[Air-l] maybe a silly question.. but

[Jonathan Cornwell]

Mary,

It's been a while since I've visited Bourdieu but I do hold the position
that "individuality" is somewhat less distinct than one might commonly
presume. Certainly, one could construct an instrument of a thousand
dimensions to measure each person and each person would have some unique
"shape" in the pattern of such an assessment but, in practice, this "fabric
of traits" must confront the homogenizing influence of culture and social
control. That we each show signs of belonging to our cultures demonstrates
the varying boundary between individuality and cultural membership.

I had forgotten how similar Bourdieu's thoughts are to The Looking Glass
Theory ("I am what I think you think I am") and to the anthropologist Mary
Douglas' thoughts that most, if not all, cultural metaphors derive from the
body.

What is truly interesting about all of these phenomena on the Internet is
that "taste fabric" is the primary means of constructing identity on the
Internet. This is done with a deliberation that is unusual in realspace. It
seems to me that a contrast between netspace and realspace is how
serendipity (in way Bandura used the word) plays a much greater role in most
aspects of identity (and, by extension, taste/preference) formation in
realspace. Even if one allows that one's netspace identity is largely a
projection of one's realspace identity (or, perhaps, a fictionalized
contrivance), one still must consciously, actively construct one's netspace
identity to participate in social networks... a process that seems to have
few realspace analogs. This consciously constructed net identity then
becomes currency in the social spaces. This dimension of serendipity in
realspace is driven to a great degree by one's physical location but, in
netspace, proximity doesn't have the same meaning except through behavior
(where, when and how one participates in netspace).

Please allow that these are merely my thoughts at the moment; all knowledge
is provisional after all *smile*.

Thanks for the reminder on Bourdieu.

Jonathan Cornwell


-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mary K. Bryson
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 11:32 PM
To: Association of Internet Researchers
Subject: Re: [Air-l] maybe a silly question.. but

And so, how useful it might be, then, to go "back to the future" with
someone like Bourdieu, whose refutation of any notion of "individuality" and
"taste" is very compelling, if taste is read as a location of culture, and
as such, of the social written on the body.

"Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects,
classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the
distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the
distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective
classifications is expressed or betrayed." (from Pierre Bourdieu
'Distinction')

Mary

On 8/27/06 8:42 PM, "Jonathan Cornwell" <jrc at tcfir.org> wrote:

> "Taste Fabrics and the Beauty of Homogeneity" by Hugo Liu, Glorianna
> Davenport, and Pattie Maes introduced me to the wonderful (IMHO) phrase
> "taste fabric". The first part of the abstract reads:
> 
> "The quintessence of an individual's taste is her aesthetic sensibility
and
> system of preferences. Online social network profiles, such as those
> appearing on Friendster and MySpace, are a veritable "show and tell" for
> taste-allowing individuals to perform acts of taste by declaring their
> favorite books, what music they love, and what their passions are. By
mining
> these social network profiles en masse and analyzing how each taste
instance
> (e.g. a book, an author, a band, a cuisine, etc.) is meaningfully
correlated
> with every other, an underlying fabric of taste common across individuals
> can be inferred." [Taste fabric and the Beauty...]


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