Marriage strategies as strategies of social reproduction

Marriage strategies as strategies of social reproduction

Pierre Bourdieu

summary

the strategies tend to ensure the reproduction of their lineage and their right to the means of reproduction appear with marked statistical regularity. But one must be very careful not to see this regularity as the result of obedience to fixed rules.(p.117)

in reality, the generating and unifying principle of practice is constituted by the whole system of predisposition inculcated by the material circumstance of life and by family upbringing. That is, by habitus. This system is the end product of structures which practice tend to reproduce them, either by consciously reinventing or by subconsciously imitating already proven strategies as the accepted, most respectable. Those strategies that have always governed such practices finally come to be seen as inherent in the nature of things.(p.118) only habitus, a system of scheme structuring every decision without ever becoming completely and systematically explicit, can furnish the basis for the casuistic thinking required to safeguard the essential at all times, even if it should become necessary to violate the “norms”, which, to be sure, exist only in the legalistic thinking of the ethnologists anyway. (p.119)

there are very string reason for postulating that marriage was not based on obedience to any ideal rule but came about as the end result of a strategy, which, availing itself to strongly interiorized principles of a particular tradition, was able to reproduce in a manner more subconscious than conscious any one of the typical solution explicitly contained in that tradition. It could even manipulate the relationships objectively present in the genealogical tree in such a way justify such kinship relation and alliance as were necessary to safeguard and augment the interest of the lineage, in other words, its material or symbolical capital. (p.120)

“poor relatives” are also poor on relatives, it is because, here as elsewhere, wealth attracts wealth. After all, the awareness of cousinship and the desire to maintain it are a function of the material or symbolic advantage to be obtained from “cousining”. (p.121)

given the fact that marriage strategies were always designed to bring about “good marriage” rather than just a marriage, that is, to maximize the advantages or to minimize the economic and symbolic cost of the marriage as a transaction of a very special kind, these strategies were in every case governed by the value of the material and symbolic patrimony was transmitted. (p.122) there definitely was a cleavage between the mass of the peasantry and an “aristocracy” distinguished not only by its material capital but also by its symbolic capital, which was measured by the value of its entire kin on both sides of the lineage and over several generation. This cleavage made certain marriages, considered to be misalliance, impossible under the law.(p.123)

but the margin of acceptable disparity was rather narrow, and beyond a certain threshold, economic differences effectively ruled out an alliance. In short, difference in wealth tended to determine the cutoff point within the field of possible, that is, legitimate, marriage partners that was assigned to each individual by virtue of his or her family's position in the hierarchy of status group. (p.124)

in short, as soon as we postulate the basic equation that the land belongs to the eldest son and that the eldest son belongs to the land, in other words, that the land inherit its heir, we have establish a structure that generate such practices as conform to the basic imperative of the group. The fact that there were occasional failures in this concerted effort at indoctrination and cultural reproduction shows that the system never function in a mechanical fashion and that it was not always free of contradictions between dispositions and structures, in which case the contradiction might be experienced as a conflict between sentiment and duty. Nor was it always free of subterfuges intended to satisfy individual wishes within the limit of what was socially acceptable.(p.129)

this, incidentally—contrary to the anthropological view that every marriage is an autonomous unit—means that every marriage transaction can only be understood as one element in a series of material and symbolic exchanges, since the economic and symbolic capital a family is able to commit to the marriage of one of its children is largely determined by the position this particular exchange occupies in the entire matrimonial history of the family.(p.136)

the earliest learning experience of children, reinforced as they were by all of their social experience, tended to model their scheme of perception and appreciation, in a word, their taste, which, since they played as large a role in their selection of a sexual partner as in other ares, led them to avord improper alliances.(p.140)

these strategies are the product of habitus, meaning the practical mastery of a small number of implicit principles that have spawned an infinite number of practices and follow their own pattern, although they are not based on obedience to any formal rules. Hence, since these patterns emerge “spontaneously”, it is unnecessary to make them explicit or to invoke or impose any rules. Habitus is thus the product of the very structures it tends to reproduce. (p.141)

point:
against legalism: the regularity on statistic does not mean rule following.
Marriage strategies is not dominated by economy alone, but after some limit economy issue ride off other possibility.
Strategies are product of habitus, which habitus is the product of the very structure it tend to reproduce.
There exist counterexample, because these structure do not work mechanically.