Hoobitus - Pierre Bourdieu and The Hoobs

Episode 232 of 250 of Series 1 of children's TV Show 'The Hoobs' and the female pink hoob Tula opens the microwave and carries her baking to the table. Enter Groove, a green male Hoob, "Ah Tula, you make the most hoobalicious hoobnip tart ever...when will the hooby cookies be ready?". Ivor runs in, also wanting some of that hoobnip tart, the ambrosia of hoobland, but Groove, the little bastard, has eaten it all. "It's ok Ivor, Tula can always make some more." Tula drops her spoon "Oh no she can't!" The boy hoobs are confused why she is cross - "I'm tired of making the hooby cookies, hooby fizz, hooby buns." The lovably camp Ivor excuses his lack of help in the kitchen, he does the cleaning and the tidying up. It is the lazy laddish Groove who does nothing. They decide to take her to a restaurant, but she is too scared, so they decide to set one up together.

There's some learning to do!

And so begins our foray into the world of the Hoobs - the world reversed - a simulacrum of social reality and a practice of acute symbolic violence.

The concept of the Hoobs is that they are outsiders to human social life - they speak the same language as the peeps (adults) and tiddlypeeps (kids), but they don't have the same cultural concepts, and lack the basic understanding of the social order. Bourdieu speaks of a habitus - an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it was constituted - the social life that the peeps take for granted, their latent contentedness and practical mastery of their lived environment, is something that the Hoobs lack. Raised in Hoobland, they haven't acquired the skillful mastery of the social intricacies, so when they encounter a problem, they head over to earth to see the tiddlypeeps, who inculcate them with an artificial 'practical logic'; this will only ever pale in comparison to the doxic experience of the peeps themselves, who see life through the lens of a pre-conscious and taken-for-granted world.

As they journey over to see the kids, the music plays a song, the same each episode. "We're off to see the tiddlypeeps, on the road we go. We're off to see the tiddlypeeps, they're smart, they're fun, they know. If we need to know, who what when why where and how, we ask them and they know." Thus we see, from the ritualised chanson, that the culture of the tiddlypeeps, and by extention peeps generally, is constituted in the hoobacious mind as the legitimate culture. The knowledge of the peeps is a 'fait accompli' - once the Hoobs have consulted the tiddlypeeps, they can cease questioning 'Why?'; the legitimate knowledge of the peeps is accepted as correct.

In this particular episode, the pedagogic authority is a pair of boys. The fatter of the two tiddlypeeps instructs Groove on how to be a waiter, and, with the confident authority of Sun Tzu, imposes a panoply of cultural arbitaries - an arbitrary that is posited to be concrete and natural through the legitmacy of the interlocutor. The first lesson from the rotund pedagogue is the 'correct' laying out of cutlery on a table. This is followed up by the second pedagogue who asserts that then you need to put flowers on the table, to make it look pretty. Little Ivor, subject to this peep-ocracy, eagerly notes down the teachings - "flowers, water...".

Groove assimilates the teaching and attempts to be a waiter - he gets the food and throws it onto the table in front of the tiddlypeeps. They laugh at him and point in his face - he looks around, startled and aghast! - this is what Goffman, in Stigma, referred to as a shaming ritual and as a blemish of character. It similarly links in to Foucault's concept of discipline - transgressions against socially normative behvaiour are avoided through adherence to the cultural arbitaries, and are monitored through omnipresent surveillance.

So the children laugh at Groove, who cannot perform easily as a waiter due to the constraints of his own boisterous Hoob-habitus (for which I coin the neologism - Hoobitus). This situation finds it's parallel in the amusement of children seeing an African woman carrying a basket on her head or the schadenfreude of watching somebody from China trying to pronounce 'lollipop'. Although cultures are equal, objectively, some are valued higher than others and those individual who considers her own to be the legitimate will thus denigrate other 'deviant' cultures - she will discipline those cultures which differ from her own.

The tiddlypeeps instruct Groove that to be a good waiter, he has to be polite and speak in an affected manner. He tries again - "Here you are Sir...and here you are Madam." The fat tiddlypeep pedagogical authority's doughface beams - "Very good Groove!!" Thus the legitimate authority corrects and controls the deviant Hoob, and is able to do so through such pedagogic action as befits a pedagogic authority.


Like this, in the 249 other episodes, the children sat in their homes, who watch The Hoobs are given a show of deference to their own culture. The naive Hoobs who gallivant into the tiddlypeep world on-screen can be seen as a simulacrum of the symbolic learning the children make in their pre-cognisant state, as their habitus is forming and before it displays itself in their hexis. The Hoobs ask the questions that the children don't need to. The children learn that the correct way to eat is with a knife, fork and spoon. But also at a table, whilst sat on a chair. Also in a designated room withing the abode. And at a designated time.

What the children viewing 'The Hoobs' see is a representation, vivid and engaging, of the idealised form of their own world, as seen from the perspective of the mores of the status quo in their society.

The Admirable Confidence of Bored Working Class Teens

I was walking through Sandall Beat Woods today with my friend Naomi after a game of tennis. We needed to cross a bridge over the rail-lines, but there was a group of young teenage girls, probably about 13-15 years old and about 6 of them, sitting on the steps, blocking our path. We went to walk through them and Naomi and I knew what was likely to happen, and happen it did. "Going for a game of tennis?!" "Alright Blonde head!!!" "greasy!" and something about our underwear. We didn't say anything back but we weren't intimidated either - there comes a time when it is so predictable as to be funny, even admirable.

In few other situations can I think of people being so confidently outspoken without fear of consequence. I'm hardly the doorframe-filling man-stallion, but I am 6ft 2 and 19 years old, but this didn't mean anything. Their insults are not discriminatory - they would be equally as harsh and rude to those their own age, those older and those younger. Indeed, they were; we heard "skinny bastard" being shouted and a minute later a middle-aged jogger ran up behind us from the bridge.

The disregard for age barriers is quite an important distinction that I'd identify in kids in working class areas. In the classrooms, I find it far easier to teach once you stop 'being teacher' and talk to them at their level. It's not a matter of acting like a child, but it doesn't aid communication and understanding for the child, if the teacher isolates themselves in order to maintain an intentional distance. And in any case, the kids quite often seem not to consider there to be a huge divide. I know that after Michael Jackson's death, an 8 year old boy (ironically one feels) told me the one of the most horrific and graphic paedophile jokes to me that I've heard (he didn't understand it and knew only that it was rude) - the fact that I'm a 'grownup' just made the joke even funnier for him. When I worked in Year Two, I was asked by one of the kids if I am a 'sekshual luv sheep'. The confidence is not only quite often funny, but it leads to better chat and ultimately in the classroom, a better mutual appreciation of the characters of the child and the teacher.

But back to the teenage girls on the bridge - their level of self-confidence and arrogance is commonplace among those bored teens hanging about on council estates, but you have to feel it's a misused and misplaced skill. If that anger, and that enjoyment in being rude to people, could be directed into other forms of expression - such as politics - it would be nothing but admirable.

It seems that only two types of people can fairly be stereotyped as being self-confident, arrogant and rude - the very successful and the very poorest. For the successful it is a virtue, but for the poorest, the bored working class teens on the bridge, it is most often perceived as nothing but menacing and threatening. Me, I think its admirable and their outspokenness, their anomie, is something to be quite arrogant about - I'm certainly nowhere near as confident.

Chav Hatred = Class and Race Hatred (long long post)

Does it strike you as hypocritical that our society views itself to be so tolerant, when actually, much of our solidarity draws upon mutual hate? It strikes me as even more strange that so many people would be quick to highlight that they themselves are not racist; it is seen as insulting to call somebody a racist, particularly if they are one. "I'm not racist but..." is a common prefix to an offensive comment. It is wrong to declare your hatred for black people, for Asian people, for foreign people in general. Racism does happen and there is a lot of racism about; I'd say this is heightened in the current economic climate where people look for someone to blame for how bad things are.

It strikes me as bizarre that a particular breed of racism is not merely ignored and overlooked but is positively encouraged and mainstreamed into our modern thick jingoistic culture. This racism is against the white working class - the new scapegoat.

Chav.

Everyone knows of chav culture (of lack of ... because they don't have one because they are unculture, the underclass) - chav is one of the most widespread terms in the modern lingo. What does chav mean to you - when somebody says chav, what do you imagine? Chances are, the chav you imagine is white - a runtish scruffy male in a tracksuit or if female, pregnant, smoking, big cheap ear-rings? Chav is a word as much as any word; the fact that it is often used jokingly does not detract from the meaning behind it.

The rich in our society tend to be intermingled and cosmopolitan. Richness is, I would imagine, overwhelmingly white in our country, but I do not think there is much stigma attached to the successful from their successful comrades. The main characteristic of the rich is their wealth; the main characteristic of the poor is their colour. When racist stereotypes spread around society, they invariably also carry the burden of being working class (or underclass because they don't work...) So when the media fanned the flames of the 'black mugger' folk devil, people didn't expect to be mugged by the suited and booted black men with respectable jobs, they expected to be mugged by the 'gangsters' of the inner cities. The Kosovan rapists who were thought to be out on the prowl in the Northern towns were not successful economically but were on benefits.

The hated groups in our society change frequently - black, pakistani, arab, gypsy. What never changes is that they are poor.

Chav is a term for a white member of the working classes who is scapegoated as being the scourge of society. Nigger is a term for a black member of the working classes who is scapegoated as being the scourge of society. Chav is equally as offensive as Nigger - it is just much more acceptable to victimise the white working classes because it isn't seen as racist - as the racists are themselves white. Chav hate is class hate in disguise.

Let's clear up some facts before I give some examples of class hate that it is oh so acceptable to perpetuate. Recent studies have shown white working class boys to be the lowest performing group within secondary schools. 93% of people residing in Britain are white. There are pockets of deprivation within our rich country which put us to shame - untouchable groups of individuals in certain areas who play no role within society; that is to say they are not included. In the inner cities of Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, the North East - not to mention inner city London - where there are families that have been completely dependent on state benefits for generations. There is the idea that the working class has fragmented - the 'working' class work, the 'underclass/chav class/ scum' do not.

On to chav hate; this blog post has been inspired by my noticing somebody's groups on their facebook. This male, a fellow student in Cambridge, is a member of several charity groups - against cancer, child abuse etc. This enlightened and intelligent (world leading undergraduate...) male is a member of both of these two groups.

• I bet I can find 1,00,000+ who hate the BNP
• STOP CHAVS FROM HAVING CHILDREN

He can join a group against the BNP because victimising people because of colour is bad (bad meaning stigmatised). He can join a group for Chav-Hatred because victimising people because of class is fine.

Let's have a deeper exploration into the murky world of chav-hatred and see what's being said in these groups.
A charming young man in the university of York (one of the top tier of universities in the country) leaves this post - I found a petition to kill all chavs
91 signatures so far.
Do your part for your community, sign now.
I wonder if it would be as acceptable to call for the black, Asian or any other ethnic group to be killed. Of course not. I'll leave some more extracts for consideration...

• why should we be handing out benefits for them to go and smoke and drink and spend on themselves whilst their kids start school with behavourial problems and learning difficulties because they haven't had any stimulation from their parents "cos they can't be bovered" . Not to mention the free housing they get .... whist we struggle to pay our mortgages especially in this "credit crunch"
• (from the same York University student who posted the above link) Bring back eugenics.
• While I do not condone violence, a simple strategy would be to remove all welfare benefits handed out to single young mothers as a way of removing their incentives to procreate. Do we need anymore evidence that society in the UK is heading towards a morality crisis that will last for at least another two generations? Baby P, Shannon Matthews?
• Just after as many benefits as they can get their wothless, jobless, skanky hands on. Some older, married couples who are desperate for a baby can't even have one, yet we see these chav children flaunting their kids about like it's something to be proud of. They should be ashamed of themselves. Their kids should be taken off them and put into good homes, and the chav mums and dads should cast out onto the streets for everyone to throw things at!

• All chavs should be shot. All chav survivors should be shot again. I, too, am all for vigilante chav beatings.
• All chavs should be shot. if the government had any sense they would see the link between chavs and the failing economy. Maybe chavs should be given injections to stop them having kids. i am all for vigilante chav beating

Doesn't this make you proud? Welcome to mainstream consensus in our society. They would argue passionately against being called a racist but will stand proud amongst the masses and profess their wishes to kill the chavs. How can this be tolerated? The question it makes me pose is who does this hate benefit? It certainly take the strain off of the government if those in the lower echelons of society blame eachother for the governments failings... This isn't merely an internet based expression of carefree freedom of speech.

Look to Jeremy Kyle, making a daily freakshow of the white working classes whilst jeremy, 'the man of the people', tells it like it is. 'Stop having children.' ' Get a job.' Well done Jeremy, you really are the voice of reason aren't you? Programmes like this serve the same function as the madhouses in days of old - allowing the 'normal' to observe, scrutinise and draw enjoyment from their inferiors from a safe distance. There is the lynch mob mentality as seen in the comments like 'i am all for vigilante chav beating'. It's shocking - what's more shocking is how 'unshocking' it is to everyone else.

What chance have we got if those who are supposed to be the educated ones are equally susceptible to this media-fuelled hateful bullshit? Those who are espousing lynch mob mentality, who suggest eugenics, cannot be pooh-poohed as narrow-minded idiots - they represent a far too common viewpoint and are the future top-tiers of society. Is it stupid to view programmes like Jeremy Kyle, the godawful Daily Mail (and increasingly the redtop papers) as pseudo-propaganda? They are more powerful at spreading hate than much wartime propaganda.

There are distinct overtones of fascism and capital punishment that fuel the entire chav-hate agenda. Does it seem as though I am overanalysing and overstating the point? It may seem so but this is wrong - it is no longer even questioned that chavs are the scourge of society. In the same way, it became 'common-sense' amongst the German public that the Jews should be eradicated. The language is even reminiscent of the mechanisation of hate - eugenics, eradication, the 'procreation'.

'Chavs' are more and more perceived to be emotionless and instead embody certain traits. Like the Jews were said to be innately greedy, the chavs are innately lazy. the chav is a lay-about - stealing from your hard earned labour. Chavs have children so they can play the welfare system and get more benefits ? Surely that level of strategic foresight is too much for their feeble cider-addled brains to muster. The entire bundle absolutely stinks of hate - if the public agrees with an idea, it becomes very accessible for a government to put it into action.

To leave this off, here is a big extract from the facebook group 'Get off your Chav Arse & get a Job, you Scrounging Social Parasite Bastard'. Note the political rhetoric of 'them versus you'. It's as worrying as it is frustrating.

• Sick of the work shy, benefit stealing scum? Annoyed with the shirkers of society who insist on milking the system of any cash they are so called entitled to?
• No wonder this country is on its knees. And it's no thanks to these scrounging bastards who mercilessly continue to rape the shit out of the welfare state with no intention on repaying their debt to society by getting a job.
• These bastards are content in laying back and reaping the benefits of your hard work - your toil, sweat and effort.
• Fed up of the Gimme, Gimme, Gimme attitude that these fuckers have effortlessly adopted due to years and years of slip shod management of the welfare state?
• This group is for you.
• Let's turn the tables on these bastards once and for all.
• POLITE NOTICE:
• If you don't agree with the principles and viewpoints of this group, please do not join. It really is that simple.

Watch out for Chav hate and be careful not to fall into it yourself as it becomes more and more acceptable in the mainstream. The less serious the hate is taken, the more serious it is becoming for it becomes 'a given' to despise a certain group of people. I notice the abundance of 'Chav Nights' - the new fancy dress theme.

The chavs may not appear vulnerable once they have been besmirched as drug taking, alcoholic, immoral, criminal, interbreeding vermin, but in reality, the poorest of the white working classes are defenceless. Failed by education and by society, they are well and truly outsiders.

It seems over the top to end on this sentence but beware of the hate.