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13 (Bourdieu 1984, 25-26)
(Bourdieu 1984, 25-26)
...Activities as alien to the explicit demands of the institution as keeping a diary, wearing heavy make-up, theatre-going or going dancing, writing poems or playing rugby can thus find themselves inscribed in the position allotted within the institution as a tacit demand constantly underlined by various mediations. Among the most important of these are teachers’ conscious or unconscious expectations and peer-group pressure, whose ethical orientation is itself defined by the class values brought into and reinforced by the institution. This allocation effect and the status assignment it entails doubtless play a major role in the fact that the educational institution succeeds in imposing cultural practices that it does not teach and does not even explicitly demand, but which belong to the attributes attached by status to the position it assigns, the qualifications it awards and the social positions to which the latter give access.
This logic doubtless helps to explain how the legitimate disposition that is acquired by frequent contact with a particular class of works, namely, the literary and philosophical works recognized by the academic canon, comes to be extended to other, less legitimate works, such as avant-garde literature, or to areas enjoying less academic recognition such as the cinema. The generalizing tendency is inscribed in the very principle of the disposition to recognize legitimate works, a propensity and capacity to recognize their legitimacy and perceive them as worthy of admiration in themselves, which is inseparable from the capacity to recognize in them something already known, i.e., the stylistic traits appropriate to characterize them in their singularity (’It’s a Rembrandt’ or even ’It’s the Helmeted Man’) or as members of a class of works (’It’s Impressionist’).
