Mary, It's been a while since I've visited Bourdieu but I do hold the position that "individuality" is somewhat less distinct than one might commonly presume. Certainly, one could construct an instrument of a thousand dimensions to measure each person and each person would have some unique "shape" in the pattern of such an assessment but, in practice, this "fabric of traits" must confront the homogenizing influence of culture and social control. That we each show signs of belonging to our cultures demonstrates the varying boundary between individuality and cultural membership. I had forgotten how similar Bourdieu's thoughts are to The Looking Glass Theory ("I am what I think you think I am") and to the anthropologist Mary Douglas' thoughts that most, if not all, cultural metaphors derive from the body. What is truly interesting about all of these phenomena on the Internet is that "taste fabric" is the primary means of constructing identity on the Internet. This is done with a deliberation that is unusual in realspace. It seems to me that a contrast between netspace and realspace is how serendipity (in way Bandura used the word) plays a much greater role in most aspects of identity (and, by extension, taste/preference) formation in realspace. Even if one allows that one's netspace identity is largely a projection of one's realspace identity (or, perhaps, a fictionalized contrivance), one still must consciously, actively construct one's netspace identity to participate in social networks... a process that seems to have few realspace analogs. This consciously constructed net identity then becomes currency in the social spaces. This dimension of serendipity in realspace is driven to a great degree by one's physical location but, in netspace, proximity doesn't have the same meaning except through behavior (where, when and how one participates in netspace). Please allow that these are merely my thoughts at the moment; all knowledge is provisional after all *smile*. Thanks for the reminder on Bourdieu. Jonathan Cornwell -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mary K. Bryson Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 11:32 PM To: Association of Internet Researchers Subject: Re: [Air-l] maybe a silly question.. but And so, how useful it might be, then, to go "back to the future" with someone like Bourdieu, whose refutation of any notion of "individuality" and "taste" is very compelling, if taste is read as a location of culture, and as such, of the social written on the body. "Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed." (from Pierre Bourdieu 'Distinction') Mary On 8/27/06 8:42 PM, "Jonathan Cornwell" <jrc@tcfir.org> wrote:
"Taste Fabrics and the Beauty of Homogeneity" by Hugo Liu, Glorianna Davenport, and Pattie Maes introduced me to the wonderful (IMHO) phrase "taste fabric". The first part of the abstract reads:
"The quintessence of an individual's taste is her aesthetic sensibility and system of preferences. Online social network profiles, such as those appearing on Friendster and MySpace, are a veritable "show and tell" for taste-allowing individuals to perform acts of taste by declaring their favorite books, what music they love, and what their passions are. By mining these social network profiles en masse and analyzing how each taste instance (e.g. a book, an author, a band, a cuisine, etc.) is meaningfully correlated with every other, an underlying fabric of taste common across individuals can be inferred." [Taste fabric and the Beauty...]
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