Theory of practice in other fields Harker, Richard (1990) Bourdieu Education and Reproduction, in Richard Harker, Cheleen Mahar

r and Chris Wilkes (eds) An Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu, pp. 86108. New York: St Martins Press. Gopal et al (2006) TOP Learning with Laptops: Information Technology and the Transformation of an MBA Program Study of how information technologies altered student practices and in understanding how IT was implicated in a struggle between the students and the faculty for control of classroom use of laptops and networks.
Harker, 1984 On Reproduction, Habitus and Education The relationships between the theory of practice and education and explication of the habitus construct.

Yolande (2009); Gram-Hanssen (2009) TOP in eco-sustainability context TOP has also been studied in the sustainable practices as in the context of cleaniliness habit of household (Strengers). It has also been used by Gram-Hanssen, 2009 in the context of household energy consumptions and how daily routines can be changed in a more sustainable direction. Murariu 2010 Bourdieu attempted to explain the relationship between peoples practices and the context - that is institutions, values and rules - in which these practices occur. This attempt led him to the idea of the field, which is a series of contexts which constitute an objective hierarchy and which produce and authorise certain discourses and activities (Webb, 2002: 21-22). Through this concept he does not refer merely to the institutions and the rules but also to the interaction that occurs between them. These fields - such as economy, politics, religion and law - all have their own rules and forms of authority and retain a certain degree of autonomy from the others. Bourdieu identifies two aspects of a field: first of all that people entering a specific field have its specific dispositions imposed upon them; and secondly they can be characterised as area of struggle through which agents and institutions seek to preserve or overturn the existing distribution of capital (Wacquant, 2008: 268). Through capital Bourdieu understands both the strictly material things and the symbolic and culturally significant attributes such as prestige, honour and status, in other words anything that is considered by an agent valuable enough to attempt to obtain it. As such an individual entering the field of science must acquire a minimum of scientific capital and must abide by the rules and regulations of the scientific community. In addition the individuals in this field all try to change the

hierarchy by accumulation of capital - in this situation ranking of journals, theories, successful experiments etc. (Wacquant, 2008: 268). Mediating between past influences and current stimuli, the habitus is both structured by the social forces producing it and structuring through its influence over human behaviour, it is the product of structure, producer of practice and reproducer of structure (Wacquant, 2008: 268). One must keep in mind that the habitus is incorporated both in the mind in form of cognitive dispositions and in the body, in the physical manner in which we stand or walk, in our style and in our discursive expressions. The relationship between capital and habitus is very important because it reveals how the amount of capital one has can condition ones way of thinking, can lead to a certain habitus and therefore result in an unconscious belief in the legitimacy of class inequality.

Agents regulate their expectations for the total sum of capital they can acquire in regards of the practical limitations placed on them by the social position in the field. Therefore people with the least amount of economic/cultural capital are the least ambitious and more satisfied with their position in the social hierarchy simply because they believe it is natural and inevitable. While the lack of capital does indeed result in class inequality, its perpetuation can only be explained within the concept of habitus. By instilling certain dispositions into individuals, dispositions which are similar to members with similar amounts of capital, the habitus allows certain pattern of behaviours to these individuals. As a consequence of the working-class habitus, agents of this class believe that because of their lack of social or cultural capital they are not able to offer judgements about the political or educational field. The domination within the political field is therefore perpetuated by excluding the dominated from the act of governing: firstly because participation requires time and money and secondly because of the capital needed social capital in the form of right social contacts and cultural capital as a feel for the game of politics (Webb, 2002: 94). The dominated therefore allow the professionals to act on their behalf and thus do not participate in the competition for the power to impose on others a certain view of the world. Bourdieu argues that the habitus creates a sense of ones place, an understanding of what people consider as being for them and not for them respectively (Swartz, 1997: 106). Consequently class inequality is preserved because they believe that a position of dominance is not for them .This mentality has its roots in socialization, which is the way in which a specific class habitus is internalised into an individual. The social environment, in which a person grows up, including the amount of capital owned, and the composition of capital, represents the primary socialization. The secondary socialization, the

educational system, is according to Bourdieu the most responsible for the persistence without conscious recognition of the class inequalities. Its functions have the role of reproduction of inequality: firstly and most importantly is the function of conserving, inculcating and conservating a cultural heritage (Swartz, 1997: 190) which contributes to cultural reproduction while the second - traditional pedagogy- leads to the reproduction of social class relations. The high correlation between subjective hopes, which are structurally determined products of parental and other reference-group educational experience and cultural life (Swartz, 1997: 197) and objective chances, results in the working class not striving for academic attainments because they have internalised and accepted the fact that the lack of cultural capital results in limited opportunities for school success. In other words the working-class habitus which is internalised during primary socialization leads the individuals to believe that certain things are not for them. The upper class on the other hand considers it natural to obtain academic success. Ilhen 2005
Field and capital
. Ihlen / Public Relations Review 31 (2005) 492496 493

Bourdieus status as a prominent contemporary social thinker has been confirmed by a number of books that introduce and discuss his contributions to knowledge (e.g., Fowler, 2001; Jenkins, 2002; Robbins, 2000). Nevertheless, his contributions are largely overlooked within public relations. Of particular relevance here are Bourdieus notions of field and capital (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990). In Thompsons (1991) useful description, a field is typically understood to be a structured space of positions in which the positions and their interrelations are determined by the distribution of different kinds of resources or capital (Thompson, 1991, p. 14). The actors in the field compete for profits and capital, which are unequally shared. Capital might be specific to a certain field and relatively worthless in other fields. It is, for instance, possible to talk about an intellectual field where, although some kind of recognition can be won outside the field, scholarly significance is only grasped thoroughly within the field. At the organizational level, a research center belongs to the scientific field, a parentteacher association belongs to the educational field, a bank belongs to the economic field, a theater belongs to the cultural field, a ministry belongs to the bureaucratic field, and so on. At the same time, every one of these fields can be part of one or several other larger fields, or contain subfields within itself. The research center may, for instance, be part of the political field through its connections with a political agenda and political institutions. The types of capital for which agents or organizations compete can be incorporated, or materialized, capital, which might be considered as, for example, economic, linguistic, and scholastic capital. Bourdieus (1986) article on the forms of capital narrows the notion down to three fundamental types: economic capital (money, property, etc.), cultural capital (knowledge, skills, and educational qualifications), and social capital (connections and membership of groups). At the same time though, he writes that these forms of capital may be apprehended as symbolic capital (prestige, honor). Social capital, for instance, always functions as symbolic capital because it is governed by the logic of knowledge and acknowledgement (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 257). The amount and type of capital that an agent possesses also locates it in the field: The social field can be described as a multi-dimensional space of positions such that each actual position can be defined in terms of a multi-dimensional system of co-ordinates whose values correspond to the values of the first pertinent variables. Agents are thus distributed, in the first dimension, according to the overall volume of the capital they posses and, in the second dimension, according to the composition of their capitalin other words, according to the relative weight of the different kinds of capital in the total set of their assets. (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 231) Agents in a field pursue their interests knowingly or unknowingly. There is a continuous struggle to maintain or alter the distribution, or to convert the type of capital. Bourdieu (1998) usefully directs the researchers focus to these competing interests, the conflicts that they generate, and the whole logic of the field. The only accompanying approach he advocates is plunging into the particularity of an empirical reality, historically located and dated, but with the objective of constructing it as a special case of what is possible (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 2). Public relations practice fits this picture if it is regarded as a practice that assists organizational actors in different fields in pursuing their interests with the help of various forms of capital. The distribution of capital is also an expression of power relationships that should be studied. A prime advantage of drawing on Bourdieu over other analyses of resources is his emphasis on relational

and dynamic aspects. The positions of the actors are seen in relation to each other and explained as functions of the types and amounts of capital, the field-specific appreciations of these forms of capital, and the constant attempts to acquire, hold on to, or to convert capital. Elsewhere (Ihlen, 2002, 2004a, 2004b), I have argued for a reworked typology of the different types of capital, fusing the work of Bourdieu with that of media sociology, which has been more focused on the capital of organizations (Davis, 2002; Schlesinger, 1990; Schlesinger & Tumber, 1994). The fusion of ideas justifies, and enables, the study of an organizations economic capital, its degree of institutionalization (the size of its adminis- tration and the number of public relations practitioners), its knowledge capital (the composite of formal professional education or informal skills, including public relations knowledge), its symbolic capital (reputation), and its social capital. Different fields give different values to the forms of capital, but organizational power positions must be understood as anchored in different types of capital. Even though the focus here will be on social capital alone, other forms of capital also matter. For instance, the knowledge capital (e.g., how to conduct a campaign, how to use rhetoric), and the economic capital needed to conduct campaigns, are highly significant. There are three further reasons for choosing to discuss social capital over the other forms. First, the development of social capital, and through it symbolic capital, seems to be at the heart of public relations. Second, although management is obviously engaged in increasing social capital, it seems to be an exclusive function of public relations to develop programs in this area. Third, Bourdieus concept of social capital needs to be further elaborated, as it does not lend itself easily to empirical studies of organizations.