Gender and Gardening - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 132

However, Bourdieu's sociology has faced reproach from feminists for situating
gender, race and sexuality as secondary to social class (McCall 1992). As Lovell
argues, 'While class penetrates right through his diagrammatic representations of the
social field, like the lettering in Brighton Rock, gender is largely invisible' (Lovell
2000, 20). By extension, Bourdieu has also been criticised for singling out class
as the most important determinant in taste distinctions, thereby giving short shrift
to factors such as gender or ethnicity as variables which impact on the meaning
of consumption (Silverstone 1994). Yet as James's attachment to chrysanthemums
reveals above, taste is also gendered. In this way, this study turns to post-modern
feminist theory (Butler 1990) as a means to counter some of the limitations of
Bourdieu's work.
Bourdieu's concept of habitus - a fairly fixed conceptual tool, faces limitations
in relation to gender (Lovell 2000; McCall 1992). Theorised as a set of unconscious
regulating principles, Bourdieu argues that it cannot be socially learned; rather it is
acquired through social practice in ways which feel completely natural to the agent.
From a gendered angle however, feminists have taken issue with the idea that women
can ever feel an unconscious 'feel for the game' in patriarchal culture (McCall 1992).
Rather, McCall argues that women develop self-consciousness from striving for
equality in male-dominated fields. In this way the concept of habitus fails to fit the
social realities of women's lived experiences. Similarly, Lovell (2000) challenges
the social fixity of habitus. For her, the literal embodiment of habitus emphasises
its 'corporeal sedimentation' - yet Lovell cites legion historical examples of gender
passing in order to contest the unconscious element in Bourdieu's account of habitus
(see also Garfinkel 1987). If women can convincingly inhabit and perform masculine
attributes, then a practical and bodily 'feel for the game' can be consciously learned:
it is possible for a woman to develop a masculine habitus and vice versa.
One can therefore see the problems Bourdieu's theory of habitus presents for post-
modern feminists, who valorise agency and the instability of subjectivity as a means
to politically transform gendered modes of being (Weedon 1987). For Butler (1990)
there is no authentic self behind the masquerade of identity; rather, identity itself is
a form of 'passing' since there is no 'real' identity behind the act of performance. In
this way, masculinity and femininity are cultural performances which generate the
effect of the natural and the inevitable. In these ways, Butler's theory offers radical
potential to feminists because ironic performances or contradictory masquerades
work to unhinge the social fixity of traditionally gendered modes of being.
In fact Bourdieu and Butler do share intellectual ground in that they both
draw on the concept, originally developed by Austin (1962), of performativity.
However, they theorise performatives differently. For Butler (1997) transgressive
or insurrectionary acts can seize their own authority and change the meaning of
performatives by dislodging them from their social structure. For Bourdieu on the
other hand, performatives gain power firstly from the institutional authority which
grants their status and through the habitus which honours that authority. For Butler,
the subject has the power to transform the self; for Bourdieu the habitus is too
inflexibly sedimented to allow for identity to be unfixed. I argue that both positions
offer efficacy to the debate about performativity. The value of Bourdieu's argument
is that he insists that indelible experiences of social learning accompany the agent