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Pierre Bourdieu, Indignado: Social and Symbolic Struggles in Spain’s 15-M

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Pierre Bourdieu in Hispanic Literature and Culture

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Abstract

In light of Bourdieu’s writings on culture and power, this chapter examines the struggles and interests that motivated and shaped Spain’s 15-M movement, a series of civilian protests and demonstrations that took place in 2011. The chapter situates Bourdieu’s political thought in the context of his career and focuses on two interrelated elements central to his writings about politics and social change that are relevant to the 15-M movement in its attempt to debunk received notions of how the social world is constructed. First, it addresses the issue of delegation and its “misrecognition” as one of the factors behind the movement, and second, it examines Bourdieu’s ideas on language and its power in the construction of a social and political reality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words . Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. Matthew Adamson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 25.

  2. 2.

    Besides countless pages on the Internet, blogs, newspaper articles, etc., Indignados has garnered a considerable number of publications, including monographs, collections of articles, and film documentaries. They share a type of trench-style sensitivity mixed with activism and urgency to get it out before it wanes.

  3. 3.

    Joseba Elola, “El 15-M sacude el sistema,” El País, last modified May 22, 2011, http://elpais.com/diario/2011/05/22/domingo/1306036353_850215.html

  4. 4.

    The relevance of social media in the creation and shaping of contemporary social revolutions is a well-discussed element in media and social studies, from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement , and Indignados have also been subject to this analysis. See, for example, Narseo Vallina-Rodríguez et al., “Los Twindignados: The Rise of the Indignados Movement on Twitter,” SOCIALCOM-PASSAT ’12 Proceedings of the 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing and 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust (Washington: IEEE Computer Society, 2012), 496–501.

  5. 5.

    Bourdieu, In Other Words, 25.

  6. 6.

    David Swartz , “From Critical Sociology to Public Intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and Politics,” Theory and Society 32.5/6 (2003): 808.

  7. 7.

    During this period he wrote what is probably his most popular book among the general public, On Television (New York: The New Press, 1998), originally published in 1996. Here Bourdieu, among other aspects, criticizes the media for closing the avenues to public opinion and for contributing to a legitimation of intellectual discourse based on media visibility rather than on traditional forms of legitimation , such as peer-reviewed publications and so forth. As mentioned earlier, the increasing lack of autonomy of the intellectual field was one of the factors that motivated Bourdieu to come out of the “academic closet.” Other publications from this period include the collections of short opinion pieces and interviews, Acts of Resistance (New York: The New Press, 1998) and Firing Back (New York: The New Press, 2003), both subtitled as “Against the Tyranny of the Market” in their English translations. These books represent Bourdieu’s most clear political interventions against neoliberalism and globalization.

  8. 8.

    While the focus of this chapter has to do mainly with Bourdieu’s theories as they relate to the theory and practice of politics and social change, it is worth noting that, during the last decade, Bourdieu’s work in general has experienced a rise in popularity, especially in US academic circles. Whereas a 1997 article by John Guillory, “Bourdieu’s Refusal” (Modern Language Quarterly, 58–4 (1997): 367–98), analyzed the negative reception of Bourdieu among US cultural studies scholars, a 2007 ranking of the most-cited authors in the humanities compiled by Thomson Reuters’ ISI Web of Science showcased Bourdieu as the second-most cited, after Michel Foucault (first) and before Jacques Derrida (third). Michèle Lamont has researched the progressive adoption of Bourdieu by American sociology in “How Has Bourdieu Been Good to Think With? The Case of the United States” (Sociological Forum, 27–1 (2012): 228–37). A similar project on Bourdieu’s increasing popularity in the fields of cultural studies and literature would shed light on the development and current status of humanities studies.

  9. 9.

    See Loïc Wacquant, Pierre Bourdieu and Democratic Politics. The Mystery of Ministry (Cambridge: Polity, 2005); Jeremy Lane , Bourdieu’s Politics. Problems and Possibilities (London: Routledge, 2006); and David Swartz , Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). For further examples from Swartz , see David Swartz , “Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Sociology and Governance Perspectives,” in Governance as Social and Political Communication, ed. Henrik P. Bang (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 141–58; “Sociologia e politica: le forme dell’impegno politico di Bourdieu,” in Bourdieu Dopo Bourdieu, ed. Gabriella Paolucci (Novara: Utet Università, 2010), 54–82.

  10. 10.

    Swartz , Culture & Power, 145.

  11. 11.

    Swartz , Culture & Power, 145.

  12. 12.

    In some ways, the field of power acts as a sort of metafield for Bourdieu. It describes the whole social world, and it is a structure based on the oppositional relationship between economic and cultural capital. This fundamental opposition organizes and shapes all subfields and social agents, which, in turn, are situated on the field of power according to their cultural and economic capital.

  13. 13.

    Pierre Bourdieu, “The Political Field, the Social Field, and the Journalistic Field,” in Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, ed. Rodney Dean. Benson and Erik Neveu (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), 39.

  14. 14.

    Bourdieu, “The Political Field,” 39.

  15. 15.

    Bourdieu has written elsewhere about how “one of the major points of contention in the literary or artistic field is the definition of the limits of the field” (Swartz , “Culture and Power,” 121). We can extend this claim to the political field . In fact, Bourdieu’s fields are not clear-cut spaces or institutions, as their very definition implies this constant struggle to define what they are and who has the right/legitimate power to name it.

  16. 16.

    Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 127–28.

  17. 17.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 164.

  18. 18.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 170.

  19. 19.

    Swartz , “Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Sociology,” 143.

  20. 20.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 221.

  21. 21.

    Just three days before May 15, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain, announced several austerity measures that had retirement pensions and public sector workers’ salaries as the main targets. See M.G. Mayo, “Zapatero congela pensiones, baja sueldos a los funcionarios y no descarta subir impuestos,” Expansion, last modified May 12, 2011, http://www.expansion.com/2010/05/12/economia-politica/1273648244.html

  22. 22.

    Eduardo López Alonso, “Islandia, el referente del movimiento 15-M,” El Periodico, last modified May 22, 2011, http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/economia/islandia-referente-del-movimiento-15-m-1013220

  23. 23.

    Oscar Gutiérrez, “Los sábados de Islandia llegaron al 15-M,” El País, last modified May 17, 2011, http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2011/05/17/actualidad/1305661201_570313.html

  24. 24.

    “The Constitutional Council—General Information,” Stjornlagarad 2011, last modified July 29, 2011, http://stjornlagarad.is/english/

  25. 25.

    The viability of Iceland’s model for other countries has been debated in the sense that Iceland’s economy and population are not comparable to those of Greece, Spain and other countries that were most affected by the crisis. It remains, however, a puzzling referent for economists such as Paul Krugman, for example, who has referred to it as the “Icelandic miracle” in “The Icelandic Post-Crisis Miracle,” The New York Times, last modified June 30, 2010, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/the-icelandic-post-crisis-miracle/?_r=0

  26. 26.

    Disciplines such as political science, and specific language to refer to political activities such as “summits,” only intensify the idea that politics occurs somewhere else, in a realm separate from everyday life.

  27. 27.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 172.

  28. 28.

    Pierre Bourdieu, Political Interventions: Social Science and Political Action, ed. Franck Poupeau and Thierry Discepolo (London: Verso, 2008), 74.

  29. 29.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 204–05, 211.

  30. 30.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 208.

  31. 31.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 204.

  32. 32.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 204.

  33. 33.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 184.

  34. 34.

    The perception of a cynical attitude on the part of politicians, however, has been a constant in Spanish politics in recent decades, with a staggering number of cases of corruption and clientelism.

  35. 35.

    This is what Bourdieu calls homology , and it is part of his theory of fields. While each field has its own set of rules and particularities, there is a certain overlap across fields, a correspondence of spaces and interests. For example, for Bourdieu, those who align with the left in the political field and oppose a policy put forward by the right would do so in order to stake out their position in the game, but in doing so, they would also benefit some of their constituency. There is, in other words, a “structural coincidence of the specific interests of the delegates and the interests of the mandators” (Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power , 215), which leads Bourdieu to claim that “[t]he people who serve the interests of their mandators well are those who serve their own interests well by serving the others” (Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 215).

  36. 36.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 177.

  37. 37.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 177.

  38. 38.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 172.

  39. 39.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 173.

  40. 40.

    Since the instauration of democracy in Spain in 1976, PSOE and PP have practically monopolized the political panorama in the country. Except for a brief period (1977–1982) when the no-longer-existing UCD (Unión de Centro Democrático “Union of Democratic Center”) was in the government, PSOE (1982–1996; 2004–2011) and PP (1996–2004; 2011–present) have alternated as governing parties.

  41. 41.

    To speak of “apoliticism” as a way to refer to a lack of involvement or interest in politics is, at best, problematic, as it can also be read as a political stance of disagreement with and protest against current affairs. In the case of the Indignados , there is an embedded criticism of the way politics operates. The data from a public opinion poll conducted by CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas) show important trends in Spaniards’ relationship with politics before and after the financial crisis: when asked what are the three main problems that Spain faces, the one phrased “Politicians in general, political parties and politics” has consistently ranked third since the economic crisis started, only behind “Unemployment” and “Economic problems” (“Tres problemas principals que existen actualmente en España,” http://www.cis.es/cis/export/sites/default/-Archivos/Indicadores/documentos_html/TresProblemas.html). A poll from December 2012 shows that almost a third of those interviewed chose politics as one of the most pressing problems. It is worth noting that another option on this poll was “The current government,” but it was hardly chosen as one of the major problems, underlining the fact that a change of government would not solve anything and the main issue rests with the political system at large.

  42. 42.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 171.

  43. 43.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 173–74.

  44. 44.

    Bourdieu has devoted attention to the figure of the intellectual as the last bastion of independent critical thought in a world dominated by economism and technocracy. See, for example, Bourdieu, In Other Words , 140–49.

  45. 45.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 244.

  46. 46.

    Lane, Bourdieu’s Politics, 63.

  47. 47.

    “Manifesto (English),” Democracia Real Ya, last modified May 23, 2013, http://www.democraciarealya.es/manifiesto-comun/manifesto-english/

  48. 48.

    Slavoj Žižek , The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (London: Verso, 2012), 79.

  49. 49.

    Žižek , The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, 79.

  50. 50.

    Slavoj Žižek , “The Simple Courage of Decision: A Leftist Tribute to Thatcher,” New Statesman, last modified April 17, 2013, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/04/simple-courage-decision-leftist-tribute-thatcher

  51. 51.

    For an excellent analysis of the Indignados movement and the power of common people to effect political change, see Luis Moreno-Caballud, Cultures of Anyone. Studies on Cultural Democratization in the Spanish Neoliberal Crisis, trans. Linda Grabner (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015).

  52. 52.

    Amador Fernández-Savater , “Emborronar la CT (del ‘No a La Guerra’ al 15-M),” in CT O la cultura de la transición. Crítica a 35 años de cultura española, ed. Guillem Martínez (Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2012), 49–50.

  53. 53.

    See Fernando Garea, “Apoyo a la indignación del 15-M,” El País, last modified June 5, 2011, http://elpais.com/diario/2011/06/05/espana/1307224812_850215.html

  54. 54.

    See Carmen Pérez-Lanzac, “Indignados y acampados,” El País, last modified May 17, 2011, http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2011/05/17/actualidad/1305623988_837783.html

  55. 55.

    This is a somewhat pejorative term that specifically refers to young vagabonds that beg for money in the streets accompanied by a flute and a dog. Eventually the term came to refer to any youth with a disheveled aspect and connected with the squatters’ movements. During the 15-M, it was employed as an umbrella term to dismiss those participating in the protests. As Albert Lladó explained in the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia soon after the protests: “[Perroflautas es] una expresión … que se ha usado de forma interesada, sea para desacreditar a aquellos que reclamaban una democracia más participativa, sea para desinformar sobre la media de edad y la ideología—múltiple y variada—de los que protestan desde plaza Catalunya o Puerta del Sol” [“[Perroflautas is] an expression … that has been used in an interested way either to discredit those who demanded a more participatory democracy or to misinform about the average age and ideology —multiple and varied—of those protesting from Plaza Catalunya or Puerta del Sol”]. Albert Lladó, “¿Eres un perroflauta?” last modified May 25, 2011, http://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20110525/54161274942/eres-un-perroflauta.html

  56. 56.

    See, for example, González Harbour’s “No son antisistema,” an opinion piece in El País written on May 20, 2011, where the author sees the 15-M not as a marginal, violent movement, but as one whose demands are legitimate and necessary for a healthy democracy . See Berna González Harbour, “No son antisistema,” El País, last modified May 20, 2011, http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2011/05/20/actualidad/1305903347_240101.html

  57. 57.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 128.

  58. 58.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 128.

  59. 59.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 131.

  60. 60.

    President of the PP (Partido Popular) at the time.

  61. 61.

    See Paloma Cervilla, “Rajoy: ‘En democracia, a los gobiernos malos, se les quita con el voto valiente,’” ABC, last modified May 19, 2011, http://www.abc.es/20110519/espana/abcm-rajoy-democracia-gobiernos-malos-201105191339.html

  62. 62.

    “Blair Sobre El 15-M: ‘Hay Que Escuchar a Quien Protesta Pero Que No Te Gobierne,’” El País, last modified June 2, 2011, http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/06/02/espana/1307029465.html

  63. 63.

    President of Comunidad de Madrid at the time.

  64. 64.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 130.

  65. 65.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 130.

  66. 66.

    Fernández-Savater , “Emborronar la CT,” 51.

  67. 67.

    Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 128.

  68. 68.

    Gonzalo Torné, “Un mes en el que la CT enfermó,” in CT O la cultura de la transición. Crítica a 35 años de cultura española, ed. Guillem Martínez (Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2012), 62.

  69. 69.

    Henry Jenkins, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).

  70. 70.

    “European Citizen’s Prize Doesn’t Please Everyone,” Expatica, last modified June 10, 2013, http://www.expatica.com/es/news/country-news/European-Citizens-Prize-doesnt-please-everyone_378568.html

  71. 71.

    Bourdieu, Political Interventions, 73.

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  1. World Languages and Cultures, Arkansas State University, State University, AR, USA

    Vicent Moreno

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  1. Romance Languages and Literatures, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado

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Moreno, V. (2018). Pierre Bourdieu, Indignado: Social and Symbolic Struggles in Spain’s 15-M. In: Sánchez Prado, I. (eds) Pierre Bourdieu in Hispanic Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71809-5_11

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