Programme full

Wednesday 15 April 2015 11:00 - 12:30
PAPER SESSION 2
participation in their couple relationships. Leading to a consideration of how the process of 'emotionalising men' can
be seen as a site of both the reproduction of, and resistance to, gendered power.
Sociology of Education
M137, GEORGE MOORE BUILDING
Playing with Capital: Inherited and Acquired Capital in a Jazz School Audition
Nylander, E., Melldahl, A.
(Linköping University)
A common dream among the youth is to become a successful musician. By surveying young aspiring musicians trying
to enter a particularly prestigious jazz audition, this paper examines assets and dispositions involved in the very
formation of a music field. In the study we build on Bourdieusian sociological theory and method in order to map out a
space of jazz contesters and characterize the group(s) seeking to enter. Our findings, based on a specific multiple
correspondence analysis performed on 211 applicants, suggest that the space of jazz contesters is structured by three
important factors: (i) the total volume of music capital, (ii) commitment to the (professional) field of practice and (iii) the
familiarity acquired through previous music socialization and training.
Using clustering techniques, we further distinguish four groups among the applicants - the Insiders, Outsiders,
Inheritors and Underdogs - and reveal the success rate of the groups. We find that the acquisition and enactment of
field-specific symbolic assets is of particular importance for elite music admissions, while at the same time the
sizeable number of musically affluent candidates competing for a small number of places turns the audition into an
event underscored with considerable uncertainty.
'When Things Go Wrong I Go Straight Back to What I Know Best….the Blue Gang': The Role of Localised
Capital in Social Mobility
Wilson, A., Abrahams, J.
(Cardiff University)
This paper draws upon the narratives of a group of young people with varying educational backgrounds and
trajectories. The cohort ranged from those who had left school at 16 with no GCSE's to those who had graduated from
university. What they all have in common is their identification with one of two rival area based gangs. Through this we
explore their motivations for identifying with these gangs and how this may serve to protect their sense of self and
belonging during a process of social mobility. The gangs imitate the well-known Los Angeles 'Bloods and Crips' who
are recognisable through their choice of clothing colour (either red or blue). Whilst identification with these gangs often
results in young people being denigrated and labelled as anti-social members of the 'underclass', we argue that their
identifications were in fact attempts to generate symbolic value and worth. Using a Bourdieusian framework the young
people's stories are located contextually within their dominated position in social space. We argue that by identifying
with this group they generated a form of localised capital, which, whilst not exchangeable within the wider field of
power served to protect their habitus as they embarked on a journey of social mobility. The fact that their identity and
stylistic displays were symbolically legitimated, in at least one field, provided them with a buffer if things went wrong
during their transition from the local field of the ghetto to the wider social space where they were they faced symbolic
violence.
High Social Theory Meets Lowly Social Reality: Teaching Bourdieu in the Parisian Banlieue
Truong, F.
(Université Paris 8 and Goldsmiths, University of London)
This paper addresses the confrontation between Bourdieu's high social theory and a public disarmed to appropriate
his views about symbolic domination and social inequality: the lower-class, immigrant pupils of high schools located in
the declining urban periphery of Greater Paris, known as the banlieues. Through an intensive 6 years fieldwork in
participant observation, I propose an empirical account of the social reception and effects of Bourdieu's work as it
questions the risk of meaningless behaviour for both pupils and teachers and explores the subjective meaning of the
domination theory for dominated individuals, between acceptance and denial. Bourdieu's theory can function as an
habitus in itself, generating new practical conducts and symbolic representations, as well as a precarious and
ambivalent feeling of self-empowerment. This fieldwork has been combined with a 5 years longitudinal study after the
pupils left highschool. Questioning how social science knowledge has been 'digested', reinterpreted and internalized
BSA Annual Conference 2015 106
Glasgow Caledonian University