Bourdieu, Gramsci and Radical Mobilization essays

Bourdieu, Gramsci and Radical Mobilization essays Throughout contemporary times there have been various student movements advocating social reform in many countries throughout the world, but perhaps one of the most well-known and influential student movements is the Students for a Democratic Society. The SDS movement was most active during the 1960s and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. It advocated for many social issues such as equality, economic justice, participatory democracy and peace. Using the theories from Pierre Bourdieus books, Logic of Practice and Distinction and Antonio Gramscis, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, we will be able to better understand the mechanisms behind the radical mobilization of the 1960s and give an explanation as to why they happened. Bourdieu would analyze that the mechanisms that allowed for the SDS movement and other radical mobilization of the 1960s could be explained through his terms, habitus, reproduction, misrecognition and the accumulation and maintenance of capital. Antonio Gram sci [on the other hand] would argue that the mobilization of the 1960s could be demonstrated through his concepts of hegemony, civil society, and common sense, war of position and war of movement. In Logic of Practice, Pierre Bourdieu introduces one of his major concepts; habitus. Bourdieu argues that the lifestyle practices, values, expectations and dispositions of individuals and particular social groups are acquired through their activities and experiences of everyday life that follow an objective structure, this is their habitus. Specifically Bourdieu defines habitus as the systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operation ...