Page 81 - Constructing Craft

sometimes classified as ‘taste’, such as dress sense, accent and style. Symbolic

capital was usually acquired through competition, inherited from family or learned at
school. Bourdieu posited that all practices were ‘orientated towards the
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maximisation of material and symbolic results – that is mainly interest-motivated’.

Bourdieu referred to the areas where the social interaction involving the forms of
capital took place as ‘fields’. Positions within the fields were determined by the

proportion of capital those involved possessed or were able to acquire. Artists and

craftspeople became involved in a struggle within the field of ‘craft’ and ‘art’ but
other individuals were also involved and other fields such as education were areas

where conflict could arise. Therefore, the struggle might be between craftspeople,

artists and craftspeople, or even craftspeople, artists, critics, educators and
administrators within a number of different fields.

Bourdieu believed that individuals entered fields with preconceived ideas and habits

that he called habitus. Habitus were unconscious points of view held by people that
can influence how they feel in different social circumstances. People attempt to

locate themselves in the field where their habitus naturally fits. Bourdieu suggested

that the field was like a game where habitus was a trump card and inherited assets
were capital. As positions changed within a field so did the dispositions which

constitute the habitus. ‘Players’ in the field of art were constantly evaluating the
status and class of others by the position they held. Those with the power to

influence could determine what good taste was – or what art was and what it was
not. Those who lacked the upbringing or education to exert influence accepted their

position in a field as natural. These attitudes, or dispositions, were formed by the

objective structures that existed within a society and were largely independent of
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the consciousness and will of individuals.

Colin Slade, a furniture maker and CCNZ President from 1985 to 1987, was aware
that the relationship between art and craft was hierarchical and that this positioning

was a sociological construction. In a speech given at an exhibition opening in 1988
he could well have been referring to Bourdieu’s ideas when he stated:

Because this hierarchy, like most, has a lot to do with power
and money, it’s important for the maintenance of the status quo

Constructing Craft