Bourdieu: Cultural Capital, the Love of Art & Hip Hop

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu was interested in how the organisation of culture and the social world around us could affect our individual view of the world. How we didn’t just pick the culture we liked, but in some ways culture picked us – made us more or less likely to act in certain ways.

I look at Bourdieu’s ideas about cultural capital, social capital, and institutional capital, primarily through his book, the Love of Art.

For Bourdieu, facts about the world could be measured, collected, and recorded; but they were also instinctively absorbed by us from a young age – they became subjectified into our own behaviour. He was interested in how these cultural and social phenomena tcouldhat connect us to the wider world. Our tastes, accents, styles of speaking, mannerisms, and values can be the product of our social environment and our own minds. He sought ‘the subjective dispositions within which these structures are actualized.’

Our preferences in art, literature, or music are, in large part at least, determined by our social positions, our family’s exposure to specific cultural artefacts, our economic possibilities, or the interests of the faculty of the school we attend. In the most obvious sense, an American girl attending high school today is unlikely to enjoy 16th century Mongolian folk songs. But why is this? Why are our tastes often so uniform?
Bourdieu’s answer is cultural capital.

He saw that If we are bought up in an aristocratic family who’s friends and teachers all read the Homeric epics then we too are more likely to attach a value to that cultural artefact. If everyone tells us these stories are good as a child we are of course, more likely to value them because praise for reading them is a reward as powerful as any financial reward. Economic capital, like money, can be exchanged for other goods. And so too can cultural capital.

Finally, I look at what this means for culture today, taking a Bourdieuan look at hip-hop and grime
.


Or send me a one-off tip of any amount and help me make more videos:


Buy on Amazon through this link to support the channel:


Follow me on:


Credits:


Stormzy Glastonbury Photo
Henry W. Laurisch [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Sources:

Bourdieu, The Love of Art

Bourdieu, Forms of Capital

Bourdieu, Theory of Practice

De Paor-Evans, A. The Intertextuality and Translations of Fine Art and Class in Hip-Hop Culture. Arts 2018, 7, 80.

[achraf-g-idrissi]

Great video as usual. Thank You
Can you please do a video on something related to Edward Said. since your channel lately seems to have become oriented towards the Cultural Turn in the humanities and social Sciences, Said's understanding of Cultural Imperialism, Secular Humanism and the role of the Intellectual would be a great addition to our channel.
Thank you once again

[jordanbeard]

Hello fellow Bimm students reading the comments while watching this

[TheCatiduso]

This is really good! I might just pass my exam in social differences with content like this! Thank you for helping me grow my cultrual capital! ❤️

[LogicGated]

The cultural capital that hip hop created for itself is astounding.

[romanovrex]

I wonder where this puts actual enjoyment, is any enjoyment of a piece of art a sort of placebo affect brought by cultural posturing, or is there a genuine experience of enjoyment which is innocent of status seeking? Perhaps there is no way of telling.

[cam]

Found this channel because I needed easier understanding of Bourdieu, I'm very grateful now because this channel is the cultural capital I need right now.

/ Will probably binge watch everything if I can.

[josephancion]

Ok, mentioning hip-hop drew me to the video, I'll admit it. Even though I like Bourdieu, "hip-hop" was the factor that made me click on the notification.

[jemmanuel]

Refreshing - there's usually minimal space for considering philosophy and Hip-Hop side by side. Thanks for generating a point of dialogue.

[wcropp]

You always do a great job balancing the pacing of your videos with the complexity level—I appreciate that they are not dumbed down, and that you don’t sound like you’re on meth. Keep up the great work, my friend—your videos are always a pleasant surprise.

[andresjimenez]

Hello, a few days ago I discovered your amazing channel and when i watched several videos that deal with the issues of social and economic systems, I wondered if you could make a video about the economic system and environmental degradation. And if you could identify the fallacies in the issue, since many pro-system say that Capitalism will be able to solve these problems through innovation and that it was those countries where there were socialist systems where the natural environment was most contaminated and destroyed. Others argue that it is the opposite and others mention that it is necessary to overcome both systems since they are two sides of the same coin and it is necessary to understand the complexity of the problem outside the Eurocentric and Anglo-Saxon logic. ... . I am currently in the sixth semester of POLITICAL SCIENCE and I have decided to investigate more on the topic of Climate Change, common resources, redistribution of natural resources, consumerism among others.

My main concern lies in identifying that the dominant economic model (dominant paradigm) is based on an infinite linear growth in a planet of finite resources, which results in many phenomena such as: Hyper-consumption, a structural inequality where the richest they consume more resources, the inequality at international level where some countries are destined to be over-exploited and to be suppliers of raw materials for the development of others, the loss of biodiversity, extinction of species, scarcity of resources among many others. (These last phenomena worry me too since my dad is a biologist)

That said, I consider that from the social sciences (Political Science Included) it is the duty to propose alternative systems that break with the dominant paradigm, both politically and economically and that allow a redistribution of resources, such as fair economic activities and consumption rational of them.

[jvb]

Brilliant! Such a clear representation of Bourdieu's ideas. Important ideas.

[colegiffin]

Awesome video. The use of pictures and scenarios really helped with understanding a great deep theory of power. Your craftsmanship is incredible.

[wlxlhmk]

Lewis: I like how much you emphasize Habermas’ ‘public sphere’ for democratic discussion/argumentation. The structure of YT is oppressive in how it gives power to YT channel users in discussion at the expense of other commenters. Though, on your last video you removed my 1st intellectual property abolition thread without notice to me. And you removed another comment in this video. So instead of immediately removing comments (or blocking users) from now on, I have a suggestion that you respond to each user with the same or similar following comment:

“YT channel users can remove any comments and block other users from commenting for any reason. This is anti free speech and gives power to YT channel users at the expense of other users commenting on their channel. Your last comment however I won’t immediately remove this comment. So instead I’m giving you until 24 hours from now to explain why I shouldn’t remove your last comment.
(I’m also open to hearing explanations from anyone for why/how I should change this process)”

Please let me know your thoughts. You could substitute “remove your comment” with “block you” or “remove your comment & block you” whenever it seems appropriate. It’s also important YT channels don’t ban any particular terms: *All terms can be ethically used in the right context* . It would be very beneficial for free speech & democracy on the internet if more channel users (& users/mods/platform holders on other sites) started conducting themselves like this.

[Frownlandia]

What makes Beethoven more respectable than LL Cool J? I can't speak to Beethoven, but I'm reminded of the phrase, "Deepest, bluest–my hat is like a shark's fin."

[meezanlmt]

Best channel said this two years ago. Say it now

[CanadianRevolution]

There’s a difference between listening to Hendrix for the first time today versus when he first started playing; it lies in the subjective experience and the uniqueness of the event in the moment of its arrival. This is the use-value of sociocultural capital from an ethical perspective.

[africanhistory]

I find your Kung Fu rewarding. Why did you not just say African Diaspora? Do not santize reality. We are speaking about the children of the Atlantic slave trade. I would also add (I meaning me not you) as an African that it is strange that hip hop makes reference more to European culture but not to its own African culture as a point of concern.

[ignitionfrn]

1:50 - Cultural capital
10:25 - Hip Hop

[spitfirepilot]

Excellent. Bourdiou is right, of course, on his main points. I'd add, though: (1) some art productions are actually richer than others: a third person account of cultural consumption can miss a key reason why Shakespeare survives better than, say, Dekker. (2) late capitalism is nihilistic. It often favours infantilism over complexity. It is thus the common enemy of Stormzy and Wagner. Some high modernism, appreciated by a minority, it is true, is more resistant to the culture industry than much of the cultural production aimed at both the middle and subordinated classes.

[Bisquick]

Does this make Trump a weird form of culture capital? Specifically related to those who value the "spectacle" of politics?