Abstract
This study analyzes the relations between the social conditioning factors and the taste for the cultural practice of chess manifested in the discourses of the grandmasters who compose its elite in the Brazilian contemporary context. The theoretical and methodological framework of Pierre Bourdieu was used. For the research method, retrospective semi-structured interviews were carried out personally with each Brazilian chess grandmaster. Thematic Analysis was assigned for the qualitative treatment of the data. The result originated the axis ‘Grandmasters, distinct elite: the naturalness of the cultivation of taste by legitimate heirs’, which mainly analyzes the favoured family origin of these agents and how this affected the success of their high-performance trajectories in this sport. It is concluded that the mechanism of the family cultural heritage acted in the production of a dilettantish taste and lifestyle in relation to chess, characterizing a distanced, liberated and detached attitude towards the practice. This condition is disseminated by its elite and does not include all people who, in Brazil, have different family origins and deal with it from an unequal distribution of opportunities in relation to the practice of this sport.
Discussing what is not discussed: A Bourdieusian analysis of taste and distinction
Taste, of which there is no accounting and whose possession confers the judgement of everything to everyone, was historically built from an individualized imagination and arbitrariness and, for this reason, is hardly transmissible. Its attribution to nature, intimate forum or erudite culture, as Saint-Martin (2019) points out, was responsible for keeping it, effectively and for a long time, little recognized among the scale of prestige in which themes circulate within the social sciences.
In the opposite direction to the substantialism of common sense that arraigns it, and the naturalization of the specific social conditions in which taste takes place (Pulici and Fernandes, 2019), there are some sociological currents that discuss it, from distinct references and artifices, as ‘reflexive, embodied, framed and collective activity’ (Saint-Martin, 2019: 23). Therefore, taste can be seen as something that is more adequately described and understood from what its meanings and re-significations manifest amid the diversity of contexts in which it operates.
Being less subjected to individual logics than to social ones, the process of taste formation cannot find ways to be examined in the irreducibility of itself or in the uniqueness of its determinants. In this lineage, there are numerous perspectives that are currently dedicated to the analysis of the relations between belonging and choices, demonstrating under which conditions constraints weigh on judgements (Gemar, 2018; Holbrook et al., 2002; Warde, 2007; Wilson, 2002). Among them, there are two main trends that compete as elucidative approaches to the mechanisms that involve the social construction of taste, of which the premises of both are synthetically presented below.
The first of these premises, represented by the central idea that ‘some people may like everything’, defends the thesis that individuals belonging to higher social classes tend to like more items related to a larger quantity of cultural goods than those who make up the lower strata, the openness to diversity composing an advantage to be obtained from variable and heterogeneous arrangements. In allusion to the figure of a social pyramid, thus, cultural omnivorism criticizes the vision of stratification which has an exclusive elite at the top and, on the other hand, an indiscriminate mass which would be allocated along its base (Peterson, 1992).
The eclecticism of tastes and practices of the upper classes disseminated by this strand, in turn, would be justified by the process of massification suffered by education and culture, as well as by the most fragile aspects of the bond stipulated between such groups and erudite culture (Saint-Martin, 2019). The weakening of the stratification of taste and cultural consumption, in this way, would result from the implicit contrast between the openness to diversity that demarcates the omnivorous assumption and, on the other hand, the exclusive consumption of the culture of higher strata and the rejection of popular culture. From this perspective, the repertoires of cultural practices would be increasingly ‘marked both by a greater breadth of tastes and participation and by a willingness to transgress previously well-delimited boundaries between culturally hierarchical genres and goods’ (Bertoncelo, 2019: 233).
The second approach, on the other hand, postulates that ‘diverse people from different social backgrounds enjoy differentiated goods to unequal degrees’. For the thesis of homologies, the agents of the more favoured classes use their cultural habits to demarcate their position in relation to the more disadvantaged classes, in addition to typically tending to the propensity of goods historically associated with the culture of higher strata (Bourdieu, 2007). On this basis, the modes of perception and apprehension of symbolic goods would be closely linked to the properties of their bearers and to the disputes that cross society at a given moment, since ‘the changes observed in matters of taste are not autonomous in relation to the transformations that affect the social space’ (Pulici and Fernandes, 2019: 39).
Without disregarding the mismatches that may exist between the objective structures and the subjective dispositions of which the possible disagreements of social life are a product, for this approach, it would be necessary to establish the structural correspondences between two sets, the space of lifestyles and the space of social positions occupied by different groups (Bourdieu, 2007). Not being a direct link between a given practice and category of class in particular, such confluences would derive from the transposable property of the habitus, which means that the modes of action and preferences would be engendered by the same schemes of perception and classification in the different fields in which life is organized. From this, agent's practices would be organized through homologous oppositions among themselves and in relation to class positions, suggesting that more legitimate or vulgar choices would be likely the higher or lower the agent's position in terms of the possession of their capital – considering the weight of each of their types in their structure and global volume – as well as the ways of socialization in which they were appropriated (Bourdieu, 2007).
In the practical spectrum of the analysis of cultural consumptions, Holbrook et al. (2002) recall that the above-mentioned perspectives, rather than operating in the logic of competition, have potential for complementarity. Therefore, and without disregarding the analytical contributions of thinking about taste through the bias of omnivorous transgression of class boundaries, for the particularity of the characteristics of the social group which this study intends to address, an approach of understanding cultural predilections as markers of class distinctions will be adopted as a practical hypothesis to be tested, the exponent of this lineage being the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002). Thus, this work innovates in adopting such a hypothesis, common in the examination of cultural practices, but never before analyzed in chess, nor in relation to the proposed group of participants in the great Brazilian mastery.
As one of those responsible for the greatest contributions regarding the construction of taste as a ‘system of oppositions that classifies and distinguishes, unites and separates’ (Saint-Martin, 2019: 12), especially from the work La distinction: critique sociale du jugement (1979), for the author, the social world presents itself as a symbolic system organized according to the logic of the difference and in the form of agents holding different properties which are structurally related to each other (Bourdieu, 2004). The idea of differentiation and separation, according to Bourdieu (1996: 18), ‘is at the foundation of the very notion of space, a set of distinct and coexistent positions, exterior to each other, defined in relation to each other by their mutual exteriority and by relations of proximity, neighbourhood or distance’. From the functioning of the social space being analogous to a symbolic space, it would be inscribed therein the properties and lifestyles which, perceived by those who hold the categories of perception, would be decoded as signs of distinction (Bourdieu, 2004).
In general, the social space is retranslated into a space of social positions which, in interaction with the space of dispositions composed of the properties of agents and their classes, includes position-taking on the practices and goods which are at stake. Such positions correspond, in turn, to the social conditioning associated with the corresponding class condition which, through habitus, associates the capacities that generate taste to the set of properties and goods which, in turn, are linked to each other through affinity between homologous lifestyles (Bourdieu, 1996).
We conclude, therefore, that the possibility of a certain judgement involves the taste as a system of classifications objectively referred to the social conditioning that produced it (Bourdieu, 1983a). In the space of available goods and services, based on the author's theory, the choices may be understood not in a direct and mechanical relation with classes and individuals (Bourdieu, 1996), but from the homology of positions between the properties shared by the objects and those distributed among those who consume them, with the result that ‘nothing classifies a person more than his classifications’ (Bourdieu, 2004: 159).
The relation between tastes, moreover, is closely related to the hierarchy of symbolic goods, making objects be ‘classified and at the same time classifying, being hierarchical and hierarchising’ (Bourdieu, 1983a: 127) from judgements such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and ‘distinct’ or ‘vulgar’, among others. The distinction, in this sense, would be understood in a Bourdieusian view as a principle of division, critical and reflective judgement. It is not restricted to a substantial semantics of that which is distinct in a naturalized, adjective and only qualifying sense. Thus, from the author, it is possible to understand that it ‘is in fact difference, separation, distinctive feature, in short, relational property which only exists in relation to other properties’ (Bourdieu, 1996: 18).
Within the social space shared by cultural practices considered as distinct, as a way of approaching the problematic of interest of this article, there is chess. Among the symbolic disputes in which this subspace is engaged, in turn, is the one related to the acquisition and manifestation of taste by the elite of this activity that, on the national scene, can be understood as the Brazilian grandmasters (GMs) (Januário, 2014, 2017).
It is a sociological mistake to suppose that the fact of occupying the most privileged position between those who ‘push’ the pieces and those who ‘give life’ to them would be enough to guarantee their taste for this activity, as well as putting to analysis its distinctive signs. The central question that is made from the reflections outlined above is expressed as follows: what are the relations between social conditioning factors and the taste manifested for the cultural practice of chess in the discourses of the GMs who compose its elite in the contemporary Brazilian context? In this sense, the aim of this article is to analyze the relations between social conditioning factors and the taste for the cultural practice of chess manifested in the discourses of the GMs that makes up its elite in the Brazilian contemporary context.
The work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) was used as an analysis of the social conditioning factors of the taste for chess as the empirical object of this article. The choice of this author's contributions, in terms of their categories and theoretical foundation, is due to the praxeological and dialectical quality with which preferences are examined from a social criticism of the judgement itself and the classifications through which its verdict is, by different social groups, semantically assured. Considering that this is a theme widely entrenched by common sense and by a substantialist thought that values the non-submission of taste even to discussion, the relevance of the use of this frame of reference stands out, moreover, by the opposition to such a perspective that seeks to relate taste to a kind of essence inherent to human nature. Contrasting it from the viewpoint of a possible point within a range of several other available perspectives, thus, looking at taste with a Bourdieusian approach is to see that these judgements are sustained by conditions: whether related to the properties of supply of the practices or, on the other hand, of the way the dispositions of those who consume it were produced.
Methodology
Group of participants
Holders of principles of differentiation – such as the volume and overall structure of capitals (Bourdieu, 1996) within the chess subspace – the social group considered was composed of all 12 Brazilian individuals who hold the certification of greatest distinction among those who practice chess, namely, the title of GM. The group of respondents was entirely composed of men, with a mean age and standard deviation of 37 ± 14 years, mostly white, with higher education and with a family background that was also favoured in terms of the level of education and profession assumed by the father and mother.
The following selection criteria were applied to these agents: (a) holding, during the period of the data production (2015 to 2017), the title of GM approved by the International Chess Federation (FIDE); (b) being a Brazilian citizen; and (c) signing the free and informed consent form providing the conditions of participation in the research.
Research method
The use of oral testimony through retrospective semi-structured interviews was adopted as an instrument to produce qualitative data. These allowed the investigation of the taste for chess from the emergence of categories identified along the participants’ life trajectories. To this end, personal meetings were held with each of the individuals according to their suggestions for dates and places for scheduling, thus ensuring that the research procedures interfered minimally in their daily activities and routines. The interviews were conducted directly in person between the months of January and March in 2017.
The audio recording of the statements was carried out with a digital recorder in order to facilitate the transcription process a posteriori. All interviews, after being reproduced in text, were returned to the group of participants. The identity of the individuals was preserved by means of the random assignment of numbers from one to twelve (1 to 12). The order adopted for the denomination was the same as the order in which the data was produced. Grandmaster 1 (GM 1), for example, represented the acronym of the chess player with whom the first personal contact was obtained through the assertion of the meeting. Finally, it should be noted that this research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (CEP) of the School of Physical Education and Sport of Ribeirão Preto under Certificate of Presentation for Ethical Review 57818016.7.0000.5659 and case number 1.761.845.
Data analysis
As an analytical approach that aims to identify, analyze and report thematic patterns within a given database, Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was used to compose, through dense description and organization, the particular corpus of interest outlined by the study. This approach involves a series of decisions required for the considerations and discussions on the themes to be made in a robust manner, and the following choices, according to the central theme, were adopted by this article: (a) a detailed analysis of a given aspect in particular, this being the social conditioning factors that made possible the taste for chess along the trajectory of the participants; (b) a theoretical analysis, considering the Bourdieusian frame of reference adopted in this study; (c) this study is based on a latent analysis of the themes, based on the perception that the rationalization of aspects of taste that are hidden is important for its understanding; and (d) a constructivist epistemology, understanding that the meaning of what is presented as taste comes from socially produced constructions reproduced by individuals based on their experiences.
The search for aspects of potential interest and significant patterns throughout the dataset followed, in turn, the stages of the Thematic Analysis coding process (Braun and Clarke, 2012). Involving a recursive and non-linear movement of constant back-and-forth between the data, the stages thus covered were: (a) familiarization with the data; (b) generation of the initial codes; (c) search for themes; (d) review of themes; (e) definition and naming of themes; and (f) preparation of the final manuscript.
Data presentation of the results and discussion
Based on the analysis of the reports and on the Bourdieusian theoretical framework adopted, the theoretical reflection presented was structured through the axis ‘Grandmasters, distinct elite: the naturalness of the cultivation of taste by legitimate heirs’, which is presented in detail below with regard to its statements, interpretations and discussions that surround it.
Grandmasters, the distinct elite: The naturalness of taste cultivation by legitimate heirs
The origin of the dispositions related to the practice of chess has been shown, according to some studies, to be strongly related to the influence of cultural heritage when considering the trajectories of Brazilian GMs (Januário, 2014, 2017; Januário and Marques, 2018). The ways in which the cultural practice of chess was transmitted to them had features such as a family genealogy composed of an extensive and distant structure of members with previous contact with the practice, an initiation carried out at an early age considering the first contacts with chess and in a very subtle and concealed way in their daily lives. The reports of this language, ‘naturally’ appropriate in their family environment, are examples: My uncle always played, I think my father even learned from him and one day he taught me, he thought I might like it. (GM 2) My father always liked chess and that was at a time when the internet had already appeared, so there was a lot of chess online, he liked to play chess on the internet. I watched him play and I liked it, I gave hints, then soon after I learned chess, I started to play there through the internet itself. (GM 9) I started playing with my father at home, from the first moment he taught me how the pieces moved. At the age of 2 or 3 he was already teaching me how to set up the board and maybe at the age of 3 or 4 I actually started to learn the movement of the pieces. My father was a chess aficionado and liked chess, so he wanted to teach me this as well as teach me other plays and games. (GM 12)
The influence of inheritance in its relationship with the management of the cultural practice of chess and the lifestyle experienced by these individuals had a direct relationship with the possession, appreciation and consumption of cultural capital as a legacy by which these agents appropriated themselves. Especially under its incorporated state, ‘[…] a having that became being, a property that became body and became an integral part of the person’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 74), the chess cultural capital was in their trajectories a socially dominant cultural asset, a trump card that for all of them was at stake. If, according to Bourdieu (2004), the distribution of rare goods operates mainly from the dimensions of the volume and the global structure of capitals, we can see that for this social group, the offer of cultural capital was as abundant as the experiences responsible for the incorporation of the chess practice in the sizes and ways constituting their habitus. In their statements, thus, it is not rare to note the distinctive mention of the practice as a naturalized object in their daily lives: We not only like it [referring to the family], but we like it a lot. We love, I guess I could define it this way. It's hard to imagine – I don’t know about the others – us not playing chess. It's interesting because when I initially learned I was very small, I was five years old and I didn’t ask to learn. But after I learned, after I was about six years old, I asked to play. So, I think that almost since I can remember I have liked it, right? (GM 5) I like it, nowadays it is already part of my life and honestly, I do not know how it came about, my father taught me so early that I can’t tell if in the beginning I really liked it or if I wanted more to please my father, beat my brothers or play better than others. The truth is that as time went by it ended up becoming something natural for me. (GM 11)
With the understanding that the ideology of taste develops in close relationship with cultural management, for these individuals, the primary mode of socialization of chess practice reinforced its properties. Opposed to the methodical learning of a late and secondary nature experienced by only one individual of this class,
1
all the other practitioners presented a contact modality that gives them the naturalness, self-assurance and spontaneity with the favoured culture that in everything favours the depth and effectiveness of the contact (Bourdieu, 1998). In this sense, in relation to the benefits provided by primary learning, the author goes on: This first apprenticeship confers self-assurance, correlative to the certainty of holding cultural legitimacy, a true principle of resourcefulness with which we identify excellence. It produces a familiar relationship, closer and more relaxed, with culture as a family asset that we have always known and of which we feel we are the legitimate heirs. Music is not the records and the record player, thanks to which we discover Bach and Vivaldi, but the family piano, heard since childhood and vaguely practiced until adolescence; painting is not the museums, suddenly discovered in the extension of a school education, but the scenario of the family universe. (Bourdieu, 1983a: 88)
The element of competition, proper of a cultural practice that is also sportive (Januário, 2014, 2017; Souza et al., 2011), had been mentioned among the tastes listed by the agents. Rather than any dispute, the mention of success and constant victories accumulated through the insignia of trophies and medals, from the initiation phase to the elite level of chess, is relevant evidence in their statements. Such predilection goes back to the very origin of the modern sport, a context in which the will to win was an underlined disposition among its practitioners of the dominant fractions (Bourdieu, 1983b) and, specifically, of those belonging to the male gender (Stempel, 2005; Warde, 2006).
According to Stempel (2005), the most exclusive sports for a favoured social group are those that restrict direct physical contact, such as chess. Still, regarding the masculine sphere, such practices would confer distinction as a civilized masculinity to the detriment, on the other hand, of brute masculine force. A characteristic strategy of dominants, the direction of violence and of physical domination would establish limits with regard to this group in relation, also, to middle and lower fractions considering different strata. Thus, the physical-cultural distinction achieved by dominant social groups through sportive practices does not take place in the domain of a greater and, as such, physical strength, but rather in the domain of the cultivation of a body and bodily hexis exhibiting vitality, moral character, competitiveness, self-control and self-development: What I can remember of the classes, right? […] I remember that I played, I remember that I was in, I don’t know, 2nd or 3rd in school, and then this kind of thing livens up. I think you start to get a taste for it. I don’t remember exactly why I played at that time, but I remember I liked the game afterwards. And then it's easy to understand why you follow it. There I can’t remember exactly why I […] I remember that I liked to win, victory was something I liked. And then you go there, there is that thing of the little medal that today we don’t know what we are going to do with the medal and throw it under a place. That little medal, no matter how trampy it was, you would be like, ‘ah, that medal is mine’. I think this, I have always been competitive, so I think that this kind of triggered it. (GM 1) I was always very competitive, right? So, I wanted trophies, medals and so on, but I saw that I needed to train for this, right? […] I liked more this part of games and something where you had to really think. For me it was […] I liked it a lot, I thought it was great, you know? Those classes, so much so that I no longer did physical education, I only did chess. The class was divided, some liked it a lot, wanted to learn, but mainly those who are competitive. And then they talked about having a tournament and so on, everyone wanted to compete, right? But that wasn’t in general, it wasn’t the whole class. But I thought it was great, I really liked having this option, not only in physical education […]. I am very competitive, so whatever I do, I will try to win. I’m very competitive for anything, right? So, chess has this, this part of competition that attracts me a lot. (GM 4) Well, imagine that I played 190 games a year, that's without counting fast tournaments and blitz tournaments, that's practically the whole year traveling and playing! And if I stay, I don’t know, one or two weeks stopped, I can’t do it anymore and I have to play something, I miss it. I really like the adrenaline of the game, the competition, wanting to beat others, so this motivates me a lot and even when I’m at home, I’m watching chess all the time, I’m watching all the tournaments. Chess is really one of the main focuses of my life, it always has been. I have liked chess for as long as I can remember. (GM 8) Coming back as world runner-up was wonderful, I was carrying a big, beautiful trophy that was as tall as me! [laughs]. So that really encouraged me to keep going, besides the fact that I already liked it, right? My career was very much about being comfortable with the environment, with the friends I made and liking that, so I was kind of very comfortable in everything that was related to chess. (GM 12)
It is interesting to note that, beyond taste, lifestyle, understood as a unitary set of distinctive preferences that express the same expressive intention (Bourdieu, 2003), is expressed in its regularities regarding the symbolic subspace of the national chess elite, which tends to prefer and prioritize aspects of an intellectualist trait engendered to the practice. For the GMs, characteristics such as the need for thought, deepening and reflection promote a contentment associated with the blessings of the mind. Thus, it is possible to realize that among the main aspects that circulate in the sports field is that referring to the modalities that require greater intellectual activity and less physical expenditure, such as chess, and those that recruit greater use of strength and lower capacity of reflection (Souza and Marchi Júnior, 2010).
That being said, these agents also refer to a lifestyle which privileges, as a form of improvement and training of the practice, the format of the studies. While in other sports the sacrifice of the body is required to obtain the highest performance, on the contrary, the habitus of this particular social group considers it as an activity whose field of knowledge and expertise is large and, therefore, an object of study, even on its own. Examples can be found in the following statements: In general, they were always games that I had to think, I think that's why when it came to chess it attracted me so much, because I already liked this kind of thing, so, and then I had an easy time too. (GM 4) Because to play chess, in fact, is to be willing to think, to go deeper. In this sense I think it came from my first influences, there is the family influence. (GM 7) I studied, went to cafes and played bullet chess with others, so it was a pleasant and enjoyable life, I had a kind of intellectual satisfaction for playing. Once I appeared in a magazine among the top 9 in the world who played blitz chess because I won a lot of bullet chess matches. (GM 10) Then I started to stand out, to win the Under-16 Championship, then I went to the World Cup and started to study more and more. I studied a lot at that time, I liked to study a lot. When I was not doing any school activity I was studying alone. (GM 2) I already like this competition part a lot, but I also like to study, right? Chess is an infinite game, the more you study, you see that you have to study even more. This kind of thing attracts me a lot, this part of being able to evolve more and the competition part. There are other games that I find interesting too, but I think they can’t even be compared to chess. (GM 4)
The allusions to the complexity of the practice all point to the understanding that chess is an extremely unique sport and, therefore, inaccessible to all people who come into contact with it. Such a posture configures what Bourdieu (2003) discusses as a translation to the top, that is, the placement of what is rare, luxury, inaccessible or absurd fantasy for a certain lower group as banal, common, relegated to the order of necessary and evident so that, thus, there is the eminence of new consumption even more restricted and, therefore, distinctive. There is no mention, on the part of the participants of the study, of ways of dealing with or even facing the complexity of this practice, which makes one believe that its adequate management is, primarily, for a few and, secondarily, secret and secretive.
The reference to the taste for complexity provided by a game of chess and its circumscription to a few people valorizes this practice to the extent that the goods offered tend to lose their relative rarity as the number of its consumers grows, who at the same time tend and become apt to its appropriation. After all, ‘dissemination devalues; declassified goods no longer give “class”’ (Bourdieu, 1983a: 134): I like this tension, this uncertainty you have during the game, it's a game you don’t dominate at any moment. During several moments in a match, you are absolutely in the dark and unable to really know if you are winning, if you are losing, or what will happen in the next move. You are not sure of things, it's a game where you have a certain uncertainty, but it's different from the uncertainty you have in poker. In poker the uncertainty is that you simply do not know what cards the other person has. In chess things are there, the uncertainty exists because neither of us – or at least many times I – am not able to see everything that is happening. But things are there, they are real and I could see. I don’t see because it is too complex, so I know that here and there are flaws in my reasoning that prevent me from dominating the situation. But this uncertainty, this question of the game I find very nice. (GM 3) My mother, on her board she had checkers and chess. First, she taught me checkers, but then when I saw chess, I liked it much better because it was much more complex […]. I liked it, I loved chess. I used to play chess as a child and that's what I liked to do, alone […]. The other boys went to play football and I didn’t, I stayed all day playing alone. (GM 6)
The aesthetic disposition was also an element that could be identified in the discourses of this social group. There were many mentions that privileged from the appreciation of how beautiful a game could be to its contemplation in analogy with a work of art. According to Bourdieu (2003), such an inclination constitutes the legitimate appropriation of a good, a dimension of a lifestyle through which the characteristics of their conditions as heirs are expressed in a very subtle way. By itself, this capacity neutralizes the ordinary urgencies and puts the practical ends in suspension, this being an aptitude for a practice without, perhaps, its practical function. The aesthetic disposition is constituted in an experience of the world liberated from urgency when it underlines the aspect of contemplation of practice, expressing a distance from the world that is at the beginning of the experience of socially favoured groups:
‘It is necessary to consider the fact that the aesthetic disposition, although it presents itself as universal, is rooted in particular conditions of existence – of which it is the rarest, most distinctive and different dimension of a lifestyle’ (Bourdieu, 2003: 110–111). Therefore, when analysing it, it is important not to lose sight of the material structures in which the habitus of these agents was forged, that is, mostly in environments and through people who favoured the lens through which these individuals see, in chess, art and beauty. In this sense, it is noticeable that the strategies of distinction of those who are considered the producers in the sporting subfield of chess, namely its elite, are found without the need to look for them. ‘This is what makes the encounter with the work often experienced in the logic of miracle and sudden passion. And that the experience of the love of art is expressed and lived in the language of love’ (Bourdieu, 1983a: 135). The following statements synthesize the appeal of chess as a practice with artistic value and, therefore, imbued with relative beauty: I find it very difficult to stop enjoying the game itself, you know? Seeing a match, seeing the beauty in it. I can’t imagine myself that way, so it's something that is inseparable, you know? It's part and parcel of my being. This is something very deep, extremely deep. There are few things in this life that you can say that about, right? I still feel that tension of arriving at important matches, I still feel the taste of playing a beautiful match. One thing that I always had since I was a kid and I think I still have is the admiration for problems, when I see a variant that has a good move and a beautiful move, I always try to go to the most beautiful line somehow. (GM 8) So, I think that for me it kind of fits like a glove because I liked chess and that's the main thing, you like the activity itself. The way you live in chess is like being an artist or anything that is not linked to you being very routine. For example, you have a trade, you know? That was never something that appealed to me, like, having something too neat and tidy, I never liked that. For me some chaos was desirable, I never liked it to be completely stable, I didn’t want to lead that routine life, you know? (GM 5) But I really like to read chess books, I’m reading several books all the time to try to learn new things, I like to learn a lot. The competitive and artistic sides for me are very, very important. They are what make me enjoy playing. (GM 8)
Finally, there were countless statements about a libertarian taste and lifestyle, that is, detached from the most common connotations in terms of what is expected from their relationship with the practice of chess. The GMs play because they like to play; they denigrate their passion for the practice to the detriment of the same love devoted to it among their peers; they value the journeys, environments and people that chess has afforded them; and they stand out for being a category that lives experiences that most other people do not have access to and, most importantly, in ways as peculiar as they see fit, at their own pace and for their own pleasure. What is most important in this movement of stylization of life, in this case, lies in the variations in distance with the world that freedom from material pressures and temporal urgencies affords them. The disposition to distance oneself from situations, which cannot only be seen as subjective as it is objectively internalized and can only be constituted in material conditions of existence relatively free from urgency, depends relatively on the whole social trajectory of these agents (Bourdieu, 2003).
That being said, one perceives that the statements of indifference and of a certain rejection are exceptional insofar as they express that social groups differentiate themselves less by the degree in which they recognize legitimate culture than by the level in which they know it (Bourdieu, 2003). It is at this point that the tastes of freedom can only affirm themselves as such in a relational way to the tastes of necessity which, in the aesthetic sphere, are constituted as vulgar. The following excerpts demonstrate this certain permissiveness, detachment and liberality in relation to their tastes and lifestyles: I play just for the pleasure. I play to win, everything else, but I play because I like to play. (GM 3) I like chess, it is obvious that I like chess. Now it's one thing to enjoy chess as a certain activity, and it's another thing to enjoy chess as a profession and have to study chess for 30 to 40 hours a week for a competition. I never had that capacity to embrace chess like, for example, GM 6 and GM 3, right? This is comparing a before and after me. They had a relationship of total commitment with chess, while I, after a certain amount of time in a tournament, started to get tired of it. So, it's different, my relationship was never that deep […]. So, in that sense I felt I had a very big handicap in relation to all of them, they liked chess a lot and were very vibrant, but I didn’t see so much, you know? But I really enjoyed the atmosphere, being there, watching, travelling and the people. I always found chess players and their personalities very interesting, but I can’t say that I was as passionate about chess as they were. I always pursued other things like, for example, school chess which was something I got into very quickly. When I started travelling and seeing how the projects were in other countries, I started wanting to implement them here, I proposed them to the secretariats and I was well accepted. The very fact that I finished the course in higher education, right? Many of the other grandmasters did not even start or finish it. So, they saw that they had a vocation for chess. To become a professional, you have to be 22, 23 years old. I started playing chess professionally when I was 25, three years after I graduated. So, there are certain differences – each one of them with its bonuses and burdens – which we felt differently, and that is not to say that I had any advantage or disadvantage. (GM 7) It was an incredible experience! I went to Moscow and spent 2 weeks there training with him in 2002, besides everything he was already an idol for me because it was with his books that my father taught me, right? So, at that time I had already read all his books and it was really fun for me to meet him, besides that I shared the flat with Peter Nielsen who is a very, very nice guy and who later became Magnus Carlsen's analyst. Getting to know the stories from chess and beyond – like the ones about communism that Dvoretsky used to tell – was really cool, he was a lot of fun. If there is something I really like and that chess has given me, it is precisely this: to have known so many different places and people! (GM 11) I really managed to enrich myself culturally in a way that I can say that not only have I been in many places, but I know more or less how people live here or there, I know how they really feel, right? Of all the opportunities that chess gave me, this was by far the one I liked the most […]. I like uncertainty the most, to travel and do something different. (GM 11)
From the statements and their interpretations presented above, it is understood that the axis ‘Grandmasters, distinct elite: the naturalness of the cultivation of taste by legitimate heirs’ was structured mainly from themes related to the cultivation of a family cultural heritage, the primacy for the competitive element of the practice, a dilettante lifestyle that values the studies, the complexity of their execution and the predilection for an aesthetic disposition. All these, therefore, demonstrate the polysemy and polymorphism constitutive of the habitus shared by these agents as a social group. An in-depth discussion emphasizes the relational nature of each of the issues that make up this axis. The picture of the origin of the chess dispositions of the Brazilian GMs is not a single, unifying and ultimately unified one. On the other hand, it is formed from multiple influences such as: (a) the puerile family cultural heritage, which affects the incorporated cultural capital that these agents will carry as assets throughout their lives; (b) the naturalized constitution of their habitus in relation to the practice of chess, the result of an extensive supply in terms of volume and structure of capital demanded; (c) the effects of primary socialization on traits such as self-confidence and ease in contact with chess culture; (d) the construction of a libertarian taste and lifestyle (playing for the sake of playing) that present regularities such as intellectualism, reflective depth and the need for extensive thinking on the most diverse subjects; (e) predilection for the study training route, a constituent point of the habitus of this social group, as well as the primacy for exploring chess complexity; (f) measurement of aesthetic dispositions that give preference to a contemplative aspect of the practice as a work of art, which reflects an experience freed from the ordinary urgencies and practical purposes of the practice typical of favoured social groups; (g) development of love for the art of chess closely engendered with the material conditions of existence in which the habitus of these agents was forged in terms of their environments and people; and (h) life stylization properties that denote an objective and subjective distance internalized throughout their trajectories.
In summary, the interrelationship between these themes in the social constitution of the taste of Brazilian GMs demonstrates that the conditions of the predilection for chess are not only multifaceted and plural but also favoured and distinctive. The relationship between them is, finally, what seems to make up the strength of the habitus and, consequently, its incidence in what this social group likes, prefers and lives in terms of its lifestyle. After all, what conditions and demarcates a class more than its own social constraints and markers?
Conclusions
To go beyond the distinction, taking the reflections outlined above as a basis and considering the Bourdieusian theoretical and methodological contribution, is to consider the economic, social and cultural conditioning factors as an integral part of the formation of the habitus of the agents. It is, therefore, to understand that tastes and lifestyles are closely related to the structures through which these propensities were cultivated throughout the personal trajectory of each individual and, more broadly, also in the conformation of a social group.
The cultural heritage of the family, in this sense, plays an important role in the way in which the Brazilian GMs envisage what they like, privilege and value. Characterizing a dilettante lifestyle, through their discourses and the intertwining between them as a social group, it is possible to note that the cultivation of capitals, especially cultural, from an early age by the family contributed to the adoption of a distanced, liberated and detached posture in relation to the material and temporal urgencies that demanded them. Without so many needs, a condition that few enjoy in a country as unequal as Brazil, freedom in relation to their predilections is based on a series of privileges accumulated along the successive positions in which, throughout their career, these individuals occupied until the achievement and maintenance of high performance in the sportive social field.
Regarding the distinction, given the objective homogeneity between the conditions, the conditionings and the dispositions arising from the position occupied in a given social space (Bourdieu, 2004), the strategies of this group as producers and, at the same time, select consumers of the practice are found without the need of search (Bourdieu, 1983a), simulating the synchrony of inclinations and appropriations structurally adjusted by hiding the maladjustments. The valorization of the intellect, of the studies as a way of improvement and training, of the complexity as a mechanism of rarity of the practice, of the aesthetic vision that finds beauty and art in the unfolding of the games and of tastes of freedom that configure a lifestyle based on disinterestedness, all configure characteristics by which the reading of chess as a distinctive practice along the spectrum of the cultural and sportive fields can be done.
As this is a study focused on the elite of this modality, it is suggested that future research be dedicated to studying different forms of appropriation of tastes and lifestyles in chess, other than those shared by the heirs. Without the intention of exhausting the subject, the glimpse of research that focuses on the way women from this symbolic subspace experience the same theme may be configured as a relevant and promising theme for future discussions. Even more so considering that there are no female GMs in Brazil to date.
In short, one may consider that taste, from a Bourdieusian referential study, is at least the product between two distinct histories, one in an objectified state and the other in an embodied state. From the junction between both, the predilections emerge and, in this step, to discover a thing of your taste is the same as discovering yourself, discovering what you want and discovering what you are (Bourdieu, 1983a). By way of Brazilian GMs: a somewhat disinterested chess.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research received grant from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (grant number 57818016.7.0000.5659).
