The Organization of Chipped-Stone Economies at Piedras Negras ...

in a less advantageous socio-economic situation, or simply do not wish to change or
challenge the status quo. At times, doxic dispositions are realized, challenged, and
brought into social discourse. Contestation is then created between those who seek higher
status and economic wherewithal, and those who have it. Bourdieu called this dynamic a
field of cultural production.
In the field of cultural production the dispositions and practices of the
“Newcomer” are considered to be heterodoxic, and those of the dominant individuals,
orthodoxic. Bourdieu (1993:83) described this relationship with an example of the French
art market, which opposes small producers to large commercial enterprises.
Those in Dominant positions operate essentially defensive strategies,
designed to perpetuate the status quo by maintaining themselves and the
principles on which their dominance is based. The world is as it should be,
since they are on top and clearly deserve to be there; excellence therefore
consists in being what one is, with reserve and understatement, urbanely
hinting at the immensity of one’s means by the economy of one’s means,
refusing the assertive, attention-seeking strategies which expose the
pretensions of the young pretenders. The dominant are drawn towards
silence, discretion and secrecy, and their orthodoxic discourse, which is
only ever wrung from them by the need to rectify the heresies of the
newcomers, is never more than the explicit affirmation of self-evident
principles which go without saying and would go better unsaid. ‘Social
problems’ are social relations: they emerge from confrontation between
two groups, two systems of antagonistic interests and theses. In the
relationship that constitutes them, the choice of the moment and sites of
battle is left to the initiative of the challengers, who break the silence of
the doxa and call into question the unproblematic, taken-for-granted world
of the dominant groups. The dominated producers, for their part, in order
to gain a foothold in the market, have to resort to subversive strategies
which will eventually bring them the disavowed profits only if they
succeed in overturning the hierarchy of the field without disturbing the
principles on which the field is based. Thus, their revolutions are only ever
partial ones, which displace the censorships and transgress the conventions
but do so in the name of the same underlying principles.
Thus, heterodoxy describes those dispositions and practices that challenge the norm,
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