Pierre Bourdieu in Context1 Craig Calhoun2 Placing Pierre Bourdieu has proved difficult for many readers.

Anthropologist, sociologist, or philosopher? Action theorist or structuralist? Materialist or culturalist? Determinist or committed to political struggle? Seeking throughout his life to overcome pro lematic oppositions, Bourdieu also em odied them. Difficult to read, he reached a road audience far eyond academic !alls. "ntensely competitive and even com ative, he inspired personal loyalty and argued for solidarity. A critic of the higher education system, he !as among its most successful products. An opponent of the grands mandarins !ho dominated #rench intellectual life, he ecame one of them. A very private man as !ell as a critic of the media, he ecame a remarka ly prominent cele rity. $he fame came especially in the last years of his life, and to some e%tent has distorted reception of his career and oeuvre as a !hole. "n the &''(s, Bourdieu ecame #rance)s most famous campaigner against the imposition of a neoli eral model of glo ali*ation. Pierre Carles) documentary movie on his political !ork, Sociology Is a Martial Art, !as a surprise commercial success in +(((,+((&-portraying Bourdieu as a sort of intellectual e.uivalent of the farmer and anti,fast food activist /os0 Bov0. $heater groups staged performances ased on his ethnographic e%ploration of social suffering, La misre du monde.1 2omen approached him in the street to tell him ho! La domination masculine had inspired them. 3 2hen he died on /anuary +1 rd, +((+, Le Monde delayed pu lication y several hours so the front page could carry the ne!s. "t !as the lead story on $4 ne!s in #rance 5and other 6uropean countries7 and ran !ith e%pressions of grief and loss from #rance)s president, prime minister, trade union leaders, and a host of other dignitaries and scholars. $he entry into politics that made Bourdieu so prominent a cele rity also aroused criticisms, suspicions, and resentments among his fello! social scientists. Beyond theoretical or empirical differences, the ne! conflicts !ere fueled y oth academic and state politics. 8n the first side, there !ere many !ho sa! Bourdieu)s fame and influence as unfair, leaving too little room for their o!n or that of other heroes. 8thers accused him of ringing a 9militant: style to scholarly disputes. Disappointed former prot0g0s and colleagues complained that Bourdieu !as not only dominant ut also domineering. ; "n a
$his paper !as developed out of speeches presented early in +((+ at <e! =ork >niversity, the >niversity of Pennsylvania, and finally the <e! School for Social ?esearch, April +@, +((+A it incorporates parts of a #rench te%t presented as the opening speech to the Collo. Bourdieu at Cerisy,la,salle, /uly +((&. " am inde ted to Boic 2ac.uant and 6mmanuelle Saada for their comments on earlier versions. + President of the Social Science ?esearch Council and Professor of Sociology and Cistory at <e! =ork >niversity. 1 Bourdieu, et al. The Weight of the World. $rans. P. #erguson. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, +(((A orig. &''1. 3 Bourdieu, La domination masculine. ParisD Seuil, &''E. ; $his charge !as made in especially vitriolic and lengthy form in /eannine 4erdFs,Berou%, Le Savant et la politique !ssai sur le terrorisme sociologique de "ierre #ourdieu. ParisD Grasset,
&

&

comment after Bourdieu)s death, a distinguished former student and co,author, Buc Bolstanski, ackno!ledged that Bourdieu had een a serious scientist in the @(s and E(s ut suggested that his more recent !ork !as little more than 9agit,prop:.@ $hat Boltanski roke the norms of mourning made this shocking, ut much the same vie! had een e%pressed for several years y others !hose differences !ere more in the realm of state politics, and !ho !ere trou led y Bourdieu)s criticisms of the Socialist government, especially after the strikes of &'';. /ournalists, !ounded y his attacks on the mainstream media, Hoined in.E Bourdieu came to sym oli*e the 9gauche de gauche,: the many groups that outflanked the Socialist Party on the Beft. Bourdieu indeed had accused the successive prime ministers /upp0 and /ospin of selling out and making their version of socialism little different from neoli eralism. As perhaps the most prominent 9mainstream: socialist to argue that the party had a andoned oth its radicalism and its critical stance on capitalism he !as seen as supporting defections to the smaller parties of the Beft. 2hen the Socialists !ere ignominiously defeated in the first round of the +((+ elections, many lamed Bourdieu posthumously 5rather than the still,living if uninspiring candidate7. 8thers, of course, suggested that the defeat of /ospin merely confirmed Bourdieu)s diagnosis, and that the party)s sacrifice of principle !as also poor electoral strategy. $hough differently motivated, these lines of criticism and attack converged on the notion that Bourdieu)s !ork changed deeply in the &''(s, and especially that there !as a sharp divergence et!een his earlier, scientific research and his later political interventions. By contrast, " !ill try to esta lish the unity of Bourdieu)s !ork, the e%tent to !hich the concerns e%pressed in his political !ritings are oth of a piece !ith and supported y his scientific analyses. $he e%tent to !hich Bourdieu directly entered pu lic de ates and the fre.uency !ith !hich he !rote polemics for roader audiences certainly changed through his career and especially in the &''(s. But the intellectual themes, conceptual frame!ork, and oth theoretical and empirical orientation of Bourdieu)s sociology remained impressively consistent, especially from its first fully mature e%pressions in the early &'E(s through his death. $his is not to say that there !as no internal developmentA ne! dimensions !ere added to Bourdieu)s sociology and older themes oth deepened and e%tended. Concepts and theoretical provenance earlier left more implicit !ere made more e%plicit. But Bourdieu !orked not y declaring a theoretical system and then revising it, ut y continually deploying a core conceptual
&''I. @ "ntervie!, in 9Bes r0actions de nom reu% compagnons de route, Le Monde, +3.(&.(+. E Anthony Pouilly 9Bourdieu et les HournalistsD l)heure des comptes,: $evue la science politique &+ 5+((+7D &,3A Daniel Schneidermann, %u &ournalisme aprs #ourdieu. ParisD #ayard, &''I. Schneiderman !as a Le Monde reporter !ho complained that Bourdieu should have recogni*ed that, !ithin necessary limits, many Hournalists !ere also engaged in promoting critical consciousness. "n the same manner that social democrats resented eing lumped !ith li erals, Schneiderman thought Bourdieu should have made stronger distinctions among Hournals and Hounralists. #or e%tensive discussion of this, see the !e site Action,Criti.ue,Medias 5httpDJJacrimed.sami*dat.netJHournalismesJcriti.ues7 and Pascal #ortin, 9Bourdieu, Schneidermann et le HournalismeD Analyse dAune contre,criti.ue,: 'omposite( & 5httpDJJcommposite.u.am.caJ+(((.&JarticlesJfortin.htm7.

frame!ork and set of insights in different empirical analyses. I $he definitions of concepts !ere to some e%tent plia le and re!orked in the midst of different analyses 5to the consternation of later systemati*ers7. <e! concepts !ere added, ut the gro!th !as incremental and consistent, not a matter of sharp reaks. ' #ar from eing ar itrary in relation to his more scientific !ork, his political analyses of the &''(s reflect grounding in that scientific !ork going ack to his early studies of Algeria, and e%tend a consistent analytic frame!ork to ne! o Hects-al eit, given the pressures of time and political immediacy, often !ithout the empirical research necessary to fully su stantiate his claims. Bourdieu)s political actions are fully consistent !ith and understanda le in terms of his scientific sociology, though they !ere not dictated y it. Bourdieu)s challenge to threatened collapse et!een scientific and economic 5and for that matter, political and economic7 fields in the &''(s and early +(((s is of a piece !ith his reHection of a collapse et!een academic and political fields in &'@I and oth are informed y his theory of .uasi,autonomous social fields and y his analysis of the disruption of traditional life and marginali*ation of former peasants in Algeria. "f it is a misapprehension to divorce Bourdieu)s politics too sharply from his sociology, it is e.ually misleading to read him only through oppositions to other leading #rench intellectuals and not through the affinities !hich also e%ist. #or e%ample, " shall emphasi*e the e%tent to !hich Bourdieu !as part of the 9poststructuralist: generation 5along !ith #oucault and Derrida among many others7. 8f course, his !ork !as distinct !ithin that road movement 5and especially distinct from much of !hat made poststructuralism a movement in the 6nglish,language !orld7. <ot least, it !as more serious a out science and social organi*ation than other lines of !ork usually grouped under that la el. But the generation !as also shaped y common intellectual sources, institutions and political conte%t. Roots and Project $o egin !ith, let us recall the e%traordinary scope and distinctive commitments of Bourdieu)s !ork. $he most influential and original #rench sociologist since Durkheim, Bourdieu !as at once a leading theorist and an empirical researcher of road interests and distinctive style. Bourdieu not only helped redefine the fields of sociology and anthropologyA he made prominent contri utions also to education, history, literary
See ?ogers Bru aker, 9Social $heory as Ca itus,: Pp. +&+,+13 in C. Calhoun, 6. BiPuma, and M. Postone, eds.D #ourdieu 'ritical "erspectives. ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press and Derek ?o ins The Wor) of "ierre #ourdieu. BoulderD 2estvie!, &''&. ' "f there !as any such reak in Bourdieu)s !ork, it came in the &'@(s and &'E(s as he first appropriated and then transcended structuralism 5!ithout ever fully a andoning it7 in developing a theory of practice and struggle. Bourdieu)s early studies of Algeria !ere not especially theoretical, and !ere influenced more y phenomenology than structuralism. Bourdieu first dre! on structuralism to challenge naKve su Hectivism, then sought to ring time, improvisation, and sense of the game to ear to sho! the limits of thinking culture in purely structural terms, especially as a system of rules. =et this !as not a reak into epistemic maturity, ut a gradual !orking,out and improvement of positions and tools.
I

studies, aesthetics, and a range of other fields. Ce analy*ed la or markets in Algeria, &( sym olism in the calendar and the house of La yle peasants, && marriage patterns in his native B0arn region of #rance,&+ photography as an art form and ho y, &1 museum goers and patterns of taste,&3 schooling and social ine.uality, &; modern universities,&@ the rise of literature and art as a distinct fields of endeavor, &E and the e%perience of poverty amid the !ealth of modern societies.&I

Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Dar el, /,P. ?ivet and C. Sei el. Travail et travailleurs en Algerie. Paris and the CagueD Mouton, this ed. &'';A orig. &'@1. && Pierre Bourdieu, 9Ba maison ka yle ou le monde renvers0,: pp. E1',;I in /. Pouillon and P. Maranda, eds., *changes et communications M+langes offerts , 'laude L+vi-Strauss , l.occasion de son /0me anniversaire. ParisD Mouton, &'@'A Pierre Bourdieu. !squisse d.une th+orie de la pratique. "r+c+d+ de trois etudes d.ethnologie )a1yle. GenFveD Dro*, &'E+ &+ Pierre Bourdieu, 9Bes strategies matrimoniales dans le system de reproduction,: Annales( &'E+ n. 3,;D &&(;,+EA Le 1al des c+li1ataires. Paris D Seuil, +((+. &1 Pierre Bourdieu, Buc Boltanski, ?o ert Castel, /ean,Claude Cham oredon and Domini.ue Schnapper, "hotography A Middle-#ro2 Art. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''(A orig. &'@;. &3 Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Dar el, The Love of Art. Stanford, CAD Stanford >niversity Press, &''(A orig. &'@@. &; Pierre Bourdieu and /ean,Claude Passeron, The Inheritors. ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &'E'A orig. &'@3A Pierre Bourdieu and /ean,Claude Passeron, $eproduction in !ducation( 'ulture( and Society. $rans y. Beverly CillsD Sage, &'EEA orig. &'E(. &@ Pierre Bourdieu, 3omo Academicus. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &'IIA orig. &'EIA The State 4o1ility !lite Schools in the 5ield of "o2er. StanfordD Stanford >niversity PressA this ed. &''@A orig. &'I'. &E Bourdieu, Pierre, 9$he Cistorical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic,: pp +;3,+@@ in The 5ield of 'ultural "roduction. <e! =orkD Colum ia >niversity Press, &''1A orig. &'I'A The $ules of Art. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''@A orig. &''+. &I Pierre Bourdieu, et al., The Weight of the World. $rans. P. #erguson. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, +(((A orig. &''1. $hough it is dated, the est revie! of the development and readth of Bourdieu)s !ork are Derek ?o ins, The Wor) of "ierre #ourdieu, op cit.A also helpful is David S!art*, 'ulture and "o2er The Sociology of "ierre #ourdieu. ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &''E.
&(

A former rug y player and a reader of the later 2ittgenstein, Bourdieu !as dra!n to the metaphor of games to convey his sense of social life. But y 9game: he didn)t mean mere entertainments. ?ather, he meant a serious athlete)s understanding of a game. Ce meant the e%perience of eing passionately involved in play, engaged in a struggle !ith others and !ith our o!n limits, over stakes to !hich !e are 5at least for the moment7 deeply committed. Ce meant intense competition. Ce meant for us to recall losing ourselves in the play of a game, caught in its flo! in such a !ay that no matter ho! individualistically !e struggle !e are also constantly a!are of eing part of something larger-a team, certainly, ut also the game itself. 9$he ha itus, as society !ritten into the ody, into the iological individual, ena les the infinite num er of acts of the game!ritten into the game as possi ilities and o Hective demands-to e producedA the constraints and demands of the game, although they are not restricted to a code of rules, impose themselves on those people-and those people alone-!ho, ecause they have a feel for the game, a feel, that is, for the immanent necessity of the game, are prepared to perceive them and carry them out.:19 Social life is like this, Bourdieu suggested, e%cept that the stakes are igger. <ot Hust is it al!ays a struggleA it oth imposes constraints and re.uires constant improvisation. $his is true of marriage, education, professional life, politics. $he idea is directly related to 2ittgenstein)s account of language games. 20 $hese are not diversions from some more asic reality ut a central part of the activity y !hich forms of life are constituted, reproduced, and occasionally transformed. Bearning a language is a constant training in ho! to improvise Mplay) in social interaction and cultural participation more generally. <o game can e understood simply y grasping the rules that define it. "t re.uires not Hust follo!ing rules, ut having a 9sense: of the game, a 9feeling: for ho! to play.21 9<othing is simultaneously freer and more constrained than the action of the good player. Ce .uite naturally materiali*es at Hust the place the all is a out to fall, as if the all !ere in command of him- ut y that very fact, he is in command of the all.: 22 $his is a social sense, for it re.uires a constant a!areness of and responsiveness to the play of oth one)s opponents and one)s teammates. A good rug y 5or soccer or asket all7 player is constantly a!are of the field as a !hole, and anticipates the actions of teammates, kno!ing !hen to pass, !hen to try to reak free. A good social analyst is simultaneously descri er, critic, and player of social games. $here is no escape from gamesmanship 5though many fields that claim disinterestedness as a constitutive feature-like academia-demand that participants dissimulate and Bourdieu)s critics fre.uently accused him of eing a gamesman as though that !ere a distinctive trait and someho! a etrayal of the game7. Games, ho!ever, may differ. Science is not mystically purified of self,interest or freed of
Bourdieu, In 6ther Words. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''(, p. @1A original emphases. Bud!ig 2ittgenstein, "hilosophical Investigations. $rans G.6.M. Anscom e, BondonD Macmillan, &'@EA orig. &';1. +& See Charles $aylor, 9$o #ollo! a ?uleN: pp. 3;,@( in C. Calhoun, 6. BiPuma, and M. Postone, eds.D #ourdieu 'ritical "erspectives( ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &''1 on Bourdieu)s account of the limits of rule,follo!ing as an e%plication of action and its relationship to 2ittgenstein. ++ Bourdieu, In 6ther Words( p. @1.
&' +(

ar itrary historical determinations. 9$he pursuit of the accumulation of kno!ledge is insepara ly the .uest for recognition and the desire to make a name for oneselfA technical competence and scientific kno!ledge function simultaneously as instruments of accumulation of sym olic capitalA intellectual conflicts are al!ays also po!er struggles, the polemics of reason are the contests of scientific rivalry, and so on.: +1 =et, this does not mean that kno!ledge reduces simply to po!er 5in the oversimplification !idely read into #oucault)s linkage of the notions7 nor does it mean that ecause technical competence confers sym olic capital it does not function as technical competence. Science and scholarship are not organi*ed not y freedom from interest, though they may claim that, ut y the harnessing of interests to the pursuit of kno!ledge. "f such fields 9are favoura le to the development of reason, this is ecause, to put oneself for!ard there, one has to put for!ard reasonsA to !in there, one has to !in !ith arguments, demonstrations or refutations.:+3 Bourdieu came y his critical intellectual orientation naturally, if you !ill, or at least iographically. Born in &'1(, he !as the grandson of an itinerant sharecropper and son of a farmer !ho later turned postman in the remote village of Basseu e in the Pyr0n0es Atlanti.ues. Ce rose through the pu lic school system to the top of his class at the Byc0e de Pau, the Byc0e Bouis,le,Grand O Paris, and the Pcole <ormale Sup0rieure at the rue d)>lm, the preeminent institution for the consecration of #rench intellectuals. Best invoking Bourdieu)s hum le origins seem like merely a ritual act of hagiography for the 9self,made man,: it is !orth noting ho! much they mattered in his reception 5and often reHection7 y #rench elites. 6ven after he !as famous-and indeed, even after his deathhe could e haughtily referred to as 9the former scholarship oy from B0arn !ho ecame the most respected and at the same time most controversial 3omo academicus in #rance.:+; 8r again, 9this son of a lo!,level functionary of B0arn, a lover of rug y as much from regional atavism as from a love for conflict !as never at ease in the Parisian salons:.+@ Bourdieu !as never allo!ed the unselfconscious elonging of those orn to !ealth, cultural pedigree and elite accents. At the same time, he also never confused his success !ith simple proof of meritocracy 5even if it did demonstrate some degree of grudging openness in the system7. "nstead, he developed from it an e%traordinary capacity for critical social analysis and epistemic refle%ivity. 2hile he only presented his 9elements of a social self,analysis: as his last lecture course at the CollFge de #rance 5and in other venues7, a year efore he died, one could read much of his !ork as a less personalistic version of the same proHect.+E
Bourdieu, "ascalian Meditations( StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press +(((A orig. &''E, p. &&(. " id., p. &('. +; Aude Bancelin, 9Bourdieu fait son cinema,: Le 4ouvel 61servateur, +@.(3.(&A also 4ouvel 61servateur !e site, (3.(+.+((+. Bancelin)s article is e%cerpted on the Action,Criti.ue,Medias site, httpDJJacrimed.sami*dat.netJHournalismesJcultureJ(& ourdieu('.html. 4ouvel 61servateur and Bourdieu e%isted in longtime mutual acrimony, perhaps precisely ecause the 4ouvelle 61servateur !as the Hournal of 9caviar socialism:. +@ #eren*ci, $homas, 9>n homme de com at,: Le Monde, +;.(&.(+, p. &,+. +E Pierre Bourdieu, Science de la science et r+fle7ivit+. ParisD ?aisons d)agir, +((+A see also 3omo Academicus and Postscript & to Chapter & of "ascalian Meditations. An unauthori*ed pu lication
+1 +3

Bourdieu)s sense of odily insertion into the competitive and insular universe of #rench academe !as an inspiration for his revitali*ation of the Aristotelian,$homist, Cusserlian notion of ha1itus, the system of socially constituted dispositions that guides agents in their perception and action. Cis a!areness of !hat his classmates and teachers did not see,, ecause it felt natural to them,,informed his accounts of the centrality of do7aQthe preconscious taken,for,granted sense of reality that is more asic than any orthodo%y,,and of misrecognition in producing and ena ling social domination. $hough educated in philosophy, Bourdieu em raced sociology precisely in order to make empirical research a tool for reaking through ordinary consciousness to achieve truer kno!ledge a out a social !orld usually considered too mundane for philosophical attention. Perhaps this !as an especially apt choice for an o1late miracul+-an initiate !hose social ackground and non,elite ha itus made his interventions seem rutal amid the aristocratic !orld of the Parisian intelligentsia and the normaliens philosophes, no matter ho! rilliant they !ere. A certain e%plicitness a out academic games oth e%presses and makes the est of that distance. "t is no denigration to note that Bourdieu)s incessant struggle against the heritage of the normalien philosophe !as simultaneously an effective reminder that he had earned the status, and at the top of his class, efore reHecting !hat he called the 9caste profits: of the philosopher. Accepting instead the challenges of empirical research offered, Bourdieu thought, the est means for reaking !ith the enchantments of esta lished ideas and self,evident social relations. And his critical distance from the institutions !ithin !hich he e%celled propelled his telling analyses of #rench academic life, and indeed of ine.uality, the state and capitalism generally. 9" have never really felt Hustified in e%isting as an intellectual,: he !rote in an e%traordinary ut not at all casual line. 9" have al!ays tried N to e%orcise everything in my thinking that might e linked to that status, such as philosophical intellectualism. " do not like the intellectual in myself, and !hat may sound, in my !riting, like anti, intellectualism is chiefly directed against the intellectualism or intellectuality that remains in meN:+I Bourdieu)s contemporaries at the Pcole <ormale, /ac.ues Derrida and Michel #oucault, shared this sense of distance from the dominant culture of the institution. +' $hough the specifics varied, a certain horror at the social environment of the Pcole informed each in a struggle to see !hat conventional consciousness o scured. "ndeed, as Bourdieu sometimes reminded listeners, #oucault attempted suicide as a student there. Bourdieu)s intellectual response differed crucially from Derrida)s and #oucault)sD he em raced science. Ce remained, nonetheless, friendly !ith oth 5and his !ork sho!ed important similarities to #oucault)s, especially perhaps in its stress on 9em odiment: and the politics of kno!ledge7. "t !as #oucault !ho proposed Bourdieu for a chair at the CollFge de #rance.
of parts of the 9elements of a social self,analysis: y 4ouvel 61servateur shortly after Bourdieu)s death, contrary to the !ishes of his family, created a small scandal. +I "ascalian Meditations( p. E. +' Derrida !as Bourdieu)s e%act contemporary and early friendA #oucault finished at the 6cole a year after they started. All !ere taught in part y Bouis Althusser, though they responded differently, Bourdieu ultimately !ith considera le hostility.

Algeria "n &';;, Bourdieu !as sent to do military service in Algeria during that #rench colony)s struggle for independence-and ?epu lican #rance)s horrific repression of it. $he loody attle of Algiers !as a formative e%perience for a generation of #rench intellectuals !ho sa! their state etray !hat it had al!ays claimed !as a mission of li eration and civili*ation, revealing the sheer po!er that lay ehind colonialism, despite its legitimation in terms of progress.1( Bourdieu addressed this oth !ith direct opposition and !ith research into the nature of domination itself, including in #rance, and into the nature of misrecognition and the struggle over classification. Confrontation !ith the Algerian !ar, and !ith the transformations !rought y #rench colonialism and capitalism, left a searing personal mark on Bourdieu, solidifying his commitment to the principle that research must matter for the lives of others. Scarred ut also toughened, he stayed on to teach at the >niversity of Algiers and ecame a self, taught ethnographer. Ce proved himself an e%traordinarily keen o server of the interpenetration of large,scale social change and the struggles and solidarities of daily life. Among other reasons, his native familiarity !ith the peasant society of B0arn gave him an affinity !ith the traditional agrarian societies of rural Algeria that !ere eing destroyed y #rench colonialism. 2ith A delmalek Sayad, he studied peasant life and participation in the ne! cash economy that threatened and changed it. 1& 2orking !ith Sayad and Alain Dar el 5among others7 helped to inaugurate a pattern of intellectual partnership that characteri*ed Bourdieu)s entire career.1+ Bourdieu did not simply study Algeria, though, ut rather sought out its internal variants, regional and 9minority: communities that !ere stigmati*ed and marginali*ed not only y #rench colonialism ut also y the construction of Algerian national identity as modern and Ara in opposition to rural, tri al, and traditional. Sociologie d.Algerie descri es in some detail not only 9Ara ic,speaking peoples: ut La yles, Sha!ia, and Mo*a ites-each of !hich groups had its o!n distinct culture and traditional social order though oth colonialism and market transformations !ere disrupting each and along !ith opposition to #rench rule pulling mem ers of each into a ne!, more unified 9Algerian: system of social relations.11 "ndeed, the very term 9La yle: 5the name for the group
See /ames D. Be Seuer, 8ncivil War Intellectuals and Identity "olitics %uring the %ecoloni9ation of Algeria. PhiladelphiaD >niversity of Pennsylvania Press, +((+ and Bourdieu)s fore!ard to it. 1& Bourdieu and Sayad, Le deracinement( la crise de l:agriculture en Algerie . ParisD 6ditions de Minuit. An e%ceptional scholar in his o!n right, Sayad remained a close friend and interlocutor of Bourdieu)s until his death in &''I. See 6mmanuelle Saada, 9 5+(((7A Bourdieu and BoKc 2ac.uant, 9$he 8rganic 6thnologist of Algerian Migration,: !thnography( & 5+(((7 R+D &E1, I+.A Bourdieu)s introduction to Sayad, La dou1le a1sence %es illusions de l.+migr+ au7 souffrances de l.immigr+. ParisD Seuil, &'''. 1+ Weight of the World !as produced !ith contri utions from +1 co,authorsS Much of Bourdieu)s later effort !ould go into maintain sites of collective production and dissemination of kno!ledgeD research centers, Hournals, and ook series. 11 Bourdieu, Sociologie d.Algerie, ParisD P>#, &';I.
1(

Bourdieu studied most7 is derived from the Ara ic !ord for tri e, and oth a claimed identity and a reminder of marginali*ation. $his dou le domination informed oth his analyses of Algeria specifically and his development of a theory of sym olic violence. Conducting research in La yle villages and !ith Ber er,speaking la or migrants to the fast,gro!ing cities of the Algeria)s coastal regions, he addressed themes from the introduction of money into marriage negotiations to cosmology and the agricultural calendar, and the economic crisis facing those !ho are forced into market relations for !hich they are not prepared. 13 Ce studied the difficult situation of those !ho chose to !ork in the modern economy and found themselves transformed into its 9underclass:, not even a le to gain the full status of proletarians ecause of the ethno,national iases of the #rench colonialists.1; Behind the studies of social change !as an account of the traditional 9other: to moderni*ation, the less rapidly changing peasant culture and economy. 1@ "t is informative to recall that the La yle !ere Durkheim)s primary e%emplars of traditional, segmentary social organi*ation in The !lementary 5orms of $eligious Life and thus already had a role as representative of a certain Mtype) of the premodern. "nfluenced y Merleau,Ponty and Sartre, among others, Bourdieu undertook in his first ook to !rite a 9phenomenology of affective life:.1E $his !as a vague frame for the minimally theoretical Sociologie d.Algerie( ut it contri uted to Bourdieu)s development of an analytic perspective on people)s investment in social roles and games, sym olic systems and structures. Before a andoning the study of philosophy in Paris, he had contemplated !riting a thesis on Merleau,Ponty under the direction of Cangulhem. Ce carried this roadly phenomenological orientation into his Algerian research, ut gradually came to reHect !hat he sa! as a one,sided su Hectivism. "t !as partly this search for a !ay to e%plain the sym olic order and its role in constituting life in Ber er villages ut !hich could not e fully articulated y those !ho lived it that dre! him to B0vi,Strauss and structuralism. Ce !ould eventually seek to transcend structuralism as !ell, nota ly through trying to grapple etter !ith issues of temporality, including oth the role of 9timing: in social action and the constitution of time as part of the sociocultural order. #rom this start, ho!ever, he launched a lifelong struggle to understand and e%press the !ays in !hich
See, perhaps most importantly, Bourdieu and Sayad, op cit. Bourdieu, Sociologie d.Algerie, ParisD P>#, &';IA Bourdieu, Dar el, ?ivet and Sei el, Travail et travailleurs en Algerie. Paris and the CagueD Mouton, this ed. &'';A orig. &'@1. 1@ Durkheim, The !lementary 5orms of $eligious Life 5<e! =orkD #ree Press, &''EA orig. &'&+7. 1E /effrey Ale%ander makes much of uncovering the fact that Bourdieu !as influenced y Sartre, and then suggests that Bourdieu)s later criti.ues of Sartre !ere disingenuous. See Ale%ander, 9$he ?eality of ?eduction,: in his 5in de siecle Social Theory( BondonD 4erso, &'';. But Ale%ander fails to grasp oth the u i.uity of Sartre)s influence-as of B0vi,Strauss)s-in the #rench intellectual field of the &';(s and the e%tent to !hich Bourdieu in his !ork of the later &'@(s and E(s played each off against the other as representations of su Hectivism and o Hectivism. Bourdieu dre! on many influences, and it is true that he did not al!ays make them clear, and especially not those that !ere most o vious in his field. $hough the temporal progression is not .uite so simple, Bourdieu proceeded through the stages his theory descri edD su Hectivism, structuralist o Hectification, the attempt to develop an account of practice that transcended their opposition.
13 1;

'

practical activity !as informed y oth a stract doctrine and lived e%perience !ithout eing strictly reduci le to either 5for e%ample, prescription of ideal marriage patterns and actual social relations and availa le options7. 8ne of the most asic difficulties in ethnographic research, Bourdieu came to reali*e, is the e%tent to !hich it puts a premium on natives) discursive e%planations of their actions. Because the anthropologist is an outsider and starts out ignorant, natives must e%plain things to him. But it !ould e a mistake to accept such e%planations as simple truths, not ecause they are lies ut ecause they are precisely the limited form of kno!ledge that can e offered to one !ho has not mastered the practical skills of living fully inside the culture. >nless he is careful, the researcher is led to focus his attention not on the actual social life around him ut on the statements a out it !hich his informants offer. 9$he anthropologist)s particular relation to the o Hect of his study contains the makings of a theoretical distortion inasmuch as his situation as an o server, e%cluded from the real play of social activities y the fact that he has no place 5e%cept y choice or y !ay of a game7 in the system o served and has no need to make a place for himself there, inclines him to a hermeneutic representation of practices, leading him to reduce all social relations to communicative relations and, more precisely, to decoding operations.:1I Such an approach !ould treat social life as much more a matter of e%plicit cognitive rules than it is, and miss the !ays in !hich practical activity is really generated eyond the determination of the e%plicit rules. $his involves not only 9failure: to follo! rules ut creative transpositions of representations across different settings and improvisations implicit in the successful play of social games. Bourdieu)s proHect !as to grasp the practical strategies people employed, their relationship to the e%planations they gave 5to themselves as !ell as to others7, and the !ays in !hich people)s pursuit of their o!n ends nonetheless tended to reproduce o Hective patterns !hich they did not choose and of !hich they might even e una!are. Bourdieu initially represented the lives of the 9original: inha itants of Algeria in fairly conventional terms, echoing many aspects of the more critical end of the moderni*ation theories of the day. "ncreasingly, though, he egan to develop not only a challenge to the idea of enign moderni*ation, ut a much richer and more sophisticated analysis of ho! a traditional order could e created such that it reproduced itself !ith impressive efficacy !ithout any conscious intention to do so, template for the reproduction, or e%ercise of po!er in its pursuit. $his !as made possi le, Bourdieu argued, y the very organi*ation of social practices, com ining the sym olic and the material seamlessly in a 9polythetic: consciousness, and inculcating practical orientations to actions in the young through e%periences repeated in everyday life. $he spatial organi*ation of the household and the calendar of agricultural production, thus, !ere not only 9cultural: choices or responses to material conditions, they !ere media of instruction organi*ing the !ays in !hich the !orld appeared to mem ers of the society and the !ays in !hich each could imagine himself and improvise action. $his social order did not admit of divisions into different fields of activity !ith different specific forms of value or claims on the loyalties of mem ers. Linship, poetry, religion, and
6utline of a Theory of "ractice, trans ?. <ice. Cam ridgeD Cam ridge >niversity Press, &'EE, p. &.
1I

&(

agriculture !ere not distinct, thus, as family, art, religion and the economy !ere in more 9modern: societies. La yle could thus live in a do7ic attitude, reproducing understanding of the !orld as simply the taken,for,granted !ay it must e, !hile the development of discrete fields !as linked to the production of orthodo%ies and heterodo%ies, competing claims to right kno!ledge and true value. ?ecogni*ing that the traditional order !as sustained not y simple inertia or the force of cultural rules, Bourdieu turned attention to the !ays in !hich continuous human effort, vigilance to!ards Mproper) action that !as simultaneously an aspect of effective play of the game, achieved reproduction. $his !as a game peasants could play effectively in their villages. $hey !ere prepared for it not only y e%plicit teaching ut y all their practical e%periences-em odied as 9second nature: or ha itus. $he same people !ho could play the games of honor !ith consummate su tlety in peasant villages !ere incapacitated y the games of rationali*ed e%change in the cities. Ba or migration and integration into the larger state and market thus stripped peasant ha ituses of their efficacy and indeed made the very efforts that previously had sustained village life and traditional culture potentially counterproductive. #rom this it !as a short step to pro lems posed y declining efficacy of the traditional order and the !eakness of preparation the Ber ers had for participation in the Mmodern) society of Algeria-nota ly the fields of economy and politics. At first, Bourdieu looked to education as a vehicle for e.uipping the marginal and dominated !ith the capacity to compete effectively in the ne! order. 1' 6ventually, he sa! education as more contradictory-providing necessary tools ut only in a system that reinforced and legitimated su ordination. La lyes and other Ber ers not only !ound up dominated, ut colluded in their o!n su Hugation ecause of the !ays in !hich they felt themselves to e different and disa led. 6%perience constantly taught the lesson that there !as no !ay for 9people like us: to succeed. 8ccasional e%ceptions !ere more easily e%plained a!ay than the u i.uitous reinforcement that inculcated pessimism as ha itus. #eeling fundamentally une.uipped for the undertakings of Algeria)s ne! 9modern: sector, they transformed a fact of discrimination into a principle of self,e%clusion and reduced am ition. $hese studies helped forge Bourdieu)s theory of practice and informed his entire intellectual traHectory, including oth academic endeavors and his later political criti.ue of neoli eralism. <ear the end of his life, he !roteD As " !as a le to o serve in Algeria, the unification of the economic field tends, especially through monetary unification and the generali*ation of monetary e%changes that follo!, to hurl all social agents into an economic game for !hich they are not e.ually prepared and e.uipped, culturally and economically. "t tends y the same token to su mit them to standards o Hectively imposed y
#or decades Bourdieu .uietly supported students from La ylia in the pursuit of higher education, a fact that speaks not only to his private generosity and sense of o ligation, ut to his faith that, for all their complicity in social reproduction, education and science remained the est hope for loosening the yoke of domination. Ce also helped Ber er emigrants in Paris found a research center, TC6?AMT 5Centre de ?echerches et dU6tudes Ama*ighes7, and !as a founder of a prominent support group for imprisoned and threatened Algerian intellectuals 5C"S"A, Comit0 de soutien au% intellectuels alg0riens7.
1'

&&

competition from more efficient productive forces and modes of production, as can readily e seen !ith small rural producers !ho are more and more completely torn a!ay from self,sufficiency. "n short( unification 1enefits the dominant.:3( >nification, of course, could e a proHect not only of the colonial state ut also of national states, the 6uropean community, and the 2orld $rade 8rgani*ation. As a self,taught researcher in Algeria, Bourdieu fused ethnography and statistics, theory and o servation, to egin crafting a distinctive approach to social in.uiry aimed at informing progressive politics through scientific production. "n some !ays, it may have helped to e self,taught ecause it encouraged Bourdieu to ignore some of the artificial oppositions structuring the social sciences-e.g., et!een .uantitative and .ualitative in.uiry. ?esearch also gave Bourdieu an approach to practical action at a time !hen he felt caught uncertainly et!een political camps. Ce oth dre! heavily on #anon, for e%ample, and then vehemently reHected the revolutionary politics that attracted him, seeing it as naively and sometimes dangerously romantic. 3& Convinced that total revolution !as impossi le, ut also that the #rench state !as insupporta le, Bourdieu sought-!ithout complete success-an approach that !ould give ade.uate !eight to the po!er of social reproduction !ithout simply affirming it. Structure and Practice $he resulting studies, developing through !squisse d.une th+orie la pratique, 6utline of a Theory of "ractice and The Logic of "ractice 5not to mention a host of articles7 are among the most influential efforts to overcome the reified oppositions et!een su Hective and o Hective, agency and structure.3+ $hough Bourdieu introduced the phrase 9structuration: later made famous y Anthony Giddens, his approach !as different in t!o important !ays. #irst, it !as al!ays rooted in a refle%ive in.uiry into the conditions of possi ility of oth o Hective and su Hective vie!s, never simply a ne! theory of a third !ay.31 Second, Bourdieu never sought to tackle these issues purely in the
Pierre Bourdieu, 9>nifying to Better Dominate,: Items and Issues, !inter +((&A orig. +((( 5forthcoming in 5iring #ac), <e! =orkD <e! Press, +((+. 3& See Bourdieu, 9$he ?evolution in the ?evolution.: $here is useful discussion in /eremy Bane, "ierre #ourdieu A 'ritical Introduction. BondonD Pluto, +(((. 3+ !squisse d.une th+orie la pratique( pr+c+d+ de trois +tudes d.ethnologie )a1yle( Geneva D Dro*, &'E+A 6utline( op cit., The Logic of "ractice, trans ?. <ice. Stanford D Stanford >niversity Press, &''( A orig. &'I(. 6utline is often descri ed as a translation of !squisse( ut it is in fact su stantially re!riting and incorporates not only a changed order of presentation and relation et!een theoretical and ethnographic te%t, ut some significant changes in theory. Logic 5Le Sens "ratique( a more evocative title7, re!orked the same te%ts, !ith further additions and deletions. ?o ins) account of the relations among the three is the most detailed in 6nglishA see The Wor) of "ierre #ourdieu, ch. E. 31 " mean here an analytic 9third !ay:, some manner of escape from the pro lems o Hective and su Hective. Bourdieu sought to o Hectify each perspective, ut also to recogni*e each !ithin the larger !hole of sociological in.uiry. 98 Hective analysis,: he !rote in 3omo Academicus( p. %iv 9o liges us to reali*e that the t!o approaches, structuralist and constructivist N are t!o complementary stages of the same procedure.: Bourdieu and Giddens diverged much more sharply on the idea of a political $hird 2ay and !hat Bourdieu sa! as Giddens) insufficiently critical approach to glo ali*ation.
3(

&+

a stract ut instead al!ays in struggle to understand concrete empirical cases. $he most important of these cases came from his Algerian field!ork, studies of #rench educational institutions, and in.uiries into the fields of art and literature. Bourdieu)s studies Hoin !ith #oucault)s !ork of the same period in moving eyond structuralism)s avoidance of em odied su Hectivity and !ith Derrida)s effort to recover epistemology y reaking !ith the notion that it must e grounded in the Cartesian perspective of the individual kno!ing su Hect. "n an important sense, discussed further elo!, the imprecise term 9poststructuralist: fits Bourdieu as !ell it does #oucault or Derrida. Bourdieu uilt on structuralism and enefited especially from the !ork of Claude B0vi,Strauss, !ho among other things had helped reha ilitate the Durkheimian proHect. "ndeed it is actually hard to remem er in the 6nglish language !orld and given the !ay in !hich the history of social science is typically taught, that in #rance the !ork of Durkheim had fallen precipitously from prominence after his death and that of Marcel Mauss. <ot only !ere less sociological vie!s ascendant, ut the Durkheimian version of neoLantianism !ith its social foundations for the categories of kno!ledge !as all ut forgotten. Philosophy sought an emancipation from social determination 5this !as a prominent theme in e%istentialism, ut not limited to it7. B0vi,Strauss revitali*ed the Durkheimian tradition and rene!ed the proHect of studying the interdependence of cultural and social relations.33 Bourdieu sa! himself as in important !ays resuming that legacy, even !hile also improving on it, and the ook series he edited made a variety of !orks y Durkheim and his students availa le that considera ly roadened understanding of their proHect.3; "n studies like his analysis of the La yle house, Bourdieu produced some of the classic !orks of structuralism.3@ Ce roke !ith conventional structuralism, ho!ever, as he sought a !ay to move eyond the dualisms of structure and action, o Hective and su Hective, social physics and social semiotics and especially to inHect a stronger account of temporality 5and temporal contingency7 into social analysis. 3E #or this he dre! on the materialist side of Durkheim and Mar%A on the phenomenologies of Cusserl, Ceidegger, and Merleau,Ponty and later on ethnomethodology 5not least the !ork of his friend
$his !as not merely a feature of the late Durkheim as opposed to some less cultural early !ork, ut a theme throughout his career. "t is in part an artificial separation of sociological and anthropological claims on Durkheim that makes his interests look more discontinuous than they are. See discussion in Michele ?ichman, Sacred $evolutions( MinneapolisD >niversity of Minnesota Press, +((&. 3; British social anthropology kept the Durkheimian tradition alive in the +(s, 1(s, and 3(s, and it is no accident that ?adcliffe,Bro!n)s Structure and 5unction in "rimitive Societies !as translated into #rench as part of Bourdieu)s Le sens commun series. 3@ 8riginally !ritten in &'@1,3, this !as first pu lished in &'@' in an homage to B0vi,Strauss and repu lished as part of the #rench edition of the 6utline. "n the same sense, many of Michel #oucault)s !orks of the mid,&'@(s are argua ly classics of structuralism and not yet in any strong sense 9poststructuralist:-e.g., The 6rder of Things( <e! =orkD Pantheon, &'E(A orig. &'@@. 3E Bridget #o!ler 5"ierre #ourdieu and 'ultural Theory. BondonD Sage, &'EE, p. &@7 rather strangely sees the concept of practice as 9associated !ith VBourdieu)sW conversion to structuralism: thus missing some of the other sources on !hich it dre!,most nota ly Mar% and mar%ism,,and the e%tent to !hich it marked an effort to transcend limits of structuralism.
33

&1

Aaron Cicourel7A on 2ittgenstein, Austin and post,Saussurian linguistic analysisA on 6rnst Cassirer)s neo,Lantian theory 5especially The "hilosophy of Sym1olic 5orms7 and 6r!in Panofsky)s studies of the history of art and perceptionA and on the 9historical rationalism: of his o!n teachers Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, and /ules 4uillemin.3I Bourdieu)s effort !as not merely to forge a theoretical synthesis, ut to develop the capacity to overcome some of the opposition et!een theoretical kno!ledge ased on o Hectification of social life and phenomenological efforts to grasp its em odied e%perience and 5re7production in action. Cuman social action is at once 9structured: and 9structuring,: Bourdieu argued, indeed structuring 1ecause it is structured, !ith the sociali*ed ody as 9analogical operator of practice.: At the heart of Bourdieu)s approach to practice lay the notion of 9ha itus:. $he concept is old, rooted in Aristotle)s notion of odily 9he%is: and transmuted and transmitted y $homas A.uinas in his approach to learning and memory. "t is used y a range of modern thinkers including Cegel, Cusserl, and Mauss. Bourdieu)s o!n recovery of the term coincided !ith that of <or ert 6lias 5though they seem to have een independent7 as 6lias sought to grasp the transformations of manners in modern 6uropean history.3' Bourdieu)s concept !as specifically more social and more odily than, say, Cusserl)s usage !hich focused on the ackground understandings latent in any act. $hough Cusserl understood action 5including perception7 in more individual and cognitive terms, he did stress the importance of dispositions and hori*ons of potential acts. Bourdieu stressed the generative role of the ha itus, the !ays in !hich em odied kno!ledge transmutes past e%perience into dispositions for particular sorts of action. 9$he conditionings associated !ith a particular class of conditions of e%istence produce ha1itus, systems of dura le, transposa le dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles !hich generate and organi*e practices and representations that can e o Hectively adapted to their outcomes !ithout presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an e%press mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. 8 Hectively Mregulated) and Mregular) !ithout eing in any !ay the product of o edience to rules, they can e collectively orchestrated !ithout eing the product of the organi*ing action of a conductor.: ;( $his is the kind of prose that leads unsympathetic critics like /enkins to call for Bourdieu to e translated into ordinary
Bourdieu)s ook series 9Le sens commun; 5pu lished y Pditions de Minuit7 revealed some of the intellectual resources on !hich he dre! and !hich he made availa le in #ranceD $he !orks of 6rnst Cassirer, Gregory Bateson, 6r!in Panofsky, /oseph Schumpeter, Mikhail Bakhtin, /ack Goody, and 6rving Goffman, among many others, are kno!n in #rance mainly ecause of Bourdieu)s efforts. 3' See discussion in ?oger Chartier, 9Social #iguration and Ca itus,: pp. E&,'3 in 'ultural 3istory 5"thacaD Cornell >niversity Press, &'II7. 6lias and Bourdieu share a variety of themes, tastes, and some other concepts, though there are also striking differences. <ot the least of the latter is the e%tent to !hich 6lias focused on long,term historical change, !hereas Bourdieu, !hile sometimes dealing intensively !ith sharter,term processes of change seldom addressed .uestions of large,scale, epochal historical change. See Calhoun, 9Ca itus, #ield of Po!er and CapitalD $he Xuestion of Cistorical Specificity,T in 'ritical Social Theory( 8%fordD Black!ell, &'';. ;( Logic of "ractice( p. ;1.
3I

&3

language.;& $he idea is genuinely comple%, ho!ever, not simply mystifiedA it is not unintelligi le. Bourdieu emphasi*es first that learning is not all e%plicit and mediated y language, ut often tacit and em odied. Second, he stresses that action is generally not produced y rule,follo!ing ut y improvisation. Much of this improvisation is unconscious 5like that of musicians in a Ha** and7 and takes place in the 9real time: of participants rather than the 9time out: for thought that characteri*es the point of vie! of o servers. $hird, the capacity to produce such improvisations-and thus actions-is developed through lengthy processes of learning !hich are simultaneously processes of 9inculcation: y society and social fields 5since the learning takes place in interaction7 and active self,creation 5since the learning is a yproduct of action !hich is itself improvised and either satisfying in its effects or not7. Ca ituses thus reflect processes of conditioning associated !ith material and social conditions of life ut also some individuation in those processes. #ourth, they are simultaneously structured and structuring, ecause they are em edded in the repetition and occasionally innovation of action through time. $hey are reproduced in the effort to do almost anything, and they are inherently social, e%isting as much in the interaction as the person. #ifth, they are efficacious !ithout conscious orientation to ends ecause they have een produced out of a nearly infinite num er of iterations of similar actions 5and reactions7 and trial and error learning reinforces the effective actionsA this is !hat Bourdieu means y saying they are 9o Hectively adHusted: to circumstances and 9o Hectively adapted: to outcomes. Si%th, though, they may e transposed into ne! circumstances, !here they may e more or less effective ut !ill in any case shape the production of actions 5and responses7 and thus ne! learning. Bourdieu ackno!ledges that in some cases such ne! learning may involve varying degrees of conscious effort to change unconscious improvisation-as coaches get athletes to !atch tapes of themselves and try to change the !ays they s!ing golf clu s, rush tennis nets, or pole vault. But !hatever our conscious intentions, !hat !e do is shaped y the 9o Hective intention: inscri ed in ho! !e have learned to do !hat !e do and in the flo! of activity in !hich !e are engaged. 5$ry saying the alpha et rapidly !ith the conscious intention of skipping certain prespecified letters.7 "n all situations-each of !hich is ne! in some degree-the ha itus generates responses to o Hective possi ilities ased on its history. "t represents not the patterns of the past as thought ut the totality of the past insofar as it is em odied. Part of !hat makes the notion of ha1itus difficult to e%plicate is the e%tent to !hich pre,esta lished categories of our thought systematically get in the !ay. 2e oppose mind and ody and imagine relations et!een them as though they could e e%ternal matters of cause and effectA em odied kno!ledge is thus a pro lematic idea. 2e emphasi*e individual actors rather than fields of interaction and thus e%aggerate intention rather than minimally thought reaction or a!areness of !hole fields of activity in trying to account for outcomes. 2e think of 9intention: as o viously a matter of consciousness, a thought a out !hat !e might do, and not e.ually the very 9o Hective: direction of our
;&

/enkins, "ierre #ourdieu( pp. &@+,E1.

&;

thoughts 5and actions7, !here they 9tend: to go, the stretching of past into future, !hich is shaped y our capacities and their limits, the patterns of our learning, the distri ution of our emotional investments. Bourdieu railed against false antinomies and the kinds of scholastic oppositions that serve less to advance scientific kno!ledge than the careers of those !ho !rite endless theses arguing one side or the other, or proposing artificial syntheses designed essentially to create a ne! academic profit niche. $he point !as not simply to choose 2e er over Mar%, or B0vi,Strauss over Sartre, ut to escape from false dualities and imposed categories. "n 6utline of a Theory of "ractice , thus, he analy*ed the opposition of mechanism to finalism, so prominent in the de ates over structuralism, as 9a false dilemma:. "t is, y the !ay, a false dilemma that has refused to die. 8nce familiar to 6nglish,language anthropologists through the de ate et!een George Comans and David Schneider 5attacking the structuralist, especially B0vi,Straussian position on methodologically individualist grounds7 and ?odney <eedham defending it, the false dilemma has recurred in recent metatheoretical arguments occasioned y rational choice theory and so,called 9critical realism:. Mechanisms are all the rage, advocated y /on 6lster and Charles $illy, acked up y philosophers of science like Mario Bunge. ;+ $hey promote various ideas of 9mechanism: 5usually !ithout considering that their !ork might e read as Mmechanistic)7 in response to the common interpretative style of ethnographic or phenomenological !ork that treats agents) self,understandings or intentions as analytically sufficient. Bourdieu !ould not e altogether unsympathetic, as he pointed out that methodological o Hectivism is a necessary moment in all research. But most of the protagonists in the theoretical de ates seek !ays to advance causal analysis !ithout having to pass through the comple%ities of a theory of practice, usually y treating either actors) decisions or structural conditions as in themselves causally efficacious. As Bourdieu reported, 9one of the maHor functions of the notion of ha itus is to dispel t!o complementary fallacies each of !hich originates from the scholastic visionD on the one hand, mechanism, !hich holds that action is the mechanical effect of the constraint of e%ternal causesA and, on the other, finalism, !hich, !ith rational action theory, holds that the agent acts freely, consciously, and as some of the utilitarians say, M!ith full understanding), the action eing the product of a calculation of chances and profits.:;1
?odney <eedham, Structure and Sentiment. 8%fordD Black!ell, &'@+A George C. Comans and David M. Schneider, <inship( Authority and 5inal 'auses. GlencoeD $he #ree Press, &';;A /on 6lster, 4uts and #olts for the Social Sciences. Cam ridgeD Cam ridge >niversity Press, &'I'A Charles $illy, 9Mechanisms in Political Processes,: Annual $evie2 of "olitical Science, +((&, 3, pp. +&,3&A Mario Bunge, The Sociology="hilosophy 'onnection. <e! Bruns!ickD $ransaction, &'''A Peter CedstrYm and ?ichard S!ed erg, eds., Social Mechanisms An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. Cam ridgeD Cam ridge >niversity Press, &''I. A key .uestion is !hether !hat many mean y the emphasis on mechanisms is less a serious statement a out the nature of e%planation than simply a restatement of Merton)s advice to stick to 9middle,range theories: et!een pure description and grand theoretical systems. See Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure. GlencoeD #ree Press, &'3', &';E, &'@I. #or some it is dogmatic metatheory, for others merely prudent search for partially generali*a le aspects of comple% social phenomena. ;1 "ascalian Meditations, p. &1I.
;+

&@

2hen Bourdieu !rote 6utline( it !as Sartrean e%istentialism that posited 9each action as a sort of unprecedented confrontation et!een the su Hect and the !orld.:;3 #or today)s advocates of e%planation y 9mechanisms: the fear of a loss of o Hectivity is aroused y poststructuralist cultural studies, in !hich the su Hect acting in the !orld may e less central ut the su Hective perspective of the o server dramati*ed. But the o Hectifying response-!hether in the form of rational choice theory or a more structural theory-remains pro lematic if it is conceived as sufficient for science rather than a moment in a larger process of producing social kno!ledge. As Bourdieu !rote in 6utlineD "n order to escape the realism of the structure, !hich hypostati*es systems of o Hective relations y converting them into totalities already constituted outside of individual history and group history, it is necessary to pass from the opus operatum to the modus operandi, from statistical regularity or alge raic structure to the principle of the production of this o served order, and to construct the theory of practice, or, more precisely, the theory of the mode of generation of practices, !hich is the precondition for esta lishing an e%perimental science of the dialectic of the internali9ation of e7ternality and the e7ternali9ation of internality, or, more simply, of incorporation and o Hectification.;; $here e%ists, thus, no simple Msolution) to the riddle of structure and agency. ?ather, their mutual constitution and su se.uent interaction must e !orked out in analysis of concrete empirical cases, y reconstituting, first, the social genesis and makeup of o Hective social !orlds 5fields7 !ithin !hich agents develop and operate, second, the socially constituted dispositions 5ha itus7 !hich fashion the manner of thinking, feeling, and acting of these agents. $his 9dou le historici*ation: calls for field and ha itus to e related in analysis of specific temporal processes and traHectories. Moreover, it must e complemented y the historici*ation of the analytic categories and pro lematics of the in.uiring scholar. 8nly in this !ay can social scientists do the necessary, if hard, la or of 9con.uering and constructing social facts:-that is, of distinguishing the hidden forms and mechanisms of social reality from the received understandings of previous academic kno!ledge, folk kno!ledge and the everyday preconceptions of 9culture: more generally. 8n this asis, empirically, ased refle%ive analysis can also esta lish the social and epistemological conditions for oth the o Hective and su Hective perspectives themselves, and for avoiding the pitfalls of !hat Bourdieu later termed 9the scholastic ias: Q the tendency of social analysts to proHect their o!n 5hermeneutic7 relation to the social !orld into the minds of the people they o serve.;@ Bourdieu)s analyses thus lay the asis for an empirical science that !ould address the practices of kno!ledge at the same time as it produced kno!ledge of social practice. $he issue remained central in his challenge to neoli eralismD

6utline, p. E1. 6utline, p. E+. ;@ $his is discussed in several placesA for a general treatment see chapter @, 9$he Scholastic Point of 4ie!,: in "ractical $eason. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''I.
;3 ;;

&E

$he implicit philosophy of the economy, and of the rapport et!een economy and politics, is a political vision that leads to the esta lishment of an un reacha le frontier et!een the economic, regulated y the fluid and efficient mechanisms of the market, and the social, home to the unpredicta le ar itrariness of tradition, po!er, and passions.;E $his 9frontier: is reinforced y oth academic preconceptions and folk understandings, and structures the apparently o Hective categories and findings of economic analysis. ;I $he production of kno!ledge structured y such presupposed categories undergirds the failure to take seriously the social costs of neoli eralism, the social conditions on !hich such an economy depends, and the possi ilities of developing less damaging alternatives. Pursuit of such a refle%ive grounding for social science !as one of the central motivations for Bourdieu)s sociology of the scientific and university fields. ;' 8ne cannot understand the stances intellectuals took during the pivotal period of May &'@I, for instance, !ithout understanding oth the positions they held !ithin their microcosm or the place of that intellectual field in the !e of sym olic and material e%changes involving holders of different kinds of po!er and resources !hich Bourdieu christened 9the field of po!er.: $his ears not Hust on political position,taking ut on intellectual !ork itself. "t is necessary to use the methods of social science-not merely introspection or memory-to understand the production of social science kno!ledge. @( Bourdieu !as often accused of determinism, as though he !ere simply e%pressing a elief in agents) lack of free !ill. Much more asically, though, he argued that agency itself !as only possi le on the asis of the comple% and u i.uitous pressures of social life, and that this as !ell as simple e%ercise of material coercion helped to e%plain the inertia of po!er relations and academic ideas alike. "n the conte%t of M@I, for e%ample, despite his o!n criti.ues of the educational system, Bourdieu !as !ary of romantic radicalism that imagined leaping eyond it or eyond ine.uality at a po!er at a single Hump. $hat !ould e to neglect the !ay in !hich institutions actually !orkedA a ne! institution like >niversity of Paris 4""" 54incennes7 !ould still e an institution and still !ithin the university system.@& "t also posed the risk of making matters !orse y undermining rather
9B)imposition du modFle am0ricain et ses effets,: 'ontre-feu7 2, pp. +;,1&A p. +',1(. Bourdieu)s understanding of the historical process y !hich this tacit understanding of market society !as esta lished !as close to-and inde ted to-that of Larl Polanyi. See, e.g., The >reat Transformation( <e! =orkD ?inehart, &'33. ;' See Bourdieu, 9$he Specificity of the Scientific #ield and the Social Conditions of the Progress of ?eason,: Social Science Information, vol. &3, no. @, &'E;, pp. &',3EA 3omo Academicus? and The State 4o1ility. @( 9" have al!ays asked of the most radically o Hectifying instruments of kno!ledge that " could use that they also serves as instruments of self,kno!ledge,: "ascalian Meditations( p. 3. See also Bourdieu and 2ac.uant, Invitation to $efle7ive Sociology( ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &''+. @& $he ackground to this phase of Bourdieu)s thought as !ell as to the struggles of the era !as the e%pansion of the university system !hich made room for ne! su Hects 5like sociology7 and ne! 5or at least more common7 class traHectories of rapid up!ard mo ility. $he ne! eighth ranch of the >niversity of Paris ecame a center for oth. Close colleagues of Bourdieu)s like Passeron and ?o ert Castel did in fact move to 4incennes. $hat Bourdieu did not may reflect oth his greater cultural capital, !hich ena led his move eventually to the CollFge de #rance, and his sense that the specific form of the gro!th produced compartmentali*ation more than
;E ;I

&I

than e%panding the capacity of the higher education system to offer opportunities, destroying the claim to universalism that under!rote the value of universities. Bourdieu remained committed to educational reform-and indeed !rote an influential report on the su Hect for the socialist government of the &'I(s. Ce did not take his analysis of social reproduction as a !arrant for fatalism, ut rather as pointing e.ually to the difficulty and the need for struggle to transform education and society to the enefit of the marginali*ed. More generally, Bourdieu called for an o Hective analysis of the conditions of creativity, and the pressures that resisted it, rather than an ideali*ation of it as a purely su Hective phenomenon. Ale%ander, for e%ample, has critici*ed Bourdieu on the grounds that only a theory that posits a sharp autonomy of self from environment could possi ly offer a meaningful account of creative action, and that only an appeal to universal values transcending social and historical circumstances could provide a normative asis for democracy.@+ Bourdieu, y contrast argued for 9refusing to replace God the creator of Meternal verities and values), as Descartes put it, !ith the creative Su Hect, and giving ack to history and to society !hat !as given to transcendence or a transcendent su Hect.:@1 Ce demanded also that social scientists pay scrupulous attention to the conditions and hence limitations of their o!n ga*e and !ork-starting !ith the very une.ual social distri ution of leisure to devote to intellectual proHects-and continually o Hectify their o!n efforts to produce o Hective kno!ledge of the social !orld. As he made clear, he could not e%empt himself from epistemic refle%ivity, though like any other !ould need to e placed in an intellectual field not analy*ed in purely individual terms. @3 Bourdieu challenged, in other !ords, the common tendency to propound o Hective e%planations of the lives of others !hile claiming the right of su Hective interpretation for one)s o!n. Poststructuralism As Bourdieu has suggested, his generation of #rench intellectuals-the normaliens philosophes especially-!ere formed in a tightly organi*ed intellectual field.@; Sartre and B0vi,Strauss !ere the to!ering giants organi*ing the oppositions in this field of force, though there !ere a num er of influential, if not .uite to!ering giants. 6%istentialism !as al!ays roader than Sartre, and structuralism came in Bacanian, Althusserian and other non,B0vi,Straussian variants, ut oth the intellectual po!er of the individuals and the social organi*ation of the field itself made them paramount. Sartre !as the dominant #rench intellectual of Bourdieu)s youth. "n the &'@(s, structuralism !as ascendant and availa le to Bourdieu and his peers as help in challenging the cult of the self,sufficient individual, even though the strongest among them !ould in turn try to transcend the limits of structuralism.
opportunity. @+ Ale%ander, 5in de Sicle Social Theory. @1 "ascalian Meditations( p. &&;. @3 See "ascalian Meditations, esp. Postscript & to Chapter & and the sketch of a social self, analysis in Science de la science et r+fle7ivit+. @; See 9"mpersonal Confessions,: pp. 11,3+ in "ascalian Meditations.

&'

Bourdieu !as part of the structuralist and then poststructuralist movements in the general sense of incorporating a structuralist starting point ut moving eyond it, as !ell as simply y generational identity. Ce shared !ith other progenitors of poststructuralism a suspicion of purely actor,centered 5e.g., Sartrean7 accounts of social life and an emphasis on the centrality of po!er. Cis proHect of a theory of practice !as distinct, ho!ever, in its claim to scientific status rather than philosophical,literary criti.ueA in its refle%ivity and in its retention of oth phenomenological and materialist moments largely reHected y the follo!ers of Derrida, #oucault and Bacan.@@ Bourdieu reHected the !idespread reliance on the metaphor of te%tuality as an approach to social life, and though he shared an emphasis on physical em odiment !ith #oucault, he reHected the tendency to import ideas of an underlying life,force along !ith other aspects of Ceidegger and <iet*sche. D!elling on the more familiar faces of poststructuralism is useful, ho!ever, in situating Bourdieu)s theory and seeing its relationship to his politics. $he connections are particularly o scure to those reading in 6nglish, ecause the pattern of translation and reception made Bourdieu appear not as a contemporary of #oucault and Derrida, ut as though he came after them. Poststructuralism is almost y definition incoherent. "t la els, mainly at a distance, a congeries of predominantly #rench efforts to move eyond the temporary certainties of structuralism. Structuralism itself !as more a undle of linked theoretical positions than a single theory. "t Hoined B0vi,Strauss to Althusser and Bacan to Piaget, despite their su stantial oppositions. $o some e%tent, though, it !as a kind of intellectual movement.@E "t reached an apogee in the &'@(s and gave irth to poststructuralism in that moment of its triumph.@I $his !as also the moment in !hich American reception egan in earnest. $his !as, ho!ever, a reception that varied considera ly y discipline. "n anthropology, the importance of B0vi,Strauss rought a significant engagement !ith structuralism efore engagement !ith #oucault or Derrida 5and in fact, some of Bourdieu)s early !ork !as rightly read as e%emplifying this structuralism7. Althusser influenced Mar%ists, ut not the core of any academic discipline. American sociology dre! little on #rench structuralism, and only elatedly incorporated much influence of #oucault. Cistory, y contrast, sho!ed a very selective influence of structuralism 5mainly in the 9ne!: intellectual history7 ut a pervasive influence of poststructuralism, especially #oucault. $o a considera le e%tent, nonetheless, structuralism and poststructuralism made the Atlantic crossing together. $his !as perhaps especially true in
@@

$his is a road generali*ation. Deeply influenced y Bacan, for e%ample, Castoriadis also dra!s on phenomenology and materialsim. #oucault)s !ork is more phenomenological and materialist 5in some !ays7 than that of Derrida or Bacan.

#ranZois Dosse, 3istory of Structuralism. $rans. D. Glassman. MinneapolisD >niversity of Minnesota Press, &''I 5+ vols.7A orig. &''&. @I "n the &'@(s, #oucault, Derrida, and Bourdieu all pu lished te%ts that stand among the 9classics: of structuralismD e.g., #oucault, The 6rder of Things. <e! =orkD Pantheon, &'E(A orig. &'@@A Derrida, 6f >rammatology. BaltimoreD /ohns Copkins >niversity Press, &'E@A orig. &'@EA and Bourdieu, 9$he La yle Couse: in Logic of "racticeA orig. &'@(. $here !as perhaps more 9post: to Derrida)s mid,&'@(s structuralism. "n the &'E(s, all three challenged structuralism in asic !ays even !hile continuing to incorporate much from it. See Bourdieu, 6utline of a Theory of "ractice? Derrida, %isseminations. ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &'I1, &'E+ A and #oucault, %iscipline and "unish. <e! =orkD Pantheon, &'EEA orig. &'E;.
@E

+(

literary studies, !hich !ere pivotal for the very idea of poststructuralism, and !here the !ay had een prepared to some e%tent y the teachings of Paul DeMann and the development of a =ale School of #rench Studies. Moreover, in many fields, 9poststructuralist: !ritings !ere vastly etter kno!n and more influential than structuralism itself had een-and failure y later generations of students to grasp the structuralism in poststructuralism produced many misunderstandings. "n a sense, in the American reception, !hat poststructuralism !as 9post: to and in tension !ith varied among academic disciplines and not surprisingly shaped its appropriation. Derrida and #oucault !ere the most influential sources-and sym ols,,for !hat came to e called poststructuralism, reaching out initially from !ithin the structuralist movement to em race other philosophical resources and ideals, such as the !ork of <iet*scheA to challenge rationalist certainties !ith reinstatements of oth dou t and ironyA and to suggest that reHecting the philosophy of individual consciousness did not entail reHecting epistemological in.uiry. $heir commonalities, like their places at the head of a putative poststructuralist movement, !ere less claimed y them than ascri ed y appropriators on the other side of the Atlantic 5and the link of poststructuralism to postmodernism can e similarly confusing7.@' $he unity of poststructualism !as al!ays du ious, and seldom important to those acclaimed the central poststructuralist theorists. $here !ere a variety of paths eyond 5as !ell as !ithin7 structuralism. As Bourdieu indicates, 9it !ould e possi le to produce as one !ished the appearances either of continuity or reak et!een the &';(s and &'E(s, depending on !hether or not one takes account of the dominated figures of the &';(s !ho provided the launch,pad for some of the leaders of the anti,e%istentialist revolution in philosophy.: Bachelard and Canguilhem !ere among the most important for Bourdieu. But the generational pendulum had een s!inging for some time. 6%istentialism Hoined forces !ith individualist reaction against Durkheim, setting the stage for B0vi,Strauss)s resuscitation of the Durkheimian tradition as !ell as his specific version of structuralism !ithin it. "f the Algerian !ar marked a crisis in the domination of e%istentialist thought, the field contained a plurality of positions and shifting relations of force !ell efore that. Structuralism !as certainly a 9movement: ut not a movement sufficient unto itself and !ithout a conte%t of struggle. And the poststructuralist generation gre! directly out of this movement. Many, including Bourdieu, had e%perienced in their youth simultaneously the domination of Sartre and e%istentialism and the teaching of a num er of po!erful critics of e%istentialism and advocates of other philosophical approaches. $eachers like Bachelard and Cangulhem !ere crucial influences even if never dominant forces in the roader intellectual field. $hus, for e%ample, /effrey Ale%ander misunderstands oth Bourdieu and the field in imagining that Bourdieu !as greatly influenced y Althusser during the !ave of structuralist Mar%ism prominent in the &'@(s ecause he fails to reali*e that Althusser taught Bourdieu as a teenager-as indeed he taught many of the rest of Bourdieu)s generation in <h@gne and at the Pcole <ormale. E( <h@gne and the Pcole <ormale of the ?ue d)>lm !ere central and e%traordinarily intense formative
See Craig Calhoun, 'ritical Social Theory 'ulture( 3istory( and the 'hallenge of %ifference. Cam ridge, MAD Black!ell, &'';A <orris, Christopher, The Truth a1out "ostmodernism. Cam ridge, MAD Black!ell, &''1A Peter De!s, Logics of %isintegration. BondonD 4erso, &'IE.
@'

+&

e%periences, and the )h@gnes of the late &'3(s and early &';(s ecame the poststructuralist generation y re elling against the philosophy of the su Hect dominant in their youth, em racing structuralisms of various sorts, and then reacting against limits of structuralism 5!hile simultaneously making their o!n !ays in the academic hierarchy7. E& Most poststructuralism !as at odds !ith social science ecause it em raced the intellectual identity and location of philosophy. <onetheless, it !as influenced y the partially sociological insights of the earlier generations of philosophers and historians of science. 9$o take an e%treme e%ample, only the transfiguration resulting from a complete change of theoretical conte%t prevents people from seeing in the Derridean slogan Mdeconstruction) a very free variation on Bachelard)s theme, !hich has ecome an academic topos( of the reak !ith preconstructions, inherent in the construction of the scientific o Hect, !hich has een simultaneously orchestrated at the Mscientific) or Mscientistic) pole of the field of philosophy 5especially y Althusser7 and of the social sciences.:E+ Most of those la eled poststructuralists, ho!ever, shared three refusals. #irst, they shared a reHection of positive politics, most especially the 9modern: attempt to uild ne! political systems or defend political arrangements rather than only to resist po!er or e%pose inconsistencies, a uses, and aporias.E1 Second, they shared a repudiation of-or at least a disinterest in-the social, !hich often appeared as the mundanely material and !as associated !ith determinism.E3 "n a sense, oth of these refusals reflected the <ietschean heritage of poststructuralismA they reflected <iet*sche)s reHection of a !orld of ordinary values and compromises, of the masses and mere e%istence, and of a morality of good and evil as the underpinning for a politics of li eration. $hird, they reHected science, vie!ing it mainly as part of a system of repressive po!er and not as a potential source of li eration 5a concept usually a andoned !ith ideas of positive politics7.
Ale%ander, 5in de sicle Social Theory. Ale%ander is determined to sho! Bourdieu to e a deterministic Mar%ist at heart. Some of Bourdieu)s formulations do indeed resem le Althusser)s, as some resem le other versions of structuralism and then post,structuralism as he !orks through his o!n version of the 9pro lemati.ue: he and most of his philosophical generation confronted. E& $he Pcole <ormale in the rue d)>lm is the pre,eminent institution for the formation of #rench intellectuals-and over!helmingly important to its field in a !ay no single institution in the >S comes close to rivaling. <h@gne is the intensive preparatory course for those seeking to enter the *cole 5and its students are called )h@gnes7. E+ "ascalian Meditations, p. 1I. Bachelard is the source for the idea of Mepistemic reak) that Althusser used in his analysis of Mar% and !hich 6nglish language readers often cite as though it originated !ith Althusser. E1 $his is not to say that they !ere politically inactiveA #oucault, for e%ample, campaigned importantly on prisons. $he point is the reluctance to em race a positive political proHect as distinct from resistance. Perhaps e.ually indicative is #oucault)s early support for the "ranian revolution led y Ayatollah Lhomeni, !hich #oucault praised precisely its resistance to modernity. E3 "t should e granted, though, that if poststructuralism, along !ith much of the 9cultural studies: movement in 6nglish language scholarship, suffered an inattention to the social, a symmetrical lack, or even repudiation, characteri*ed much of social and political theory and sociology. $hose on the other side from poststructuralism and kindred cultural in.uiry often insisted on thin notions of culture and especially failed to pay much attention to creativity.
E(

++

Bourdieu suggested, in fact, that this !as partially a reflection of the very training of the 9core: poststructuralists as philosophy students at the Pcole <ormale, ut also their appreciation of the 9caste profits: that accrued to those !ho chose higher status disciplines 5even though oth Derrida and #oucault !ere in fact marginali*ed y academic philosophy, the former gaining influence mainly in literary studies and the latter gaining position as a historian7. 8ther situations of privilege could also support such thought, ho!ever. As Bourdieu !rote of an American center of this ostensi ly decentered thought, the >niversity of California at Santa Cru*, 9ho! could one not elieve that capitalism has dissolved in a Mflu% of signifiers detached from their signifieds), that the !orld is populated y Mcy orgs), Mcy ernetic organisms), and that !e have entered the age of the Minformatics of domination), !hen one lives in a little social and electronic paradise from !hich all trace of !ork and e%ploitation has een effaced?:E; Bourdieu had little patience for the reHection of science recently fashiona le among self,declared critical thinkers. Ce thought that the 9#rench theory: that claimed inde tedness to #oucault and Derrida had 9much to ans!er for: on oth the scientific and the political fronts and considered 9postmodernism: a 9glo al intellectual s!indle: made possi le y the uncontrolled 9international circulation of ideas: that gained prestige from their e%otic provenance even !hile this undercut !hat should have een the corrective mechanisms in different intellectual fields. Much of #rench poststructuralism and postmodernism derived, thus, from a German Le1ensphilosophie opposed to the historicist rationalism at root of the #rench social science lineage. 2hile he shared the vie! that simple empiricism !as lia le to reproduce ideologically conventional vie!s 5and !hile concepts like ha1itus also point to the limits of rationalism and the importance of a le1ens2elt perspective, if not a le1ensphilosophieA, he argued that the necessary response !as not to thro! out the a y of science !ith the ath!ater of positivism and a andon empirical research, ut to !ield continual collective vigilance over the classifications and relations through !hich scientific kno!ledge !as produced and disseminated-including y state ureaucracies !hose categories pigeon,hole human eings for their o!n purposes !hile providing social scientists !ith apparently neutral data. $he pro lematic tendencies inherent in #rench poststructuralism !ere magnified in its American appropriation. As in the importation of le1ensphilosophie into #rance, the e%port of poststructuralism to America involved oth an artificial accretion of prestige and an intellectual deconte%tuali*ation. $he American appropriation !as marked y a further reduction in attention to social relations, partly perhaps ecause it !as led y professors of literature !hose disciplinary formation encouraged focusing on the a stracted te%t, ut also ecause of a tendency to underappreciate 5/ameson not!ithstanding7 the mar%ist theory in the ackground and underpinnings of many poststructuralist theorists. Poststructuralist theories !ere conHoined !ith politics, ut seldom !ith positive rather than negative political proHects 5and too often !ith the illusion of politics that intra,academic insurgency offers7. "f #rench poststructuralism !as orn of the &'@(s, it is not unfair to suggest that American poststructuralism flourished
E;

"ascalian Meditations( p. 3&.

+1

most in the !ake of the &'@(s, amid considera le disillusionment and cynicism. And American poststructuralism eagerly em raced the criti.ue of science. All these are crucial reasons !hy !hat has come most visi ly after poststructuralism-in oth #rance and the >S,,is on the one hand a resurgent right !ing populism and on the other variants of li eralism-!hether neoLantian or Cayekian. $he Beft has een oth !eak and theoretically impoverished. E@ Certainly, the ne! right !ing politics has attracted fe! poststructuralists, and indeed fe! theorists. "t is rooted more in populist ressentiment than in intellectual innovation. But it also uilds on some openings poststructuralism helped to create, including especially the denigration of the social. "f fe! poststructuralists like Margaret $hatcher, many have nonetheless seemed sympathetic to her suggestion that 9there is no such thing as society:. Poststructuralism, as conventionally understood, offers scant tools to contest the neoli eralism of glo al capitalist interests.EE Bike!ise, !hile many poststructuralists have emphasi*ed the deconstruction rather than affirmation of identity in identity politics, nonetheless the movement has offered minimal ases for contesting the resurgence of a racism transformed into a kind of ethnic claim-putatively not against others ut only in favor of Mus). $he popular poststructuralism that egan to flourish after &'@I, and as 9#rench theory: spread to America !as, Bourdieu feared, specifically disempo!ering to the struggles against neoli eralism. /ust as &'@(s,era attacks on the university made it harder to defend the academy from ne! right,!ing assaults, the poststructuralism 5and 9postmodernism:7 that follo!ed encouraged denigrations of science, government action, and social order. "dentity politics !as often su stituted for more material struggles. Both trends !eakened those !ho might resist neoli eralism, and fight to protect some of the gains made in previous struggles 5and often institutionali*ed in states7. Much academic poststructuralism and postmodernism produced illusions of radicalism !ithout fact contesting either po!er structures or the production of suffering. EI "t involved, in Bourdieu)s terms, 9transgression !ithout risk:. As Bourdieu !rote of
A variety of li eralisms are involved, including oth more 9left: and more 9conservative: neoLantian positions in #rance,,and there especially the variety of academic positions trading on reHections of the thought of M@I 5cf. Buc #erry and Alain ?enaud, 5rench "hilosophy of the Si7ties. AmherstD >niversity of Massachusetts Press, &''(A consider also Byotard7. "n America, some!hat similarly, feminists !ho had argued largely from poststructuralist positions !ere often thro!n ack on li eralism in their efforts to defend gains against resurgent right !ing challengers. $his fit !ith feminism)s close association !ith defense of multicultural freedoms, ut it often sacrificed the kind of more general and positive social and political theory earlier linked to socialist,feminism 5though see efforts to reclaim the latter proHect, e.g., y <ancy #raser, in Bustice Interreuptus. <e! =orkD ?outledge, &''@7. EE 9Ba <ouvelle vulgate plan0taire,: Le Monde %iplomatique, March +(((D @,EA pp. 331,;& in Bourdieu, Interventions( CD/C-200C( Paris, Agone, +((+. EI $his is the grain of truth in the other!ise ludicrous assaults of right!ing critics of 9tenured radicals:. $he attacks are most painful precisely ecause they force ostensi le radicals to reali*e that they are not so radical-and certainly not the Mar%ists many critics claim-as !ell as that they lack the po!er ascri ed to them.
E@

+3

Philippe Sollers, the famous founder of Tel Euel and ostensi le cultural radical, 9$he man !ho presents and sees himself as an incarnation of freedom has al!ays floated at the !him of the forces of the field.:E' $he phrase could descri e not only the particular individual, ut the paradigmatic individual of individualism, una le to recogni*e the social conditions of actual freedom, confusing ephemeral novelties !ith changes in the underlying field of po!er. And !hat Bourdieu suggests is that for all the !ill to radicalism in fashiona le poststructuralist thought, it more commonly achieves cynicism and a kind of cultural play that fails to engage deeper social issues. "f this is !illfully self, serving in Sollers) case and a genuine intellectual misrecognition in others), so much more reason to seek out a theoretical asis for a more critical intellectual position. Poststructuralists !ere the most important enemies of the universalist criti.ue of hierarchy-sometimes to e sure still resisting hierarchy itself, ut a andoning this foundational position for the resistance. Bourdieu also surrendered foundationalism, ut insisted on aspirations to the universal even if his theory held that these !ould inevita ly fail to reach perfection. "nstead of accepting the 9illusion of foundation,: he argued that !e should recall oth the ar itrariness of eginnings and the constructive !ork of history. Critical analysis, thus, revealed that 9in the eginning, there is only custom, the historical ar itrariness of the historical institution !hich ecomes forgotten as such y trying to ground itself in mythic reason.:I( But historical and sociological research provided tools not merely for announcing this, ut for distinguishing the !ays in !hich different fields !ork, the defenses they create against direct e%ercise of force, and their capacity to support an investment in 9constitutive norms: that em ody the aspiration to universality. Art, literature, and science are thus not realms of pure disinterest, ut are still realms in !hich agents have 9a particular interest in the universal:.I& Moreover, the very e%istence of differentiated fields is a ul!ark against the e%ercise of tyrannical force. 96very advance in the differentiation of po!ers is a further protection against the imposition of a single, unilinear hierarchy ased on a concentration of all po!ers in the hands of one person N or one group.:I+ Many other poststructuralists !ere strong cele rants of 9difference:. Bourdieu !as skeptical. Ce emphasi*ed instead 9distinction: and differentiation of fields. "n his vie!, 9difference: typically suggested essential, internal characteristics of identities, as though persons, groups, or social positions simply e%isted unto themselves. Distinction, y contrast, emphasi*ed the !ays in !hich each e%isted only in its Hu%tapositions to the others, in a field of relationships, and in a temporal process in !hich positions !ere
Sollers, Bourdieu said, made 9cynicism one of the #ine Arts:A Acts of $esistance. <e! =orkD <e! Press, &''I, p. &+. I( "ascalian Meditations( p. '3. Bourdieu)s position, em racing Pascal and a tradition of #rench 9historical rationalism: should evoke in 6nglish,language readers some echoes of Cume, rethought as less conservative and less anti,rationalist. [ propos of the opposition of e%istentialism to structuralism, it is !orth recalling that Pascal is often seen as anticipating Lierkegaard and some other e%istentialists, not least in his emphasis on the non,rational sources of the first principles of kno!ledge, and on the parado%ical, contradictory aspects of human e%istence. I& "ascalian Meditations( p. &+1. I+ "ascalian Meditations( p. &(1.
E'

+;

al!ays in a dialectical relationship to position,takings. I1 ?ather than emphasi*ing attri utes of individuals, Bourdieu sho!ed them to e em edded in traHectories and struggles, improvising ne! responses on the asis of generative capacities learned in their previous social engagements. $his is !hy the dispositions of individuals or groups can lead in opposite directions depending on specific confrontations !ith circumstances. But, the logic of distinction al!ays involves hierarchies. Bourdieu thought the cele rants of difference often naKve, imagining that they could !ill into eing an egalitarian order !ithout addressing institutional underpinnings in a serious !ay. "n fact, the differentiation of social fields produces hierarchies even as it defends against the dominance of a single hierarchy. $o have science, thus, entails recogni*ing differences in scientific achievement and Hudging the validity of truth claims. $hat legitimate scientific authority is likely to e co,mingled !ith illegitimate impositions of po!er ased on other criteria is true and deserves criti.ue. But that science is hierarchically organi*ed rather than purely egalitarian is hardly a reason to reHect it or consider it no different from the market or politics. 8n the contrary, maintaining science-among other fields-reduces the scope for direct e%ercise of political and economic po!er. "n the hands of many in the 6uropean ne! right 5and some homologues in America and else!here7 a non,hierarchical construction of essentialist difference has served as the asis for oth cele rations of self,identity and politics of e%clusion. Co!ever repugnant right,!ing nationalism and ethnic politics may e to poststructuralist advocates of identity politics, those advocating more relativist, less sociological and historical positions, and those failing to analy*e fields and hierarchical relations have !eak capacity for critical analysis. "t is accordingly not surprising that this ne! 9differentialist racism: 5in $aguieff)s phrase7, has produced confusion in the anti,racist camp, ecause it has reduced the purchase of traditional anti,racist arguments !hile introducing a ne! racism that can appropriate the terms of the poststructuralist discourse of difference and resistance to universalism.I3 $here is clearly an irony in seeing cele ration of difference turn into a racist reaction to it. 6.ually ironically, and even more centrally perhaps, the poststructuralist politics of resistance has turned into an outright li eralism for some, and undercut resistance to dominant li eralism for others. $his is ironic, ecause most versions of li eralism depend, for e%ample, on presumptions of individual su Hects strikingly at odds !ith poststructuralism)s deconstructions and analyses of the production of su Hects y disciplinary po!er. Similarly, poststructuralists often affirmed a polymorphous creativity at odds !ith the role of neoli eralism in support of the disciplining la or for glo al consumption. $here is perhaps a closer and less ironic link et!een the cele ration of consumer culture y many postmodernists 5in !ays not really inherently poststructuralist7 and the neoli eral argument that consumer choices are a good measure of freedom. "n any case, many !hose primarily political instincts !ere simply to resist authority have
9/ust as physical space N is defined y the reciprocal e%ternality of positions, N the social space is defined y the mutual e%clusion, or distinction( of the positions !hich constitute it, that is, as a structure of Hu%taposition of social positions,: "ascalian Meditations, p. &13. I3 Pierre,Andre $aguieff, The 5orce of "re&udice 6n $acism and its %ou1les. $rans. y MinneapolisD >niversity of Minnesota Press, +((&A orig. &''&. See also Bourdieu and 2ac.uant, 9Ba <ouvelle vulgate plan0taire.:
I1

+@

found themselves una le to resist the seductions of an ideology that sees free movement -free playS-of capital as a prime instance of resistance to authority. I; "t is no! hard to find a !ay out of oppositions et!een a racism and nationalism dressed up in ne! differentialist colors, and a neoli eralism in !hich the li erties of capital dominate over any positive conception of human freedom. 2hatever their contri utions, most versions of poststructuralism offer little help in the search for an escape from this frustrating forced choice. #or many !ho have een influenced y poststructuralism, positive political action on a large scale raises a specter of utopian aspirations and the potential conse.uences of totalitarian social engineering. Simply shoring up li eralism appears as the est choiceprotecting civil li erties, for e%ample, as a !ay of protecting differences among su Hects. $o some e%tent this reflects simply the e%tent to !hich the left !as thro!n on the defensive, hoping to preserve various freedoms during the rise of the ne! right. But there !as also an elective affinity et!een poststructuralism and the a andonment of proHects more directly engaging state po!er or seeking structural change in social relations. At the same time, many follo!ers of poststructuralism, in America at least, tended to su stitute academic politics for ties to social movements eyond the universities. #eminism, for e%ample, !as once a remarka le demonstration of ho! academic intellectual !ork and road social movement could e Hoined, ut the link !as largely severed in the era of poststructuralist predominance. $o some e%tent, this !as not the fault of poststructuralism ut of larger movement and political dynamics. $he dominant forms of poststructuralism, though, !ere particularly prone to !hat Bourdieu called the 9scholastic fallacy,: to attri uting the pro lems of theoretical understanding to people not engaged in theory as such, and thus to imagining that academic contestation over cultural issues !as the same as practical politics rather than a potentially useful complement to it. I@ Poststructuralist theory did offer useful complements-including its emphasis on difference and the pro lems !ith universalism- ut not a via le alternative. #ights et!een mar%ists and poststructuralists, moreover, tended to cro!d out other traditions of critical social analysis-including for e%ample the approaches offered in #rance y Mauss and Merleau,Ponty, oth part of a tradition Bourdieu sought to revitali*e.

8ne of the many ironies of >.S. politics in the &'I(s !as that many !ho sa! themselves as radical critics of the esta lished order identified !ith poststructuralism and !ith an academic politics in !hich more old,fashioned leftists 5including mar%ists, especially of an older generation7 !ere the !ould, e authorities to e resisted as often as e%tra,academic authorities of the right. $o speak of the social, or of asic structures of capital, !as in many circles seen as a retrograde attempt to enforce old vie!s that stood condemned as repressive and-perhaps !orse - oring. 2hat this meant !as that opportunities for a fruitful melding of mar%ist and poststructuralist insights !ere often lost, or at least deferred. "ndeed, the image of poststructuralism in the >.S. tended often to present #rench poststructuralists as more clearly opposed to mar%ism 5and structuralism7 than !as in fact the case. $he structuralism and 5often structuralist7 mar%ism incorporated into many of the classics of poststructuralism !as underestimated-making !orks like Derrida)s Specters of Mar7 5<e! =orkD ?outledge, &''37 more surprising than they should have een. I@ "ascalian Meditations, ch. + 5among many discussions7.
I;

+E

<ot all features of li eralism are pro lematic, of course, ut li eralism !ithout a strong theory of social relations and social practice is in a remarka ly !eak position to contest the 9neoli eralism: that makes the a stracted individual the ground of all analysis and the economic the primary measure of this individual)s !ell, eing. $his neoli eralism is the dominant ideology of the day. Mounting an effective challenge to it, and moving eyond the idea that it is the only availa le alternative to the ne! racism and nationalism, depends on revitali*ing the idea of the social and overcoming de ilitating oppositions et!een the social and the economic, the social and the individual, and the social and the cultural. <ot least of the importance of Bourdieu)s !ork, then, is suggesting a truly sociological !ay to incorporate the gains of poststructuralism, ut transcend its !eaknesses.IE Most versions of li eralism, y contrast, represent a continued retreat from the social. "n order to contest neoli eral orthodo%y and the parado%ical collapse of much poststructuralism into it, !e need to in.uire into the very construction of 9the social:that is, of human life understood relationally. Bourdieu)s theory is not the last !ord on this, ut it is a crucial starting point for investigating ho! the social is uilt and re uilt in everyday practice, and ho! the asic categories of kno!ledge are em edded in this. Bourdieu)s !ork at its most asic is a challenge to false oppositionsD the interested and disinterested, the individual and the collective, and the socio,cultural and the economic. 9A presupposition !hich is the asis of all the presuppositions of economics: is that 9a radical separation is made et!een the economic and the social, !hich is left to one side, a andoned to sociologists, as a kind of reHect:II $his in turn undergirds 9a political vision that leads to the esta lishment of an un reacha le frontier et!een the economic, regulated y the fluid and efficient mechanisms of the market, and the social, home to the unpredicta le ar itrariness of tradition, po!er, and passions.I' 6conomics is a le to claim a falsely asocial 5and acultural7 individual su Hect, and the social 5including culture7 is posited as the non,economic realm 5the realm at once the economically unimportant and of the pure aesthetic,,never a true commodity ut claima le only after the fact as an economic good7. 2hen the production of kno!ledge is structured y such presupposed categories, failure to take seriously the social costs of neoli eralism, the social conditions on !hich such an economy depends, and the possi ilities of developing less damaging alternatives is almost inevita le. Education, Ine ualit! and Re"roduction Bourdieu)s engagement !ith 9the social: !as not simply a theoretical position ut the product of an acute interest in social ine.uality and the !ays in !hich it is masked
8n this point, and also the relationship of oth Bourdieu and other poststructuralist arguments to critical theory, see Calhoun, 'ritical Social Theory 'ulture( 3istory( and the 'hallenge of %ifference. 8%fordD Black!ell, &'';. II Bourdieu, Acts of $esistance( p. 1&. Bourdieu)s emphasis !as especially on the separation of the economic from oth the social and the cultural, ut the opposition of the latter t!o can also e e.ually pernicious, as in specious ideas of division of la or et!een sociology and anthropology in the >S, or the construction of 9sociology of culture: !ithin American sociology-rather than, say the 9cultural sociology: of central 6urope. I' Bourdieu, 'ontre-feu7 II. ParisD ?aisons d)Agir, +((&, pp. +',1(.
IE

+I

and perpetuated. At once personal and political as !ell as scientific, this concern !as appropriately evident in his studies of intellectual production and its hidden determinations. More generally, it underpins his account of the forging, conversion and communication of 9cultural capital: and the operation of 9sym olic po!er:-a central theme of his career. Already prominent in his !ork on Algeria, this concern ecame even more prominent !hen he turned his attention to #rance, nota ly in studies of matrimonial strategies and gender relations in his native B0arn during the early &'@(s.'( "n &'@3, in colla oration !ith /ean,Claude Passeron, Bourdieu pu lished The Inheritors, the first of several ground, reaking studies of schools, cultural distinction and class division, soon follo!ed y $eproduction in !ducation( 'ulture( and Society.'& $he latter outlines a theory of pedagogical !ork as an e%emplar of 9sym olic violence:. $his concept reflects Bourdieu)s structuralistJpoststructuralist heritage, referring to the imposition of a 9cultural ar itrary: that is made to appear neutral or universal. Both ooks e%amined the !ays in !hich seemingly meritocratic educational institutions reproduced and legitimated social ine.ualities, for e%ample y transforming differences in family ackground or familiarity !ith ourgeois language into differences in performance on academic tests. ?ead in 6nglish narro!ly as te%ts in the sociology or anthropology of education, they !ere also more general challenges to the #rench state, !hich em raced education more centrally than its counterparts in the 6nglish,language countries. $he national education system stood as perhaps the supreme e%emplar of the pretended seamless unity and neutrality of the state in simultaneous roles as representative of the nation and em odiment of reason and progress. Bourdieu sho!ed not merely that it !as iased 5a fact potentially corrigi le7 ut that it !as in principle iased. $his !as read y some as a lanket condemnation, and indeed Bourdieu himself !orried later that this loose reading of his !ork encouraged teachers simply to adopt la% standards in order not to e seen 5or see themselves7 as the agents of sym olic violence. $he heavy emphasis of the early !orks on demonstrating the tendency of the educational system to reproduce its o!n internal hierarchy and the e%ternal material and sym olic hierarchies of the larger social order encouraged some readers in the distorting simplification of seeing the studies as merely arguments that 9education is a process of reproduction:. "n fact, Bourdieu did not deny the progressive possi ilities of educational eit in need of reform-and he certainly sa! science as potentially li erating. "f anything, Bourdieu)s early !ork on Algeria suggests that he started out !ith a conviction that reformed educational institutions and access could provide the dominated and marginali*ed !ith effective resources for political and economic participation 5 The Wor) of "ierre #ourdieu, ch. 37. By the mid,&'@(s, he !as ecoming increasingly du ious that educational institutions could play this role, and perhaps reacted against his o!n earlier affirmation of their potential in his disappointed criti.ue of their em eddedness in processes of reproduction.'+
Bourdieu pu lished several articles on these themes, and left a more e%tended, ook,length treatment, Le #al des c+li1ataires crise de la soci+t+ paysanne en #+arn 5ParisD Seuil, +((+7 in press at his death. '& Bourdieu and Passeron, op cit. '+ See ?o ins, The Wor) of "ierre #ourdieu, ch. 3.
'(

+'

Bourdieu)s vie!s of the educational system reflected the disappointed idealism of one !ho had invested himself deeply in it, and o!ed much of his o!n rise from provincial o scurity to Parisian prominence to success in school. As he !rote in 3omo Academicus, he !as like someone !ho elieved in a religious vocation then found the church to e corrupt. 9$he special place held in my !ork y a some!hat singular sociology of the university institution is no dou t e%plained y the peculiar force !ith !hich " felt the need to gain rational control over the disappointment felt y an Mo late) faced !ith the annihilation of the truths and values to !hich he !as destined and dedicated, rather than take refuge in feelings of self,destructive resentment.: '1 $he disappointment could not e undone, ut it could e turned to understanding and potentially, through that understanding, to positive change. Bourdieu)s disillusionment !ith the educational system !as not simply an immediate response to his e%perience at the Pcole <ormale, though that !as certainly among its roots. "n his early !ork on Algeria, in fact, Bourdieu looked to schools as potential vehicles for remedying the poor preparation of e%,peasants for the ne! commercial society and post,colonial politics. "f only they could e organi*ed to provide fair, open, and effective access to high value cultural goods, he implied in concert !ith many educational reformers, then educational institutions could e the crucial means for improving society. As Bourdieu continued to think a out Algeria, though, and even more as he egan to analy*e #rench schooling, he ecame du ious a out the potential. "ncreasingly, he sa! the issue not as the failure of schools to perform their manifest function-to use Merton)s phrase- ut rather as their success in fulfilling various latent functions. 8f the latter, maintaining and simultaneously disguising the class structure !as central. Also important, though, !as providing an institutionally specific field for educators and intellectuals themselves-together !ith field,specific capital over !hich these could struggle. $he very engagement of the educators in this field and in the pursuit of standing !ithin it made it very unlikely that they could ecome the force for change Bourdieu had previously hoped.'3
3omo Academicus( p. %%vi. #ailure to take Bourdieu)s !ork in Algeria seriously enough has impeded many sociologists) grasp of the traHectory of his vie!s on education. A prominent recent American ook on Bourdieu, thus, never connects the t!o 5David S!art*, 'ulture and "o2er the Sociology of "ierre #ourdieu. ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &''E7. $he issue is even more acute in the sketchier accounts of ?ichard /enkins 5"ierre #ourdieu, BondonD ?outledge, &''+7 and Bridget #o!ler 5"ierre #ourdieu and 'ultural Theory, BondonD Sage, &''E7. Carker points to the pro lem in 9Bourdieu-6ducation and ?eproduction,: pp. I@-&(I in ?ichard Carker, Cheleen Mahar, and Chris 2ilkes, eds.D An Introduction to the Wor) of "ierre #ourdieu 5<e! =orkD St. Martins, &''(7A ?o ins gives a fuller account in The Wor) of "ierre #ourdieu and Bane in "ierre #ourdieu A 'ritical Introduction. Part of the issue is that Bourdieu)s early !ork is not all availa le in 6nglishA part is that the !ay Bourdieu)s !ork !as received into different 6nglish, language fields at different times created structuring preconceptions a out it-not least a out the !ork on education !hich !as the first source of Bourdieu)s fame in 6nglish. Sociologists also tended to assume his !ork on Algeria !as someho! of a different, 9anthropological: genre, and of interest mainly !ith regard to 9traditional society: 5an impression perhaps encouraged y the !ay in !hich it !as represented in 6utlineA. See also discussion in Moishe Postone, 6d!ard BiPuma, and Craig Calhoun, 9"ntroduction: to Calhoun, BiPuma, and Postone, eds., #ourdieu
'1 '3

1(

6ducational institutions !ere central to Bourdieu)s concern, ut his sense of disappointment and his critical analyses oth reached !idely. All the institutions of modernity, including the capitalist market and the state itself, share in a tendency to promise far more than they deliver. $hey present themselves as !orking for the common good, ut in fact reproduce social ine.ualities. $hey present themselves as agents of freedom, ut in fact are organi*ations of po!er. $hey inspire devotion from those !ho !ant richer, freer lives, and they disappoint them !ith the limits they impose and the violence they deploy. Simply to attack modernity, ho!ever, is to engage in the 9self, destructive resentment: Bourdieu sought to avoid. ?ather, the est !ay for!ard lies through the struggle to understand, to !in deeper truths, and to remove legitimacy from the practices y !hich po!er mystifies itself. "n this !ay, one can challenge the myths and deceptions of modernity, enlightenment, and civili*ation !ithout ecoming the enemy of the hopes they offer. Central to this is rene!ed appreciation of oth the autonomy and distinctive character of the scientific field and of the contri utions it can make to pu lic discourseD "t is necessary today to reconnect !ith the &' th century tradition of a scientific field that, refusing to leave the !orld to the lind forces of the economy, !ished to e%tend to the !hole social !orld the values of the 5undou tedly ideali*ed7 scientific !orld 5Bourdieu +((&D I7. "n educational institutions, particular systems of categories, contents, and outcomes are presented as necessary and neutral 5and one senses Bourdieu)s outrage at professors !ho can)t see the system refle%ively and critically even !hile he e%plains their complacency and incapacity7. #orming the ta%onomic order of oth the !ay academics think and the !ay the system is organi*ed, these impressively protect against internal criti.ue and therefore against successful reform and improvement. $he homology et!een the structures of the educational system 5hierarchy of disciplines, of sections, etc.7 and the mental structures of the agents 5professorial ta%onomies7 is the sources of the functioning of the consecration of the social order !hich the education system performs ehind its mask of neutrality. '; "n short, the educational system is a field. "t has a su stantial autonomy, !hich it must protect, and a distinctive form of capital !hich depends on that autonomy for its efficacy. "t is internally organi*ed as a set of transposa le dispositions and practical ta%onomies that ena le participants to understand their !orld and to take effective actions, ut !hich also produce and reproduce specific ine.ualities among them and make these appear natural. $hese can e challenged-as indeed Bourdieu challenged them y analy*ing them- ut it should not e thought that they could e easily changed y a simple act of !ill. And it is e%ternally productive, providing the larger field of po!er !ith one of its most po!erful legitimations through the process of the conversion of educational capital into more directly economic, political, or other forms.

'ritical "erspectives 5ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &''17 and BoKc 2ac.uant, in Bourdieu and 2ac.uant, To2ard a $efle7ive Sociology. '; Bourdieu, 9$he Categories of Professorial /udgment,: in 6nglish edition of 3omo Academicus. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &'IIA orig. &'EI.

1&

Cere !e see again the dialectic of incorporation and o Hectification. '@ $he education system depends on the inculcation of its categories as the mental structures of agents and on the simultaneous manifestation of these as material structures of organi*ation. $his ena les the production of o Hective effects that do not cease to e o Hective and materially po!erful simply y pointing to the su Hective moments in their creation. "t is true that there is 9sym olic aggression o serva le in all e%amination situations: 5and Bourdieu goes to great lengths to document and analy*e such things as the terms teachers use in commenting on e%amination papers7 ut not that this is e%plica le simply as the psychological attitude of individual agents. ?ather, it is a disposition inculcated y agents) o!n traHectories through the educational field 5as students as !ell as teachers7 and oth reproduced and rendered apparently neutral y its match to the categories of organi*ation and value in the field as a !hole.'E More generally, the social order is effectively consecrated through the educational system ecause it is a le to appear as neutral and necessary. "n one of Bourdieu)s favorite metaphors for descri ing his o!n !ork, Mao)s notion of 9t!isting the stick in the other direction:, he turned the structuralist analysis of ta%onomies in another !ay y mo ili*ing it through an account of practice in the conte%t of fields.'I And the analysis of ho! the culturally ar itrary 5and often materially une.ual7 comes to appear as natural and fair directly informed his later criti.ue of the imposition of neoli eral economic regimes and the American model of dismantling or reducing state institutions, including those like
6utline( p. E+A Logic of "ractice( ch. 1, and esp. p. ;@. 9$he Categories of Professorial /udgment: ends !ith an illustration of the !orkings of fields that is also a comment on the aristocratic side of the fashiona le Ceideggerianism of the poststructuralist eraD $hese generic dispositions are in fact made specific y the position held y each reader in the university field. 2e see, for instance, !hat the most common reading of the classical te%ts 58 6picurean gardenS7 may o!e to the virtues of provincial gardeners, and !hat ordinary and e%traordinary interpretations of Ceidegger may o!e to that aristocratic asceticism !hich, on forest path or mountain pass, flees the fla y, vulgar cro!ds or their concrete analagon, the continually rene!ed 5 ad7 pupils !ho have to e endlessly saved from the temptations of society in order to inculcate in them the recognition of true valueA p. ++;. See also Bourdieu, The "olitical 6ntology of Martin 3eidegger( StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''&A orig. &'II !here field analysis is used to understand Ceidegger himself 5!hose traHectory from rural origins to professorial eminence is not altogether !ithout resem lance to Bourdieu)s7. "t is !orth noting that this ook originated as a lengthy article in &'E;A Bourdieu redeployed it as an intervention into a different set of intellectual de ates !hen he repu lished a slightly revised version. 'I Bourdieu complained a out the misunderstanding of those !ho sei*ed on the analytic devices he took up from one or another esta lished approach, missing the fact that he !as already e%aggerating in order to t!ist the stick in the other direction, and then la eled his approach y the strategically deployed concept-perhaps most famously the idea of Mstrategy) that he used as a !ay of inHecting dynamism into structuralist analysisA "ascalian Meditations, p. @1A see also Bourdieu, TConcluding ?emarks,T pp. +@1,E; in C. Calhoun, 6. BiPuma and M. Postone, eds.D #ourdieu 'ritical "erspectives. Cam ridgeD Polity and ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &''1.
'@ 'E

1+

education that do provide opportunities for ordinary people even !hile in their e%isting form they reproduce distinctions like that of ordinary from e%traordinary. '' /ust as Mar% argued that capitalism produced !ealth that it could not effectively distri ute to all its participants, Bourdieu argued that science and education do in fact produce and reproduce kno!ledge ut do so insepara ly from ine.ualities in capacity and opportunity to appropriate that kno!ledgeD 6conomic po!er lies not in !ealth ut in the relationship et!een !ealth and a field of economic relations, the constitution of !hich is insepara le from the development of a 1ody of speciali9ed agents, !ith specific interestsA it is in this relationship that !ealth is constituted, in the form of capital, that is, as the instrument for appropriating the institutional e.uipment and the mechanisms indispensa le to the functioning of the field, and there y also appropriating the profits from it.&(( "t !ould make no sense to start socialism-or any more egalitarian society- y !illfully a olishing all the material !ealth accumulated under capitalism and previous economic systems. But it !ould e necessary to transform the system of relations that rendered such !ealth capital. Bike!ise, kno!ledge as a kind of resource deployed y those !ith po!er in relation to specific fields-legal, medical, academic,,constitutes a specific form of capital. But kno!ledge need not e organi*ed this !ay. #ields and #orms o$ Ca"ital Bourdieu)s e%ploration of the operation of different forms of po!er lossomed into a full,fledged model of the relations et!een economic, cultural, social and sym olic capital in the deployment of strategies of class reproduction. $his perhaps reached its fullest development in his study of the grands +coles and the political and economic po!er structure of the elite professions.C0C $he studies of education !ere part of a roader approach to culture and po!er that dre! also on a series of empirical studies of art and artistic institutions starting in the &'@(s.&(+ "n addition to the ook,length !orks on education and art, Bourdieu pu lished e%tensive shorter studies of the religious, scientific, philosophical, and Huridical fields. "n these and other investigations, he laid the asis for a general theory of 9fields: as differentiated social microcosms operating as spaces of o Hectives forces and arenas of struggle over value !hich refract and transmute e%ternal determinations and interests. Cis deepest and most sustained !ork on fields, as !ell as his most historical research, focused on literature and !as capped y The $ules of
See Bourdieu, 9$he essence of neoli eralism,: Le Monde diplomatique F!nglish editionA, Decem er, &''ID &,E. &(( Bourdieu, 6utline of a Theory of "ractice. $rans. ?. <ice. Cam ridgeD Cam ridge >niversity Press, &'EE, pp. &I3,;A see also Bourdieu, Les structures sociales de l.+conomie. ParisD Seuil, +(((. &(& Bourdieu, The State 4o1ility !lite Schools in the 5ield of "o2er( StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''@A orig. &'I'. &(+ Bourdieu, Alain Dar el and Domini.ue Schnapper, The Love of Art. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''(A orig. &'@@A Bourdieu, Buc Boltanski, ?o ert Castel, /ean,Claude Cham oredon and Domini.ue Schnapper, "hotography A Middle-#ro2 Art. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''(A orig. &'@;.
''

11

Art, an investigation of the sym olic revolution !rought in literature y #lau ert, Baudelaire and others.&(1 Bourdieu)s greatest unfinished !ork is pro a ly its companion study, a sociogenetic dissection of Manet and the transformation of the field of painting in !hich he played a pivotal role. $his line of !ork is most !idely kno!n, ho!ever, through %istinction, almost certainly Bourdieu)s most prominent ook in 6nglish. &(3 %istinction is an analysis of ho! culture figures in social ine.uality and ho! the pursuit of distinction or differential recognition shapes all realms of social practice. "t is also an effort to 9move eyond the opposition et!een o Hectivist theories !hich identify the social classes 5 ut also the age or se% classes7 !ith discrete groups, simple counta le populations separated y oundaries o Hectively dra!n in reality, and su Hectivist 5or marginalist7 theories !hich reduce the Msocial order) to a sort of collective classification o tained y aggregating the individual classifications or, more precisely, the individual strategies, classified and classifying, through !hich agents class themselves and others:. &(; Bourdieu develops, thus, an argument that struggles over classification itself are an important and largely ignored aspect of class struggle 5suggesting in the process that class struggle has hardly ecome o solete7. $hat classification is materially efficacious may e a familiar idea from the structuralist heritageA that it is an e%ercise of political po!er and potentially challengea le y a political-and also cultural-struggle is more in keeping !ith 9poststructuralist: arguments 5though Bourdieu)s notion of po!er al!ays had more to do !ith agents !ielding and enefiting from it than, say, #oucault)s7. %istinction, ho!ever, is also crucially a response to Lant)s $hird Criti.ue 5and to su se.uent philosophical dis.uisitions on Hudgment7. &(@ Much as Durkheim had sought to challenge individualistic e%planation of social facts,&(E so Bourdieu sought to uncover the social roots and organi*ation of all forms of Hudgment. Lant)s argument had sought an appro%imation in practical reason to the universality availa le more readily to pure reason. Ce had seen this as crucial e.ually to artistic taste and political opinion. But he had imagined a standpoint of disinterested Hudgment from !hich practical reason 5and criti.ue7 might proceed. Bourdieu clearly accepted the analogy et!een art and politics, ut not this idea of disinterest or of a place outside social struggles from !hich neutral kno!ledge might issue. "f he shared this criti.ue of ostensi le neutrality !ith #oucault and other more conventional poststructuralists, he differed importantly in arguing that kno!ledge not only uttresses the hierarchies of the social !orld ut also can e an effective part of the struggle to change that !orld, even if it is never produced from a standpoint outside it. $he !orld,as,it,is,perceived issues out of and olsters the !orld,as, it,is, a struggle over classification may actually change the !orld, and-this !as crucial
Bourdieu, The $ules of Art. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''@A orig. &''+. "t !as named one of the ten most influential sociology ooks of the +( th century y the "nternational Sociological Association, on the asis of an impressively unscientific survey. %istinction ranked @th !ith 31 votesA Bourdieu)s ne%t entry on the list !as Logic of "ractice !ith E. 2e er)s !conomy and Society topped the list !ith '; votes 5httpDJJ!!!.ucm.esJinfoJisaJ ooksJ7. &(; %istinction( p. 3I'. &(@ "mmanuel Lant, 'ritique of Budgment. "ndianapolis, "nd.D Cackett, &'IEA orig. &E'(. &(E <ota ly in Suicide( <e! =orkD #ree Press, &'E@A orig. &I';.
&(1 &(3

13

for Bourdieu-that struggle need not e simply a matter of po!er ut can e through science a matter of kno!ledge !hich transcends mere po!er even if it does not escape struggles over po!er and recognition altogether. "n short, !e needn)t go do!n the ostensi ly <iet*schean path to!ards a choice et!een simple em race of the !ill to po!er or a futile resistance to it. 8n the contrary, 9there is, as <iet*sche pointed out, no immaculate conceptionA ut nor is there any original sin Q and the discovery that someone !ho discovered the truth had an interest in doing so in no !ay diminishes his discovery.:&(I 2e can refuse relativism even though !e cannot escape social relations. And if many of the poststructuralists failed to avoid relativism, they also failed to recogni*e the system of social relations in !hich they remained em edded, including the .uasi, aristocratic system of the university 5and especially in the #rench case, the philosophy, centered production of this aristocratic system7.&(' #ailing to e, at the same time, social reaks !hich truly renounce the gratifications associated !ith mem ership, the most audacious intellectual reaks of pure reading still help to preserve the stock of consecrated te%ts from ecoming dead letters, mere archive material, fit at est for the history of ideas or the sociology of kno!ledge, and to perpetuate its e%istence and its specifically philosophical po!ers y using it as an em lem or a matri% for discourses !hich, !hatever their stated intention, are al!ays, also, sym olic strategies deriving their po!er essentially from the consecrated te%ts. Bike the religious nihilism of some mystic heresies, philosophical nihilism too can find an ultimate path of salvation in the rituals of li eratory transgression. /ust as, y a miraculous dialectical rene!al, the countless acts of derision and desacrali*ation !hich modern art has perpetrated against art have al!ays turned, insofar as these are still artistic acts, to the glory of art and the artist, so the philosophical Mdeconstruction) of philosophy is indeed, !hen the very hope of radical reconstruction has evaporated, the only philosophical ans!er to the deconstruction of philosophy.&&( Philosophy is like art in claiming a certain disinterested distance from the economy ut in fact contri uting to the reproduction of the social order. Both also specifically deny the centrality of the social, not only in terms of the institutions in !hich they flourish ut e.ually in the necessary distinction et!een merely intellectual and truly social reaks !ith the esta lished order. "f philosophy and art-and at least to some e%tent science &&&,,operate !ith a denial of interest, economics and less academic discourses a out economic matters clearly em race interest. But they operate !ith a presumption of neutrality and o Hectivity that renders them vulnera le to a closely related criti.ue. #or if the cultural
"ascalian Meditations, p. 1. Bourdieu, 9Becture on the Becture,: in In 6ther Words. StanfordD Stanford >niversity Press, &''(A orig. &'I+. &&( Bourdieu, %istinction( p. 3'@. &&& Bourdieu, 9$he Specificity of the Scientific #ield and the Social Conditions of the Progress of ?eason,: Social Science Information( &3 5&'E;7, R@D &',3E and Les usages sociau7 de la science. ParisD "<?A 6ditions, &''E.
&(I &('

1;

!orld is the economic !orld reversed, as Bourdieu famously put it &&+, it is also true that li eral economics turns precisely on the denial of cultural significance, the positing of 9interests: as o Hective, and the perception of economic systems as matters of necessity rather than products of choice and po!er 5and therefore potentially to e improved y struggle7. $here is no disinterested account of interests, no neutral and o Hective standpoint from !hich to evaluate policy, not even academic economics.&&1 But this doesn)t remove economic matters from science, it simply e%tends the demand for a truly refle%ive social science, and for an overcoming of the oppositions et!een structure and action, o Hective and su Hective to economics and economic analysis. $he economy has no more e%istence separate from or prior to the rest of society than do art or philosophy. "t is not merely Mnecessity), to !hich !e may only adapt, any more than artistic creativity is simply Mfreedom) !ith no social ase. Bourdieu did not develop any detailed account of 9the economy: as such, partly ecause his concerns lay else!here and partly ecause he .uestioned !hether any such o Hect e%isted !ith the degree of autonomy from the rest of social life that conventional economics implied.&&3 Cis account of the different forms of capital, thus, involved no account of capitalism as a distinctive, historically specific system of production and distri ution. $his !as perhaps implied y his treatment of the corrosive force of markets in Algeria and y his criti.ue of neoli eral economic policies. "n each case the more inclusive, larger,scale organi*ation of economic life also entailed a greater reduction of other values to economic ones 5and a specification of economic values as those of private property7. 96conomism is a form of ethnocentrism,: Bourdieu !rote. "t removes the elements of time and uncertainty from sym olically organi*ed e%changeA it desociali*es transactions leaving, as Bourdieu follo!s Mar% 5and Carlyle7 in saying, no other ne%us et!een man and man than 9callous cash payment:. "t treats pre,capitalist economies through the categories and concepts proper to capitalism.&&; Among other things, this means introducing !hat Bourdieu calls 9monothetic: reason, in !hich analysts imagine that Msocial) can only mean or actors only intend one thing at a time. Precapitalist thought in general, and much ordinary thought even in capitalist societies is, Bourdieu suggests, polythetic, constantly deploying multiple meanings of the same o Hect. 9Practice has a logic !hich is not that of the logician.:&&@ "t puts sym ols and kno!ledge together 9practically,: that is, in a philosophically unrigorous ut convenient !ay for practical use. Bourdieu devoted a good deal of effort to challenging such economism. But he did this not to suggest an alternative vie! of human nature in !hich competition did not matter so much as an alternative vie! of the social !orld in !hich other kinds of 9goods:
Bourdieu, 9$he #ield of Cultural Production, orD $he 6conomic 2orld ?eversed,: pp. +',E1 in The 5ield of 'ultural "roduction. <e! =orkD Colum ia >niversity Press, &''1A orig. &'I1. &&1 See Andre! Sayer, 9Bourdieu, Smith and disinterested Hudgment,: Sociological $evie2 3E 5&'''7 R1D 3(1,1&. &&3 See Bourdieu Les structures sociales de l.+conomie( !hich takes up ut moves !ell eyond arguments a out Mem eddedness) follo!ing Polanyi. &&; Logic of "ractice, pp. &&+,1. &&@ Logic, p. I@. Compare Pascal)s most famous line, 9$he heart has its reasons, of !hich reason is ignorant.:
&&+

1@

and relationships !ere the o Hects of investment and accumulation. $his led him into the influential idea of different partially converti le forms of capitalD nota ly cultural, social, and sym olic. $he social !orld can e conceived as a multi,dimensional space that can e constructed empirically y discovering the main factors of differentiation !hich account for the differences o served in a given social universe, or, in other !ords, y discovering the po!ers or forms of capital !hich are or can ecome efficient, like aces in a game of cards, in this particular universe, that is, in the struggle 5or competition7 for the appropriation of scarce goods of !hich this universe is the site. "t follo!s that the structure of this space is given y the distri ution of the various forms of capital, that is, y the distri ution of the properties !hich are active !ithin the universe under study,,those properties capa le of conferring strength, po!er and conse.uently profit on their holder. ... these fundamental social po!ers are, according to my empirical investigations, firstly economic capital, in its various kindsA secondly cultural capital or etter, informational capital, again in its different kindsA and thirdly t!o forms of capital that are very strongly correlated, social capital, !hich consists of resources ased on connections and group mem ership, and sym1olic capital, !hich is the form the different types of capital take once they are perceived and recogni*ed as legitimate.&&E 6conomic capital is that !hich is Timmediately and directly converti le into money.T &&I 6ducational credentials 5cultural capital7 or social connections 5social capital7 can only e converted indirectly, through engagement in activities that involve longer,term relationshipsD employment, family and marriage, etc. Different social fields create and value specific kinds of capital, and if economic capital has a certain primacy for Bourdieu, it is not dominant in all fields and its role may in varying degree e denied or misrecogni*ed. Bourdieu)s !ork on Algeria stresses the tension et!een the relatively undifferentiated traditional order and development conceived as transition to a society in !hich the economic field had a kind of differentiated autonomy. Cis later arguments against neoli eral glo ali*ation, y contrast, focus on the threats posed y dedifferentiation, a loss of autonomy y fields other than the economy. $here are common threadsD crucially, the lack of preparation of large segments of the population for the ne! conditions and the introduction of ne! ine.ualities !ithout systems of social reciprocity to mitigate their effects. But Bourdieu does not offer a strong account of ho! and !hy economic capital should have its distinctive po!ers, and to !hat e%tent these are specific to or take a distinctive form in societies that can e called 9capitalist:. &&' Perhaps it is simply the one,sided focus on certain sorts of social practices and values-those designated properly economic in capitalism-that oth constitutes capitalism and makes it po!erful 5as !ell as dangerous7.
T2hat Makes a Social Class? 8n the $heoretical and Practical 6%istence of Groups,T #er)eley Bournal of Sociology, 1+ 5&'IE7D &,&I, .uotation from pp. 1,3. &&I Bourdieu, T$he #orms of Capital,T in /ohn G. ?ichardson, ed., 3and1oo) of Theory and $esearch for the Sociology of !ducation. <e! =orkD Green!ood, &'I@, pp. +3&,;I.p. +31. &&' See Calhoun, 9Ca itus, #ield, and Capital.:
&&E

1E

Bourdieu)s analytic focus is more on sho!ing that !hat economism takes as the universal characteristic of human nature-material, individual self,interest-is in fact historically ar itrary, a particular historical construction. 9A general science of the economy of practices,: thus, !ould 9not artificially limit itself to those practices that are socially recogni*ed as economic.: "t !ould 9endeavor to grasp capital, that Menergy of social physics) in all of its different forms, and to uncover the la!s that regulate their conversion from one into another.:&+( Capital is analogous to energy, thus, and oth to po!er. But, 9the e%istence of sym olic capital, that is, of Mmaterial) capital misrecogni*ed and thus recogni*ed, though it does not invalidate the analogy et!een capital and energy, does remind us that social science is not a social physicsA that the acts of cognition that are implied in misrecognition and recognition are part of social reality and that the socially constituted su Hectivity that produces them elongs to o Hective reality.:&+& Sociolog! in Action Bourdieu)s approach !as to rethink maHor philosophical themes and issues y means of empirical o servation and analyses rooted in 9a practical sense of theoretical things: rather than through purely theoretical dis.uisition. &++ 8nly relatively late, in "ascalian Meditations( did Bourdieu offer a systematic e%plication of his conception of social kno!ledge, eing, and truth. "n this ook, he started once again !ith the premise that the kno!ledge produced y social analysts must e related to the conditions of intellectual !ork and to the peculiar dispositions fostered y the scholastic universe. Ce laid out his philosophical anthropology, in !hich human action is guided not y 9interests: ut y the struggle for practical efficacy and pursuit of recognition, !hose form !ill e determined y particular locations in collective and individual histories. Ce clarified his agonistic vie! of the social !orld, anchored not y the notion of 9reproduction: ut y that of struggle 5itself internally linked to recognition7. And he sho!ed !hy epistemic,,as distinguished from narcissistic-refle%ivity mandates a commitment to 9historical rationalism,: and not relativism. Science-including sociology and anthropology-!as for him a practical enterprise, an active, ongoing practice of research and analysis 5modus operandi7, not simply a ody of scholastic principles 5 opus operatum7. "t !as no accident that he titled his ook of epistemological and methodological preliminaries The 'raft of Sociology .&+1
Bourdieu and 2ac.uant, Invitation to $efle7ive Sociology, p. &&I. $he reference in .uotes is to Logic, p. &++, 9the capital accumulated y groups, !hich can e regarded as the energy of social physics, can e%ist in different kinds.: &+& Logic( p. &++. &++ Bru aker, 9Social $heory as Ca itus,: Pp. +&+,+13 in C. Calhoun, 6. BiPuma, and M. Postone, eds.D #ourdieu 'ritical "erspectives. ChicagoD >niversity of Chicago Press, &''1. &+1 Pierre Bourdieu, /ean,Claude Cham oredon and /ean,Claude Passeron, The 'raft of Sociology. BerlinD de Gruyter, &''& A orig. &'@I. "f it !as an accident that this !as Bourdieu)s ook of &'@I, it !as nonetheless meaningful, for his response to the crisis of the university !as in part to institute a etter, more democratic ut also professional pursuit of sociological kno!ledge. See ?o ins, The Wor) of "ierre #ourdieu( ch. ;.
&+(

1I

$he craft !orker is al!ays a lover of kno!ledgeA the craft itself is precisely a store of kno!ledge, yet it is never fully discursive and availa le for e%plicit transmission as such. Masters teach their skills y e%ample and coaching, kno!ing that kno!,ho! cannot e reduced to instructions, and never escapes its situated and em odied character. Bike ha1itus, 9the rules of art: is a phrase that signifies practical kno!ledge, learning, y, doing, tacit understanding, like the kno!ledge of cooking em odied in a grandmother)s demonstrations and guidance rather than a cook ook. Art can never e reduced to follo!ing set rules and yet to say it is !ithout coherence, strategy or intention or not ased on social organi*ed and shared kno!ledge !ould e to misunderstand it utterly. <either is science simply the value,free e%pression of 9truth.: "t is a proHect, ut one organi*ed, ideally, in a social field that re!ards the production of verifia le and forever revisa le truths-including ne! truths and ne! approaches to understanding,,and not merely performance according to e%plicit rules and standards.&+3 "t is a proHect that depends crucially on reason as an institutionally em edded and historically achieved capacity, and therefore refuses e.ually the rationalistic reduction of reason to rules, simple determinism)s unreasoned acceptance of the status .uo, and the e%pressive appeal to insight supposedly transcending history and not corrigi le y reason. "ndeed, it !as as a social scientist that Bourdieu in the last years of his life turned to analy*e the impacts of neoli eral glo ali*ation on culture, politics, and society. 9$he social sciences, !hich alone can unmask and counter the completely ne! strategies of domination !hich they sometimes help to inspire and to arm, !ill more than ever have to choose !hich side they are onD either they place their rational instruments of kno!ledge at the service of ever more rationali*ed domination, or they rationally analyse domination and more especially the contri ution !hich rational kno!ledge can make to de facto monopoli*ation of the profits of universal reason.:&+; $hough he !as accused of simply adopting the mediatic throne Sartre and #oucault had occupied efore-and certainly he never fully escaped from that mediatic version of politics,,he offered a different definition of !hat a 9pu lic intellectual: might e. Citing the American term, he !rote of 9one !ho relies in political struggle on his competence and specific authority, and the values associated !ith the e%ercise of his profession, like the values of truth or disinterest, or, in other terms, someone !ho goes onto the terrain of politics !ithout a andoning the re.uirements and competences of the researcher:. &+@ Ce contrasts such a 9specific intellectual: to the 9general intellectual: 5Sartre !as the o vious model7 !ho spoke on all matters claiming a right conferred more y personal eminence or authenticity than y professional e%pertise or perspective. "f the tradition of \ola legitimates intellectual as political forces in #rance, it !as nonetheless important to recogni*e the difference et!een simply claiming a ne! sort of aristocratic,clerical right to speak in pu lic, and ringing analyses !ith specific scholarly ases into pu lic de ate. Bourdieu !as famous long efore the struggle against neli eral glo ali*ation of the &''(s. "n /une &'@I, some students had actually carried copies of his ook, The
Suggested in 9$he Specificity of the Scientific #ield,: and discussed at more length in "ascalian Meditations. &+; "ascalian Meditations( p. I1,3. &+@ Bourdieu, 'ontre-feu7 II, p. 11.
&+3

1'

Inheritors, onto the arricades. But Bourdieu had stayed more or less apart from that struggle, turning his attention to scientific-al eit critical,,research. Some of this research produced 3omo Academicus, a ook partly a out the relationship et!een the university microcosm and the larger field of po!er in &'@I, ut the ook appeared over fifteen years later.&+E 8ne reason Bourdieu !as not a vocal pu lic activist in &'@I !as that he did not think the crucial issues of po!er and ine.uality !ere !ell,Hoined in the struggles of that year. <either their romanticism nor the predominant versions of Mar%ism appealed to him, and he resisted especially leftist tendencies to collapse the scientific and political fields. Moreover, he !orried that naKve overoptimism encouraged actions that !ould set ack rather than advance the causes of li eration and kno!ledge. <ot least of all, there !as a supera undance of sym olically prominent intellectuals in &'@I. By the early &''(s this !as no longer so. Sartre and #oucault !ere oth dead, and a num er of others had a andoned the pu lic forum or simply appeared small !ithin it. $he death of #oucault may have een especially important. 2hile #oucault lived, Bourdieu !as in a sense protected from the most intense demands of media and popular activists for a dominant pu lic intellectual of the left. After #oucault !as gone, there !as a sort of vacuum in #rench pu lic life !hich Bourdieu !as increasingly dra!n to fill. Bourdieu sei*ed the occasion to fight for undocumented and unemployed !orkers, against the tyranny of neoli eral ideology, and to create a ne! 9"nternational: of pu lic, spirited intellectuals. Ce defended the homeless and anti,racist activists. $here !as nonetheless an irony, given the e%tent to !hich Bourdieu had earlier railed against #rench model of the 9total intellectual: !ith its presumption of omnicompetence and its displacement of more speciali*ed scientific kno!ledge.&+I Cis distinction of specific from general intellectuals clarified his self,understanding ut inevita ly he traded not only on demonstrated competence ut fame and position. $he sociologist !ho had critici*ed Sartre seemed to e taking on a Sartrean mantle. As Bourdieu)s theory suggested, ho!ever, pu lic fame is a product of the field not Hust the individual, it is not surprising that he could not escape it or that he sought to use it like any other resource or field,specific capital. "n this case, of course, academic prominence transcended the intellectual field to ecome political fame partly ecause of the very !eakness of the oundaries et!een political and intellectual life and the mediation of Hournalists that he else!here critici*ed. &+' $hough he increased his pu lic interventions during the &'I(s and early &''(s, a !ave of strikes in &''; !as pivotal. $his not only pitted the government and capitalists against !orkers ut split the Beft over !hether reformist accommodation to glo ali*ation !as the est strategy or resistance made sense. Bourdieu had previously !ritten important reports on education for the socialist government and participated .uietly in the politics at or eyond the left !ing of the socialist party. Ce gre! increasingly disillusioned and frustrated, though, after Mitterand forced out Michel ?ocard 5!hom Bourdieu e%plicitly praised7, and carried the
Bourdieu, 3omo Academicus( op. cit. Bourdieu and Passeron, TSociology and Philosophy in #rance since &'3;D Death and ?esurrection of a Philosophy 2ithout Su Hect,T Social $esearch 13, no. & 5Spring &'@E7, pp. &@+, +&+. &+' See, e.g., 9$he Cit Parade of #rench "ntellectuals, or 2ho is to /udge the Begitimacy of the /udges?: pp. +;@,+E( in Pierre Bourdieu, 3omo Academicus, and 6n Television.
&+E &+I

3(

party in an opportunistically centrist direction. After making !hat !as then a rare appearance at a demonstration at the G]re de Byon in &'';, Bourdieu took on an increasingly pu lic role and ecame a critic of the socialist party from its left. "t !as in many !ays a transformation of the intellectual and political fields that rought a out the transformation in at least an aspect of Bourdieu)s ha itus. Basic to Bourdieu)s interventions as a pu lic intellectual, in this sense, !as the importance of creating the possi ility of collective choice !here the dominant discourse descri ed only the impositions of necessity. "n the conte%t of the =ugoslav !ars of the &''(s, for e%ample, Bourdieu challenged the idea that the choices of 6uropean citi*ens !ere limited to passivity efore the horrors of ethnic cleansing or support for the American,led <A$8 policy of high,altitude om ing. &1( More prominently, especially from the early &''(s, Bourdieu !orked to protect the achievements of the social struggles of the t!entieth century ,, pensions, Ho security, open access to higher education and other provisions of the social state ,, against udget cuts and other attacks in the name of free markets and international competition. "n the process, he ecame one of the !orld)s most famous critics of neoli eral glo ali*ation. &1& Ce challenged the neoli eral idea that a specific model of reduction in state action, enhancement of private property, and freedom for capital !as a necessary response to glo ali*ation 5itself conceived as a .uasi,natural force7. Calling this the 9American model: annoyed Americans !ho !ished to distance themselves from government and corporate policies. $he la el nonetheless captured a !orld!ide trend to!ard commodification, state deregulation, and competitive individualism e%emplified and aggressively promoted y the dominant class of the >nited States at the end of the +(th century. Bourdieu identified this American model !ith five features of American culture and society !hich !ere !idely proposed as necessary to successful glo ali*ation in other conte%tsD 5&7 a !eak state, 5+7 an e%treme development of the spirit of capitalism, and 517 the cult of individualism, 537 e%altation of dynamism for its o!n sake, and 5;7 neo,Dar!inism !ith its notion of self,help.&1+ 2hatever the la el, Bourdieu meant the vie! that institutions developed out of a long century of social struggles should e scrapped if they could not meet the test of market via ility. Many of these, including schools and universities, are state institutions. As he demonstrated in much of his !ork, they are far from perfect. <onetheless, collective struggles have grudgingly and gradually opened them to a degree to the dominated, !orkers, !omen, ethnic minorities, and others. $hese institutions and this openness are fragile social achievements that open up the possi ility of more e.uality and Hustice, and to sacrifice them is to step ack!ards, !hether this step is masked y a deterministic analysis of the 9market: or a naked assertion of self,interest y the !ealthy
See, e.g., Interventions( pp. +E',I(. Bourdieu pu lished a host of essays collected in Acts of $esistance( 5iring #ac)( and Interventions. Bourdieu)s essays !ere only a part of his struggle 9against the tyranny of the market:. Ce gave speeches and intervie!s, appeared on the radio and at pu lic demonstrations, launched a non,party net!ork of progressive social scientists called $aisons d.agir 5?easons to act7, and helped to forge links among intellectuals, cultural producers and trade,union activists. &1+ Bourdier, 'ontre-feu7 II, pp. +;,1&.
&1( &1&

3&

and po!erful. $his does not mean that defense must e lind, ut it does mean that resistance to neoli eral glo ali*ation, even !hen couched in the apparently ack!ard, looking rhetoric of nationalism, can e a protection of genuine gains and indeed, a protection of the pu lic space for further progressive struggles. Bourdieu !as concerned a ove all that the social institutions that supported reason- y providing scholars, scientists, artists, and !riters, !ith a measure of autonomy,,!ere under unprecedented attack. ?eduction to the market threatened to undermine scienceA reduction to the audience,ratings logic of television entertainment threatened to undermine pu lic discourse. 9"f one !ants to go eyond preaching, then it is necessary to implement practically N the $ealpoliti) of reason aimed at setting up or reinforcing, !ithin the political field, the mechanisms capa le of imposing the sanctions, as far as possi le automatic ones, that !ould tend to discourage deviations from the democratic norm 5such as the corruption of elected representatives7 and to encourage or impose the appropriate ehaviorsA aimed also at favouring the setting up of non,distorted social structures of communication et!een the holders of po!er and the citi*ens, in particular though a constant struggle for the independence of the media.: &11 $he pro lem !as not internationali*ation as such. Bourdieu himself called forcefully for a ne! internationalism, sa! science as an international endeavor, and founded Li1er, a 6uropean revie! of ooks pu lished in si% languages. $he pro lem !as the presentation of a particular modality of 9glo ali*ation: as a force of necessity to !hich there !as no alternative ut adaptation and acceptance. "n his o!n life, Bourdieu recogni*ed, it !as not merely talent and effort that propelled his e%traordinary ascent from rural B0arn to the CollFge de #rance, ut also state scholarships, social rights, and educational access to the closed !orld of 9culture.: $his recognition did not stop him from critical analysis. Ce sho!ed ho! the classificatory systems operating in these institutions of state, culture, and education all served to e%ercise sym olic violence as !ell as and perhaps more than to open opportunities. But he also recogni*ed the deep social investment in such institutions that !as inescapa ly inculcated in people !hose life traHectories depended themD 9!hat individuals and groups invest in the particular meaning they give to common classificatory systems y the use they make of them is infinitely more than their Minterest) in the usual sense of the termA it is their !hole social eing, everything !hich defines their o!n idea of themselvesN:&13 <eoli eral reforms, thus, not only threaten some people !ith material economic harms, they threaten social institutions that ena le people to make sense of their lives. $hat these institutions are fla!ed is a reason to transform them 5and the classificatory schemes central to their operation and reproduction7. "t is not a asis for imagining that people can live !ithout them, especially in the a sence of some suita le replacements. Moreover, the dismantling of such institutions is specifically disempo!ering, not only economically depriving. $hat is, it not only takes a!ay material goods in !hich people
"ascalian Meditations, p. &+@. %istinction( p. 3EI.

&11 &13

3+

have an 9interest:, it undercuts their a ility to make sense of their social situation and create solidarities !ith others. A central strength of glo al capitalism is its a ility to control the terms of discourse, and most especially, to present the specific emerging forms of glo ali*ation as oth inevita le and progressive. Consider the force of this message in the rhetoric of the 6uropean >nion and the advocates of a common currency. Glo ali*ation appears as a determinant force, an inevita le necessity to !hich 6uropeans must adaptA capitalism appears as its essential characterA the American model is commonly presented as the Mnormal) if not the only model. =et 6uropean unification is held to e li eral, cosmopolitan, and progressive.&1; $o assert as Bourdieu did that the specific pattern of international relations-like relations !ithin nations-is the result of the e%ercise of po!er is to open up the game, to remove the illusion of necessity. $o reveal the po!er eing !ielded and reproduced !hen apparently open political choices are structured y a sym olic order organi*ed to the enefit of those in dominant positions, !hether or not they are fully a!are of !hat they do, is to challenge the efficacy of do%ic understandings. $hese are asic acts of critical theory, and oth consistent !ith and informed y Bourdieu)s !ork since his early Algerian studies. Conclusion As !e sa!, the entry into politics that made Bourdieu so prominent a cele rity also aroused criticisms, suspicions, and resentments among his fello! social scientists. Beyond theoretical or empirical differences the ne! conflicts !ere fueled y oth academic and state politics. Many charged that Bourdieu)s ne! politics !as not only irresponsi le ut deceptive. "t !as the former, critics said, ecause it encouraged populism, ultra,leftism, and a ne! anti,Americanism. "t !as the latter ecause Bourdieu claimed to speak !ith the authority of science, ut his e7 cathedra pronouncements !ere not supported y thorough research and the role in !hich he made them !as one he had specifically critici*ed !hen it !as performed y Sartre.&1@
Bourdieu, 9$he Myth of MGlo ali*ation) and the 6uropean 2elfare State,: pp. +',33 in Acts of $esistance. Also, Calhoun, 9$he Democratic "ntegration of 6uropeD "nterests, "dentity, and the Pu lic Sphere,: in M. Bere*in and M. Schain, eds., $emapping !urope. BaltimoreD /ohns Copkins >niversity Press, forthcomingA 9$he Class Consciousness of #re.uent $ravelersD $o!ard a Criti.ue of Actually 6%isting Cosmopolitanism,: in Daniele Archi ugi, ed. %e1ating 'osmopolitics. BondonD 4erso, +((+. &1@ $he Beft had no need of Bourdieu, Bruno Batour suggested, not least precisely ecause he claimed to speak from the vantage point of science and science itself lacked legitimacy. Moreover, Bourdieu-like science-claimed an authority !hich Batour thought could only e a form of domination. $his interest in science Batour sa! 5!rongly7 as a sudden departure and deplored it from the vantage,point of a more aristocratic humanism. Bourdieu preserved the scientific dream of mastery, Batour suggested, and therefore !as not content simply to descri e the social !orld in the terms of actors themselves. Batour oth reHected Bourdieu)s manner of speaking and posed the rhetorical .uestion, 9!hat has Bourdieu done in his la oratory, over thirty,five years? N Cave fields ecome more permea le? Cas sym olic capital ecome more fluid? Cas reproduction ecome less repetitive?: "n other !ords, if one !ere to claim the authority of science, one must demonstrate it in technical mastery. 8ne cannot, Batour implies, at least not for social science, and in any event to speak as though science could under!rite any
&1;

31

" have tried in this paper to challenge the charge of discontinuity or even contradiction, sho!ing the connections !ithin Bourdieu)s scientific !ork and et!een it and his political analyses. As to the role, there is an element of truth to the charge, ut also considera le ad faith since most of those making the accusation !ere precisely the university ased intellectuals !ho most commonly seek to appear in the editorial pages of the ne!spapers. "t is easy to see ho! cele rity can fuel Healousy among intellectuals. $o this !e must add the special comple%ities of the #rench intellectual field and Bourdieu)s place !ithin it. Cis chair at the CollFge de #rance gave him a sym olically preeminent ut materially marginal position. Ce could not effectively place all his prot0g0s in independent positions. Moreover, though he resisted 5and sometimes fiercely denied7 ecoming one of the 9mandarins: of the #rench system, its structural constraints insistently asserted themselves. $here !as no other !ay to organi*e a large collective enterprise 5or at least he found none7. And it !as hardly at odds !ith Bourdieu)s theory that those challenging a field should have to accumulate and deploy capital !ithin it, and participate despite all in its reproduction. <onetheless, Bourdieu)s enterprise e%emplified charismatic not rational, ureaucratic leadership. Ce alone gave the crucial assignments and conferred value on participants) activities. Many felt they !ere in a competition for his favor and attention, some that he played them off against each other. <ot surprisingly, Bourdieu !as !orried y struggles over succession. $o achieve personal autonomy, several of Bourdieu)s early students and colla orators felt it necessary to go through painful re ellions. &1E A fe! could not restrain themselves from pu licly e%pressing their .uasi,8edipal struggles in ne!spaper commentary after Bourdieu)s death. And yet, perhaps the greatest source of resentment against Bourdieu !as his refusal to turn his o!n success Q in the intellectual !orld, on the political scene, and in the media ,, into an endorsement of the system and thus of all those honored y it. 8n the contrary, Bourdieu !as relentlessly critical of the consecration function performed y educational institutions. By implication, many felt deconsecrated.&1I

political position recalls the crimes of BeninismA 9Ba gauche a,t,elle esoin de Bourdieu?: Li1eration( &;.'.&''I. &1E Bourdieu himself had enefited from the patronage of ?aymond Aron, and uilt his academic ase largely on institutional connections he derived from Aron. And yet he chose to reak !ith Aron rather than e seen directly as carrying on Aron)s !ork, a role more fulfilled y Aron)s other prominent assistant of the same period, Alain $ouraine 5see Aron)s Memoires, ParisD /ulliard, &''17. Bourdieu presented his rise to prominence in !ays that minimi*ed the role of Aron)s patronage and ma%imi*ed his o!n re ellion against the esta lished elite rather than his consecration y it. $hat Bourdieu !as up!ardly mo ile and $ouraine from an elite ackground gave a material ground to their distinctive styles and positions. $o his credit, and perhaps to the credit of a tradition of patrician graciousness, $ouraine offered an elo.uent appreciation of Bourdieu after his death !hile some of Bourdieu)s o!n one,time prot0g0s could not 5/os0 GarZon, 9Ba reaction de Alain $ouraine,: Li1+ration, +;J(&+((+7. &1I Lno!ing the antagonism this !ould arouse, Bourdieu had called the first chapter in 3omo Academicus 9A MBook for Burning)?:

33

Bourdieu)s pu lic interventions !ere, ho!ever, firmly rooted in his sociological analyses. "ndeed, it !as his theory of social fields-honed in studies of the religious field, the legal field, and the field of cultural production,,that informed his defense of the autonomy 5al!ays only relative7 of the scientific field from market pressure. Cis theory of the multiple forms of capital-cultural and social as !ell as economic-suggested that these !ere indirectly converti le ut if they !ere reduced to simple e.uivalence cultural and social capital lost their specificity and efficacy. And his early studies in Algeria sho!ed the corrosive impact of un ridled e%tension of market forces. Bourdieu kne! the political importance of science, ut also that this importance !ould e vitiated y reducing science to politics. "n "antagruel, ?a elais famously said, 9Science !ithout conscience is nothing ut the ruin of the soul.: "t is a etter line in #rench, !here Mconscience) also means consciousness. "t is not the sort of line Bourdieu !ould .uote, though, ecause pu lic appeals to conscience are too commonly Hustifications for a Hargon of authenticity rather than the application of reason. <onetheless, Bourdieu demonstrated that conscience-in oth its senses,,is not simply an interior state of individuals. "t is a social achievement. As such, it is al!ays at risk. Bourdieu !as a scholar and researcher of great rigor and also a man and a citi*en !ith a conscience attuned to ine.uality and domination. 2ould there !ere more.

3;