How Should We Conceive Public Opinion if Bourdieu Asserts that Public Opinion Does not Exist - Article Example

Full and section number of According to Pierre Bourdieu “What needs to be questioned is the very notion of personal opinion".... The idea of personal opinion" perhaps owes part of its self-evident character to the fact that...it expressed from the very beginning the interests of the intellectuals, small, self-employed opinion producers whose role developed parallel to the constitution of a specialized eld of knowledge and a market for cultural products, then of a sub-eld specializing in the production of political opinions with the press, the parties and all the representative bodies. The act of producing a response to a questionnaire on politics, like voting is a particular case of a supply meeting a demand (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 399). Thus Bourdieu asserts that public opinion does not exist. Some people are of the opinion that Public opinion research, in particular, does nothing but reproduce the biases of pollsters. They say that opinions do not exist independently of the apparatus designed to measure them: i.e., survey questions, and the professional or ideological interests of pollsters. They never agree to the fact that public opinion does exist. They are of the opinion that modern public opinion is something of a fiction (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 399). They say that it is needed to legitimate the power of governments, but it cannot be accurately described or analyzed. They opine that public opinion does not really exist and it is just a simple notion. According to them the various approaches to public opinion seem to be flawed (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 399). The theory of non-existence of public opinion says that one can either claim that a critical public exists, surrounded by an uneducated, uncritical mass public (as Mill and Tocqueville argued) or claim that public opinion exists in state and social institutions. This removes some of the critical functions of the public, and confuses it with the institutions that surround it. For many people public opinion is just something which is not available in the real world (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 399). There are people who consider democracy as a weak model as they believe that it would not be desirable to have a democracy based on public opinion is beside the point as they are of the opinion that public opinion of the sort necessary to make it possible simply does not exist at all. However it is impossible to prove that public opinion does not exist in the society in its real form. Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion developed as a concept with the rise of a public in the eighteenth century. The English term ‘public opinion’ dates from the eighteenth century and derives from the French ‘l’opinion publique’, first used by Montaigne two centuries earlier in 1588. This came about through urbanisation and other political and social forces. It became important what people thought as forms of political contention changed (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 399). The tide of public opinion becomes more and more crucial during political elections, most importantly elections determining the representatives. The capacity of a political system to respond to the preferences of its citizens is central to democratic theory and practice. Research and theory about the impact of public opinion on policymaking has produced decidedly mixed views. A number of analysts find a strong and persisting impact of public opinion on public policy. Other analysts reject the idea that the public has consistent views at all, or even if it does, that those views exercise much influence over policymaking. Normative aspects of the opinion/policy link are also controversial (Benson, 1999). Public opinion can be influenced by public relations and the political media. Additionally, mass media utilizes a wide variety of advertising techniques to get their message out and change the minds of people. A continuously used technique is propaganda. While some analysts have seen new mechanisms for inserting ordinary citizens’ views into policy debates through the increasing use of polling, others decry the same processes for their potential to encourage politicians to “pander” to the public. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art in the debates over the opinion-policy link in the rapidly growing body of research on polls, public opinion, and policymaking in contemporary American politics. We think several conclusions can reasonably be drawn. Where public opinion measured expresses a coherent mood or view on a particular policy question (or bundle of policy questions) in a way that is recognizable by political elites, it is more likely than not that the movement of policy will be in the direction of public opinion. But two crucial caveats must also be entered. First, within the broad parameters established by public opinion, politicians and policy entrepreneurs often have substantial room to maneuver policy in detailed ways that are not visible to the public. Second, while public opinion clearly sets important parameters on policymaking, the combination of contradictory public views on many key policy issues and the capacity of political elites to shape or direct citizens’ views significantly reduce the independent causal impact of public opinion (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 399). Herbert Blumer, the American sociologist, came out with a different definition to the word ‘public’. According to him, public is as a form of collective behavior (another specialized term) constituted by the individuals who are discussing concerning a specific public issue at some point of time. According to this definition, publics born at various situations, that is, a group of individuals constitute public when an issue arises and the group (or the public) disappear when the issue is resolved. What Blumer says is that as people get involved in a public at different levels and at varying times, public opinion polling cannot always give a measure of the public. For example, an archbishops participation is more important compared to that of a bum. The ‘mass,’ according to which individuals independently take decisions about, for example, what kind of soap to be purchased, is an example of the collective behavior which is different from the public (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 399). I argue that there are some more or less durable components to the phenomena we refer to as American public opinion"; that these components are real, measurable, are reasonably robust, and moreover have political content (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 399). Post-modern critics of positivist social science underestimate or ignore the extent to which the normal social science" like public opinion research is relevant if not indispensable to the studying democratic politics in the wake of the information revolution. The presence of public opinion, broadly conceived and the interaction and aggregation of people and their preferences is evident in political institutions e.g., trade unions, political parties, campaigns and elections, electoral systems, legislatures, constitutions (Becker, 1958). In the words of a famous 1964 study of ideology in the American electorate, mass public opinion seems free of ideological constraint. The critics just cited all believe that people do have opinions and preferences and engage in observable, political acts and that there does exist something called public opinion. Public opinion researchers are naive or ignorant as to the political and ideological consequences of their scholarly interventions into the polity. Citizens appeared to have little idea about ‘what goes with what’, which is to say that a large section of the American public seemed to possess policy preferences that did not cohere in an ideologically consistent fashion. Foucauldian power-knowledge and the bleak findings of 1950s behavioralism combine to pose a formidable challenge to social scientific investigations of mass politics. Not only do social scientific investigations of mass opinion merely echo the categories and priorities of the knowledge elite, but for the most part, this is all that social scientists can recognize in the opinions of the mass public. Certain people are of the opinion that public opinion the cornerstone of the liberal ideal of free-ranging, reasoned, deliberation can hardly be said to exist in any meaningful or independent fashion; opinions exist only to the extent that pollsters create them. However they are unable to answer what constitute the rule change and other important decisions if there has been no public opinion. If there has been nothing called public opinion there would never have been any opposition or an opposing opinion in democracy. Public opinion is the expression of the way a particular public feels about something - problem, interest, organization, product, person, issue, etc.- that affects them in some way. It is an issue, a point, matter or question to decide by groups of people who have different opinions about how it should be settled. There are different types of opinion that the opinion leaders help to shape public opinion. There are various favoring and opposing public opinion. By gathering and synthesizing information, and sharing it with the peers over whom they have influence, public debate is stimulated and differing opinions fight with each other. The publics with strong opinions, although they are usually a minority, stimulate public debate as each side tries to convince all the other publics that its stand is the right or best stand. Public opinion is not just a simple notion. It is a very crucial topic and is valuable to the political, social and economic welfare of the society. Public opinion is very important because the stakes are always high: legislation that favors one side, an election that puts one side into power, money that supports one side, sales that dominate the industry for one product, actions that save lives, etc (Benson, 1999). Opinion Leaders help shape public opinion. Public opinion is the expression of the way a particular group of people feels about something - a problem, interest, organization, product, person, issue, etc.—that affects them in some way (Becker, 1958). For example, problems like Drunk Driving, AIDS, Pollution, Smoking; Interests like Sports Teams, Hobbies, Political Parties; Organizations like Red Cross, the U.S. Government, the local hospital; Products like the latest movie, cigarettes, Levi Jeans, Nike shoes; Persons like Michael Jordan, Brittany Spears, President Bush; Issues like Abortion, Gun Control, Animal Rights, Environmentalism (Benson, 1999). What would have been the situation if there was no public opinion for all these topics? Public opinion is very important because the stakes are always high: legislation that favors one side, an election that puts one side into power, money that supports one side, sales that dominate the industry for one product, actions that save lives, etc. Because people don’t always feel the same way about things, public opinion can be split into a number of different sides. Some publics will have strong opinions either for or against a given side, while most may be undecided, neutral, or unconcerned (Benson, 1999). Citizens always have complete and consistent preferences over policy outcomes and other significant issues. Even though it is true that American public opinion is highly disorganized and of fluid nature, their stand in crucial issues like abortion and affirmative action confirms that public opinion does exist and public opinion does have a strong influence in the nation. Public opinion is plays a good role in the way political issues are framed and political objects denoted. No society can thrive without public opinion. Nobody can ever imagine prosperity without public opinion. If everybody had a similar view about the issue of ‘death sentence’ the result would have harmed several people. Therefore differing opinions and interests are essential for the society. Public opinion on issues is very important to society. An issue is something important to the society about which there are at least two different strongly held opinions. Only a small minority of the population is either strongly for or against most issues. Those active publics, even though they are in the minority, keep the debate alive and on the public agenda. Consider abortion for example. There are two very vocal and organized sides to the abortion debate: the Pro-Life side and the Pro-Choice side. Both sides have a goal: Pro-Life wants to end abortion totally; Pro-Choice wants it available without restrictions. Both sides have professional communicators who use both public relations techniques to communicate the reasons why their side is right. Both sides hand out materials, get stories, editorials and letters to the editor in the media, hold special events and fund raisers, lobby politicians, etc. Both sides draw attention to the debate by staging demonstrations in Washington D.C. at important times, like the January anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion. We also see abortion in the media frequently, especially during campaigns for key legislators. Similarly there are several problems in the society that requires or identifies the presence of public opinion. No one can ignore the presence of public opinion in the society. No theory can disprove the presence of public opinion (Becker, 1958). 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