Part IV: Interactions of those 3 and “Agile” Methods
Symbolic Violence, Hexis and Cultural capital while independent can be combined AND be used to feed/increase each other!
A system created by people with similar levels of those can only be blind to the needs of the rest
Symbolic Violence, Hexis and Cultural capital while independent can be combined AND be used to feed/increase each other!
A system created by people with similar levels of those can only be blind to the needs of the rest
You have a big enough Hexis and it opens door to many jobs where you can get a lot of cultural capital which open a lot of venues to wield correctly the traits adding to your Symbolic Violence
You can experiment yourself with the effects of artificially reducing a lot one of those 3 to see how people react to you
(SideNote: those 3 are only the 3 I’ve got interested: Bourdieu literary found a plethora “pervasive evaluative patterns & distinctions to determine social status and class” ALL OF THOSE compose and feed each other it is mind blowing!!!)
In teams where people have similar levels of those 3 a lot of the unconscious can just go unchecked: there is little Symbolic Violence exerted, no one is feeling diminished in cultural capital, no one is outshining in Hexis: we‘ill have a lot of biases & other issues but not this
Our industry methods where created by groups that where not really homogeneous in the cultural capital front but where similar enough in Symbolic Violence and Hexis
If you want to see a first-person account of what happens when teams are not homogeneous regarding those 3 you already know you can find it in @sarahmei marvellous original thread that sparked this (From Me you'll get only theory) :
Let's project @sarahmei thread on Bourdieu exposed theories shall we?
When you pair program with someone whose Symbolic Violence/Hexis/cultural capital is much higher than yours you are pair programming with your boss in an invisible informal hierarchy?
Nope right? if you're reading this and is a privileged as I am you are now already thinking "so what? I pair with all my supposed bosses a lot!” as a matter of fact you never really had a boss? I know I never did: people paid me a salary without any authority over me all my life
So lets replace this when you interact with someone whose Symbolic Violence/Hexis/cultural capital is much higher than yours you are condemned to think that the other opinion is more valid than yours even when it is not the case? Better?
Not really right? If you are as privileged as me part of you is already thinking "oh I love when I'm wrong, I learn stuff!" another part is already all “I do not even acknowledge the duality of valid/invalid for opinions Romeu!”
OH my reader! thats because it is rare for you!
OH my reader! thats because it is rare for you!
So let's exaggerate a little? To make this more relatable? When you interact with someone whose Symbolic Violence/Hexis/cultural capital is much higher than yours you are condemned to “hit yourself” in an unpleasant way?
The central question after all this is: Society has conditioned you to “hit yourself” when talking to people passing certain patterns and you have them in a team how can you work? What methods can even work in that situation?
Agility is ridiculously unequipped for that: To improve the team we are supposed to reflect on the issues, communicate them, decide experiments and follow trough them: every part of this depend on a safety that is compromised
A Pair programming or mob session where one of the participants is hitting oneself is not a co-creation, it is submission
A discussion about our different visions about the complexity of a task when a participant is hitting oneself is no longer a simple exploration of our different views
Either we are supposed to create that safety so our methods work, or we need new methods not based in the communication being safe.
Nothing about safety being central is new, @TotherAlistair Crystal Clear is adamant on safety and newer stuff like @modernagile also is: What is new to me is the realisation that all this Sociological violence is between us and that safety
And hence: Our current approaches are extremely naïve about how achievable that safety is to what degree of safety
Creating the safety means we have to work around our conditioning ! This is a vast quixotic quest, but I suppose the first babystep is raising awareness ? This is why I’m doing this thread is literally the least one can do
I would literally be one of the worst people ever to theorise alone on how to create a method that is resilient to lack of safety tho, Like I said: key to this is that we condition those benefiting from it to be unaware:
and the effort to raise their awareness may as well turn some of them violent too, in abusive ways not symbolic at all
I'll stop here friends, I have many thoughts more on this but they're pretty bleak to be honest.
This was Part IV of :
