Towards an analysis of the bourgeois ideologies - 1. The habits of the «refined manners»

Abstract

Beyond an essentially unconscious learning done after the spontaneous imitation of other people's action, there is another form of knowledge acquisition after the voluntarist imitation of models suggested through a speech. In the field of the bourgeois rules for the «savoir-vivre», to the «worldly education» corresponds the first and, in the rising periode of the bourgeoisie, the education after the «manual of civility» corresponds to the second. The two learning forms are complementary but, under certain circunmstances one surpasses the other. It was like that in the rising period of the bourgeoisie, dealt in this article, a période where one sees the predominance of the second all along. In fact, the «manual of civility», as it came, supplied the wants of a bourgeoisie that needed, as a class already raised to the situation of a ruling class, to learn how to take possession of the symbolic capital of the noblesse, once overcome the opposition between one and the other, with more or less delays and conflicts. Neverthless, the appropriation of that capital implied a transformed reproduction, which, after the analysis done in this article to a certain number of «manuals of civility», presented three main forms: to circunmscribe the symbolic, reserving it specific times and places; to preserve a refuge-family, in spite of the rising exigencies of a larger social life; to display a democratic ideal, trying to harmonize the aspirations of the first moment (initial bourgeoisie) with the conquests of the second (ruling bourgeoisie).