[csaa-forum] Public Lecture: TONY BENNETT -- 'The Divided Habitus'

[Sufern Hoe]

Apologies for cross-posting.

The Department of English with Cultural Studies at The University of
Melbourne presents a free Public Lecture.

Professor Tony Bennett
'The divided habitus: aesthetics and the politics of taste'
6: 15 pm Tuesday 23 May 2006
Prince Phillip Theatre (Architecture Bldg) The University of Melbourne

Abstract
Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus has played a significant role
in cultural studies in suggesting that our relations to texts -
whether visual, literary, or auditory - are mediated via class-based
habitus that provide unified and unifying principles of taste that
are manifest across the full range of an individual's cultural
interests.  Yet Bourdieu claimed that his own habitus was a divided
or cleft one as a consequence of the conflicting experiences arising
from his social mobility.  This lecture will suggest that such a
divided habitus is the rule rather than the exception, and that the
notion of a unified habitus - which plays a central role in
Bourdieu's sociology of consumption - is unsustainable.  The
argument will be illustrated by drawing on the evidence regarding
the social distribution of cultural tastes from a recent study of
the relationships between cultural practices and cultural capital in
the UK.  Its implications for accounts of the relations between
aesthetics and the politics of taste will be explored by contrasting
Bourdieu's interpretation of the social inscription of  Kantian
aesthetics in processes of class distinction with competing accounts
focused their role in relation to development of liberal forms of
governance.

Tony Bennett is Professor of Sociology at the Open University, a
Director of the Economic and Social Science Research Centre on
Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), and a Professorial Fellow in the
Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne.    His current
interests focus on the sociology of culture, with special reference
to questions of culture and governance, the history and theory of
museums, cultural and media policy, and relations of class, culture
and social exclusion.  His publications include Formalism and
Marxism; Outside Literature; Bond and Beyond: The Political Career
of a Popular Hero (with Janet Woollacott); The Birth of the Museum:
History, Theory, Politics; Culture: A Reformer's Science; Accounting
for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures (with Michael Emmison and
John Frow); Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics, Programs
(co-edited with David Carter); Contemporary Culture and Everyday
Life (edited with Elizabeth Silva); and, most recently,  Pasts
Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism and New Keywords: A
Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society (edited with Larry
Grossberg and Meaghan Morris)  He was elected to membership of the
Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1998.

Enquiries: Annemarie Levin, 8344 5506, alevin at unimelb.edu.au
http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au
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