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Instrumental Power

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Pierre Bourdieu. Pierre Bourdieu (French: [buʁdjø]; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist, anthropologist,[2] and philosopher.[3] Bourdieu rejected the idea of the intellectual "prophet," or the "total intellectual," as embodied by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Pierre Bourdieu

His best known book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979), in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position, or more precisely, are themselves acts of social positioning. His argument is put forward by an original combination of social theory and data from quantitative surveys, photographs and interviews, in an attempt to reconcile difficulties such as how to understand the subject within objective structures.

In the process, he tried to reconcile the influences of both external social structures and subjective experience on the individual (see structure and agency). Life and career[edit] Ideology and Symbolic power: Between Althusser and Bourdieu. Western Marxism has often laid considerable stress upon the ideology of modern capitalist societies.

Ideology and Symbolic power: Between Althusser and Bourdieu.

This focus upon ideology stems from the failure of proletarian revolution to have either occurred, or establish socialism within Western Europe. The exact nature and function of ideology became paramount in Marxian explanations of the continued stability of Western capitalism after the Great War and Great Depression. Marxian conceptualizations of symbolic domination (under the notion of ideology) remain in the realm of consciousness and intellectual frameworks. Pierre Bourdieu developed a paradigm for understanding symbolic power and domination through his theory of dispositional practices that breaks with the concept of ideology and it basis in the tradition of ‘Kantian intellectualism’. Like Bourdieu, Althusser endeavor to understand symbolic domination was derived from the problem of social production and reproduction of stratified social structures.

Written by Mathew Toll. Emagazine English Language Conference 2013: Blair's babes and Cameron's chaps. When Tony Blair took office in 1997, around a quarter of the MPs elected for the Labour Party were women.

emagazine English Language Conference 2013: Blair's babes and Cameron's chaps

Since the House of Commons had up until that point been viewed as an enclave of male privilege, this influx of women was expected to change the dynamics of the institution. Would the women change the tone of debate? Would the bear pit of privately educated middle-aged white males yelling at each other be altered, calmed down and turned into a collaborative and cooperative place for civilised and rational discussion? After all, women cooperate and men compete, don't they? Well, not really. Shaw discovered that women tended not to break the rules as much as the men. Female MSPs on an equal footing, study finds. A new study finds women in the Scottish Parliament participate on an equal basis with their male colleagues There is a received wisdom that parliaments – no matter the proportion of women – are male-dominated environments.

Not so in Scotland, according to new research. Why do politicians use business jargon? 5 February 2013Last updated at 19:46 ET Going forward.

Why do politicians use business jargon?

Leverage. Level playing field. In the business of politics, politicians increasingly use corporate buzzwords. Why, asks Sally Davies. There was a line that stood out in Barack Obama's second inaugural address last month, but not in a carve-it-on-the-Lincoln-memorial sort of way. How do women fare in parliament? In 2006, Tony Blair told the House of Commons that the next election would be a contest between "a heavyweight and a flyweight".

How do women fare in parliament?

He predicted that his successor, Gordon Brown, would knock out the Conservative leader, David Cameron, with a "big, clunking fist". These remarks delighted the Cameron camp while appalling many on Blair's own side. Labour supporters feared for their electoral prospects if voters got the idea that, as one journalist put it, "Gordon Brown is from Mars, David Cameron is from Venus". Today it is a truism that effective leaders do not use "big, clunking fists": in the words of the management guru Tom Peters, they "listen, motivate, support". They wear their authority lightly and are not afraid to show their feelings. But Cameron is also a typical Venusian leader in another, more paradoxical way: he is a man. Agreement in the House of Lords? Not likely! A user's guide to art-speak.

The Simon Lee Gallery in Mayfair is currently showing work by the veteran American artist Sherrie Levine.

A user's guide to art-speak

A dozen small pink skulls in glass cases face the door. A dozen small bronze mirrors, blandly framed but precisely arranged, wink from the walls. In the deep, quiet space of the London gallery, shut away from Mayfair's millionaire traffic jams, all is minimal, tasteful and oddly calming. Until you read the exhibition hand-out. "The artist brings the viewer face to face with their own preconceived hierarchy of cultural values and assumptions of artistic worth," it says. If you've been to see contemporary art in the last three decades, you will probably be familiar with the feelings of bafflement, exhaustion or irritation that such gallery prose provokes. David Levine and Alix Rule do.

Next, they collated thousands of exhibition announcements published since 1999 by e-flux, a powerful New York-based subscriber network for art-world professionals.