J'avais la tête qui éclate
Mar. 19th, 2004 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jawnbcFrom a week where there was too much on the go (last week), this week’s been much more low key. Strangely, too low key at times to keep focussed on that which needs to be done. Oh well, c’est ça.
I started teaching a graduate course a few weeks ago, community (adult) education. My discipline and my speciality and I got to design the whole friggin’ thing. So I’m doing a fair bit of prep time each week, but pretty much absolutely loving it. Nearly all 15 students are bright, fab and engaged (there are a couple of quiet ones). A concept that’s got a lot of currency in public policy these days--in NSW, Australia, Canada and all sorts of jurisdictions--is social capital. Problem is, too many policy folks are using definitions of social capital that pretty much confound what social capital is about--and why analyses of social capital make a great deal of sense with regards to the limits of social mobility in Western democracies.
Social capital was conceptualized by Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist. Social capital is the value of one’s social connections. It’s based on genuine membership in a social network, and the ability to valorize one’s peers when support is needed. In one sense, we all have social capital in our local communities and families. But just as individuals have wealth, power and authority, so do social networks. And some social networks can exert influence way more than others--and not necessarily the networks with the most money.
And this is where people like James Coleman and (particularly) Robert Putnam get it all wrong. The conflate social capital with social cohesion, and argue that strengthening local communities--local social networks--will make for stronger societies. They completely ignore that other social networks impede--or diminish--the social capital of others. Because Putnam and Coleman both are blinded by the liberal notion of meritocracy: work harder, get more--getting less means you’re not working hard enough.
Bourdieu said something faboo about the notion of meritocracy, most probably after getting totally pissed off with how a Putnamian notion of social capital has been embraced in settings where to question meritocracy is to be accused of being a Communist (think Red, White and Blue):
“[An] imaginary universe of perfect, competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one…and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can become anything.”
Anyways, it was a great class. And if I only get to pick one job for the rest of my life, university lecturer would be it. An honour, really.
Sources:
Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The Forms of Capital. In John Richardson, Ed. Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood Press.
Putnam, R. D. (1995). Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America. PS: Political Science and Politics, 28(4), 664-683.
I started teaching a graduate course a few weeks ago, community (adult) education. My discipline and my speciality and I got to design the whole friggin’ thing. So I’m doing a fair bit of prep time each week, but pretty much absolutely loving it. Nearly all 15 students are bright, fab and engaged (there are a couple of quiet ones). A concept that’s got a lot of currency in public policy these days--in NSW, Australia, Canada and all sorts of jurisdictions--is social capital. Problem is, too many policy folks are using definitions of social capital that pretty much confound what social capital is about--and why analyses of social capital make a great deal of sense with regards to the limits of social mobility in Western democracies.
Social capital was conceptualized by Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist. Social capital is the value of one’s social connections. It’s based on genuine membership in a social network, and the ability to valorize one’s peers when support is needed. In one sense, we all have social capital in our local communities and families. But just as individuals have wealth, power and authority, so do social networks. And some social networks can exert influence way more than others--and not necessarily the networks with the most money.
And this is where people like James Coleman and (particularly) Robert Putnam get it all wrong. The conflate social capital with social cohesion, and argue that strengthening local communities--local social networks--will make for stronger societies. They completely ignore that other social networks impede--or diminish--the social capital of others. Because Putnam and Coleman both are blinded by the liberal notion of meritocracy: work harder, get more--getting less means you’re not working hard enough.
Bourdieu said something faboo about the notion of meritocracy, most probably after getting totally pissed off with how a Putnamian notion of social capital has been embraced in settings where to question meritocracy is to be accused of being a Communist (think Red, White and Blue):
“[An] imaginary universe of perfect, competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one…and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can become anything.”
Anyways, it was a great class. And if I only get to pick one job for the rest of my life, university lecturer would be it. An honour, really.
Sources:
Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The Forms of Capital. In John Richardson, Ed. Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood Press.
Putnam, R. D. (1995). Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America. PS: Political Science and Politics, 28(4), 664-683.
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Date: 2004-03-19 07:30 am (UTC)But seriously--no, wait, equally seriously but less flirtatiously--had I stayed in academia, Bourdieu's work was on the cusp of being a whole lot more central to my own. I think I may have drawn liminally on him in my article on Star Trek--can't recall now.
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Date: 2004-03-19 07:32 am (UTC)and i didn't know you were working. wow! that is fantastic! wonderful! bravo!! even better that you are doing something you love. :-)