{"id":3999,"date":"2016-04-06T13:58:37","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T20:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/?p=3999"},"modified":"2020-01-09T04:06:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T11:06:04","slug":"3999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/3999\/3999\/","title":{"rendered":"Bourdieu and the Bloggernacle: Autonomy and Apostasy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHe that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.\u201d<\/p>\n

“For, behold, priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get …\u00a0praise of the world; but they seek not the welfare of Zion.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This should be the final post in the series \u2013 at least for a while. Whereas the previous post was a Bourdieuian indictment of us who read, lurk and comment within the Bloggernacle, this post is more aimed at those of us who engage in the writing and publishing of posts within our little online community. To do this, I will provide a Bourdieuian account of the relationship and struggles between two\u00a0fields of cultural production: the LDS church and the Bloggernacle. (All pages refer to Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production<\/em>, chapters of which can be found here <\/a>and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bourdieu\u2019s understanding of cultural production \u2013 this includes art, science, religion, music, literature, etc. \u2013 can be understood in terms of his diagram below:<\/p>\n

\"cultural<\/a><\/p>\n

The diagram is a logical representation of the social space in which we live, with north and south representing the amount of economic and cultural capital that a person has. West and east, by contrast, represent the relative concentrations of cultural capital (what we might put on a resume) in the west or economic capital (what we should declare to the IRS) in the east. Roughly speaking \u2013 and with significant overlap and historical variation – we could locate the following fields of cultural production from west to east: Art and Literature, Religion, Science, Politics, Economics. Those who wield power within our society, obviously find themselves at the top of the chart.<\/p>\n

(A side note for the sake of exposition: A Marxist would want to turn this table clockwise 90 degrees, thus making economics the base upon which the more cultural fields are built. Bourdieu\u2019s table, however, is situated to highlight the struggle for stratification within different fields of cultural production.)<\/p>\n

Within the field of cultural production, then, there are several other distinctions that are relevant to understanding the struggles and mutual (mis)understandings among cultural producers. On the right hand side exists the field of large-scale cultural production \u2013 those types of cultural production which are aimed at either mass-consumption (social or pop art) or, more toward the top of the chart, distinctive\/conspicuous consumption within \u201chigh\u201d society (patroned, commissioned or otherwise bourgeois art). More to the west, however, exists the final sub-field: that of small-scale or limited cultural production \u2013 those types of culture which are consumed (at the top) by other producers within the same field (pure art or \u201cart for art\u2019s sake\u201d) or consumed by very few, if any people at all (avant-garde or bohemian art) \u2013 the difference between these two being the quantity and quality of their actual audience.<\/p>\n

Again, it must be kept in mind that while Bourdieu focuses on artistic production, he also insists that the same forces structure and stratify all forms of cultural production, including academia, literature, music, religion and blogging. Every field is stratified along the lines of autonomy from vs. tutelage to the ruling authorities (east\/west) and orthodox conservatism vs heretical innovation (north\/south).\u00a0 It is in this spirit that I wish to interpret the relationship between the church and the Bloggernacle along these Bourdieuian lines.<\/p>\n

To do this, I wish to limit the social space under consideration to the general church membership and Mormon culture. Within this social space, the church leadership is the \u201cruling class\u201d at the northeastern corner from which the low-level, mainstream (to the south) and the largely self-contained sub-field of Mormon intellectuals who write for other Mormon intellectuals (to the west) can be distinguished. It should also be noted that under this transformation, the capital to the right would not be economic capital, but religious capital \u2013 which is basically priesthood authority within the LDS tradition.\u00a0 While Bourdieu insists that material or economic capital is the most fundamental type, he does allow for religious authority to be a dominating force to which other fields of cultural production are sometimes subservient. Since the Enlightenment of the 18th<\/sup> century, he claims,<\/p>\n

\u201c[i]ntellectual and artistic life has progressively freed itself from<\/strong> aristocratic and ecclesiastical tutelage<\/strong> as well as from its aesthetic and ethical demands. This process is correlated with the constant growth of a public of potential consumers\u2026 an ever-growing, ever more diversified corps of producers\u2026 [and a] multiplication and diversification of agencies of consecration.\u201d (Pg. 112)<\/p>\n

The Bloggernacle, then, is a field of LDS cultural production – an LDS Republic of Letters, if you will \u2013 that, to varying degrees, seeks and achieves autonomy from the ruling elite of the priesthood leadership. It is useful to provide further examples of where other LDS cultural producers are situated within this larger field. Starting at the northeastern corner, we would find SS manuals and the church public relations department. Moving southward, we would probably find Meridian magazine and Millennial Star\u00a0until we came to Jack Weyland and Gerald Lund in the southeastern corner. The culturally consecrated (as opposed to priesthood consecrated), northwestern corner would probably include Dialogue and various Mormon Studies programs throughout academia. Again, moving southward, we would find Times and Seasons, BCC, W&T and FMH until we came to the bohemian, southwest corner made up of myself and other low-level individual blogs that largely go ignored. Farms, Fair and apologetics in general would lie toward the central-northward direction while most of the locally produced works that one can find at Seagull books, for example, would probably lie toward the central-south.<\/p>\n

With this taxonomy in mind we can elaborate upon the variations in and struggles for symbolic capital and autonomy within LDS culture. This relationship is crucial since, Bourdieu argues, the struggle for autonomy from the dominant culture is the primary means to the symbolic capital necessary to contest that dominant culture. The quest for autonomy and freedom (academic or otherwise) from priesthood authority is, then, a potential source for great conflict with and against the church. Within the eastern field of large-scale and heteronomous LDS production, producers thus find it necessary to adapt their cultural products to tastes and preferences of their LDS market, be it the aggregate demand of mass consumption (toward the south) and\/or a specific request from their priesthood authorities (toward the north). The movement westward is thus defined by an increased autonomy from both the LDS mainstream as well as priesthood supervision:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe autonomy of a field of restricted production can be measured by its power to define its own criteria for the production and evaluation of its products<\/strong>.\u201d (Pg. 115)<\/p>\n

Consequently, as fields of LDS cultural production move westward, their cultural interest in a neutrality, if not active disinterest towards LDS orthodoxy grows<\/strong>. Producers within the field of limited LDS production seek the approval and good opinion of the fellow cultural producers and critics of whom they (the original producers) have a good opinion of.<\/p>\n

\u201c[I]n the most perfectly autonomous sector of the field of cultural production, where the only audience aimed at is other producers<\/strong> \u2026 the economy of practices is based, as in a generalized game of \u2018loser wins\u2019, on a systematic inversion of the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies<\/strong>: that of business (it excludes the pursuit of profit<\/strong>\u2026), that of power (it condemns honours and temporal greatness<\/strong>), and even that of institutionalized cultural authority (the absence of any academic training or consecration may be considered a virtue).\u201d (Pg. 39)<\/p>\n

For relatively those neglected bloggers, such as myself, who find themselves situated in the southwest corner, there are two paths out of obscurity: I can gain a larger audience within the LDS public by \u201cselling-out\u201d and traveling eastward toward a low-level popularity or I can \u201cculturally refine\u201d my blogging content so as to strive for the accolades, hat tips and linked posts from the other, \u201cmore culturally consecrated\u201d blogs above me in our social space. These two audiences, however, consist of very different people whose good opinions are valued very differently.<\/p>\n

The reason why moving northward within the field of autonomous, limited-scale production is so difficult is because such a field is the product of a long-term arms race in the struggle for the symbolic capital that comes with upward mobility. Symbolic capital, to be clear, is not the same as economic, cultural, social or even religious capital. It is, instead, the ability to define for others the relative legitimacy of these various types of capital and those who produce and trade in them. A person with high symbolic capital is thus able to legislate – with relatively low resistance – the definition and value of their own field with respect to other, competing fields. Let\u2019s take Kate Kelly as an example. To the extent that people accepted her definition and valuation of (il)legitimate LDS culture without objection or resistance, she was thus wielding symbolic power within the LDS community. (J. Max Wilson provided a fantastic, ableit sadly neglected critique<\/a> of how those within the Bloggernacle struggle for distinction and symbolic capital within it.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe struggle in the field of cultural production over the imposition of the legitimate mode of cultural production is inseparable from the struggle within the dominant class<\/strong> \u2026 to impose the dominant principle of domination (that is to say \u2013 ultimately \u2013 the definition of human accomplishment)…\u00a0 who is legitimately entitled to designate legitimate writers or artists<\/strong>.\u201d (Pg. 41)<\/p>\n

The defining relationship both within and between different fields of cultural production, according to Bourdieu, is one of competitive struggle. The priesthood leadership struggles against the wayward and \u201cleveling\u201d tendencies of the mainstream membership from which they have been “set apart” and the world in general. The largely autonomous Bloggernacle similarly struggles to distance itself from and delegitimize the \u201cunthinking\u201d mass membership of the church. Higher blogs struggle to distinguish themselves from the less rigorous, less qualified or otherwise unworthy-of-serious-attention bloggers such as myself. I struggle to subvert the principles and values according to which such bloggers set themselves apart from the rightful domination of priesthood authority. And so on. To exist as a producer of culture just is to struggle against and distinguish oneself from other forms and producers of culture.<\/p>\n

Fields of cultural production such as the church or the Bloggernacle thus exist in a (sometimes uneasy) tension wherein one\u2019s peers are both 1) united against the power (symbolic or otherwise) wielded by outsiders and 2) competitive obstacles to one\u2019s own struggle for religious or cultural capital within your respective sub-field.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe writer, the artist\u2026 even the scientist writes not only for a public, but for a public of equals who are also competitors<\/strong>. Few people depend as much as artists and intellectuals do for their self-image upon the image others \u2026 have of them.\u201d (Pg. 116)<\/p>\n

Doctrines and policies within the church, or slogans and metaphors within the Bloggernacle, then, are no different from the scientific realm in which,<\/p>\n

\u201cTheories, methods and concepts<\/strong> are<\/strong> to be considered as strategies aimed at installing, restoring, strengthening, safeguarding or overthrowing a determinate structure of relationships of symbolic domination; that is, they constitute the means for obtaining or safeguarding the monopoly of the legitimate mode of practicing a literary, artistic or scientific activity<\/strong>.\u201d (Pg. 139)<\/p>\n

While he does not come out and say it, I suspect that Bourdieu would agree with a paraphrase of David Sloan Wilson\u2019s group selectionist theory: Cooperation within fields is easiest to maintain where competition between fields is most fierce and (this he does say) competition is most fierce between fields that are closest to each other. Quite obviously, the Bloggernacle and the LDS church are very close to one another in the space of cultural production.<\/p>\n

Given the historical nature of the struggle for capital that defines each both the Bloggernacle and the church, Bourdieu totally rejects the idea that these communities (or any academic discipline while we\u2019re at it) can ever be defined in terms their quest for coherence or consensus (sorry Pierce):<\/p>\n

\u201c[W]hat can be constituted as a system for the sake of analysis is not the product of a coherence-seeking intention or an objective consensus<\/strong> (even if it presupposes unconscious agreement on common principles) but the product and prize of a permanent conflict; or, to put it another way, that the generative, unifying principle of this \u2018system\u2019 is the struggle.\u201d<\/strong> (Pg. 34)<\/p>\n

As is to be expected, the struggle that constitutes every (sub)field is historical in nature, admitting of no timeless essences which might distinguish one field from another. Any attempt at imposing a timeless essence upon a religious, scientific or artistic field is<\/p>\n

\u201conly re-using, without knowing it, the historical production of the slow and very gradual work of purification<\/strong> \u2026 which, in each of the genres \u2026 accompanied the automatization of the field of production.\u201d (Pg. 190)<\/p>\n

While this clearly amounts to a strong argument for continuing revelation within the church, he is also careful to distance himself from a charismatic conception of prophets or online personalities.\u00a0 Cultural authorities within any field, he insists, do not act as \u201cthe unconscious spokesman of a group\u201d (Pg. 56) and he would totally reject the possibility of any community being organized solely or even primarily for the sake of \u201cmourning with those who mourn\u201d or \u201cgiving voice\u201d to the oppressed. Rather, a cultural authority is he or she who is most praised and followed within their cultural field since it is he or she that is able to best accrue symbolic capital for that field at the expense of other competing fields. In other words, the French placed Napoleon above themselves only insofar as he led them to victory over their neighbors.<\/p>\n

It is in this sense that some innovations and revelations are well received within a community, they being seen as \u201cconsecrated betrayal[s] of expectations\u201d according to which the consecrated elite come to alter the ways in which they continually sift the upwardly mobile from the bohemian heretics. (Pg. 119)<\/p>\n

\u201cScholastic codifications of the rules of scientific practice are inseparable from the project of building a kind of intellectual papacy<\/strong>, replete with its international corps of vicars, regularly visited or gathered together in concilium<\/em> and charged with the exercise of rigorous and constant control over common practice.\u201d (Pg. 139)<\/p>\n

To be repeat, the relationship between the cultural producers that make up the Bloggernacle and Church leadership is one of conflict and struggle. Both parties \u2013 especially the former \u2013 define themselves in opposition to and distinction from the other. If the relationship between the Bloggernacle and the church were one of full compatibility, then the former\u2019s quest for autonomy from the latter would be meaningless. Cultural producers on the far left, however, do seek a meaningful autonomy from priesthood regulation precisely because there is a struggle between the two parties for symbolic capital. Both sides claim the right to define and evaluate the persons, products and capitals that circulate within LDS culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll critics declare not only their judgement of the work but also their claim to the right to talk about it and judge it<\/strong>. In short, they take part in a struggle for the monopoly of legitimate discourse<\/strong> about the work of art, and consequently in the production of the value of the work of art.\u201d (pg. 35-36)<\/p>\n

This, I submit, pretty well sums up the relationship which the Bloggernacle has to the church. By continually discussing the church, we continually assert our claims to judge the church. It is for this reason that the church, like any other dominant class, attempts to strike a balance with these producers of Mormon culture. It offers to<\/p>\n

\u201crecognize the intellectual\u2019s and the artist\u2019s monopoly on the production of the work of art as an instrument of pleasure\u2026 in return, the artist is expected to avoid serious matters<\/strong>, namely social and political questions.\u201d (Pg. 128)<\/p>\n

Within the current context, then, a Blogger is allowed by their church leaders to post whatever they like so long as they do not interfere with, subvert or otherwise call into question the social, political or otherwise moral functions of the church. It is when this \u201ccompromise\u201d is ignored or actively rejected that both the church and those parts of the Bloggernacle that are most autonomous of the church threaten to withhold the cultural capital of which they are the guardians from each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny act of cultural production implies an affirmation of its claim to cultural legitimacy: when different producers confront each other, it is still in the name of their claims to orthodoxy<\/strong> or, in Max Weber\u2019s terms, to the legitimate and monopolized use of a certain class of symbolic goods<\/strong>; whey they are recognized, it is their claim to orthodoxy that is being recognized.\u201d (Pg. 116)<\/p>\n

It is little wonder, then, that these oppositions often \u201cexpress themselves in terms of reciprocal excommunications\u201d (pg. 117) in which each party claims that the other is actually the one who left them and their (no longer recognized) orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

To recap, the path leading from autonomy from priesthood authority to apostasy against priesthood authority is as follows:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An online community (the Bloggernacle) distinguishes itself\u00a0from the LDS mainstream.<\/li>\n
  2. The Bloggernacle strives for autonomy from the priesthood\u00a0authorities who\u00a0define the social world and prioritize the different forms of capital that circulate within it for the LDS mainstream.<\/li>\n
  3. \u00a0The Bloggernacle becomes a largely self-contained community of peers who mutually evaluate each other according to their own logic and history which is distinct from that of the mainstream church.<\/li>\n
  4. A hierarchy emerges around the differential production and accumulation of the cultural capital which defines\u00a0the Bloggernacle.<\/li>\n
  5. The elite within the Bloggernacle’s cultural hierarchy\u00a0gain symbolic capital by which they gain the ability (authority)\u00a0to define the social world and prioritize the different forms of capital that circulate within it for those within the Bloggernacle.<\/li>\n
  6. The symbolic capital that comes from being a cultural elite within Bloggernacle\u00a0is thus brought to bear in a struggle against the, by very definition, distinct symbolic capital of the ruling elite of the LDS priesthood authorities.<\/li>\n
  7. These two, distinct hierarchies find themselves compelled to excommunicate each other by the authority of the differing symbolic capital that they each wield in opposition to the\u00a0other.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Also, just for fun, here is a very rough, first draft of the taxonomy that I have in mind. \u00a0I would love for any additions or corrections to this:<\/p>\n

    \"Bloggernacle<\/a>