Bourdieu had a problem with how other scholars looked at social life.

One was the

structuralist approach which overemphasized the structure, and the other was
phenomenological- which overemphasized the individual experience. He found both of these
unsatisfactory. His own Theory of Practice draws from both structuralist and
phenomenological approaches. It focused on how individuals are instituted into structures.
Example of gift exchange: A phenomenological view looks at gift exchange as experienced by
individuals. A structurlaist view would look at it from outside. What both these miss out on is
the element of time. This is important from the p.o.v. of practice because without it, gift
giving won’t make much sense. Bourdieu believes that strategies are more important than
rules because they entail mastery over rules, as well as use of rules. Rules cannot explain the
ground reality or practice. Bourdieu also distinguished between official and practical kinship.
Official kinship refers to the representations of kinship in certain ways by using diagrams and
specific terminology. This method is preferred by anthros. Practical Kinship accounts for the
real nuances of kinship—of how it actually operates.
According to Bourdieu, the role of societies is to ensure social reproduction. They maintain
cultural patterns, though not without change. His case study is of the marriage strategies of
the French Pyrenees.
Marriage strategies are conducted to maximize economic and symbolic gains and therefore
carry out a “good marriage”, rather than just a marriage. The two most important functions
of marriage strategies are: Reproducing the lineage and therefore the work force,
Safeguarding the patrimony in a context of scarcity of money. (Patrimony is the property
inherited generally from the father).
Marriage strategies are influences by the sex and order of birth of the person getting
married. The most important principles are of
1) Male supremacy (surprise surprise!)
2) Primogeniture (1st born child)
Discussion of adot and the eldest son
The share of propertyofa descendant is entitled by tradition, is the same as the
compensation paid at the time of marriage. Therefore the value of the property determined
the value of adot which is the dowry. The size of dowry demanded by fam of future husband
was determined by the size of their own property. Due to the mediation of adot, marriage
negotiations take an economic character and become a matter of “cost analysis” and
economic exchange. Due to the feature of adot, marrying too high or too low was not
permitted. An eldest son shouldn’t marry too high because some day he may have to return
the adot. Also, marrying too high would threaten his position in the domestic power
structure—he will not have the upper hand. It would also be difficult for the mother of the
boy to exert her power over her daughter in law if she came from a very rich background. He
also shouldn’t marry too low because that would dishonour him and make it difficult to
dower younger siblings. Marriage of the eldest son (heir), determined the size of adot that
could be given to younger siblings, hence the kind of marriage they could make. Therefore
the strategy followed was to obtain from the bride, an adot large enough to pay for adots of
all other younger sons and daughters without having to mortgage the property.
Marriage strategies related to a Girl
Due to male bias, every marriage was judged from the male p.o.v. Girls were legally allowed
to marry above their station. mIf she was an only girl or the eldest of many sisters, the
continuity of the patrimony would come at risk to lineage. Because:
1) If she married an eldest son then the “house” would be annexed by another
2) If she married a younger son, domestic power fell to a stranger after the death of her
parents
If she was a younger daughter, only option was to marry her off because unlike boys, she
could not be sent away or kept unmarried since cost of her labour was not commensurate
with the cost of her upkeep.
Imbalance and political authority
Imbalance is greatest when the eldest son marries a younger daughter of a v large family.
The adot may not be much larger than that of an eldest girl from a modest family who had
just one brother.
Questions of political authority became most acute when eldest son married an heiress—
specially if she was richer. This led to either an open or hidden conflict over the place of
residence. This type of marriage could create a permanent back and forth between the two
homes or even maintenance of two separate households because none wanted to give up
their lineage or lead to extinction of a “house” and its name.
Bearn suggested that sociology of the family is often premised on sentiment, but might be
an aspect of political sociology. In Max Weber’s language, the competition between spouses
for authority over the family, i.e. for monopoly of legitimately exercising power in domestic
affairs, are related to the material and symbolic capital they bring into the marriage.
Marriage strategies for younger sons
If he married into a family of same rank, bought a good adot, and made a good mark in
terms of his fertility and work, he was honoured and treated as the true master.If he married
upward, then he would sacrifice everything to the new house where his parents in law
remained in charge of everything. Hardly any young sons were willing to marry younger
daughters.
Those who were unable to marry an heiress, owing to their low adot, had two options:
1) Move away to another city or America, and learn a new craft and establish
themselves.
2) Could become servants to own family ,he supplied his labour to his fam without
adding to expenses of household or detracting from the property. They therefore helped
preserve the patrimony.
Conclusion—Relation between strategies, rules and habitus
The constraints surrounding every marriage choice are numerous and complex and not
reducible for individual conscious choice. Therefore, they cannot be expressed by a set of
mechanical rules. Numerous rules would have to be invented to account for the various
strategies employed.
Fams carry out “parries” and “moves” like in fencing or chess, to deal with potential threats
the marriage poses to property and fam. These are not at all simple procedures reducible to
explicit laws, but are infact products of the habitus, which implies: the practical mastery of a
smallnumber of implicit principles that have spawned an infinite number of practices and
follow their own pattern, although they are not based on obedience to any formal rules.
“Hence these patterns emerge “spontaneously”, and it is unnecessary to make them explicit
or impose any rules. Habitus is the product of the very structures it tends to reproduce. It is
predicated upon a “spontaneous” compliance with the established order and with the will of
the guardians of that order, namely, the elders, habitus is the principle that will generate he
different solutions which individuals, depending on their position in the social hierarchy,
their place in the family’s order of birth, their sex, and so forth, can bring to the practical
dilemmas created by the various systems of exigencies that are not necessarily mutually
compatible.”
Marriage strategies must be seen as one element in the entire system of biological, cultural,
and social reproduction by which every group endeavours to pass on to the next generation
the full measure of power and privilege it has itself inherited.