University of Western Macedonia

N. Daskalaki, PhD student, A. Kyridis, professor of sociology, I. Vamvakidou,

ass. Prof. of history, C. Zagkos, dr. of political sociology, N. Fotopoulos, lecturer
of sociology

The bourgeois and the farmer as social partition of everyday routine: small children
paint the life in the village and in the city

Abstract
Older and modern studies have dealt as much with the rural regions as with the
urban centres and the urban constitution and they concern the demographic size, the
demographic density, or the social heterogeneity that characterizes every social
structure. Sociologists as Max Weber, Georg Simmel or even Werner Sombart were
interested in the urban constitution, while the social anthropologists in their turn
described intensively the life in smaller settlements and villages. Can the structure of
the urban, semi-urban or rural superstructure influence the social being within its
built-up limits? C. Levi Straus’s work has shown that the society is shaped and
simultaneously shapes the space, and consequently the organization of space
constitutes indisputably an important semiotic text and we can find here a point of
section with Habraken’s thesis, that the social processes (difference, power,
inequality, collective action), occur via material forms that we draw, we build, we use
and protest. We search the way in which children of nowadays perceive and depict the
differentiations among urban and rural way of life, city and village. We attempt a
socio-semiotic analysis of 160 sketches of children from 4 to 12 years old from the
regions of Macedonia, Thrace, Eptanisa, and Cyclades who were asked to paint
without previous educational intervention life in the city and the village. According to
Kress’s analysis and the epistemologic proposal of Lagopoulos about the space and
the settlement in social sciences we analyze the children’s sketches as “points” of
engagement of everyday life seeking the relation of daily life of people with the built-
up network and the differentiations that it presents depending on the built-up
environment in which it takes place.

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 Theoretical and analytical approach of “Everyday” through the children’s
drawings

A number of recent and influential works of sociology deal with the seemingly
trivial phenomena of everyday life. The standard mass surveys are being replaced by
in-depth, interpretative, and qualitative procedures that focus on the visual surface of
society. Sociology may be studied from the very abstract level of macro-sociological
problems to the level of the everyday life of people ((Sztompka, 2008:24).
The analysis of the differences between the urban and the agricultural way of
life or between the city and the village as wholes has been a crucial theme of study
among the social scientists. The movement of people in large numbers from one place
to another over a period of time has always drawn critical reflection from researchers.
Max Weber, Henri Lefebvre, Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin’s critical
reflection from the early twentieth century onwards established the building blocks
from which contemporary urban theory emerged. What these writers did was to
“adopt the city as the microcosm for modern society” (Parker, 2004).
Walter Benjamin (Gilloch, 1998) and Henri Lefebvres (2002) writings
revolved around culture in the city, while Max Weber’s writings saw the city as
replica of the medieval city (1922).Georg Simmel (2002 orig. 1903) on the other hand
wrote about a new blasé urban culture. But how the differences between the village
and the metropolis or the farmer and the bourgeois are reflected in young child’s
mind? The drawing production of preschool and primary school children (Kakisi-
Panagopoulou, 1994, Fineberg, 1998, Gombrich, 1961) is not limited in the field of
artistic activity as medium of self expression and sentimental growth of child, but
recommends rich material with cognitive content. As we know that “creativity exists
in children, but art doesn’t” (Molok, 1998: 55), we can focus on the creativity and the
forces of intelligent observation (Golia, Vamvakidou & Traianou, 2009: 600-612).
Children use their artistic activities in many ways to position themselves, and
produce their identities and sense of self (Foucault, 1988: 22). Pictures are a potent
medium for conveying underlying assumptions about who is a social actor in various
contexts (Ferree & Hall, 1990). For example, Schneider and Hacker (1973) found that
students who were asked to find pictures to illustrate textbook chapter titles phrased in
the "generic" masculine (i.e., "Urban Man") brought back more pictures of individual

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men than those assigned to illustrate more inclusively phrased titles (i.e., "Urban
Behavior").
But how a child’s drawing can express and represent the everyday?
We argue that a child’s drawing as a cultural product, as testimony of truth or
false (Eco, 1989: 26) reveals how children depend on the environment, in which they
are engaged daily.
The sociology of social existence, following after the ‘first sociology’ of social
entities – organisms, systems – as practiced by the classics of the discipline, Auguste
Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, and later Talcott Parsons, and the ‘second
sociology’ of social ‘atoms’ – behaviours, actions, or even their ‘sub-atomic
particles’, meanings, scripts, texts – initiated by Max Weber, and later pursued by
George Herbert Mead, Claude Levi Strauss and others. The ‘third sociology’ takes as
its ultimate object of inquiry social events: human action in collective contexts,
constrained on the one hand by the agential endowment of participants and on the
other hand by structural and cultural environments of action (Sztompka, 2008:25).
Taking into consideration the previous theoretical and analytical approach of
everyday life on social debate, we would say that sociology and the study of everyday
signs are based on the frustration of holistic project of modernism. This argument was
expressed by Adorno and Horkheimer (1997) in their criticism on the project of
modernity providing that the enlightenment and the season of huge revolutions led to
new forms of alienation and oppression of human situation. Moreover, the “failure” of
modernity project to lead human being to get out of his/her immaturity, signals the
failure of holistic approaches to overcome the crisis directing the social thought to the
search of subject and the redefinition of the meaning of existence.
The everyday routine becomes the realm of “lifewolrd” (Habermas, 1984)
signalling the progressive shift from holistic and macro-social to everyday and micro-
social, while the subject is placed in the centre of social interest. Beyond any doubts,
the “life world” is colonised (Outhwaite,1994:82) by the alienating current
circumstances and the “space” looks like as an alienated field into isolated social
world. More specifically, Marcuse practising acute criticism in the ethics but also in
aesthetics argues that the perspective of “new sensibility” promotes in utmost what
Marxιan legacy calls emancipation of senses in the classless prospect of “secular
society of poets” (Fotopoulos, 2002:205). In this concept, the everyday routine, its
interpretation, comprehension and understanding, constitutes the basic criterion for

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the consolidation of alternative social perspective: the ostensibly “insignificant”
becomes “important”, “insipid” becomes “essential”, “small” is transformed into
“big”.
In Marcuse’s view the senses become the tool of awareness of social reality
(new sensibility) and consist of a new negative political power (great refusal) against
the sovereign reality (Marcuse, 1969: 23). In other words everyday becomes the
“soul” each social and cultural practice, creating the conditions for the change of
world, the transformation of social status quo.
The designation of everyday life, through children’s drawings, in the city and
the village, both reveal and elect the dynamics, the stereotypes, the social and cultural
identities as they are shaped and they are inherent through the children's figurative
representation of reality.
A basic concept of structural semantic analysis is isotopy. An isotopy consists
of semantic units which, according to the feeling of the native speaker, “belong
together”, meaning that they have one or more common semantic elements. The
selected unit depends on the level analysis. In our case, the relative semantic unit is
the infant design. An isotopy is based on the existence of one or more common
semantic elements among units. Isotopies can be detected empirically by a read of the
material. In order they to be finalised, the content of each isotopy and the
relationships between isotopies must be determined. In this way, a structural set of
semantic codes is shaped. Some of these codes are economic, social, ecological,
historical, environmental codes (Bocklund- Lagopoulos, 1987: 122-123).

The research sample

We studied children's sketches on life in the city and life in the village. The
survey involved 160 children aged 6-12 years from urban centres, country capitals
and rural areas.

Gender Figures Percentage (%)

Male 66 41,3
Female 94 58,8
Total 160 100,0

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 The survey was conducted in May and June 2010 in Athens, Thessaloniki,
Macedonia, Crete, Cyclades, Ionian, Central Greece and Thessaly. The demographic
characteristics of the children were studied in connection with their sketch, age, level
of urbanization (residential area), sex, education and occupation of parents.
Children’s paintings (Thwaites, Lloyd and Mules, 1994) consist a sign which
can produces meanings, thus we can seek: (a) the relative operation, (b) the codes, (c)
the schematic operation, (d) the direction and (e) the social frame of signs. The picture
represented by the children despite the fact that is coded is not imposed in the
receptor, but it organises polysemic messages. In this dimension, semiotics seeks the
codes, the relations of proportion between real, perceptible and cultural level of the
children (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996).
The data
The children were asked to paint the man in the city and in the village in order
to obtain the representations of these two categories of people and to analyse how
their stereotyped characteristics run through the children's paintings. The child-
transmitter of the design and the representation it chooses, can be coincided with the
designed element, as it can put itself into the material of the representation
(Vamvakidou and Daskalaki, 2007: 976)
Some general conclusions from the quantitative analysis (Kruskal-Wallis Test)
regarding their paintings are the following:

 The area of residence influences the degree of stereotypical portrayals of

forms. All children focus their representations on clothing and work.
However, causes the fact that the percentage reaches the absolute (100%) for
all children coming from rural areas, is quite impressive.

 Parents’ profession seems to affect the paintings. Children whose parents are
merchants, labourers and farmers present more stereotypical representations.
Similarly, children whose parents are public/private officials and scientists
represent less stereotypical forms.

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  As far as the educational level of parents is concerned, the children, whose
parents possess an undergrad or postgrad degree, draw less stereotypically, in
relation to children of less educated parents.
The children painted full length figures, frontal and without movement at their
majority in a very small part of the page (at the top).
They did not emphasise or paid great attention at specific characteristics of the
figures, but they focused on occupations, clothing and environmental differences.
In many paintings, the sex of the figures is not clear. Some girls painted the “man”
as a woman.
However, in several cases the shape of the bourgeois is bigger than the shape of the
farmer.

 Appearance
In the paintings, men of the city drive a big car or bike, wear suit and tie, black
sunglasses, headphones while listening to music and holding a briefcase.
Similarly, women are dressed in modern clothing, mini skirts and short blouses.
They have fine hair and wear heels. Women are depicted in very few paintings.
The children of the city are displayed standing behind a window and looking at
other kids playing in the countryside. On the other hand, people of the village are
more casually dressed. They usually wear hats and hold hoes and shovels or
basket of eggs. Men and women are dressed in a similar way. Women are dressed
in plain clothes and colourful dresses.

 Occupation
The representation of the job is mainly focused on management positions for the
bourgeoisies. This results from their appearance (suit and briefcase) and from the
fact that they drive big cars or motorbikes. All people from the village are shown
as farmers. In almost all paintings the farmers hold shovel or hoe. They are also
shown to drive or stand next to tractors. The women are depicted in similar to men
occupations. Children play happily in the countryside.

 Environment-space

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 The surrounding area in the city -buildings, big streets, cars and illustrations
included- is mostly painted in one colour (by pencil). The village is painted with
more natural colours and showing the sun, sea, grass, trees, flowers, fields, small
houses, rivers and caterpillars. The element of nature is quite strong, as expected.

Regarding the grammar of icons, the shape, the colour, the position (space), the
direction (space) and the gender, reveal the iterative and the cumulative of the
cultural representations. Social and sex stereotypes are represented by the children
who are the remakers, the transformers and the re-shapers of the representational
recourses (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996:155).
In these paintings, we can highlight the “representations of space”, as space is
developed cognitively. In this case, few children (10-12 years) recognize the spatial
borderlines of the city and the natural lines of the environment and most of them (6-
10 years) use the vacuum of the page as the non-spatial (no perspective in the design).
More precisely, children paint houses, buildings, cars, streets, trees and signs of urban
and rural spatiality, using the design in a linear and vertical orientation.
Thus, the children re-construct the city and the village according to their empirical
- everyday habitus as well as the classes’ stereotypes about the bourgeois and the
farmer as social partition of everyday routine.
Habitus is defined as a set of acquired patterns of thought, behaviour, and taste.
According to Pierre Bourdieu, habitus constitutes the link between social structures
and social practice and is adopted through upbringing and education.
Social space has a very concrete meaning when Bourdieu presents graphically the
space of social positions and the space of lifestyles. His diagram in Distinction shows
that spatial distances are equivalent to social distances: The very title Distinction
serves as a reminder that what is commonly called distinction, that is, a certain
quality of bearing and manners, most often considered innate (one speaks of
distinction naturelle, "natural refinement"), is nothing other than difference, a gap, a
distinctive feature, in short, a relational property existing only in and through its
relation with other properties (Bourdieu, 1994: 134-138). This concept offers a basis
for cultural approach to structural inequality and permits a focus on the forms of
social pictures.

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In this research the paintings as a sign consist of
 The signifier / signified
 The appearance / the occupation
 The occupation / the environment
 The environment / the space
 The space / the urban/ the rural
 The linear / the vertical orientation
 The upper/ the bottom position.

Results of the research

Every child constructs conceptual representations using signals and symbols.
These representations are developed and converted according to cognitive
development.
According to Bruner (1962), the school aged child represents the world with
pictorial form and much later with symbolic representation. In our case study, the
material concerns not only the exterior/real representations, but also the conceptual
representations with accent in symbolic (Koliadis, 2002: 324).
In the sample, the majority of children draw in the level of mental and optical
realism their everyday life empirical knowledge.
The 23,3% of infants and 44,5% of students comprehend the bourgeois and the
villager in a realistic, pictorial field as urban / rural in a cartographic determination
and they add labour’s symbols already known from family, school and social
environment of learning.
Most systematic differences, which arise by the use of the codes, appears between
cities and villages. It seems that the social contrast of the city ant the countryside is
the dominant one about the conception of the peripheral space in Greece. Some
differences are, if not predictable, at least logical: the city seems to use more codes of
building morphology and urban planning; however the countryside seems to use
mostly the ecological code (Bocklund-Lagopoulos, 1987: 125-126).
The everyday life refers to the class and the fashion code. The connected terms
that were asked to be designed by the children, can be described as a pair of contrasts,
without always being opposites. Langholz Leymore refers to this distinction as a

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“binary contrast” (life in the city and life in the village), Binary contrasts are a product
of culture and not of nature.
The wider research field in which we are engaged, the infant design, involves the
relationship between schemes and reality, as realities aren’t endless and unique for
each person, but a product of different social definitions. That’s why the research on
infant design can lead to the analysis of thematic categories, as binary or polar
contrasts, like life in the city and life in the village (Vamvakidou and Daskalaki, 2007:
980).

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