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.
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