with the idea that the social aspect of language is an internal characteristic of language, and he makes a plea for treating language not only as a formal object of contemplation, but as something which has an impact on reality, something which is an instrument of action and power (Bourdieu, 1991: 37). For him, an internal study of language can never get to the power of words, because that power is only delegated power, and it actually stems from the objective conditions of the user of the language and of the discourse in which it is being used (Bourdieu, 1996: 107). What he does is to bring linguistic dispositions in play when he speaks of the linguistic habitus. He thus rejects the distinction between langue and parole, or at the very least, like in the discussion with Kant, denes their social conditions. Furthermore, to decode a linguistic message, the objective conditions, which he here calls the discourse, are a necessary basis of understanding. Linguistic dispositions are dened by their social conditions of production. However, what is important in this respect is that, even though he rejects the langueparole dichotomy, Bourdieu sticks to the relational logic and the principle of difference. For he argues in his 65

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1 discussion of the role of the market in the creation of symbolic value and meaning of discourse that, on the basis of distinctions between different ways of saying, distinctive manners of speaking. It follows that style, whether it be a manner of poetry as compared with prose or of the diction of a particular (social, sexual or generational) class compared with that of another class, exists only in relation to agents endowed with schemes of perception and appreciation that enable them to constitute it as a set of systematic differences, apprehended syncretically (Bourdieu, 1996: 389). Bourdieu here goes beyond the internal linguistics Saussure proposed to restrict linguistics to, and he broadens the setting of language by means of his concept of habitus, while staying within Saussures argument in incorporating a differential logic into the analysis of class. Classes thus exist by virtue of differences. Differences in life-styles, differences in language, and so on. In a way, Bourdieu takes Saussures principle of difference, and uses it against him. For whereas Saussure says langue exists in the social collectivity, Bourdieu points out, using that principle of difference, that there are many such collectivities, each with an own meaning of discourse. There is, for Bourdieu, no such thing as a homogeneous collective body of language, there are rather different such bodies, and they are meaningful in relation to each other, by means of their being different from one another. In his sociological application of Saussurean concepts, Bourdieu is therefore an eclectic. He rejects some of Saussures ideas, and at the same time incorporates others into his own work.11 As he says: I think that the core of my thought is that the properties attached to different individuals, constitutive of a society, constitute a system (ensemble) of differences which, when they are perceived by agents gifted with the necessary discernment . . . function like the elements of a system of differences, or of distinction, which is totally structurally comparable to a system of phonemes the material properties attached to an individual and to the individuals properties function like distinctive signs (Bourdieu, 2000, pers. comm.).12

In Conclusion: Where Does Saussurean Semiotics Bring Bourdieu?

It has been mentioned by several commentators that Distinction is a critique of Kants third critique (see, for instance, Lash, 1993), or that the arbitrariness of culture is essential to Bourdieus analysis (LiPuma, 1993; Garnham, 1993) and that this is a Saussurean inuence (LiPuma, 1993; Robbins, 2000). However, the logical connection between the critique of Kantian aesthetics and the incorporation of Saussurean ideas has not been sufciently claried, and the distorted views some hold with regard to Bourdieus work are often due to a misrecognition of either one of these 66

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Schinkel and Tacq The Saussurean Inuence in Bourdieu essential ingredients to his theory, and to a blurred perspective on their interrelatedness. To bring that relation to the forefront is exactly what was set out to do here. What Bourdieu gains from Saussurean semiology, through an analogy with language, is a methodological apparatus with which he is able to analyse different actions within society in relation to each other precisely because of their differences in relation to each other. In his words: Differences associated with different positions, that is, goods, practices and especially manners, function, in each society, in the same way as differences which constitute symbolic systems, such as the set of phonetics of a language or the set of distinctive features and of differential carts that constitute a mythical system, that is, as distinctive signs (Bourdieu, 1998: 89). This is a way of relating everything to everything. Moreover, it allows Bourdieu to see through the social relations of power and to state that these are symbolic relations of power. In essence, the differences between agents in the three-dimensional space of the classes are arbitrary instead of natural. They are only meaningful because they are differences. This is Bourdieus answer to Kants aesthetics. A rejection of intrinsic, natural values leads to a perception of value being created by means of difference. It can thus be said that Bourdieus theoretical underpinnings have been very much inuenced rst by Kant, and second by Saussure, in incorporating a relational logic into his thinking as an answer to the gap created by a rejection of Kantian aesthetics. Now it might be argued that Kants aesthetics dont apply in a class analysis and that Kant referred exclusively to art. But, in fact, Kant very scarcely gives examples related to art. Moreover, he has been criticized for not distinguishing between the beauty of everyday or natural objects and works of art (Wollheim, 1980). And it has also been argued that Kant denes taste so broadly that it includes things he liked himself, such as fashion and what would now be called design (Bhme, 1997). Beauty was for Kant a way of cultivating humankind as social being. Therefore the gap between ethics and aesthetics and between the beauty in nature, art and social actors and actions is, for Kant, not such a big breach. Bourdieus denial of the universality of the judgement of taste is thus an uncoupling of the Good as the Social, and the Beautiful. This pair that is socially reproduced and reinforced by means of symbolic power is disconnected in Bourdieus analysis. That is what the use of a relational logic and the principles of difference and arbitrariness have contributed to his work. In fact, it is what to a large part gives it its critical potential.

Notes
1. This concept is, however, somewhat inconveniently claimed by Bourdieu, since it has been used by many others in different contexts, such as by Piaget

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International Sociology Vol. 19 No. 1

in his developmental child psychology, or by Lucien Goldmann to denote the methodology in his sociology of art. Kant does not only refer to works of art when he speaks in terms of aesthetic experience, he also mentions the rose as an object of aesthetic pleasure (Kant, 1985). Though with regard to the recent debate in Theory, Culture and Society regarding the cunning of imperialist reason (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1999), it has been argued that Bourdieu misses the point even in France (see French, 2000; Wieviorka, 2000). Bourdieu notes that it can be changed, that it is an open set of dispositions, but continues to say that statistically speaking, most people tend to stay within the dispositions as they were once formed. This is indeed what becomes apparent in most of his works. The reason for this relative stability of the habitus may be that it generates behaviour, which then functions as a strengthening factor for the initial dispositions and ways of perception of reality; see Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992: 87). And he furthermore states that it is the homogeneity of habitus that is observed within the limits of a class of conditions of existence and social conditionings that causes practices and works to be immediately intelligible and foreseeable, and hence taken for granted (Bourdieu, 1990: 58). Similar critical remarks on the concept of habitus are made by Laermans (1984). For Alexander, the concept of habitus is merely a Trojan horse for determinism (Alexander, 1995: 136). The word is derived from Thorstein Veblen, but Bourdieu does not use it in this same sense; see Veblen (1899). This appropriate term comes from Jenkins (1992: 140). See Bourdieu and Passeron (1970). Quoted in Laermans (1984). When he speaks of what he calls a structural sociology of language, he puts it like this: A structural sociology of language, inspired by Saussure but constructed in opposition to the abstraction he imposes, must take as its object the relationship between the structured systems of sociologically pertinent linguistic differences and the equally structured systems of social differences (Bourdieu, 1996: 54). In his letter from 23 October 2000, Bourdieu agrees with the pointe of this article. It is here restated in his own words.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

References
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Biographical Note: Willem Schinkel is working as a sociologist at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is currently working on a PhD concerning violence. He is also working on a theoretical sociology. Address: Faculty of Social Sciences Room M617, PO Box 1738, Burg. Oudlaan 50, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands. [email: Schinkel@fsw.eur.nl]

Biographical Note: Jacques Tacq is Professor of Sociology at the Catholic University of Brussels. He has published work on various elds, including philosophy and causality in the social sciences, and social scientic research methods, such as multilevel analysis. He is the editor of books on Pierre Bourdieu and Immanuel Kant. Address: Catholic University Brussels, Faculty of Social Sciences, Vrijheidslaan 17, 1081 Koekelberg, Brussels, Belgium. [jacques.tacq@kubrussel.ac.be]

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