Perception and symbolic violence

The study of the social perception of the most diverse phenomena is a classic of the social sciences. It is studied the social perception of politics, of immigration, of youth and its problems, of delinquency or, in general, “citizen security” or “insecurity”, of unemployment, etc. In short, as can be seen, the focus of interest of this kind of analyses is nothing other than how what some call “public opinion” defines another of the typical commonplaces to which “public powers”, or as currently they called it the “political managers”, usually lead to the social sciences: the so-called “social problems”.

Because the point of view from which these studies of the social perception of several collective “matters” are mainly taken up, of how the “electors” define these questions, is usually that of the political demoscopy, that of the so-called public opinion studies. It is a perspective that happens to be neutral and objective. That is, without observers or observants. It would seemed that the definition of these phenomena is independent of social relations; that it is the same for everyone; that there are no games of power in how reality is perceived and defined. “Reality” is simply an unproblematic fact. Therefore, from a methodological point of view, this approach is full of percentages; of numbers; of ratings from 1 to 10, and accuracy; of confidence levels and margins of error. What matters here is the accuracy of the photo taken, its sharpness, its definition, without considering in no event if all its protagonists appeared in the photo or whether this is really the picture of reality each one of them would take. The objective of these studies is usually very simple: to “identify” what for the electors are the most common and serious “social problems” in order for the leaders can tell them what, according to the political consultants, they want to hear. Count, classify, rank and draw a picture of social problems, know which ones are more important than others to determine the “demand” of problems and what offers they can sell them to solve them.

On other occasions, they use social psychology. The link between one thing (social psychology) and the other (the perception of certain phenomena) would be very evident. If it is a matter of studying the social perception of the most varied social facts, it would seemed perfectly natural to have the help of that discipline that is in charge of studying the connection between the perceptual processes and the perceived objects. Although this point of view seems quite promising, it does not explicitly raise the problem of power either. Even though the previous perspective neither sensed it, this is not the central variable either there. Social perception from this standpoint is based on the individual mechanisms of perception. Though there are different schools within social psychology in this regard (constructivist psychology introduces some variables such as social and cultural factors that affect what is perceived, which for more behavioral currents are less present; group dynamics and theories of social exchange can give a certain pre-eminence to social relations), the explanation based on the individual mental processes from which we get an idea of reality is prevailing there. For social psychology, social perception is the way we have to grasp reality. Again, since power relations are not the central explanatory variable, social psychology does not consider how social reality affects the way we perceive, but vice versa. And, as we will see later, this is absolutely inescapable. But not as is usually advocated from this discipline, which often resorts to ad hoc explanations based on factors external to the theory itself (that is, non-psychological, often social variables without naming them as such) to explain anomalous perceptual phenomena, which are usually labeled as “mere faults” of attribution or perception anomalies that should be considered exceptions or perceptual errors —they often use denominations that tend to suggest any type of inconsistency during the perception process—, but rather that the social reality affects so centrally in the perceptive processes that the psychological explanation is not only insufficient, but directly subsidiary to that based on the social relations of power to account for the processes of social perception.

In summary, in the first case, perception is a communicative process, and these are the models that are used to explain the formation of “public” opinions. For psychology, perception is a mental process. But these studies are seldom undertaken from the sociology of knowledge. From Marx in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the indispensable link between social structures and the formation of ideas of all kinds became clear. It is the main asset of sociology in order to understand the perception and social construction of the definitions of social phenomena even in our days.

From this point of view, perception is not a process independent of the socially defined possibility of perceiving. That is, it depends on what is perceived, how it is perceived, and who perceives. Thus, perception is neither an isolated and socially neutral psychological process, as it seems to be for psychology, nor a communicative act or a series of communicative processes as it could be considered from a perspective approached from the conceptualization of what is usually called “public opinion”. Nor is it an unproblematic fact that is presented as taken for granted. The perceived reality is not a fact, but a fact permanently in contest. The cognitive struggle for the definition of social reality is the symbolic struggle par excellence. That is why it is not and cannot be an act taking place outside the social relations of power established between agents. It is a fully social process —perhaps the most social of all and on which many social mechanisms are based— in which power is the central variable.

As described in more detail below, this central hypothesis in the sociology of knowledge means that there is a correspondence between social structures and mental or thought categories or schemes. From the point of view of Pierre Bourdieu this means that the filters from which we perceive reality correspond to the social divisions instituted. Or, in other words, that there is a homology between the principles of vision and division and social structures. This correspondence implies that the perceptual processes from which we represent reality involve acts of cognition and recognition of the arbitrary divisions between the dominated and the dominant ones. A division that is naturalized, actualized and re-actualized in each perceptive act. This division is internalized so that it becomes a common sense that cannot be thought of in any other way.

This common sense is what is called “symbolic violence”. Symbolic violence is an act of practical cognition and recognition of these social divisions, of perceptive adhesion, a belief that does not need to be thought or affirmed as such, and that generates in a certain way, that actualizes, naturalizes and re-actualizes the relations of power of which it is a product. In this sense, the nexus between the processes of social perception and power relations is more than evident. Symbolic violence can be considered as that social process from which some definitions of reality are imposed over other definitions, and these definitions become unquestioned and hegemonic, to the point that they end up being seen as the only real, the only possible, and the “common sense”. They do not need to be argued. They are self-evident. From these processes of imposition, which do not need to be imposed, of some ways of seeing reality over other ways of seeing it, some groups impose their criteria on other groups, which become dominated by the former, granting them power over them. A typical example of symbolic violence is the androcentric vision. It is a form of symbolic violence that women themselves, as well as men, contribute to actualize and re-actualize. And, therefore, they themselves contribute to their own subordination, because both for them and for men themselves, the androcentric vision is taken for granted. It appears as the only possible and as natural and obvious. It does not need to be thought or argued to be imposed, since it falls under its own weight in the eyes of all.

To put it in other words which may be more common, the symbolic violence are all those “taken for granted” from which we impose on other people, without having even the remotest awareness, and totally against our will and independently of what we want or intend intentionally, a whole series of “definitions of reality” that end up structuring our social relations. They are that “logical conformism” and that “moral conformism” of which Durkheim spoke. This is how social perception is constructed from the mediation of symbolic violence because it is evident that it cannot be otherwise. Social perception, like the vast majority of social processes, is not an indeterminate or spontaneous or governed by chance process, which is not subject to any law, regularity or social constant. If so, the social sciences would not exist. And precisely one of these constants that do not stop registering these disciplines so poorly understood is that social processes depend on social relations of power. That is, perceptions are defined by those having the power to do so, and over —and even against— those who have less power to do it, who see how their reality and what they themselves are imposed on them, even without they being able to recognize it. Furthermore, just for that reason. Because most of the time they are not aware of it.

But I know very well that, despite all my efforts, maybe what I am trying to say has not yet been fully understood. Not because of the reader’s or mine’s inability to explain, but rather because, in order to grasp the relationship between social perception and symbolic violence, it is necessary to understand very well what symbolic violence is. It is a key concept in the work of Pierre Bourdieu and, very probably, his main contribution to social science, in which he was working, even without knowing it, from the beginning of his career. It was in his last works when this formulation emerged explicitly with the current name, especially from 1998 with his book Masculine Domination.

Unfortunately, this is a contribution that has not been very successful among the audience more or less interested in these matters. But that, regrettably, it has inspired, with more or less bad faith, other perspectives that, with a simplicity which is not too appropriate to account for the complexity of the social phenomena that they try to explain, take advantage of the wide field of studies that has open the symbolic violence paradigm in the social sciences. They are points of view such as the so-called “micro-sexisms”, which although they are based quite blatantly on Pierre Bourdieu’s contributions on symbolic violence, they cannot in any way do justice to the object of study that they intend to analyze. Maybe that’s why they have overwhelmingly triumphed. Because they sell ideas that are easy to listen to, to understand, to assimilate and to put into practice.

It is a concept that apparently can seem very abstract. It is also possible that it is interpreted as one of those contrived conceptualizations to which certain intellectuals are prone. But this is not the case. Pierre Bourdieu always denounced the scholasticism of certain analyses coming from philosophy and, very especially, from social science, which he saw as intellectual “cavilings” that were incapable of grasping what he called “the practical sense” of the very varied forms that they covered social relationships and behaviors. As he said, they tried to understand the phenomena based on logics and intentions which were often wrong, and most of the time they did not even really occur. It was the analyst who introduced these logics into his object of study, which he made speak by his mouth as if he were a ventriloquist. But it was not the agent’s logic with respect to the facts studied.

It is therefore possible that the best way to understand both the relationship between social perception and symbolic violence and symbolic violence itself, is precisely through a representation in action of these phenomena. It is a small example, a riddle with which the reader himself will virtually capture this concept. It is designed so that whoever reads it can experience in operation the mechanisms of this phenomenon that act in each of the social relations in which we intervene. It is simply a kind of experimental case, similar to Harold Garfinkel’s well-known “breaching experiments” in his Studies in Ethnomethodology, but raised from different theoretical and methodological assumptions. A small fragment isolated from reality that will allow us to get an idea of the extent to which symbolic violence is a habitual fact in the daily life of each one of us. And, therefore, to what extent determines our perception of reality. And also, very especially, to what extent are we ourselves who, without any intention, without any pretension and, above all, without realizing it, exercise symbolic violence.

Let’s imagine that one day, a father and his seven-year-old son living a hundred kilometers from the coast decide to spend the day at the beach. But halfway, they have an accident. They collide with another car. The vehicle is completely destroyed, and the child has very serious injuries. The father calls, with the few strengths that he has left, since, although not so serious, he is badly injured, to an ambulance, and after a while, he becomes unconscious. After five minutes, the medical service arrives. The person who looks after the child, an eminent professional of a well-known prestige with many years of experience, barely seeing the child, rules his death. And then he says: “He’s my son”.

Most likely, most of those who read will be thinking that this is impossible. But there is no trick. Right now, you will be considering the most plausible explanations for this mystery. A few people will come up with the only correct answer, which is also the simplest. If you want to continue playing to guess the solution of this enigma, I would recommend that you do not continue reading. Evidently, there is only one person who, quite apart from the father of the child, could have exclaimed what the character in the story said: his mother. After knowing the correct answer, it seems very easy, right? But how many have got it right? Most likely, most have thought that the doctor was a man. However, if you look carefully at how the statement has been written, at no time has any gender, masculine or feminine signal been used. It could have been used names that could have been misleading as “doctor” —which could have led to confusion— instead of “person who looks after the child” or “expert” instead of “eminent professional of a well-known prestige with many years of experience”. But great care has been taken not to over-connote linguistically what was being said. Afterwards it will be explained why this has been done in this way and its implications.

This is an example in action of the relationship between social perception and symbolic violence. It is based on the most paradigmatic model of symbolic violence: the androcentric vision. It is an archetype in which all the properties that serve to highlight the relationship between social perception and symbolic violence appear greatly increased. Specifically, in a field that is very familiar to all of us, but at the same time, it is completely unknown to us, since most times we interpret it from completely erroneous perspectives. Mostly, philosophies of the subject that do not allow capturing the subtleties of the phenomenon they purport to explain: male chauvinism (in Spanish, machismo). That is why, when the enigma of machismo is raised from an eccentric, unsuspected and unthinkable point of view, such as that of social perception and symbolic violence, it is revealed as something much more complex and much less simple than what these simplistic —and mostly too willful— analyses let us glimpse.

Machismo is a social fact deeply rooted in our social structures as we all believe we know when we read analyses of patriarchal social structures. Most of the time for the one who reads, the “social structures” are “the other people”. What we do not know or want to know is to what extent machismo is rooted in our perceptual schemes. This is symbolic violence. That is, how the mental schemes we use to perceive and define reality are a direct product of social structures, of social relations established in a given society; it is a hypothesis which Durkheim already raised in 1912 in his classic The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: according to him, the “primitive forms of classification” correspond to the structures of the groups. So, if our societies are male-chauvinistic, if social relations are male-chauvinistic, these perceptual schemes are also male-chauvinistic. We will see, perceive and define reality in a male-chauvinistic way. This is symbolic violence. Probably the vast majority of those who have done this little breaching experiment have been horrified when, finally, they have practically understood, in their own flesh —in this case, in their own (un)consciousness—, what symbolic violence is; and surely they will have been more horrified if we consider the example on which the exercise has been based, machismo, which we always believe is something that “belongs to other people, not to us”; and its intimate relationship with social perception. Since, as you may have experienced, machismo determines social perception to an extent which goes beyond the analyses that have in their explanatory center the will, the imaginary, the intention, the motivation, the desire, the motives, the reasons or any other the forms that can adopt what are usually called philosophies of the subject, whether they emphasize the conscious as the unconscious aspects —oppositions as consciousness/unconsciousness or object/subject which are totally inoperative for analyzing most of the social phenomena—. What is more horrifying is to realize how, without knowing it and without wanting it, everything one tried to fight against, that “hell which is other people” as Sartre said, lives inside each one of us. I have no doubt that most of those who have done the experiment and have verified that for them the unthinkable —in the strict sense, that is, what cannot be thought, what cannot be expressed by the established perceptual schemes because it is not socially recognized; and it is in these “unthinkable” ones that all the “not-presented”, all the “not-admitted” and all the “glass ceilings” under the sun by the great majority of social groups and categories, beginning with women, in the most diverse areas, are founded— it was also what is socially unthinkable —that is, that a “woman” performed a profession that is socially recognized for men, but not for women—, they have been horrified to find that machismo also lived inside them.

This kind of breaching experiment will have served also to see how all those perspectives of analysis of male chauvinism —which are rather proposals for action—, such as, for example, the linguistic obsession of the gendered language, are very well-intentioned, but they have no real chance of success. As has already been pointed out, this small experiment has been deliberately designed so that there could not be any kind of linguistic interference in its result, eliminating any gender connotation in the riddle’s writing to control what is usually called the “sexist language”. According to the supporters of this point of view that has achieved so much public notoriety, it is language that constructs the world as it is. But the result of this experiment seems to deny it. Most readers have ended up associating the image of the doctor with a man, although at no time has a sexually connoted or “sexist” language been used. The main implication of this seems to be that language plays no role in the way we define the world. Rather, as the example would seem to show, symbolic violence is the main factor that intervenes in the way we perceive and define reality. In any case, language would be the “vehicle” by which we “express” or “represent” these “perceptions” of the world, these “definitions” of reality that preexist language itself. Thus, beyond language are the perceptive schemes we use —and that are imposed on us— to define what can be thought and what is unthinkable, as this experiment has so eloquently revealed. Possibly, the language is the most visible scapegoat to intervene (or pretend to intervene) on the reality to change it, since it propitiates the illusion of a planned action oriented to a certain purpose. The illusion that “something is being done”, how comforting it is for us humans, that we have an ancestral panic to feel that we are not doing anything when it would be urgent to do so. Possibly, the language is the favorite scapegoat of the supporters of all those philosophies of action that give a great intellectual and social benefit because they are based on (erroneous) assumptions that are burned into the minds of most people and that, therefore, they are easy to understand, to interpret, to assimilate and, in short, to put into practice; they are philosophies that, after all, are nothing more than “cultured” translation with “guarantee of scientificity” of the schemes of perception, appreciation, valuation and action coming from “vulgar common sense”: oppositions as object, subject; consciousness, unconsciousness; rational, irrational; material, symbolic; voluntary, involuntary, etc.

And finally, the words of Bourdieu himself in his Pascalian Meditations, where he warned against these attempts at explanation condemned to failure: “Now, if there is one thing that our ‘modern’ or ‘postmodern’ philosophers have in common, beyond the conflicts that divide them, it is this excessive confidence in the powers of language. It is the typical illusion of the lector, who can regard an academic commentary as a political act or the critique of texts as a feat of resistance, and experience revolutions in the order of words as radical revolutions in the order of things” (p. 2). For, as he also pointed out, “It is quite illusory to think that symbolic violence can be overcome solely with the weapons of consciousness and will” (p. 180).