3rd Critical Review

Thomas Turino discusses practice theory in terms of how Bourdieu defines habitus in Outline of a Theory of Practice. Bourdieu addresses the relationship between how people act and the "objective structures" of society. People tend to act based on what they have learned from their environment, in ways that are not always obvious and conscious. In fact, most people internalize the "objective structures" of society, which causes them to become "objective conditions", and eventually "internalized dispositions".

"As does Bourdieu, Gramsci, too, often characterizes "common sense" as being unelaborated, and some writers have been troubled by the implication that the internalized bases for everyday practices thus become relegated to the unconscious."

I thought the discussion around common sense was particularly interesting in this article because I have never thought of common sense as an unconscious entity. I think of common sense as the conscious decisions we make based on what we deem is the "correct" decision, or most moral decision. But it does make sense that "common sense" would also include our daily actions that we never consciously think about, such as how to walk up a flight of stairs or sitting in a chair.

So my question is, can music ever be considered to be common sense? What about when we sing lyrics to a familiar song without even realizing we know all of the lyrics? I know this doesn't exactly relate to the idea of "objective structures" of society, but it's most of an extension of what unconscious behavior entails, and what can be classified as common sense. Then, thinking backwards, is there a way that music can be considered to be an objective structure of society? Western cultures are almost taught to appreciate harmonies in music, so whenever we hear harmonies we perceive the sound as pleasurable. I would argue that that could indeed be an "objective structure" of society, and the pleasant feelings around the harmonies could be considered an unconscious, internalized common sense. Many people can tell you which songs they like and which songs they don't like without being able to articulate why.