This week began with a discussion on the public and private aspects of marriage and weddings and then turned to a discussion of when marriage could be described as political. You discussed the most recent example that has appeared in the NZ news - Christine Rankin being appointed to the Families Commission and the ways her history of multiple marriages has become public fodder in the debate around her appointment.
This segued into Bourdieu, rites of passage as political events and symbolic capital. The powerpoints are below. We watched a clip from My Big Fat Greek Wedding and analysed it in terms of Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus. We also discussed ideas of individualism, specifically the reflexive individual and self identity as a project, in terms of Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and Scott Lash.
The clip from class begins at minute 6:
29 May 2009 at 4:17 pm
[...] In addition to walking out of the lecture thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve got to get my hands on that article’ you should have also been thinking about the processes through which new rituals emerge and the ways they can be used to display one’s own social standing (think of his fans and his wife) and the social standing of others after their death. You can never fully escape Bourdieu. [...]