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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 19, 2017)
OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2017 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager Water under the bridge Compiled by Bob Duke From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers 10 years ago this week — 2007 Students at Paul Mitchell — The School in Astoria planned to return to classes today following a five-day boycott in protest of ongoing problems and new frustrations at the cosmetology school. One student, who requested to remain anonymous, said the fledgling stylists were generally sick of “getting screwed.” About 14 students walked out of the program last Tuesday — the day they returned from summer break — citing up to 20 different concerns. Since the 1920’s, sports fans have packed grandstands to watch Warrenton High School’s Warriors battle for glory, their spirit illustrated by variations on one symbol: an American Indian man in feathered headdress. But the small-town team’s longtime logo could become history. An advisory group under state schools Superintendent Susan Castillo is considering a ban on Native American mascots, team names and logos at Oregon public schools, waging potential uproar over an issue historically left up to individual schools and school districts. The group is drafting a policy and plans to issue its recommendation in September. A pilot escaped his single-engine plane after it skidded off the runway at the Astoria Regional Airport Saturday night. The crash damaged the Cessna 182 but the pilot was uninjured, both the U.S. Coast Guard and Port of Astoria Interim Executive Director Ron Larsen said. 50 years ago — 1967 This July, when the fire danger in the forests is greater than it has been for decades, and when the skies here have already been darkened by the smoke of a 3,500-acre fire in Quinault Indian Reservation, there comes a timely reminder of one of the worst fires in Northwest history. The current issue of Forest Log, publication of the Oregon Board of Forestry, reports that rehabilitating the Tillamook burn is nearly complete. In 1933 and again in 1938 and 1945, fire swept over 350,000 acres of forest in Tillamook and southern Clatsop counties. In 1948, reports the Forest Log, Oregonians authorized bonds to pay for rehabilitating the devastated hills. Why not a hose cart race for the 1967 Astoria Regatta, like the ones they used to hold six decades or so ago? This was the suggestion of Elmer Palo, West Astoria merchant, this week, as he turned over to The Daily Astorian a 1905 Regatta “programme” from his archives. “We still have a hose cart stored up at the East End fire station, which very few people know,” Palo said. The House Appropriations Committee today told the Bonne- ville Power Administration to leave financing and planning of a Pacific Northwest nuclear power plant to private industry. The warning was made in a report accompanying an appro- priation bill which slashed $9.5 million for spending planned by the federal power marketing agency in the fiscal year begun July 1. The biggest single cut in the BPA budget was from $8 mil- lion to $4 million for service to the Northwest Aluminum Co., which the committee said was due to a change in the location of the plant site. 75 years ago — 1942 The Daily Astorian/File Scenes like this snapped at the Columbia River Packing Associa- tion’s cannery here will be common again as tuna canning opera- tions begin Saturday and Monday at the different plants. Twenty-five Boy Scouts of the Astoria district took to the woods of Cul- laby Lake for a week’s outing Sunday, gathered for the first camp ever held in the new Astoria district Boy Scout camp, Camp Cullaby, on the lake’s northeast shore. Price of albacore tuna leaped from the opening price of $350 to $380 in bidding for two cargoes on fishermen’s exchange Saturday. The cargoes were the 4,000 pounds of the schooner Argo and the 3,000 pounds of the schooner Hermes. The Argo cargo went to Paragon Packing company and the Hermes cargo to Barbey Packing company. Getting radical about inequality By DAVID BROOKS New York Times News Service I ’m not in the habit of recom- mending left-wing French intel- lectuals, but I’m beginning to think that Pierre Bourdieu is helpful reading in the age of Donald Trump. He was born in 1930, the son of a small-town postal worker. By the time he died in 2002, he had become perhaps the world’s most influential sociologist within the academy, and largely unknown outside of it. His great subject was the struggle for power in society, especially cultural and social power. We all possess, he argued, certain forms of social capital. A person might have academic capital (the right degrees from the right schools), linguistic capital (a facility with words), cul- tural capital (knowledge of cuisine or music or some such) or symbolic capital (awards or markers of pres- tige). These are all forms of wealth you bring to the social marketplace. In addition, and more important, we all possess and live within what Bourdieu called a habitus. A habitus is a body of conscious and tacit knowledge of how to travel through the world, which gives rise to mannerisms, tastes, opinions and conversational style. A habitus is an intuitive feel for the social game. It’s the sort of thing you get inculcated with unconsciously, by growing up in a certain sort of family or by sharing a sensibility with a certain group of friends. For example, in his surveys of French taste, Bourdieu found that manual laborers liked Strauss’ “The Blue Danube” but didn’t like Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” People who lived in academic com- munities, on the other hand, liked the latter but not the former. Your habitus is what enables you to decode cultural artifacts, to feel comfortable in one setting but maybe not in another. Taste overlaps with social position; taste classifies the classifier. Every day, Bourdieu argued, we take our stores of social capital and our habitus and we compete in the symbolic marketplace. We vie as individuals and as members of our class for prestige, distinction and, above all, the power of consecration — the power to define for society what is right, what is “natural,” what is “best.” The symbolic marketplace is like the commercial marketplace; it’s a billion small bids for distinction, prestige, attention and superiority. Every minute or hour, in ways we’re not even conscious of, we as individuals and members of our class are competing for dominance and AP Photo/Alex Brandon President Donald Trump points to a member of the audience before being introduced during a ‘Made in America’ product showcase at the White House Monday. respect. We seek to topple those who have higher standing than us and we seek to wall off those who are down below. Or, we seek to take one form of capital, say linguistic ability, and convert it into another kind of capi- tal, a good job. Most groups conceal their naked power grabs under a veil of intel- lectual or aesthetic purity. Bourdieu used the phrase “symbolic violence” to suggest how vicious this competi- Bourdieu radicalizes, widens and deepens one’s view of inequality. tion can get, and he didn’t even live long enough to get a load of Twitter and other social media. Different groups and individuals use different social strategies, depending on their position in the field. People at the top, he observed, tend to adopt a reserved and under- stated personal style that shows they are far above the “assertive, attention-seeking strategies which expose the pretensions of the young pretenders.” People at the bottom of any field, on the other hand, don’t have a lot of accomplishment to wave about, but they can use snark and sarcasm to demonstrate the supe- rior sensibilities. Sometimes, the loser wins: If you’re setting up a fancy clothing or food shop you go down and adopt organic and peasant styles in order to establish the superior moral prestige that you can then use to make gobs of money. Bourdieu helps you understand what Donald Trump is all about. Trump is not much of a policy maven, but he’s a genius at the sym- bolic warfare Bourdieu described. He’s a genius at upending the social rules and hierarchies that the establishment classes (of both right and left) have used to maintain dominance. Bourdieu didn’t argue that cultural inequality creates economic inequality, but that it widens and it legitimizes it. That’s true, but as the informa- tion economy has become more enveloping, cultural capital and economic capital have become ever more intertwined. Individuals and classes that are good at winning the cultural competitions Bourdieu described tend to dominate the places where economic opportunity is richest; they tend to harmonize with affluent networks and do well financially. Moreover, Bourdieu reminds us that the drive to create inequality is an endemic social sin. Every hour most of us, unconsciously or not, try to win subtle status points, earn cul- tural affirmation, develop our tastes, promote our lifestyles and advance our class. All those microbehaviors open up social distances, which then, by the by, open up geographic and economic gaps. Bourdieu radicalizes, widens and deepens one’s view of inequality. His work suggests that the responses to it are going to have to be more profound, both on a personal level — resisting the competitive, ego-driven aspects of social networking and display — and on a national one. LETTERS WELCOME Letters should be exclusive to The Daily Astorian. Letters should be fewer than 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and phone numbers. You will be contacted to confirm authorship. All letters are subject to editing for space, grammar and, on occa- sion, factual accuracy. Only two letters per writer are printed each month. Letters written in response to other letter writers should address the issue at hand and, rather than mentioning the writer by name, should refer to the headline and date the letter was published. Dis- course should be civil and people should be referred to in a respect- ful manner. Submissions may be sent in any of these ways: E-mail to editor@dailyasto- rian.com; online at www.dailyas- torian.com; delivered to the Asto- rian offices at 949 Exchange St. and 1555 N. Roosevelt in Seaside or by mail to Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103.
