Paradox, Anti cultur alism and Self-elimination: A study of the "Act" of the BA Students of Theatre at the University of Tehran (A Bourdieuian Approach)

Students of Theatre mostly share many habits and interests within their "Educational Field", although sometimes we may witness clashes in them, too. The educational system hopes to lead these acts according to its own legitimacy, which is usually interpreted as "positive act". This legitimization creates a "cultural capital" and a tremendous change in the university and among the students, which may also affect the outer spaces as the "social fields". The present study aims to check whether the School of Performing Arts and Music at the University of Tehran has kept its traditional legitimacy, or has lost its symbolic power. In order to do so, the habits and interests of the students should be analyzed. This research shows that the newly created "subfields" in the "academic field" of the university, has defined some rules and concerns of its own. It seems that this new field requires the students to move towards anticulturalism and absence of act, in which the agents (the students) tend to eliminate themselves from the field, and choose "silence" as value to gain credit. This research has done on the basis of a questionnaire with 63 questions, all on the basis of Pierre Bourdieu's ideas, which was distributed among 115 BA students of Theatre. The results of the data analysis prove some new problems, for which the present article has provided its suggestions to solve them.