Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

34 MICHAEL PINCHES
demonstrate variable levels of ease or awkwardness in the realm of ‘legitimate’
taste or ‘high culture’ (1989:252). The ‘ease’ which Bourdieu says characterises the
manner and lifestyle of the bourgeoisie is pervasive in its influence ‘because it
represents the visible assertion of freedom from the constraints which dominate
ordinary people’ (1989:255). Cultural capital thus has a parallel existence to
‘economic capital’; in general, the two reinforce each other, and one can be used to
acquire the other. Though it is economic capital that ultimately proves the more
powerful asset, and is more likely to guarantee the reproduction of privilege across
generations, the two capitals need to be seen as separate, as they constitute
different means by which people acquire power and prestige–one pyramid headed
by the cultivated intellectual or artist, the other by the wealthy capitalist. For the
most part, the bourgeoisie is comprised of people who are privileged in both, but
social tensions arise over differences in the primary attachments of particular
segments. We might expect these to become particularly acute in the case of the
new rich.
Secondly, while the variable possession or lack of cultural capital has social
consequences for all, Bourdieu does not simply posit a hierarchical continuum of
differential prestige; he also distinguishes three different forms of taste dynamics
identified with the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie and the working class. Thus,
whereas the working class might seek cleanliness, the petite bourgeoisie look for
comfort and fashion, while the bourgeois, who simply assume both, pursue
harmony or refinement (1989:247). The major qualitative divide is to be found
between the ‘legitimate’ aesthetics of the bourgeoisie and the ‘popular’ aesthetics of
the working class. A crucial aspect of Bourdieu’s argument here is its materialist
line of explanation. For Bourdieu, the detached, abstract and formalist Kantian
aesthetics of the French bourgeoisie is founded in its ‘distance from necessity’
(1989:53—4, 254—5). Conversely, proletarian taste is said to be rooted in the
practical concerns of everyday life (1989:41—4, 254, 372—96), yet Bourdieu also
claims that this often combines with the domination of bourgeois-taste goods, as is
evident in the popularity of what he calls ‘cheap substitutes’ (1989:386). 41
For Bourdieu, the taste dynamics of the petite bourgeoisie or middle class,
whose position would approximate most closely the majority of the new rich in
Asia, is to be understood in terms of their intermediate position. On the one hand
they struggle to distinguish themselves from the working class, with reference to
such qualities as sobriety, rigour and neatness; on the other, they go out of their
way to emulate the bourgeois, but in doing so are distinguished by the bourgeoisie
as ‘pretentious’ and ‘flashy’ (1989:246—7). Hence the middle-class man:
is bound to be seen–both by the working classes, who do not have this
concern with their being-for-others, and by the privileged classes, who, being
sure of what they are, do not care what they seem–as the man of
appearances, haunted by the look of others and endlessly occupied with
being seen in a good light.
(1989:254)