"Social maps are powerful. But they are not all-powerful. We are creatures of our physical and social environment. However, we need not be blind creatures. Occasionally, individuals can imagine a different way of organizing our world..."
Gillian Tet on work of Jean Baudrillard
Gillian Tet on work of Jean Baudrillard
Since this elite has an interest in preserving the status quo, it also has every incentive to reinforce cultural maps, rules, and taxonomies. Or to put it another way, an elite stays in power over time not just by controlling resources, or what Bourdieu described as...
...“economic capital” (money), but also by amassing “cultural capital” (symbols associated with power). When they amass this cultural capital, this helps to make the status of the elite seem natural and inevitable.
Bourdieu did not believe that the elite—or anyone else—created these cultural and mental maps deliberately. Instead, they arose as much from semiconscious instinct as conscious design, operating at the “borders of conscious and unconscious thought.”
The habitus does not just reflect our social patterns, but it ingrains them too, making these seem natural and inevitable. The elite and non-elite are both creatures of their cultural environment.
What really matters in a society’s mental map is not simply what is publicly and overtly stated, but what is not discussed. Social silences matter.
The system ends up being propped up because it seems natural to leave certain topics ignored, since these issues have become labeled as dull, taboo, obvious, or impolite.
For the record I meant Pierre Bourdieu ;)
