Distinction

How is it that we are able to tell the difference between things, and how are there such stark differences in what people recognize?  This is one of the topics that we were talking about today in the undergrad class that I work with and I thought some of it was pretty interesting.  Back in like the 80's this French dude, Pierre Bourdieu, did some research on culture and how people think about it, and what makes people like different things (think: micro-brew beer vs. bud light).

He would ask things like 'what is a photo beautiful' with answer choices like: sunset, bark of a tree, and a woman  breastfeeding (i know, that one seems totally random).  Turns out that there are strong social class differences in people's answers.  Lower class people like sunset photos (easily appealing, colorful, easy to 'understand'), middle class people like the woman breast feeding (ahhh, not sure here - value family?), and rich people like picture of tree bark (drawn to abstract stuff, appreciate subtle art themes more).  Now, these were strong differences and not just like some upper class people here and what not.  Weird.

The idea is that we all live in certain social circles that then impact what we understand, recognize, like, appreciate and so on.  Why are something things familiar to us while other things we don't 'get?'  Only certain people recognize different wines, let alone even like it (or can afford it even more).  But it can be more than just physical things like art and food/drinks.  Religion is like this (type of music one likes in church, theologically liberal or conservative, and so on), and pop culture (movies, music, who dates who), politics...

Here is the part from class that I thought was interesting (if you stuck with me this long).  Two things.  First, Baylor has more upper class students and some will recognize this and others think what they see here is pretty common.  This thinking that upper-middle class-ness is normal or not actually as upper class as it is is conditioned by community and context in just the same way.  No, it is not normal for everyone to be wearing Sperry Topsiders with their niki running shorts - but you see it enough you will start to think that this is not related to money.  No, normally there are not this many Mercedes on a college campus.  They have a lot of money, but it is relativized so that they don't think of it as a lot, but as 'normal.'

The second thing is volunteering.  Baylor really pushes this.  It is even to the point that some of their scholarships require students to do things in the community here a few times per week.  It would be interesting to see what difference (if any) this makes for constructing a certain view of volunteering as something that 'normal' people do.  I hope it does make that difference.  On the flip side, it reinforces distinctions here.  The students 'go out' into the community to help them.  The school is separated as different and reinforced as such.  They are not a part of the community, but they are the big brother that steps in to beat off the bullies when the brother is able to show up when needed.  the 'we' goes to help the 'them.'  Not making 'our' community better, but helping 'their' community.  Makes me think, how do we understand volunteering?  How should we?