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The Return of the Subject? The Methodology of Pierre Bourdieu

Robin Griller Crit Sociol 1996 22: 3 DOI: 10.1177/089692059602200101 The online version of this article can be found at: http://crs.sagepub.com/content/22/1/3

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The Return of the Subject? The Methodology of Pierre Bourdieu

Robin Griller

ABSTRACT: While Pierre Bourdieu is

clearly one

of the most

important living sociologists, there are problems with his theory of practice, his methodology, and his conception of science. In an
to overcome the subjectivist/objectivist divide, Bourdieu has developed his theory of human practice. This theory, while seen as an advance by many, interacts with Bourdieus

attempt

methodology

to

produce

sociology plagued by tautologies,

contradictions, and a positivistic view of social science.

In what has become a massive body of work, Pierre Bourdieu has pursued the project of overcoming what he sees as the false opposition between the subjective and objective through the development and application of a theory of practice.1 Having identified the failure of objectivist anthropology, and rejecting the subjectivist alternative, Bourdieu has attempted to unite both the objective and subjective in an explanation of the generation of human behavior. In so doing, he has developed a theory of practice, based on the concept of habitus, which, through the interaction of habitus with the field of study, can be used to explain the generative principles of human behavior. In the process, however, his methodology was shaped as well. This shaping produced a methodology with a number of problems, as we shall see. It is necessary, then, to look at the origin and purpose of Bourdieus theory of practice and the methodology that developed from this guiding theory to be better able to understand the origins of some of the limitations and confusions contained within his work.

Theory of Human Practice

Bourdieu

being shaped by

(1990a:1-2) describes his intellectual development as the opposition between the objectivism of Levi-

Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 203 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5T 1P9.I wish to thank Y. M. Bodemann and Don Forgay for their feedback
on an

earlier version of this paper and for leaving me no option but to think clearly.

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Strauss and the subjectivism of Sartre.2 In his early ethnographic research among the Kabyle in Algeria, Bourdieu was clearly working in the structuralist tradition.3 It was that research, particularly the discovery that &dquo;the type of marriage considered to be typical in Arabo-Berber societies, namely marriage with the parallel girl cousin&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:8) was statistically a tiny minority of all marriages that led Bourdieu to question structuralism. As he puts it, structuralism, of all types, reduces the agents actions to &dquo;mere epiphenomenal manifestations of the structures own power to develop itself and to determine and overdetermine other structures&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:41). Furthermore, the explanation of human behavior as merely the product of social structure means that objectivist social science not only confuses &dquo;the objective meaning of practice ... [with] the subjective purpose of&dquo; the actor, but:

Short of

constructing practice
the whole
or

other than

negatively,

that is,

as

execution, objectivism is condemned either only

to record regu-

question of the principle of their reify abstractions, by treating objects constructed by science-be they &dquo;culture,&dquo; &dquo;structures,&dquo; &dquo;social classes,&dquo; &dquo;modes of production,&dquo; etc.-as autonomous realities endowed with social efficacity, capable of acting as subjects responsible for historical actions or as a power capable of constraining practices (Bourdieu, 1973a:59-60, 63). Structuralists attempt to account for this by using &dquo;rules&dquo; to govern human practice, but these apparent rules turn out to be mere justifications of behavior: &dquo;Only in the context of elicitation from an informant does one get a description of social practices as if carried out in obedience to rules that can be talked about&dquo; (Acciaioli, 1981:32). Objectivist social science, then, is a failure as it eliminates the subjective agent from the explanation of practice, turning him or her into a machine, and is unable to explain the principles of, the motivations for, human behavior, because it gets caught up in an imaginary subject of the object of social structure. Bourdieus rejection of structuralism, of an objectivist social science, did not, however, lead him to embrace subjectivism. While objectivists cannot identify the real generative principles of human behavior, the subjectivists, by not accounting for social structure, miss it as well.4 The subjectivists, in denying the impact of objective reality in conditioning human practice, must treat every human practice as the product of a rational choice. Therefore, they must explain even religious belief-faith-as the product of a rational decision (Bourdieu, 1990a:50). However, Bourdieu points out that even if we were to accept, for arguments sake, that such a process is involved in the
larities, ignoring

production,

to

&dquo;decision&dquo; to believe in God, the

persistence of faith

cannot be

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explained by conscious will alone. In this case, we must conclude that conscious rationality alone cannot explain human behavior. Bourdieu concludes, then, that neither objectivism nor subjectivism can provide a basis for the explanation of the generation of human behavior.5 Each is faulty without the other and it is on that basis that he concludes that
the

antinomy is a false one.

Habitus and the Generation of

Practice

As Bourdieu cannot accept either the rules of structuralism or the rational choice of subjectivism as the basis of human behavior, he uses the concept of the habitus, the central concept of both his theory of practice and his sociology as a whole, to escape from the false choice between a &dquo;structuralism without subject and the philosophy of the subject&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:10). He defines the habitus as:
a

system of acquired dispositions functioning on a practical level

as

categories
as

principles
What is

of perception and assessment or as classificatory well as being the organizing principles of action

(Bourdieu, 1990b:13).
about the habitus is where it comes from, what it in Bourdieus formulation of an explanation of both the objective and subjective elements of human practice, and how the generative principles of human behavior it contains interact with the world to produce practice. Though the habitus is located within the subject, it is neither produced by the subject him or herself, nor is it a set of motivations and neuroses produced purely by individual experience as might be postulated by psychological theory. Rather, it is a product of social structure, of the experience of conditions and conditionings that are particular to a given position in the social space. As habitus is, in its formation, the &dquo;internalization of externality&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1973a:63), the dispositions that make up habitus are &dquo; embodied social structures&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:468). Furthermore, while each person contains this set of dispositions in his or her head and while we do not have perfectly identical habitus, each position in the social space has a specific habitus associated with it: &dquo;A social class (in-itself)-a class of identical or similar conditions of existence and conditionings-is at the same time

important

represents

class of

as a

biological individuals having the same habitus, understood system of dispositions common to all products of the same condi-

tionings&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:59).6 The dispositions that make up the habitus are determined by social structure, by the conditions and conditionings experienced as a result of ones position in the social space. In this way, the habitus contains within it both the objective and subjective side of the production of human practice. It is the subjective
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embodiment of the determining influence of social structure. Or, in other words, habitus is the subjective accretion, within the agent, of the determining influence of objective factors on the principles that motivate human behavior . It is crucial, before moving on to discuss the interaction of these dispositions with the objective world, to explore the relationship, of the individual with his or her habitus. Put simply, the individual does not create or control the content of habitus and is not likely even aware of its existence, let alone able to either alter its content or control its influence on behavior. That is, the habitus is part of the unconscious, as are the dispositions that make it up (Bourdieu, 1990a:56). Further, habitus is active within our minds, producing the practical logic that determines our behavior, for it is these sets of dispositions, locked away in our unconscious minds, that contain the &dquo;generative principles&dquo; of human behavior.
Field and Strategy
In practice, however, the habitus does not produce our behavior on its own; rather, it interacts with fields to produce strategies of behavior aimed at gaining the forms of capital available in given fields. In Bourdieus theory of practice, human behavior is always conducted within the relationships of one field or another. Therefore, fields can range from the field of classes, the economic field (which is not identical to the field of classes for Bourdieu), the academic field, etc. The field is defined as:
a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions objectively defined, in their existence and in the deter-

minations upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field as well as their objective relation to other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc.) (Wacquant, 1989:

39).
Put another way, a field is a set of objectively defined relations within which exist positions (defined by their possession, or lack, of the capital or power, both those available and those necessary for domination, in the field), occupied by individuals with related habitus. In
assures that the agents located in the field believe in the value of the capital and power at stake in that field (Wacquant, 1989:39), so the agents habitus interact with the field to produce strategies, based on which the agents act in pursuit of the &dquo;specific profits&dquo; that are available through competition in the field.

addition, the very functioning of the field

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7 It is important to note, however, that the interaction of habitus and field to produce strategies, as well as the strategies themselves, are no more conscious for the individual than the generative dispositions. As such, strategies are neither the conscious choices of subjectivist philosophy nor the rules or norms of structuralist objectivism. That is, we do not choose our strategies (they are a product of the interaction of our unconscious habitus and the field) and our strategies do not act as rules ordering a particular action in a particular circumstance (Jenkins, 1992:83). Given that habitus and the field combine to produce unconscious strategies followed by agents in pursuit of social gain, &dquo;the objective future may not be a goal consciously pursued by the subjects and yet can still be the objective principle of all their conduct&dquo; (quoted in Jenkins, 1982:279ff). So, we have seen that Bourdieus theory of practice posits a set of unconscious dispositions, called habitus, which are determined by social structure (through the conditioning effect of position in the social space) and which, in interaction with fields, in turn produce unconscious strategies in pursuit of the capital and power to be gained in the field.

The Practice of a

Methodology

This discussion of Bourdieus practical methodology will focus on Distinction7 and Homo Academicus, though mention will be made of procedures used in the research reported in The Logic of Practice as well.8 As will become clear, the theory of practice outlined above has a strong impact on the methodology used by Bourdieu. First of all, as is clear in both Distinction (a study of the relationship between, and contents of, the field of classes and the cultural field, as a way to approach a &dquo;Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste&dquo;) and Homo Academicus (a study of the academic field in France), Bourdieu does not begin with a population of people; instead he is concerned with the study of fields of social action. The three steps that Bourdieu identifies as necessary to study a field guide his whole research process (Wacquant, 1989:40; Bourdieu, 1988a:32). First, &dquo;one must analyze the position of the field vis-a-vis the field of power&dquo; (Wacquant, 1989:40). For example, in Homo Academicus he studies the academic field, a field occupying a dominated position in the field of power as intellectuals are a dominated fraction of the dominant class (Bourdieu, 1988a:36). Second, the objective structure of relations, occupied by agents or institutions in competition for capital and authority within the field, must be mapped out. This Bourdieu does in Distinction with his diagrams of the class space/space of life-styles, the food space, and the political space (Bourdieu, 1984:128-9,186, 452), and in Homo Academicus through various &dquo;maps&dquo; of the positions of faculties and intellectuals in the academic space. Finally, the

primarily

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researcher of fields must analyze the habitus associated with each of the positions in the social space. It is in this step, discussed below, that the research moves from an analysis of the constructed structure and the directly observable practices of agents to the motivations, or generative principles of practice, underlying those actions. The Use of Statistics
Bourdieu uses a number of techniques in his research which, if we divide them into quantitative techniques and qualitative techniques, each have specific roles to play. As we will see, Bourdieu uses statistical analyses to study what is directly observable and constructible from direct observation: what people do (practice) and, from this, the structure of the field (social structure), the characteristics of those in the various positions, etc. It is through statistical data that the researcher determines the &dquo;configuration of preferences&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:506), &dquo;regularity i.e., a certain statistical measurable frequency the formula which describes it&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:39). In and Distinction, Bourdieu does this both with his own survey (printed in its entirety in Bourdieu [1984:512-518]) and through the secondary data analysis of 51 other sets of survey data (Bourdieu, 1984:519-524).9 Using this statistical data, Bourdieu constructs the positions in the field of classes as well as determines the content of the homologous dispositions manifested in the space of life-styles (Bourdieu, 1984 :128129). Although he points out that &dquo;a survey by closed questionnaire is never more than second best, imposed by the need to obtain a large amount of comparable data on a sample large enough to be treated statistically&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:506), he goes on to argue that the best way to check the accuracy of the statistical data produced by ones own survey is to use all the statistical data available, rather than testing it against other methodologies (Bourdieu, 1984:507). Furthermore, he argues that, having done preliminary research of a qualitative type (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff), statistical data may be successfully used as a substitute for direct observation:
... ...

analysis of particular whole set of surveys, require observations and tests, is offset by a gain in systematicity. Just as in a single field, painting for example, the particular configuration of preferences ... is a substitute for the indications of manner which would be yielded by direct observation and questioning; so too, the meaning of each particular application of the single system of dispositions emerges in its relationship with all the others (Bourdieu, 1984:506-507).
areas, each of which would
a

[T]he loss of precision and detail

in the

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While qualitative techniques of research play a major role in Bourdieus research, it appears that he is comfortable substituting statistical methods of research whenever qualitative research would be difficult or time consuming In the research for Homo Academicus, Bourdieu and his research team depended almost entirely on published sources of data (biographical dictionaries, citation indexes, etc.) to produce their map of the field and its homologous set of dispositions. This had not been their original intention, but they found that the qualitative methods they were using either were too difficult and time consuming or would not provide the information they were interested in. For example, they had originally intended to research the determinants of power and status within the academic field through extended interviews with professors, but they found that these professors would not discuss their positions of power or their political stances for fear of being branded mandarins (Bourdieu, 1988a:39). Rather than continuing these detailed, qualitative, discussions, &dquo;we decided to restrict ourselves exclusively to information deliberately and consciously publicized&dquo; to &dquo;avoid distortions as completely as possible. as well as dissimulations and misrepresentations&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1988a:39). As described in an appendix to Homo Academicus (Bourdieu, 1988a: 227-242), all of the data then used for construction of the positions in the academic field as well as the field of dispositions was the product of statistical analyses of published information. Even the &dquo;Indicators of Political Dispositions&dquo; ended up being a &dquo;cumulative index of political membership by using overt public declarations, that is, signatures of support given and published on different political occasions&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1988a:240). While it is clear, then, that Bourdieu uses statistical data often and that he sees it as having a broad applicability, he does not use statistics in the traditional sociological fashion. First of all, he sneers at the use of statistical tests to determine causality.ll Rather, his use of statistics is primarily descriptive (Jenkins, 1992:60). The most intricate use of statistics he makes is to measure relative strengths of association as he does in Homo Academicus,12 though even here he does not give any indication of actual statistical strengths of the relationships. Also, while he uses random sampling, he often samples respondents with particular characteristics to ensure sufficient numbers of respondents for each position in the field under study. For Distinction he oversamples among the bourgeoisie (Bourdieu, 1984:505) and in the research that produced Homo Academicus he both random sampled and sampled specific academics to &dquo;produce a small-scale but correctly proportioned model of the university field as a space of positions&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1988a:76). Second, as a result of his epistemological ideas, embodied in his theory of practice, he cannot use survey questions to answer questions of why respondents behave in the way they do. As
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10

generative principle of practice, habitus, is unconscious, even the knowledgeable, capable agent is not aware of his or her reasons for acting in a particular way: An agent who possesses a practical mastery, an art, whatever it may be, is capable of applying in his action the disposition which appears to him only in action, in the relationship with a situation (he can repeat the feint which strikes him as the only thing to do, as often as the situation requires). But he is no better placed to perceive what really governs his practice and to bring it to the
the
most

order of discourse, than the observer (Bourdieu,

1990a:90-91).

Therefore, there is no point in asking, or even discussing with agents, why they do what they do.13 Rather, having brought out the patterns of practice, the field, and the field of dispositions, Bourdieu can move on to the exploration of the generative principles of practice, the logical coherence of habitus that underlies the overall pattern of an agents

dispositions.

Ethnography and Other Qualitative Techniques

Before moving on to the main research technique used in the pursuit of this logical coherence, ethnographic observation, we should
look at what I believe to be one of the main sources of Bourdieus importance for sociology as well as the most successful area of his methodology. That is, his use of an immense variety of qualitative sources. He describes unlearning the &dquo;unwritten rule that only data collected in socially defined scientific conditions, i.e., by prepared questioning and observation, may enter into the scientific construction&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:509). As we noted earlier, in Homo Academicus he used names on public political declarations, for example. This use of various sources is most profound in Distinction, where he uses catalogs, theater reviews, photographs, advertisements (Bourdieu, 1984:221-222; 236-239; 377; 385; 308), and other forms of &dquo;non-scientific&dquo; evidence. Despite his argument in favor of using this data, I think Bourdieu would not be entirely pleased by the fact that these types of evidence are not only far more interesting than the statistical analyses in the same book, but are also often far more convincing and compelling as evidence in support of his argument. Even more crucial in providing compelling evidence in support of his hypotheses is Bourdieus use of data collected from ethnographic observation. Despite Bourdieus apparent belief that statistical patterns can be interpreted back to disposition to discern the logic of habitus, it is clear from reading Distinction, in particular, that the source of the interpretations leading to the discerning of the logic of particular habitus is Bourdieus ethnographic observation. First he

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11

argues that the

ence

only way to &dquo;give an account of the practical coherpractices and works is to construct generative models which reproduce in their own terms the logic from which that coherence is generated&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:92). Then, and this relates to the discussion of reflexivity below, he sees the successful objectification of &dquo;incorporated structures&dquo; as allowing the researcher to position ones &dquo;self at the point of generation of practice to grasp it, as Marx says, as concrete human activity, as practice, in a subjective way (Bourdieu,
of
&dquo;

As we will see below, in the context of Bourdieus definition of reflexivity this can only be done in observational methods. The only way to really demonstrate this in &dquo;practice&dquo; is to compare the interpretations of an element of a habitus produced by, on the one hand, statistical data and, on the other, ethnographic data. In discussing the logic of the working-class habitus, the &dquo;choice of the

1990a:145).

Bourdieu gives us ample evidence that, while statistical data may point to questions requiring an answer, they cannot tell us the logic of practice. For example, he notes that, the &dquo;mode of purchasing furniture&dquo; (i.e., what type of shop/market it is purchased in) is largely determined by class background (Bourdieu, 1984:77-79). However, it is a long way from statistical evidence that working-class people tend to do their shopping in department stores, etc., rather than antique shops to the argument that &dquo;nothing is more alien to working-class women than the typically bourgeois idea of making each object in the home the occasion for an aesthetic choice, of extending the intention of harmony or beauty even into the bathroom or kitchen, places strictly defined by their function, or of involving specifically aesthetic criteria in the choice of a saucepan or cupboard&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:379). To be able to develop the idea that working-class practice is a product of a habitus, whose logic can be described by the concept of &dquo;the choice of the necessary,&dquo; it is clear that observation must have been done; in this example, there would be no way of knowing the truth or falsity of the above statement without having observed working-class homes and the processes of selection of furniture, through observation of people in their everyday lives. Another example that demonstrates the strength of this argument well is Bourdieus discussion of food and the working-class style of

necessary&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:372-396),

Here again Bourdieu finds evidence toward the idea of a working-class taste for might push necessity in his analysis of statistical data that show slight variations in the types of food purchased by different classes.14 While he finds that working-class people, even those who have sufficient funds to purchase more expensive foods, retain their taste for &dquo;the heavy, the fat and the coarse&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:185), this is hardly the basis for concluding that working-class people are motivated by an uncon-

eating (Bourdieu, 1984:177-197).

that
one

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12 scious &dquo;taste for the necessary.&dquo; Even if they have sufficient funds to be able to purchase more &dquo;bourgeois&dquo; foods, the statistical data demonstrate that they already are spending far more of their total incomes on food (34.2-38.3 percent) than most members of the dominant class (24.4-25.4 percent, excluding the &dquo;industrial and commercial employers&dquo;). To demonstrate that the real evidence for such an interpretation is in the ethnographic data, there is the following extended quote from Bourdieus description of the working-class meal: Plain speaking, plain eating: the working-class meal is characterized by plenty ... and above all by freedom. Elastic and abundant dishes are brought to the table ... and served with a ladle or spoon, to avoid too much measuring and counting, in contrast to everything that has to be cut and divided, such as roasts.... It is part of the mens status to eat and to eat well ... it is particularly insisted that they should eat, on the grounds that it wont keep ... strict sequencing of meals tends to be ignored. so that Everything may be put on the table at the same time the women may have reached the dessert, and also the children, who will take their plates and watch television, while the men are still eating the main dish and the lad, who has arrived late, is swallowing his soup. This freedom, which may be perceived as disorder or slovenliness, is adapted to its function. Firstly, it is labour-saving.... But these short cuts are only permissible because one is and feels at home, among the family, where ceremony would be an affectation.... The common root of all these liberties is no doubt the sense that at least there will not be self-imposed controls, constraints and restrictions ... in the heart of domestic life, the one realm of freedom, when everywhere else, and at all other times, necessity prevails (Bourdieu,
...

1984:194-195).
While
we will be looking at the serious problems with Bourdieus ethnography soon enough, the above gives both a taste of the power and elegance of his ethnographic descriptions of practice and a demonstration of the role of his ethnography in the interpretation of

habitus.
A

Reflexive Sociology
Before

concluding this discussion of Bourdieus practical research, finally, to look at the third major component of his his notion of reflexivity. The first thing to note is that by methodology,
it is necessary,

reflexivity, Bourdieu does not mean direct self-examination. In fact, he is quite disdainful of self-focused reflexivity: &dquo;objectivation of any
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13

cultural producer involves more than pointing to-and bemoaninghis class background and location, his race or his gender&dquo; (Wacquant, 1989:33). What he means by reflexivity is not awareness of personal bias; since it is given that habitus both determines all practice and is unconscious, we cannot become aware of these biases through introspection.15 Instead, the reflexivity to be pursued is that which &dquo;objectifies the objectifier.&dquo; As he argues in Homo Academicus:

[A] social science armed with a scientific knowledge of its social determinations constitutes the strongest weapon against normal science and against positivist self-confidence which represents the most formidable social obstacle to the progress of science

(Bourdieu, 1990b:31).
In other words, the purpose of reflexivity is to objectify the scientist by placing the researcher, as researcher rather than as an individual, in the social structure (and in so doing develop an awareness of the habitus of the academic in a specific position in the social space) and to objectify his or her relationship to the objectified subject of the study
to note that this reflexivity manifests itself in different ways. First, for qualitative methodology, in ethnographic research reflexivity manifests itself as an objectification of the relationship between the observer and the observed. Without such an objectification, anthropologists proclaim themselves epistemologically privileged observers (Bourdieu, 1990a:14). In opposition to this epistemological privilege, Bourdieu advocates for a further distancing, &dquo;at the cost of a methodical break with primary experience&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:14). In other words, Bourdieu advocates &dquo;distancing, through objectification, the native who is in every outside observer&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:20) to bring the native, or subject of observation, closer to the observer. For statistical research, reflexivity takes another form, one which seems little different from what a quantitative research methods textbook might call basic competence. In the use of statistics, Bourdieu two

(Bourdieu, 1990b:34). It is also important

puts special emphasis on codification: Indeed, for the researcher anxious to know what he
code

is
an

of the work of codification becomes, under his self-reflexive gaze, the immediately readable trace of the operation of construction of the object.... In addition, our self-reflexive scrutiny of the very operation of coding reveals everything which separates the constructed code from the practical and implicit schemata of ordinary perception ; and, in so doing, reveals all the implications which an
...

changes analysis: the objectified product

an

from

instrument of

analysis

to

doing, the object of

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14

adequate understanding 1988a:7-8). That is, the process of developing categories within the data for statisawareness

of that difference has for the

of scientific study and its object (Bourdieu,

tical analysis no longer merely produces useful sets of statistical data, but is a technique for the reflexive distancing of the scientist from his or her own socially constructed habitus. Thus, in a bizarre twist of logic, the necessary act for quantitative research of ensuring that the categories developed for coding data have real social meaning, rather than simple use value for the researcher, becomes an act intimately tied to reflexivity. The objectification of the social world involved in codification is turned, by logic it seems, into the objectification of the observer, &dquo;introducing the possibility of a logical control of coherence, of a formalization&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:79).
The Structure and
A Nest of Tautologies

Meaning of the Practice of Research

Much of Bourdieus writing on his methodology and many of his ideas about method and the nature of sociology are either confused or unintentionally inconsistent with the products of his own methodological practice. To begin with, he argues against conceptual closure in research:

Concepts can-and, to some extent, must-remain open and provisional, which doesnt mean vague, approximate or confused: any real thinking about scientific practice attests that this openness of concepts, which gives them their suggestive character, and thus their capacity to produce scientific effects ... is the essence of any scientific thought ... , in opposition to that completed science that provides mental pabulum for methodologists and all those who invent ... rules and methods more harmful than good (Bourdieu, 1990b:40-41).
However, it seems obvious that if he begins with
that
are a theory of practice that tells him that unconscious habitus interacts with field to produce unconscious strategies that determine behavior, then there is a fairly serious amount of conceptual closure involved in Bourdieus research. Furthermore, as weve noted above, it is not just a question of an outline that guides how we consider human behavior; the goal of all human behavior in all fields is the capture of capital and power within fields. Therefore, the strategies of the dominant automatically aim to retain positions of dominance and the strategies of the dominated are aimed at gaining dominance, while their habitus legitimizes their

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15

dominated status. Thus there is clearly a significant level of conceptual closure in Bourdieus work. This is not the biggest problem with Bourdieus methodology, however. What initially appears to be a deductive research process (see Appendix), is described in Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984:503-518) when Bourdieu states that the &dquo;theoretical hypotheses ... could never have been extracted from the material analyzed if they had not been present, in the form of heuristic schemes, from the very beginning of the research&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:504). In fact, he describes his &dquo;preliminary survey by extended interview and ethnographical observation&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:504) as having as a central purpose, the finding of the &dquo;main features of each universe&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff) so a closed response category survey could be constructed and the
&dquo;statistical regularities&dquo; established. It is not, however, that his research is guided by &dquo;heuristic schemes,&dquo; that is the major problem, but rather that his research is ultimately tautological. Though he presents his theoretical ideas
et

relating to human practice as merely a guide to methodology (Harker al., 1990:195), they do much more than that. If we begin research

from the premise that within a field there will be: positions in the social space, an homologous set of dispositions, habitus, which produce, through an interaction with the field, strategies geared to the pursuit of capital, power, and dominance, what is left to study? Well, first we would look at the statistics to determine the characteristics of the positions in the field and the characteristics of the agents who fill those positions. We then would look for the generative principle of practice that underlies this practice. If we begin our research with these premises, we cannot help but find that, yes, the field does consist of dominant and dominated positions in the pursuit of particular capitals; that, indeed, these practices are determined by the strategies produced by the interaction of unconscious habitus and the field; and that, of course, we can explain the behavior of all agents at all times as the product of determined unconscious dispositions. As Harker et al. (1990:215) point out, conceptual circles are a constant in Bourdieus work: &dquo;Capital is something that is struggled for-what is capital? Capital is that which people value and (therefore) struggle for. What is strategy and struggle about? It is the activity that people engage in, in order to gain the necessary volumes of capital to achieve their aims.&dquo; In fact, in writing that &dquo;so long as there is a generative habitus somewhere at work, one will never cease to discover new data,&dquo; Bourdieu (1990a:9) makes the circular nature of his research structure overt.

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16 Positivistic Tendencies

Sociological positivism has been characterized by deductive hypothesis testing, a preference for directly observable entities, the privileging of quantitative over qualitative data, and a naive view of the achievement of objectivity (Abercrombie, 1984:63-4; Williams, 1983:239).16 Each of these characteristics is present in Bourdieus work, showing that there is a definite streak of positivism in his thought and, even more so, in his methodology. Despite the fact that there is a powerful and complex set of theoretical ideas underpinning Bourdieus research, a metatheory if you will, he claims that these theoretical ideas are not a guiding, overarching theory, but simply a methodological guide.17 He describes his use of theory as &dquo;a program
of perception and of action-a scientific habitus, if you wish-which is disclosed only in the empirical work which actualizes it. It is a temporary construct which takes shape for and by empirical work&dquo; (quoted in Wacquant, 1989:50). What this means is that Bourdieus research is not about testing this theory (which, as we have seen leads to a tautological research process at that level anyway), but rather is about deductive testing of &dquo;lower&dquo; level theories through hypothesis testing-the &dquo;hypothesis that there is an almost perfect homology between the space of the stances ... and the space of the positions held by their authors in the field of production&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1988a:xvii) in Homo Academicus, for example, or that of the &dquo;unity of tastes&dquo; in Distinction. Furthermore, he elsewhere criticizes the data collectors he worked with in Algeria for lacking &dquo;both methods of recording and hypotheses capable of orienting their research and their inquiries&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:5). The demand for research-orienting hypotheses and the testing of &dquo;general theories&dquo; such as &dquo;there is a homology between the academic field and the space of the stances,&dquo; when combined with a denial that the theory of practice is used as a theory, has clear positivistic tendencies. A second way in which Bourdieu inadvertently brings a &dquo;residual positivism&dquo; (Jenkins, 1992:60) into his work is through his use of statistics, which is partly a product of his theory of practice. To begin with, as was noted above, he is overly confident that statistics can be accurately used to show the real patterns of human behavior in the world. As Jenkins (1992:60) points out, he is convinced that his Arab marriage statistics actually represent what they purport to represent, and this is despite the fact that elsewhere he notes that he &dquo;was confronted with a mass of collections of data that were generally incomplete and technically deficient&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:5). That is, while he is clearly aware (see the discussion of codification in Homo Academicus) that categories of data are social constructs, and therefore

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17
to be treated with caution, he does just the opposite and treats them naively as representing what they purport to represent. This is particularly apparent in his use of &dquo;preferences&dquo; as representing real behavior. Bourdieus theory of practice means, as has been noted, that there is no point in asking agents why they do what they do-they dont know, so their responses will be justifications of their behavior as the product of unreal rules. So, Bourdieu accidentally approximates the positivist reduction of science to dealing with &dquo;observable entities known directly to experience,&dquo; at least in terms of what he sees as accessible to research. That is, we can only access what it is that people do, therefore making statistical surveys very useful. However, in practice Bourdieu violates this rule by equating stated preferences with actions.18 In the survey used for Distinction, for example, not only are there questions asking people what they do (&dquo;Where did you get your furniture?&dquo;), responses to which might well tell us where people think they buy their furniture, or worse, where they would like the researcher to believe they bought their furniture, but half of the 26 questions ask for the respondents preferences rather than actions. In fact, there are four more preference questions than action questions, since the remaining four ask for opinions (Bourdieu, 1984:512-518). In the areas of popular music, food, and books, the only questions asked are preference questions. The question on books,

which asks what

types of books the respondent prefers,

is then

presented

in

table, with the interpretation that &dquo;the position of the

different fractions [of the dominant class] ranked according to their interest in the different types of reading-matter tends to correspond to their position when ranked according to volume of cultural capital&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:116-118). It never seems to cross Bourdieus mind that stated preferences are two steps removed from actions: they are not even stated beliefs about how one acts, but about how one would prefer one acted, regardless of how one acts! The methodological naivete necessary to assume the validity of such data is astounding in so determinedly &dquo;reflexive&dquo; a sociologist. Finally, while Bourdieus work clearly depends on his ethnography for the heart of its interpretation, I would argue that he does in effect privilege statistical data over ethnographic data. There are three different types of evidence in favor of this argument: first, relating to his analysis of his research method; second, in what he claims statistical data can do; and third, the casual manner in which he will abandon qualitative data in favor of statistical data. While the second and third points have been argued earlier, the first one will have to be
dealt with in detail. The first argument is that in his discussions of his research methodology there is an obsessive detailing of his statistical methods alongside an almost complete absence of discussion of the sources and
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18

collecting his qualitative data; the implication of this is that the statistical data must be presented in great detail as they are far more important than his other data. That he does this is clear from examining either Distinction or Homo Academicus. In Distinction Bourdieu presents three appendices on statistical data (Bourdieu, 1984 :519560), outlining his &dquo;complementary sources&dquo; (statistical sets used in secondary data analyses), &dquo;statistical data&dquo; (the tables produced by his own survey), and &dquo;associations&dquo; (further statistical data, from another survey, on respondents associations of politicians with set categories of objects), but not a single word on the nature of the ethnographic research that began the research process. Furthermore, the only discussion of the source and method of collection of the qualitative interviews presented in Part III of Distinction is a paragraph, at the bottom of the first page of the first of the interviews presented, which does not even tell us how many interviews were conducted (Bourdieu, 1984:274). In addition, what Bourdieu tells us about the interviews is what makes them most like quantitative interviews: that they were as systematic as possible, that the interviewees were led &dquo;towards the most central areas of his or her life-style&dquo; on the basis of the previous statistical research, and by using direct as well as semi-direct and indirect questioning. Clearly, in his discussion of the research process he denigrates the importance of his qualitative data. Given that this downgrading of qualitative data is combined with an exuberant belief in what statistical data can tell us and, therefore, an excessive willingness to abandon qualitative work in favor of statistics, it is not overstretching to suggest that there is a certain positivistic style to Bourdieus use of statistics. A third way in which Bourdieus methodology reflects a positivistic tendency is through his conception of and belief in the efficacy of reflexivity. While he does not see sociology as exactly like the physical sciences (which was the original positivist position), he does not refer to it as either a non-science or as a science unlike the physical sciences, but as a science &dquo;whose peculiar feature is the peculiar difficulty it has of becoming a science like the others&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:189). In other words, it is not that sociology is a science that is, in crucial ways, destined to remain forever very different from the physical sciences. Instead, sociology has to do something extra to become &dquo;like the other sciences.&dquo; In effect, Bourdieu is taking up a position that says that the positivists are right, in that sociology can become like the physical sciences, but that they are naive to think that this can be done without reflexivity.
Both this view of the purpose of reflexivity and how Bourdieu sees reflexivity as being enacted are, I would argue, confirmations that he has a positivistic view of science. For, in defining self-reflexiveness as caution about the relationship to the observed combined with an
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processes of

19

understanding of the academics position in the social space (i.e., knowing the interests, dispositions, and habitus that go along with that position), Bourdieu is arguing that we can successfully &dquo;objectify the objectifier.&dquo; As he writes in The Logic of Practice: [T]he reification of the object of science in the essential otherness of a mentality presupposes triumphant adherence to a nonobjectified subject. Distance is not abolished by bringing the outsider fictitiously closer to an imaginary native, as is generally attempted; it is by distancing, through objectification, the native who is in every outside observer that the native is brought closer to the outsider (Bourdieu, 1990a:20, emphasis added).19 If we accept his apparent view that the sociologist can become objective through a neutralizing distancing (said phrasing reproducing positivistic language), then there is no reason to disagree with the subjectivists: through reflexivity the sociologist can become the rationally acting, choosing agent who is free of structural constraint. In such a situation, the sociologist can become like the physicist, a natural scientist, who maintains his ability to &dquo;do&dquo; science through a constant reflexive vigilance.

Reproducing the View from Above

It is necessary to return to a discussion of Bourdieus ethnographic practice at this point because it relates directly to these problems of reflexivity and the positivistic tendencies in his scientific thought and

practice.20

Bourdieu is, of course, very critical of traditional anthro-

pological research methods, arguing that they epistemologically privilege the anthropologist (Bourdieu, 1990a:14). In research emerging out of such epistemological privilege the researcher will end up unreflexively imposing his or her own &dquo;norms of construction&dquo; on the object. If ethnographers are to escape from this view from above-with the
observer, free of the social relations that structure the behavior of the native, looking down clearly and unobstructedly on the object of study-they must, according to Bourdieu, be reflexive in his sense of
the term as no other scientific option is available. Intuitive methodologies will not work; intuition just &dquo;fictitiously denies the distance between the observer and the observed&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:14). Neither will the &dquo;primitivist participation of the bewitched or mystic anthropologist&dquo; because:

participation ... still plays on the objective distance from the object to play the game as a game while waiting to leave it in order to tell it. This means that participant observation is, in a
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20
a contradiction in terms (as anyone who has tried to do it the critique of objecwill have confirmed in practice); and tivism and its inability to comprehend practice as such in no way implies the rehabilitation of immersion in practice. The participationist option is simply another way of avoiding the question of the real relationship of the observer to the observed and its critical consequences for scientific practice (Bourdieu, 1990a:34).

sense,

...

The only option left, then, is to reflexively objectify the objectifier so as to &dquo;distance the native within the observer,&dquo; and thereby bring the object of study paradoxically closer to the observer. As Bourdieu discusses the issue in relationship to his study of marriage strategies in the Barn, the necessary process is that &dquo;of objectifying the ethnologist not only as a socially situated individual but also as a scientist who professes to analyze and conceptualize the social world, and who for that reason has to withdraw from the game&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:59). Unfortunately for Bourdieu, however, this &dquo;procedure&dquo; is a failure and his ethnography only succeeds in producing interesting and useful interpretations as it has accidentally reproduced the view from above of traditional ethnographys epistemologically privileged observer. As was argued earlier, in Bourdieus sociology ethnography fills the space between structure and practice by &dquo;discovering&dquo; the generative principle of habitus, without which Bourdieus sociology would have a gap in its causal path (de Certeau, 1984:52). However, as de Certeau (1984:55-6) points out, given that Bourdieu always links and a collective practices to both &dquo;a proper place (a patrimony) of administration (a family, the group)&dquo; and given that stratprinciple egy is unconscious, he carries out a traditionalist ethnology in which &dquo;the elements of a people and its culture ... [are] coherent and unconscious.&dquo; Bourdieus attempt to bridge the gap between structure and practice through unconscious dispositions, an interiorization of structure (de Certeau, 1984:57), puts the ethnographic observer above, epistemologically, that which he observes. In fact, his ethnography fits perfectly de Certeaus description of traditional ethnography:
...

- In order for coherence to be the postulate of ethnological knowledge... it was necessary to put this knowledge at a distance from the objectified society, and thus to presuppose that it was foreign and superior to the knowledge the society had of itself. The unconsciousness of the group studied was the price that had to be paid ... for its coherence. A society could be a system only without knowing it. Whence the corollary: an ethnologist was required to know what the society was (de Certeau, 1984:56).

And so, we must conclude that Bourdieu unintentionally reproduces, even in his qualitative research, a positivistic relationship between the

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21

ethnographer and his subject. He unintentionally reinvents all over again the anthropologists gaze, looking at the practice of unconscious natives, knowing better than they the sources of their behavior because he is a scientist, because he is reflexive, something they cannot be without his help.
Outcomes: The Twilight Agent in
an

Objective World

While it has become clear that, in the end, there are some serious flaws in Bourdieus methodology-from its tautological nature, to its positivistic elements, to the production of a traditionalist ethnography -and that many of those problems stem from the epistemology central to his theory of practice, there is one central question that has not been addressed here: whether or not Bourdieu has successfully reinserted the subject into objectivist sociology. In one sense he has because the habitus is part of the subject by definition. However, we must ask ourselves what kind of subject it is, whether it is a meaningful subjectivity.21 The subject in Bourdieus sociology is ultimately a determined subject devoid of choice, and his theory of practice must be deemed a failed attempt to revive the subject in objective sociology. As we have already discussed, position in the social space produces habitus: the experience of conditions and the conditionings associated with a specific set of conditions in a specific position in the social space will determine the set of dispositions in the individual agent. The agent has neither control of his or her dispositions nor even awareness of them, given their location in the unconscious. Even the strategies produced by the interaction of habitus and field are located in_ the unconscious. In his attempt to bypass objectivisms agent, &dquo;subjugated by the dead laws of natural history&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1973a:72), Bourdieus theory posits agents who &dquo;do not, properly speaking, know what they
are

doing&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1973a:71).

Their behavior, objectively adjusted to the structures that have produced it, is unconscious and uncontrollable, determined by the objective structures within which they have been bom, grown up, and within which they will die. Bourdieus agent is, as de Certeau argues, really an it: &dquo;A passive and nocturnal actor is substituted for the sly multiplicity of strategies.... [An] immobile stone figure is supposed to be the agent that produces the phenomena observed in a society&dquo; (de Certeau, 1984:58). While, as noted above, the habitus, being located inside the agent, necessarily returns the subject to an otherwise objectivist sociology, what it does not return is agency itself. For while it is clear that, as social actors, we are not the purely rational actors of those fantasies in which economic man consciously and accurately weighs all the options before making a choice, it is also clear that a
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22

subject

without agency of
a

some

type, without
as

some

subject only pointed out (Bourdieu, 1990a:26). Acknowledging that this exploration of Bourdieus ideas has been unremittingly critical is hopefully also acknowledging that his body of work is sufficiently important and serious to be worth the effort of critique, particularly as we are talking about a writer who is incredibly difficult to read in the first place. While the attempt to explore and critique a theory of practice and a methodology has left no room to discuss the merits of Bourdieus work, I hope that the reader will not
name
no merits exist. If the room were available I up issues relating to the crossing of disciplinary boundaries, the pursuit of serious theory (even more, the pursuit of serious theory in conjunction with empirical research), and other subjects. It is the case, as Jenkins points out (Jenkins, 1992:180), that Bourdieus work is open to criticism because he makes a truly serious attempt to develop a sociology worthy of the name and is so serious about examining what it is he is doing in public. It is no criticism to conclude, with Jenkins, that Bourdieus weaknesses are also his

consciousness, is

in

form of will and Bourdieu himself has

conclude that I think

might bring

strengths.
Notes
1. The
a

overcoming of false oppositions that limit the success of the social sciences is
theme of Bourdieus work. Other such "antinomies" would include

major

theory/research, micro-/macro-, anthropology/sociology, quantitative/qualitative, etc.

(Bourdieu, 1988b:777-780). While
overcome

bottom founded" (Bourdieu, 1988b:780). 2. While it seems likely that this is at least partially an after the fact reconstruction, Rogers Brubaker (Brubaker, 1985:746) points out that Bourdieu entered adulthood just as Levi-Strausss research began to have impact. For a chronological treatment of Bourdieus career, see Robbins (1991). 3. See, for example, his description of "The Berber House" (Bourdieu, 1973b), which he has described as the last of his "blissful structuralist" writings. 4. While Bourdieu refers specifically to Sartre in much of his writing on this subject (Bourdieu, 1990a:42-47), I will not be using his specific critiques of Sartre. As Bourdieu presents Sartres ideas as an example of a type of explanation of human practice and as it has been suggested that Bourdieus treatment of Sartre and some other authors is to set up simplistic misreadings of them as strawmen to knock down (Jenkins, 1992:166), it seems sensible to discuss subjectivism as a type, rather than discuss primarily his attack on an individual writers position. 5. Bidet (1979) makes the point that not all of the intellectual traditions that Bourdieu characterizes as objectivist necessarily are. Bourdieu includes Marx as an objectivist, for example; Bidet argues that structure, in Marx, is inseparable from practice. Therefore, if practice and structure are dialectically intertwined, neither existing separately or independently of the other, the subjectivist-objectivist antinomy disappears. 6. As we shall see in greater detail later with regards to Bourdieus methodology, this sentence shows the circularity, or tautological nature, of much of Bourdieus thought and writing. If habitus is "understood as a system of dispositions common to all
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each of the oppositions that Bourdieu attempts to significant, the objectivist-subjectivist opposition is, as he puts it, "the rock antinomy on which all the divisions of the social scientific field are ultimately is

23
of the same conditionings" and social class is "a class of identical or similar conditions of existence and conditionings," then class and habitus, two supposedly separate, independent concepts cannot help but be identical. While he does acknowledge that no two people could have experienced identical conditioning, he uses the idea of homology to get around this: "Each individual system of dispositions is a structural variant of the others, expressing the singularity of its position within the class.... Personal style, the particular stamp marking all the products of the same habitus ... is never more than a deviation in relation to the style of a period or class, so that it relates back to the common style not only by its conformity ... but also by the difference that makes the manner" (Bourdieu, 1990a:60). 7. For a time ordered description of the procedures used in the research that produced Distinction, see Appendix. Also see Bourdieu (1984), especially pp. 503-524. 8. There are problems in deciding when Bourdieus methodological reports are trustworthy. First, each of his studies is published years after the research is done; the research for Homo Academicus was begun in 1967, but it was not published until 1984. The research for Distinction was begun no later than 1963 (it is not entirely clear whether the "preliminary survey" was done in the same year as the "actual" survey, or earlier), but the study was not completed until 1979. Second, especially regarding his Algerian research, the studies have been reworked, rewritten, and republished so many times it would be very difficult to reach a conclusion on what research techniques should be described. Would it be only those used in the research in the late 1950s or should there be some discussion of the intervening decades as part of the research? 9. There are major problems with his use of secondary data, stemming, oddly enough, from his distrust of mainstream statistical methodology. He argues that accounting for the "nature of the responses, the conditions of the survey and the structure of the sample" (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff) is sufficient to eliminate any problems with using data for purposes other than those for which they were collected. How naive this position is can be seen by what he means by the above: "For example, in one survey, hunting and fishing are grouped in a single question, in another separated into two questions; educational level is coded in five categories in one case, in seven categories in another" (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff). See Appendix also. 10. An example of his abandonment of qualitative methods as too time consuming and difficult, when compared to quantitative methods, can be seen in the abandonment of analysis of intellectuals positions on May 1968 through their writings. He describes this as a necessary step: "the raw recordings are only the unrefined information ... we would have had to give details each time of the contents of their contributions ... and that was more a question of content analysis, with all its nuances, than of a necessarily simplified codification" (Bourdieu, 1988a:241). 11. "One has explained nothing and understood nothing by establishing a correlation between an independent variable and a dependent variable" (Bourdieu, 1984:18). 12. See Bourdieu (1988a:69-72) for an explanation of his "factor analysis of correspondences." Note that his use of statistics not only avoids significance tests and strength of relationship tests, but is often very sloppy as well. In Homo Academicus, for example, there is a table (Bourdieu, 1988a:43) in which some of the percentages given (see the percentages for number of children of members of the Science faculty) are impossible, unless fractional academics can have specific numbers of children. 13. Bourdieu ends up fudging this in practice as he asks questions relating to "preferences" rather than "why" and then imputes backwards to habitus the dispositions (i.e., preferences) thus revealed. If agents are not aware of the motivations for behavior, are they really aware of their preferences or are their stated "preferences" just what their dispositions tell them should be said, rather than what they prefer? In fact, we must question whether preference really has any meaning in a world in which we

products

act

unconsciously.
14. See the tables
on

pages 181-2 and 188-9 (Bourdieu, 1984). That the variations

are

slight can be seen if we look, for example at spending on fats (butter, oil margarine, and lard). While the members of the subordinate classes spend a slightly higher percentage of their food budgets on fats (4.7-5.3 percent) than those in the dominant class (3.3-4.3 percent), in actual cash expenditures the two groups overlap: working class (439-629 francs), bourgeoisie (399-551). While the difference does exist, it is a weak quantitative basis for founding differences in the generative principles of practice.
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24
15. Despite the optimistic sounding position Bourdieu takes in In Other Words ("not only can habitus be practically transformed by the effect of a social trajectory leading to conditions of living different from initial ones, it can also be controlled through awakening of consciousness and socioanalysis" [Bourdieu, 1990b:116]), reflexivity is in practice as impersonal as habitus is. Furthermore, if it is the normal state of human activity to be acting in the world under the determination of habitus, under what conditions can reflexivity even be pursued? As habitus determines our behavior, surely the pursuit of reflexivity would have to be a product of ones habitus. In addition, as the strategies produced by the interaction of habitus and field are entirely geared to the pursuit of capital and power, no "honest" reflexivity would appear to be possible. The only way such a reflexivity could exist would be if a groups dispositions and the field were such that truth was what was needed to gain capital (in which case it would have to also be that the other agents in the field would recognize said truth automatically for
...

it to be rewarded). 16. Here I am allowing Raymond Williams argument that charges of positivism should be avoided (the real argument is about science, with "positivism" being used as an insult [Williams, 1983:239]) to induce caution in my use of the term positivism, without foregoing it as a useful concept. I will, then, respond to Williams position in two ways: first, by being careful to not accuse Bourdieu of being a positivist, which would be unfair in the end as he is honestly opposed to "naive objectivity" in social research; and, second, by defining what I mean here by "positivistic." To do so I will use Bottomore et al. (1983), Abercrombie et al. (1984), and Williams (1983). The main characteristics of a sociological positivism (Abercrombie et al.,1984:163-4) would be: one, reducing science to dealing with "observable entities known directly to experience"; two, deductive research, as the scientist attempts to test general laws and theories; three, a "preference for measurement and quantification"; four, a "tendency toward social structural explanation" (Abercrombie et al., 1984:163-4); and five, a naive view of the achievement of objectivity (Williams, 1983:239). Looking at this list shows that ultimately Bourdieu cannot be accused of being a simple (or simple minded!) positivist; rather, my argument here is that he, due partly to his position on certain research issues and also due to his theory, ends up accidentally reproducing certain elements of positivistic social sciences research process and thought. 17. Obviously he does not deny that his logic of practice is a set of theoretical ideas. Rather, the argument is that he does not use them as a pre-existent, foundational theory, but rather as "a way of thinking" guiding his research. (Wacquant, 1989:50) 18. Of course he must violate his own prescriptions in this area as the goal of his research is the explication of the generative principles motivating human behavior; otherwise he is reduced to the simple structural determinism of the "increased educational attainment leads to an increase in personal income" variety. Searching out those motivational principles takes Bourdieu beyond positivistic "looking only at whats visible," though, paradoxically, as we shall see, in a way that fails to accomplish the nontraditional ethnography he pursues. 19. Again see note 15 for a discussion of the impossibility of reflexivity in a world in which motivations are entirely unconscious. The problem, put simply, is that it would appear that to become reflexively conscious one must already be reflexively conscious. This is, of course, an impossibility, unless magic is involved, the magical creation of Bourdieu perhaps? It also brings up the problem of how one would spread reflexiveness, which is particularly relevant as Bourdieu sees sociology as the science that can bring freedom (i.e., reflexive self-awareness), to the dominated. Clearly the habitus of the dominated would be such that they would refuse to recognize the truth in sociological production (after all their habitus work to legitimate their status as dominated in their own minds). So would they, in a strange modern version of Rousseau, have to be forced to be free? You will sit and read and understand my book. 20. Much of this discussion is drawn from or developed from the argument made by de Certeau (1984:45-60). 21. One of the problems in analyzing Bourdieus theory of practice is that it is pretty well impossible to prove or disprove an epistemology; one can argue with logic, but how can anybody demonstrate the nonexistence of unconscious dispositions guiding our behavior? So throughout this section we must remember that, regardless of what it means, Bourdieu could be right.

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25

References
Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner. 1984. The Penguin Dictionary

of Sociology. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Acciaiolo, Gregory L. 1981. "Knowing What You Are Doing: Pierre Bourdieus Outline of a Theory of Practice." Canberra Anthropology 4(1): 23-51. Bidet, Jacques. 1979. "Questions to Pierre Bourdieu." Critique of Anthropology 13/14 (Summer): 203-208. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1973a. "The Three Forms of Theoretical Knowledge." Social Sciences Information 12(1): 53-80. 1973b. [1970] "The Berber House." Pp. 98-110 in Mary Douglas, ed., Rules
.

and Meanings. Harmondsworth:

77-85.

Penguin.

_______. 1979. [1977] "Symbolic Power." Critique of Anthropology 13/14 (Summer):

.

Pp. 304-317 in Karen Knorr-Cetina and Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. _______. 1984. [1979] Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. _______. 1988a. [1984] Homo Academicus. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ________. 1988b. "Vive la Crise! For Heterodoxy in Social Science." Theory and SociAaron V.

Cicourel, eds., Advances

1981. "Men and Machines." in Social

ety 17(5): 773-787.

_______. 1990a. [1980] The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. _______. 1990b. [1982, 1987] In Other Words. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bottomore, Tom, Laurence Harris, V.G. Kiernan, and Ralph Miliband (eds.). 1983. A

Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Brubaker, Rogers. 1985. "Rethinking Classical Social Theory: The Sociological Vision of
Pierre Bourdieu." Theory and Society 14(6): 745-775. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. DiMaggio, Paul. 1979. "Review Essay on Pierre Bourdieu." American Journal of Sociology 84(6): 1460-1474. Garnham, Nicholas. 1986. "Extended Review: Bourdieus Distinction." Sociological Review 34(2): 423-433. Harker, Richard, Cheleen Mahar, and Chris Wilkes. 1990. An Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu. London: MacMillan Press. Inglis, Roy. 1979. "Good and Bad Habitus: Bourdieu, Habermas and the Condition of England." Sociological Review 27(2) : 353-369. Jenkins, Richard. 1982. "Pierre Bourdieu and the Reproduction of Determinism." Sociol16(2): ogy 270-281. _______. 1992. Pierre Bourdieu. London and New York: Routledge. Lemert, Charles C. 1986. "French Sociology: After the Patrons, What?" Contemporary Sociology 15(5): 689-692. Lienard, Georges and Emile Servais. 1979. "Practical Sense: On Bourdieu." Critique of Anthropology 13/14 (Summer): 209-219. Rasmussen, David. 1981. "Praxis and Social Theory." Human Studies 4(3): 273-278. Robbins, Derek. 1991. The Work of Pierre Bourdieu. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Wacquant, Loic J.D. 1989. "Towards a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with Pierre Bourdieu." Sociological Theory 7: 26-63. Williams, Raymond. 1983. [1976] Keywords. London: Flamingo (Fontana). Zolberg, Vera. 1986. "Taste as a Social Weapon." Contemporary Sociology 15(4): 511-515.

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Appendix: The Methodological Process in Distinction 1 ) METATHEORY

2) HEURISTIC SCHEME

(
B

/~ ~

z
~
&dquo;~

3) PRELIMINARY SURVEY ) j< by extended interview and ethnographic observation ~

BB
/ /

B B z

4) HYPOTHESI +
5)

ESIS OF 4) HYPOTHESIS OF
UNITY OF TASTE

~~ ~~~ /

9) WRITING

~
6) APPLY SURVEY twice (1963, 1967-68)

PRODUCE SURVEY structured interviews using closed response categories

z ~ ~~ ~ /
z

OBSERVATONS 8) OBSERVATIONS AND

QUESTIONINGS IN REAL

LIFE SITUATIONS

~
7) DATA ANALYSIS AND
guiding (determining) theory.

SECONDARY DATA ANALYSIS

1. By which I mean epistemology, theory of practice, and related theories. Therefore, this includes habitus, disposition, field, capital, strategy, etc. Bourdieu, as discussed above, clearly regards these theoretical constructs as guides to thinking rather than as a
2. Heuristic Scheme: &dquo;theoretical hypotheses could never have been extracted from the material analyzed if they had not been present, in the form of heuristic schemes, from the very beginning of the research&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:504). The reason for inserting this &dquo;step&dquo; is that I did not want to give the impression that the following step was directly determined by theory, in the sense of pure deductive research. Rather, early in

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the research for this paper I wanted to give Bourdieu the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was working on the basis that previous research and developed macrotheory could not be ignored and that the neo-qualitative building up of theory from the data in Distinction was the building up of a subset of theory within a metatheory. While these two arguments still hold, they do so within the higher level conclusion that Bourdieus methodology is ultimately tautological. 3. There is no description of the conducting of this research. The only mention of it is that it happened and that it guided development of the statistical survey. 4. 5. Bourdieu makes a number of arguments, some of them bizarre, in favor of research through the structured, closed response category survey. A set of logical (?) steps is pursued: there is a loss of precision and detail in producing and using such a survey; that loss is offset by the gain in systematicity; the configurations of preferences produced by the survey replace the indications of manner seen through direct observation ; therefore, the survey can replace observations. This springs from the relationship between the &dquo;preliminary survey&dquo; and the produced survey: the categories and questions of the survey have been determined as representative of the questions and responses to them through the initial nondirective interviews (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff), therefore they adequately represent what would be found in observation. There are several problems with this argument. First, if direct observation has produced results that are easily turned into a limited set of response categories for specific questions then why force people to respond in those ways? They will anyway, so you lose accuracy with no gain in systematicity. Second, there is the problem of negative responses. It is very odd that, having acknowledged that this problem infected some of his data, Bourdieu shrugs it off as unimportant (despite elsewhere quoting Karl Kraus, &dquo;If I have to choose the lesser of two evils, I choose neither&dquo; [Bourdieu, 1984:466]). One must conclude that Bourdieu sees it as sufficient to use observation techniques to guide statistical data collection and for dealing with problems that cannot otherwise be dealt with (see note 7 below). 6. If one is going to use statistical methods to this extent, how should one relate to the rules of statistics? Bourdieu here treats them rather roughly. While acknowledging that the overall results are not comparable given his weighted sample, he also conducted the survey at two different points in time (separated by several years) and treats the two samples as one for the purposes of analysis. There is no active comparison of the two samples to ensure that they arent different, though Bourdieu does argue that &dquo;because the survey measured relatively stable dispositions, this time lag does not seem to have affected the responses&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:504). 7. In his use of secondary data analysis, which is considerable, Bourdieu not only downplays potential difficulties, but seems to suggest that his use of other survey data provides a sort of armor for the validity of his conclusions. He argues that accounting for the &dquo;nature of the indicators, the phrasing of the questions, the coding of the responses, the conditions of the survey and the structure of the sample&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff) is sufficient to eliminate any problems with secondary analyses. In fact, he argues that &dquo;it is by mobilizing around a systematic survey all the statistical data available ... that one is best able to check and fill out the data provided by the main survey&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:50~. Again there are huge problems with these arguments. First, by &dquo;systematically accounting&dquo; for the nature of the secondary data, he is referring to such things as hunting and fishing being grouped together in one survey but not in another or education being coded into differing numbers of categories (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff). These adjustments are hardly sufficient to account for the potentially huge difficulties in using this secondary data, especially to confirm other survey data: he is essentially using one method to confirm the conclusions of the same method, rather than using a variety of techniques to do so. Second, he is not just &dquo;mobilizing&dquo; this data to support what is already there in his own data; in his discussion of food preferences (Bourdieu, 1984:179-199), for example, not one of the tables presented is from his own survey. In fact, there is only one question (#10) on food (Bourdieu, 1984:514) in the survey and it refers to preferred styles of meal served to guests (i.e., &dquo;simple but well presented&dquo; as if categories such as that in a survey really mean anything). Furthermore, much of his argument could not be produced from survey data. See, for example, pages 194-6 where he discusses the manner of food consumption by different classes. These
...

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28
observations could only have been produced by observation, which is downgraded in all discussions of methodology. Finally, compare the amount of data produced by 1217 interviews to that of the 51 surveys used in the secondary data analysis. 8. When Bourdieu talks about using &dquo;observations and questionings in real life situations,&dquo; what exactly is he talking about? He used these techniques &dquo;whenever a difficulty arose or a new hypothesis required it&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:509). In other words, he used these techniques when his statistics couldnt provide an answer. If we were to go based on his methodological description, we would conclude that qualitative methods were actually used sparingly. The three areas of use that I have been able to clearly identify are as follows: one, extended interviews on political views conducted in 1970 on a separate sample (Bourdieu, 1984:591ff); two, extended interviews on taste and lifestyle conducted in 1974, again on a separate group of people (see below); and three, various print sources (theater reviews, letters to the editor, etc.). While his use of print sources is often interesting and innovative and the political interviews are fine (but only used in one chapter), this leaves only the extended interviews with an unspecified, but apparently quite small, number of people as the identified &dquo;observations and questionings in real situations.&dquo; Furthermore, some of the uses of his statistical data as the basis to &dquo;lead the interviewee ... towards the most central areas of his or her lifestyle&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:274) are disturbing. Actually Bourdieu appears to have guided the interviewee to the central areas of the lifestyle of his or her class position according to the survey (in fact, the interviews were conducted to &dquo;collect ... the most significant features of each of the lifestyles that had emerged from analysis of the survey&dquo; [Bourdieu, 1984:274]). Surely if the dispositions he appeared to have found were actually there, he could have found evidence in the extended interviews without guiding his respondents views quite so stringently, instead guiding to broad subject areas and seeing what was there. The basis of selection of interviewees was a little suspect as well, as they &dquo;[w]ere often a friend or acquaintance of the interviewer&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:274). 9. Bourdieu argues that the difficulty of his writing style is necessary as &dquo;the language must be used to signal a break with ordinary experience ... [to] bring home the corresponding social experience to those who do not, or do not want, to know about it&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:509-10). Well, regardless of the fact that the difficulty of the language makes it that much easier for misunderstanding to arise, it is not so difficult to argue that the writing style also just makes it easier for those who wish to ignore the ideas. How many people will bother with near-incomprehensible passages in books that are not part of the mainstream discourse to begin with?

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