TY - JOUR
AU - Bourdieu, Pierre
AB - Based on a study of his childhood village of Béarn in southwestern Francein the 1960s combining social history, statistics, and ethnography, the author showshow economic and social standing influence the rising rates of bachelorhood in apeasant society based on primogeniture through the mediation of the embodiedconsciousness that men acquire of this standing. The scene of a local ball on themargins of which bachelors gather serves to highlight and dissect the cultural clashbetween country and city and the resulting devaluation of the young men from thehamlet as urban categories of judgment penetrate the rural world. Because theirupbringing and social position lead them to be sensitive to‘tenue’ (appearance, clothing, bearing, conduct) aswell as open to the ideals of the town, young women assimilate the cultural patternsissued from the city more quickly than the men, which condemns the latter to begauged against yardsticks that make them worthless in the eyes of potential marriagepartners. As the peasant internalizes in turn the devalued image that others form ofhim through the prism of urban categories, he comes to perceive his own body as an‘em-peasanted’ body, burdened with the traces of the activitiesand attitudes associated with agricultural life. The wretched consciousness that hegains of his body leads him to break solidarity with it and to adopt an introvertedattitude that amplifies the shyness and gaucheness produced by social relationsmarked by the extreme segregation of the sexes and the repression of the sharing of emotions.
TI - The peasant and his body
JO - Ethnography
DO - 10.1177/1466138104048829
DA - 2004-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/the-peasant-and-his-body-X4omqZNKmD
SP - 579
EP - 599
VL - 5
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -