大学英语议论文范文
充满希望-卓有成效
大学英语议论文范文
【大学英语议论文范文】 The
politics of protest(布迪厄)
Pierre Bourdieu has
become a leading figure in the radical movements
that have swept Franc
e in the last few years.
He talked to Kevin Ovenden about anti-capitalism
and resistance
The Weight of the World was
recently published in Britain. It describes
through interviews in t
he early 1990s the
''social suffering of contemporary society''. Why
is life getting harder for mo
st people?
There are similarities between what has
happened to people''s lives in France and in
Britain.
The main issue, of course, is neo-
liberalism and what I call the retreat of the
state. The state h
as abandoned a lot of areas
that it was involved in, such as healthcare,
education, and social
provision.
When we
conducted this study it was only beginning. Now it
is far worse. So for example, in F
rance neo-
liberal philosophy has become embedded in all the
social practices and policies of
the state. It
has become internalised in the minds of the
political establishment. The minister o
f
education who was recently forced out of office,
Claude All
gh policies''--a drive for
efficiency and productivity.
Instead of
looking very carefully at how education works, the
neo-liberals opt for a very simple
solution.
They create competition between schools and
between the directors of schools, wh
o have to
compete for budgets and for students. This
competition is fake--it is artificially
constr
ucted. It does not arise spontaneously
from the way the education system works. The
educati
on system was not perfect. I was very
critical of it. But instead of correcting it and
providing th
e means to better it, they destroy
it by introducing this capitalistic vision of
education.
One could say the same about
healthcare. I recently read a record of a meeting
between a gr
oup of professors of medicine who
are traditionally very conservative. They went to
meet prim
e minister Jospin. He did not receive
them. A technocrat met them instead. The
transcript of t
he discussion is terrible. The
people say, ''Look, I never demonstrated or
participated in any st
rike or protest
movement. But for the first time I am forced to
speak out on behalf of my patien
ts.'' One gave
an example of a 73 year old woman who had cancer,
but her medicine was too
expensive for the
hospital''s budget. Another said that his hospital
does not have the money t
o pay anaesthetists,
so there are no anaesthetists at night. He asked
the technocrat, ''Would
you send your wife to
such a hospital?'' He replies, ''That''s a
personal question which I will no
t answer.''
We are seeing a blind and chaotic response to
the problems of public institutions. We have
ha
d a very hierarchical system in healthcare
for many years. But after 1968 younger people
tried
to change it. They tried to make the
system more collective and introduce the idea of
working
as part of a team. Now that is being
destroyed because they work under the threat of
cuts an
d demands for greater productivity.
Centre-left parties are in government across
most of Europe. They are presiding over these
n
eo-liberal policies. Do you see anything new
in the way social democratic parties are
governin
g?
I am very sceptical about the
idea that there is this new approach called the
Third Way or the
Neue Mitte. We have, to
varying degrees across the continent, basically
neo-liberal policies dr
essed up with talk of a
new form of politics which is not terribly new at
all. So we find social de
鑗
re, was very
similar to the one you have in Britain. He
introduced into education so called ''tou
mocratic rhetoric being deployed
to destroy the social democratic policies which
grew up in th
e period after the Second World
War.
In France many of those pushing this
offensive hail from the 1968 generation. They
became r
adicalised then, but now are
incorporated into the system. The failure of the
Mitterrand years
generated a backlash against
the French Socialist Party. Of course, the great
revolt of Decem
ber 1995 ushered in a wave of
social movements which brought the Socialists back
into powe
r.
But the aim of the government
and its technocrats is to curtail and destroy
those movements.
Ministers and advisers use
their prestige and experience from 1968 against
the movements.
When students occupied the ole
Normale Supieur, the government figure arguing to
send the
police in firmly and swiftly had
himself taken part in the occupations of 1968.
People in Germany and in Britain often tell me
that it must be wonderful to live in France with
t
he 35 hour week and other reforms. But those
gains are a result of the pressure of the
move
ments. They are not freely given by the
government. The left government believes it can be
m
ore successful than the right in controlling
those movements.
How do your sociological
ideas influence your political stance? You
developed your ideas wh
en structuralism was
the main influence on French intellectuals.
I
was not a structuralist. That approach saw the
world as composed of structures which strictl
y
determine the way people act. There was no scope
for human agency. As the structuralist
Marxist
Louis Althusser said in the 1960s, human beings
were merely the ''unconscious beare
rs of
objective structures''. The results of my
anthropological work in Algeria in the 1950s did
n
ot fit into this structuralist framework.
Of course people are structured by society.
They are not, as free market theory holds,
isolate
d individuals each deciding a course of
action by making individual economic calculations.
I d
eveloped the concept of ''habitus'' to
incorporate the objective structures of society
and the su
bjective role of agents within it.
The habitus is a set of dispositions, reflexes
and forms of behaviour people acquire through
a
cting in society. It reflects the different
positions people have in society, for example,
whether
they are brought up in a middle class
environment or in a working class suburb.
It
is part of how society reproduces itself. But
there is also change. Conflict is built into
society
. People can find that their
expectations and ways of living are suddenly out
of step with the n
ew social position they find
themselves in. This is happening in France today.
Then the questi
on of social agency and
political intervention becomes very important.
The heart of Marxism is the struggle by the
working class for its own emancipation. Where do
you place the struggles of the working class
within the spectrum of the social movements you
are involved in?
Seattle brought together
organised labour and various single-issue
campaigns. They were oft
en mobilised on
different political bases, but they influenced one
another. That is new. For the
first time we
have the possibility of aggregating these kinds of
people who were very suspicio
us of one
another.
In France we have this tradition of
workerism which is anti-intellectual. The unions
are very ho
stile to intellectuals and the
intellectuals are very distant from workers. In
1968 it was very visi
ble. Now for the first
time because of the failure of Soviet Marxism we
are free from that. So I
can speak with a CGT
official as I am speaking to you. They are very
open. In a sense intellec
tuals like me did not exist 20 years ago.
People like Sartre and Foucault were sympathetic
to t
he movement, but they did not have much
empirical knowledge of workers.
Seattle is
very important in showing how new forces are
developing. The small farmers'' leade
r
Jos?Bov?is well informed. He expresses himself
clearly without the oversimplification which
you hear from politicians. He is an
intellectual. But at the same time he works on his
farm.
I recently organised a meeting of all
the leaders of the social movements in France--the
unem
ployed, the sans papiers immigrants, some
trade unionists. You had anarchists, Trotskyists,
Marxists--all types. The discussion was at a
level you could not imagine. You can see the
revi
val of a left political culture in the
huge sales of Le Monde Diplomatique. Some
suspicion still r
emains among those who are
working together, of course. But at the end of the
meeting they
gave Raisons d''Agir, the group I
am involved in, a mandate to issue a charter for a
European
social movement. We must escape
nationalist division and have an international
movement to
fight against global capital.
How can the movements generalise and how will
the different ideas within them be clarified?
The way the movement will develop is open. It
is a process. We plan to publish an appeal for
a European movement against neo-liberalism in
May. We are seeking the support of the DGB
union federation in Germany, the CGT in France,
intellectuals, social movements and many
d
ifferent organisations. There will be a
meeting in September of different movements to
elabor
ate this charter. Then we will hold a
conference in Athens in March of next year to
discuss tha
t and try to create the foundations
of a social Europe. We have many ideas, but we
must work
on them. The aim is to create an
intellectual and practical opposition. It is not
only intellectual
s. One of the most important
leaders of one of the main unions in Greece wants
to fund the co
nference. Our mission is to
organise and try to help people to communicate.
There is a division of labour in this
developing movement. Social scientists can help to
overco
me difficulties. If we want an effective
social movement at the level of Europe we must
overco
me that--otherwise we will disappear.
There are powerful political obstacles between
people. The main obstacles come from the
so
cial democratic movement. If we succeed in
overcoming these it will lead to a genuine Third
Way which will be much more radical. We need
to build the left of the left. In the ecology
mov
ement you have people who are really on the
left--even among the Communist Party, which
h
as had a deadening effect on the left in
France.
Many people are coming to realise that
globalisation is more of a political imperative
than an e
conomic fact. Three quarters of the
exchange of goods in Europe is internal to Europe.
The s
ocial democratic parties in power could
implement policies to limit the free market.
How will we force them? Will we require a new
political party?
I don''t know. It would be
nice if we could force them, but I am not sure if
we can. It seems to
me there is a crisis of
the social democratic governments. In Britain the
crisis of Blairism has
well and truly started.
There is also the crisis of the right wing parties
in much of Europe, parti
cularly the CDU in
Germany. The true left has always faced a false
choice: you vote for the rig
ht or you accept
this fake left wing. We have had the same problem
in France since 1981.
Forces other than the
left are trying to gain a hearing. So we see the
Haider phenomenon in A
ustria. But he has not
gone unchallenged. The recreation of a true left
wing movement will be
the main instrument of
the destruction of Haider. Nobody spoke about Le
Pen and the Nation
al Front in France during
the hot winter of 1995 in France. The mass
movement in defence of
pensions in Italy also marginalised the far
right.
Whether the revival of the left will
lead to a new party is an open question. So too is
how idea
s will be clarified. The main thing is
to build the movement. No one should doubt the
radical c
hanges that are happening in the way
people think. I am more optimistic about the
future than
at any time in the last three
decades, despite the seeming triumph of global
capitalism