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All good stuff, as well as good fun. Interesting study, Ruth!My thoughts are as follows:Most people - whether 'intellectuals' or 'ordinary people' - believe that class and status groups are indeed linked. To that extent, whatever their political choices and values, most people are Marxists rather than Weberians. It is a bit of an ideal-type Weberianism to say that Weber's 'ideal types' are distinct!I think Bourdieu is right on this, but not actually very original. This view is central to most variants of Marxism, and Bourdieu's significance is perhaps in returning to this tradition using a new language - not least in opposition to the 'post-modernists' and 'post-structuralists' he found around him in French academic sociology. If I ask anyone in Stoke-on-Trent, 'do you think that people's status is lined to their class', then once the question was clarified, the answer would be, 'it's a no-brainer.'But where does that leave us? If 'appreciation' of posh music or posh art or posh whatever is linked to class as well as (simply) individual or status-group or stratum-based orientation, then does that mean we are left with relativism in culture?Adam is right: JS Mill struggled with this. He wanted, like Bentham, to say that pushpin and, say, poetry were of equal value, but could not bring himself to deny that tastes could be 'higher'and 'lower'.And do we really want to say that reality TV is of equal status with literature or even with Coronation Street?Perhaps the 'symbolic violence' (Bourdieu) of 'cultural capital' is exerted through the class hegemony of people who do not really appreciate an objective fineness in 'fine art' or 'fine music but merely subscribe to it as part of their tribe....... which is not to deny that there are such things as quality art/music et al. Nor is it to deny that rock music, rap (as in that brilliant artist Eminem, for example) et al can also be part of the quality canon. But there can be good rap and crap rap!At the end of the day, it's about whether we are relativist or not. Do we believe that the telephone directory is just as capable of being 'read' as literature as Flaubert, as some idiotic post-structuralists seem to? And, if not, we are already on the road to building criteria for judging.......It's a bit like Gramsci on education, and the more sensible socialists today: just because something is (currently) 'upper-class' does not mean we should scorn it and shun it on behalf of the working-class. Champagne? Good grammar? If we shun those, we will either disadvantage the working-class in capitalist society or build a philistine socialist society. Proletarian values are to be superseded in socialism, not lionised! A bit like feminism: if it is successful, it will abolish itself, or else become political correctness.I'm glad I can write this in the garden........Best to all, CalumOn 10 July 2014 13:29, Adam Oliver <[log in to unmask]> wrote:I think that the wife of Roy Plomley (who devised and hosted – for decades – Desert Island Discs) didn’t want Michael Parkinson to be his successor, because she didn’t think him cultured enough. That said, I don’t really think people should feel the need to justify their tastes. You like what you like. Who else’s business is that? That said that said, JS Mill thought that there are different levels of taste, of course, and I use him quite a bit to inform my own work these days (but more in relation to his harm principle). For those of you like biography, I recommend the DID archive, but if you’re listening to the insufferable snobbery and self-regard of those who have made a career claiming that they care about other people whilst at the same time decorating you apartment, refrain from throwing paint pots. It’s not worth it.
From: Anglo-American Health Policy Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joseph White
Sent: 08 July 2014 18:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Marmot
Alma appears to have been a bit more memorable than that...
On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 12:58 PM, Uwe E. Reinhardt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
How different from today’s hook-up culture, in which, after a tryst with Alama, Kokoschka would have queried in the morning “Nice to mee you. By the way, what’s your name?”
From: Anglo-American Health Policy Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joseph White
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2014 12:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Marmot
well, and Alma's effects on not just Mahler but others had its medical dimensions. Not just Gus
consulting Sigmund Freud, but...
http://www.alma-mahler.at/engl/almas_life/puppet.html(I know about this because my daughter did a history project on Alma in 9th grade, wanting to know more about the person behind the song....)
On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Uwe E. Reinhardt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
For those into this stuff http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/arts/music/mahler-was-more-a-romantic-than-scholars-thought.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Mahler was quite a dude, it seems, and Alma qite a lady http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Tom+Lehrer%27s+alma&FORM=VIRE5#view=detail&mid=62C651B6949C4BC3AD9062C651B6949C4BC3AD90 .
From: Shirley Johnson-lans [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 10:26 PM
To: Uwe E. Reinhardt
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Marmot
Today is Mahler's birthday and QXR is featuring his music all day and evening. There is also, apparently, an interesting tidbit about his romantic involvements on their website.......it seems it wasn't just Alma who had a roving eye.
Shirley
On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 9:19 PM, Uwe E. Reinhardt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I reckon Mahler is Jo White’s stuff, too, although he may deem it risque.
From: Anglo-American Health Policy Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joseph White
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 8:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Marmot
not necessarily a bad thing.
On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 8:04 PM, Kenneth Thompson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Ain't no "light my fire"
I will never get on the island.
On Jul 7, 2014, at 9:52 AM, "Uwe E. Reinhardt" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:I am afraid it is, Ken. By contrast, I danced to Gustav Mahler’s Lieder in 1968 They have such a cool beat. Here’s an example:
I would shine on Desert Island.
Uwe
From: Anglo-American Health Policy Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kenneth Thompson
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 8:14 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Marmot
Hi Ruth et al.
So my first rock and roll concert was the doors in 1968. And while a resident in 1982 I was part of a group that weekly went to dance at the roxy (the epicenter of hip hop in NYC). All this means that my honorable status is in the balance?
Yikes.
On Jul 7, 2014, at 2:30 AM, "McDonald, Ruth" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Thanks Joe - interesting paper!
In my paper I say that 'It could be argued that the tastes of these older doctors are likely to be very different from those of younger members of the profession'.
I also acknowledge that 'advocates of the cultural omnivore thesis suggest with regard to taste in art, music and so on, that a shift from snobbishness to omnivorousness has occurred (Peterson 1992). This is characterised by an openness to ‘appreciating everything. In this sense, it is antithetical to snobbishness, which is based fundamentally on rigid rules of exclusion such as ‘It is de rigueur to like opera, and country music is an anathema to be shunned’ (Peterson and Kern 1996: 904)'.
BUT 'studies which do not rely solely on quantitatively exploring the preferences of cultural omnivores find that rather than liking everything, omnivores, particularly those who are endowed with “objectified” and “institutionalised” markers of cultural capital tend to be disproportionately attracted to ‘highbrow’ forms of culture and the arts. For example Warde et al (2008: 158) found a relative openness to ‘popular’ culture amongst omnivores but that they disproportionately favoured ‘highbrow’ culture'.
Also it's not just about what you like, but how you came to like it.
'Bourdieu is at pains to point to out the importance of examining not merely the possession of tastes, but their mode of acquisition. Our doctors’ accounts illustrate how family and educational influences play a huge part in their acquisition of cultural capital. They provide insights into the ways in which socialisation processes at medical school and thereafter contribute to the development of a medical habitus, but early life experiences are hugely important in equipping doctors with cultural capital which may in part explain their ‘honourable’ or morally worthy status (IpsosMORI 2013) in society'.
From: Anglo-American Health Policy Network <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Joseph White <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 07 July 2014 04:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Marmot
well, yeah, pretty "sophisticated" list though not ALL classical.
great research idea, ruth! rates with one of my colleagues' piece in which he analyzed the effect of being crazy on success in U.S. elections, with the indicator of craziness being references on the internet using terms like "idiot" and "bats**t" (his phrasing for publication). http://politicalscience.case.edu/crazy_train.pdf
but couldn't there be an age factor? Just a bit younger and there really should be some Stones or The Who. Right? Or maybe a what-it-would-be-like-to-be-stuck-on-an-island factor? Not sure if I'd stick to my basic preference for loud rock or not, though I suspect I'd get tired of nature pretty quick. my guess is i'd go real eclectic actually. Maximize variety once I'm stuck on the same old island for a long time... Anyway, would 40-year-old docs really go classical???
cheers,
joe
On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 12:44 PM, McDonald, Ruth <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
What Desert Island Discs reveals about doctors
http://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/desert-island-doctors/
What Desert Island Doctors reveals about doctors | News | WBS
New research by Ruth McDonald, Professor of Governance and Public Management at WBS looks at the portrayal of doctors when they appear on Desert Island Discs, the BBC Radio 4 show.
'Bourdieu', medical elites and 'social class': a qualitative study of Desert Island Doctors
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9566.12121/abstract
From: Anglo-American Health Policy Network <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Adam Oliver <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 03 July 2014 17:35
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Marmot
Michael Marmot is on Desert Island Discs this week:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/56dc9508#b048j630
Shall we predict his picks? One might think he’d take the Black Report, but he’s probably memorised that.
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