To Break the Vicious Cycle: Doing Sociology
As a sociology student there are multiple definitions of sociology that I have and probably will continue to come across. But Bourdieu’s definition of sociology he mentioned in the documentary “Sociology is a Martial Art” was, for me, the most aim-oriented one to explain the structured structure of society, by that I mean a return to the early discussions of sociology, that it is not a natural science but a social science and how this distinction is important within the main focus of sociology.
My translation of his words is that “How is it that things happen that way? How is it that it happens like that in social life and not otherwise?” (Carles, 2001). He basically claims that anything that happens in our life not because of one particular reason or a certain action, but rather an unstable formula – a social phenomenon- that different factors enabled to happen in the circumstances. Asking the question of “how” is important here to underline and assume that there are structures, there are different parameters and layers that a thing -an event, an act, a discourse, etc.- in social life is not natural but rather structural within space, institutions, labor, but mostly within time.
“What I put under the term of ‘recognition’ then, is the set of fundamental, prereflexive assumptions that social agents engage by the mere fact of taking the world for granted, of accepting the world as it is, and finding it natural because their mind is constructed according to cognitive structures that are issued out of the very structures of the world.” (Bourdieu, 1992, p.168).
A very deeply rooted discussion that I want to bring up about neoliberalism and individualization of events or acts is also involved within this discussion so that I couldn't go further from this without mentioning it, because seeing things in social life as natural is also making them individualized and leads us misrecognize what is the issue, what are the parameters and a distraction from the standpoint of the problem or the reason of the continuing act.
Later in this paper, I aim to frame a vicious cycle -not to be too pessimistic indeed, rather an observation- according to these parameters that I brought up in the light of the definition of Bourdieu. Bourdieu's conception of “symbolic violence” and Rob Nixon’s conception of “slow violence” will be discussed in relation to each other and also in relation to how misrecognizing, unawareness leading the society to neoliberalism and individualization of the problems. Furthermore, it will be discussed how neoliberalism and individualization also justify symbolic violence and slow violence by created media discourses and cognitive structures of what is important to discuss, what is emergent and then causing reproducing the violence.
“Symbolic violence, to put it tersely and simply as possible, is the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity.” (Bourdieu, 1992, p.16). Here Bourdieu talks about how easily individuals become agencies by practicing norms, established rules within society. Symbolic violence is simply nonphysical and invisible violence that rises upon understandings which have been established within one’s practices, habitus, environment, basically a person’s social world and the practices that are sustaining the understandings of that social world.
For doing it a person doesn't have to necessarily be born into that social world, but it is to say that symbolic violence gains its power through practice and through time. Because symbolic violence comes from the practices of our social world, we are lacking in seeing it, making a distinction of it, being aware of it and by that we reproduce it. According to Bourdieu, to see social order as natural to reproduce symbolic violence.
Therefore, Bourdieu found a relation between symbolic violence and gender domination too: “Male order is so deeply grounded as to need no justification it imposes itself as self-evident, universal (man, vir, is this particular being which experiences himself as universal, who hold a monopoly of human, homo).” (Bourdieu, 1992, p.171) So that man is used to live in a world that he is the one making the rules and constructing the social order, it is also being accepted as natural by women whose reality are the same social world, who has been, maybe even for a lifetime, living under the rules that men made. Therefore, woman accepts men's rules and hegemony as universal and as natural.
Again, Bourdieu adds, who is not aware of the doxic experience that he or she has been exposed to -been the subject of it- is simply reproducing it. The aggression of Portuguese women has over other Portuguese woman who has been raped, example given in the article, is a good example to point out the effect of doxic experience on the invisibility of symbolic violence. The Portugese woman, who found the woman who is the victim of the sexual damage guilty, claims that there is a reason why the rape happened specifically to that woman. She said, “They did nothing to her. Her rights are to be at home with her two kids and to be a good mother. A Portuguese woman should be with her kids and that’s it.” (Bourdieu, 1992, p.172)
I tend to not listen to the rest of the sentences that starts with ‘A woman should…’ because of my experiences but here we see a Portuguese woman who believes it is natural that a woman's place is home, and otherwise the violence is legal and justified and this social order is obviously established by men, and again, a woman's place is the case of others. It is also a good point to underline the relationship between individualization of problem and not being aware of symbolic violence and the legitimization of it. The woman in this case, because she was not aware of the doxic experience that she has been through, is also reproducing symbolic violence over another woman by not pointing out the rapists or other structures, other systematic regulations which are to blame and the sources of the problem but individualizing the problem by blaming the woman for not being at home. So, I aim to continue my paper with focusing more on the invisibility discussion and how these symbolic violences leading us to destruction gradually by constructed discourses of what is even important or emergent to discuss.
When it comes to invisibility and formlessness, not being able to see the concrete or the structured image of violence, I immediately thought of Rob Nixon’s conception of slow violence. It refers to harm that occurs gradually and out of sight and mostly to see the consequences of them takes a lot of time. The conception underlines this kind of violence unequally affects marginalized communities by making the gradual destruction less visible and urgent through politics and media discourses.
In terms of slow violence, climate change or environmental degradation could be good examples of it. So that as you can see in these examples the violence is being legitimized through time, and because the effects of it are almost invisible to observe; we fail to capture, understand the importance of it and how it could devastate our world gradually.
In addition to invisibility, there's another context to mention which also has a dimensional relationship with invisibility discussion: the imagery, the conception of violence. There's no clear cut between which one causes another one, but it is certain that they are useful in reproductions of each one of them. “Many politicians -and indeed many voters- routinely treat environmental action as critical yet not urgent. And so generation after generation of two- or four- year cycle politicians add to the pileup of deferrable actions deferred. With rare exceptions, in the domain of slow violence ‘yes, but not now, not yet’ becomes the modus operandi.” (Nixon, 2011, p.9)
So both Bourdieu’s example of gendered symbolic violence and Nixon’s example of environmental issues underestimated through slow violence are discursively established as not urgent because of a common quality of the reproduction of those problems and the representation of them. Here, the book also discusses the effect of 9/11 occurred in United States to the constructing of violence, what is considered as a violence threat. The constructing of violence as ‘violence is what is spectacular, what is immediately sensational and instantly hyper visible’ which are not the case for either slow violence or symbolic violence. (Nixon, 2011, p.13) Therefore, I think that might be the commonality of the invisibility of them. This conceptualization of violence becomes a discourse through narratives and the power that politics and media holds take a huge place for the formation of these discourses by using, formulating and generating the narratives.
For instance, Global warming has become discursively something like a ‘Big Brother’ that does not exist but always there, always being used by politicians and some experts to warn people to not use certain kind of deodorants, etc. It also goes with how system suggests woman to deal with hegemonic masculinity, to become so successful that being a woman could not harm, do not make mistakes that someone can hold against you, etc.… Basically you have to compensate being a woman, it is your fault but furthermore it is not a fault in the first place, it is disadvantaged because of the system itself.
First aspect of it is that both global warming and hegemonic masculinity are invisible because the causes of them are well-hidden within the structures of the society, institutions, certain mechanisms, etc. and also this invisibility, through discourses, is being used to misdirection of the source of the problem so that the problem is being reproduced and both of the aspects I have mentioned, in fact, are political.
Rachel Carson on ‘Silent Spring’: “a shadow that is no less ominous because it is formless and obscure” (Nixon, 2011, p.10) They are no less harmful because they are invisible or because we are not able to understand, grasp the systematic reproduction of them. Because it happens slowly it doesn't mean that it is not going to cause damage.
To conclude, as you can see there's a relation between symbolic violence and slow violence that both are invisible within structures and practices and their importance being reduced through discourses. Therefore, the vicious cycle I mentioned earlier and aimed to explain the different parameters and dimensions of it through the paper is to be broken. It is to say that it is not going to happen immediately and there is no clear, obvious way to do it. However, in my opinion, there is a very crucial part, a very important step to acknowledge first to do that. It is; accepting what is personal, what is seen as individualistic is, in fact, decomposable from what is collective, what is socially constructed. By understanding, acknowledging this and harmonizing them with our practices, we establish a way to deindividualize the problems and also to capture the bigger picture, avoid the disconnection of the self from what is happening and what is created and constructed through discourses.
Therefore, Bourdieu’s choices of words to describe doing sociology is, as he also adds, not for adding another academical description to the terminology but making it understandable -within the members of society- (Carles, 2001). Because if the members of society, not just the ones that analyze it, understand the relation between their acts and their socially constructed world, then the gradual effect of the aim of doing sociology would be accomplished.
Bibliography
• Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Harvard University Press.
• Pierre Bourdieu, “Symbolic Violence,” pp. 167-174 in Invitation to Reflexive
• Carles, P. (Director). (2001). Sociology is a martial art [Documentary film]. C-P Productions.
