Panacea from Condatum

An illustrated summary of Pierre Bourdieu’s The Bachelor’s Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Béarn.

Pierre Bourdieu writes: “If he is in any way clumsy, ill-shaven, ill-attired, the peasant is immediately perceived as the hucou (the tawny owl), unsociable and churlish, ‘sombre (escu), clumsy (desestruc), grumpy (arrebouhiec), sometimes gross (a cops groussè), graceless with women (chic amistous ap las hennes)’ (P. L.-M.). It is said of him, n’ey pas de here, literally ‘he is not at the fair’ (to go to the fair, one put on one’s smartest clothes), he is not presentable. Thus the young women, who are more open to urban ideals, and rendered particularly attentive and sensitive by all their cultural training to gestures and attitudes, clothing and a person’s whole demeanour [tenue], readier to deduce deep personality from external appearance, judge the men according to alien criteria. Judged by this standard, the men are worthless.”¹ 

1. Pierre Bourdieu, 2008, The Bachelor’s Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Béarn, trans. Richard Nice, University of Chicago Press: Chicago & London.