Notes on:
Zembylas, M. (2007) 'Emotional capital and
education: Theoretical insights from Bourdieu'. British
Journal of Educational Studies 55(4):
443--63. DOI 10/1111/j.1467-8527.2007.00390.x
Dave Harris
Bourdieu's work helps us avoid nasty dualisms
including those between subject and object,
agency/structure, private/public, and
nature/culture. He discusses embodiment and
the link with social reproduction.
Embodiment and the emphasis on practice 'maps
emotions on to experiences' (443). Emotions
have been increasingly discussed and
investigated in a number of ways, and critical
pedagogues are interested in them. Emotions
are managed in interpersonal relations and on the
social level. Affect is also been discussed
in terms of their bodies capacities.
Bourdieu, and the notions of 'habitus, field, and
capital' can add further insights.
The concept of emotional capital is particularly
significant, and implications are explored both
for Zembylas's own practice and for educational
research. Emotional capital can be seen as a
matter of emotional resources which contribute to
the generation of a habitus. It can also be
used to understand 'emotion practices as forms of
resistance'(444), particularly useful in
challenging 'functionalist and determinist'
accounts of the need to develop and exploit
emotional capital, for example in work on
emotional intelligence. This article explore
as the notion of emotional capital and its role in
affective economies, and is linked to current
ethnographic work.
Emotions can be seen as both 'signs for bodily
states and cultural categories' (445), but
affective experiences precede emotions.
Ethnography helps us to theorize the embodiment of
emotions—affect is experienced first then 'named
and reexperienced through social relations and
culture'. The basic affects are 'anger,
fear, disgust and so on' and are universal,
although emotions very culturally and
socially. Emotions arise from membership of
groups and interactions, and are not simply bodily
or biological: they depend on 'ongoing relational
practices' (446), including the way in which
individuals are defined and separated from the
social. Ahmed has coined the term '"affective
economies"', showing how intensities and energies
circulate and get attached to 'objects, bodies and
signs', and thereby constitute subjectivity.
Emotions separate us from and help us connect to
others: for example hate is circulated [and
amplified by] groups, and is constantly used in
the processes of differentiation. Probyn
argues that affective experiences become part of
the habitus, a system of dispositions, and this
enables us to conduct every day life.
Embodied experiences 'coincide with objective
structures' for Bourdieu, however. It
follows that if we want to change emotional
performances, we need to readjust our habitus [but
can this be done?].
We can connect this to Williams's notion of
structures of feeling, as another 'bridge between
social structures and… individual[s]'
(447). We can use his concept to understand
what goes on in educational contexts, and to
understand 'challenges to these norms'.
Generally, normal emotions regulate individuals,
and 'reflect power relations'. As a result, they
are 'techniques for the discipline of habitus' in
emotional expressions and communication.
Bourdieu develops connected concepts like
'habitus, field and capital'. The habitus
provides dispositions which guide strategies, and
dispositions involve both cognitive and affective
factors. The habitus is a product of
history, but appears as a second nature, and this
is how individuals cope with social circumstances,
and how institutions 'produce real effects on
individuals'. The habitus appears as
commonsense, some kind of bodily knowledge, as in
the politics of gender and how this governs the
way in which men and women might walk and
talk. The habitus was refined in the later
work as something more adaptable or
'"transposable"'(448). Embodied practice is
strongly influenced, but not completely determined
by, social and historical and cultural
contexts. The habitus is dynamic, and 'thus
is not wholly structured'. The habitus can
be seen as displaying an affective economy, moving
emotional capital around, and investing it in
particular actions, and this also makes it not a
fully deterministic: it generates practices.
It can be seen as 'the site of transformative
emotion practices', and it can offer a 'potential
for innovation'.
Anthropological examples of the flexibility of
conduct with others shows the
possibilities—traditional behaviours can be
adjusted. Bourdieu sees the field as a social
arena for struggles over resources and other
relations, which contain their own rules of the
game. Fields are regions of the world which
define the situation, 'structured systems of
social positions' (449. Again they do not
completely determine action, however, and there is
room for negotiation. The possession of
different sorts of capital assumes specific
significance in their specific fields. There are
various forms of capital, including 'economic,
cultural and social'[and these are defined]. We
might need a broader understanding of cultural
capital to include its affective aspects,
according to Reay and Skeggs. The
accumulation of social capital is important in the
overall 'battle for distinction' (450), and it can
be seen as offering emotional resources as well as
setting 'norms and obligations'. Bourdieu is
unusual in arguing that social capital is
'ubiquitous and continually transmitted' as well
as accumulated in ways that help of reproduction
of existing social structures.
Forms of capital can be transformed into each
other. Combinations explain the different
fractions of social classes. They also
explain how cultures are generated by social
mechanisms, for example schooling. By
discussing the link between capital and power,
Bourdieu 'comes close to Foucault's analysis of
power' in the sense that power depends on
relations in different fields. There is also
a 'potential for subversion' from these movements
of different sorts of capital and different fields
[well -- changes in the balance of power between
fractions of the bourgeoisie] .
We can work towards an notion of emotional capital
here, although Bourdieu never uses the term.
Other sociologists of education have developed
this notion, however, including Gillies, Reay, or
Colley. Reay admits that the concept is
better as a heuristic device, however, but sees
emotional capital as referring to access to
emotionally valued skills and assets, largely
possessed by women. We're talking about the
emotional resources including 'support, patients
and commitment' usually associated with
women. Reay also refers to emotional
resources being passed from mothers to children,
and mothers' involvement in education
specifically: emotional capital is seen 'as an
investment in others'(451). There is a
dispute about whether poverty diminishes emotional
capital.
These issues show how emotional capital is social,
but there is a danger that it will be seen
exclusively in terms of 'a parenting model'
(452). There is also an underlying notion
that we can see the deployment of these capital in
terms of realizing profits, but it is complex, and
extends beyond what parents do in terms of their
children's benefits. There is also the
danger that 'traditional emotion discourses'
suggesting that women are the ones who have more
caring and more emotional, might be implied: Reay
is careful to say that this is so only in the
context of pparent involvement in education.
Colley on the 'vocational habitus' in FE suggests
that there are certain ways which dictate how one
should look and act, and feel, when trying to
acquire a job , drawing on the original Hochschild
study of emotional labour. The term has a
Marxist origin, and suggest that people have to
suppress or induce feelings as part of their
occupational role, manage their emotions to fit
the needs of the organisation. Colley
suggests that in patriarchal societies, emotional
capital is a particularly good at expressing
inequalities of power, and wants to reintroduce
the notion of exploitation of women's resources by
criticising Reay: women's 'available repertoires
of feeling' are the result of a particular mode of
production, and individuals have to work on these
feelings.
Zembylas's own interests have a different source,
and are also related to ethnographic research,
both by himself and by others. For example,
he has shown how emotional capital can be built
over time, and can contribute to particular
affective economies. Emotional capital can
be circulated between teachers and students to
produce feelings of empowerment. However, he
has learned that 'the possibility of change…
are not limitless'. An ethnographic study of
ethnic conflict in Europe shows that resentment
and hatred can arise, based on the supposed evil
of the other, and this is supported by the
emotional practices in education, and this can
help to both reproduce and destabilise 'dominant
national, social and cultural taxonomies'.
An ethnocentric habitus can appear, and it can
become active in normalising feelings and actions,
requiring adaptation to 'the emotional demands of
the hegemonic culture' (454). Even here,
however, 'the habitus contains important
ambivalence and tension', and even hatred 'is full
of contradiction and uncertainty and is not
(always) absolute'. This helps educators
locate hate in individual needs and social and
political struggles, focusing on the practices in
which hate is constituted. Socialisation is
not just a passive absorption of dominant affects,
and these are experienced and circulated in
particular ways, which can be analysed.
The study shows the relation between emotional and
other forms of capital in the circulations between
social groups. With hatred, emotional
resources can be withheld, and other emotional
resources distributed in such a way as to produce
feelings of nationality and culture, and
subjectivity in general. Such emotional
resources separate self from other and connect
selves to others. Emotional capital can turn
into cultural capital in the form of dispositions
about others, and social capital, since
relationships and networks with the others are
also affected. It is also possible for
individuals to understand their relation to their
social group differently, 'as they acknowledge the
politics of difference' (455): here, a 'richer
emotional understanding of the Other' helps new
dispositions emerge. We can see how
emotional capital is not just restricted to issues
of gender and class and their effects on
involvement in schooling: like other forms of
capital, there are 'complex manifestations'.
There are dangers in using the concept emotional
capital in educational research. First it
seems too closely associated with economic theory,
and second that it has already been 'coopted by
management and functionalist discourses' in
discussions of the exploitation of human capital
[he includes Goleman in this] (456).
Emotional intelligence often mean self control,
related to new forms of morality, efficiency and
professionalism, a disciplinary technology.
It gets stripped of its social and political
context and its role in cultural difference and
hierarchy. This is the opposite of what
Bourdieu was arguing, according to Reay: the point
was to argue that intelligence alone, of any kind,
was not the key to success or failure.
Emotional capital itself varies in terms of its
symbolic value, and it has a crucial role in
reproducing capitalist equality.
We need to retain the links with politics, and use
it to understand the importance of emotions and
affects and the circulation of capital
generally. We need to see 'how previously
established emotional capital — solidarity, trust,
hope, loyalty, enmity and so forth — may influence
later practices' (457), to see how it operates in
particular contexts. The relational concepts
of field and habitus offer a way of understanding
these contexts, showing how identity emerges
collectively, and how barriers are drawn between
groups. There is 'a collective body - field'
which is not just individual, and characteristic
emotional patterns belonging to different social
groups. We can now see how categories like
those of race or religion are underpinned by
emotional investments, how emotions connect
individuals to groups with a sense of belonging,
how affective economies are established that
'actively manipulate emotions for political
purposes'(458) and add value to particular
affects. This also helps us retain a focus
on 'the materiality of the body' since emotion is
embodied, and often displayed by bodies. It
also provides for the possibility of 'theorizing
change'.
The emphasis might well be on reproduction rather
than change, but there is an implicit
conceptualisation of change in Bourdieu's work,
because 'the historicisation of norms is
acknowledged', and this can help to show the
contingency of such norms in education [he refers
to his own earlier work]. The project will
be to identify 'weak points and lines of fracture'
where new connections can become counter
hegemonic. Analysis can reveal the role of
particular affective economies. Individuals
are never entirely subsumed by objective
structures, and 'professional and classroom
communities are able to constitute habituses that
have the potential to subvert disciplinary
mechanisms and practices' [in theory, as a
hope? What about the sources of
inconsistency actually identified by Bourdieu?].
We need to grasp and extend Bourdieu's work in
education, to acknowledge the role of emotions,
and to examine socio-political contexts. It
is part of a much larger debate about
subjectivities in classrooms. Analysis will
help us move between 'possible and real
transformation', or at least theorize its
difference. We need to focus on how
emotional capital is converted to other capitals
to guide ethnographic work. Understanding
possibilities and limitations will help us assess
the value of emotional capital [is a concept do
you mean?].
A note refers to work suggesting that emotions are
now controlled more in terms of group conformity
and peer reaction, as part of a general trend
towards the informal in western societies.
This puts even more emphasis on emotional self
restraint.
References include one which crops up quite a lot
in the other work: Barbalet, J. (1998) Emotion,
Social Theory, and Social Structure: A
Macrosociological Approach. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. There are lots
of useful commentaries on Bourdieu, and lots more
Zembylas.
back to Zembylas page
|
|