Pierre Bourdieu (19302002)

Basic Facts
Born

August 1, 1930 in
Denguin, PyrnesAtlantiques, France
Grandfather was a
sharecropper, and father
was a postman, later
postmaster
Married Marie-Claire
Brizard in 1962
Had three sons
French sociologist
Died January 23, 2002 in
Paris, France

Academic Career

Studied philosophy in Paris at the cole Normale

Suprieure
He worked as a teacher for a year
Established sociological reputation with
ethnographic research while in French Army
during Algerian War of Independence (1958-62)
1964+ Director of Studies at the cole Pratique
des Hautes tudes
1968 until death, headed Centre de Sociologie
Europenne, a research center founded by Aron
1975 edited sociological journal, Actes de la
recherche en sciences sociale, with Luc Boltanski
1981 until retirement, Chair of Sociology at
Collge de France (position formerly held by
Raymond Aron et al.)

Awards
1993

received Medaille dor du

Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS)
1996 received Goffman prize from
UC Berkeley
2002 received Huxley Medal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute

Influences
Gaston

Bachelard
Georges
Canguilhem
Emile Durkheim
Norbert Elias
Edmund Husserl
Maurice MerleauPonty
Claude LviStrauss

Blaise

Pascal
Ferdinand De
Sassure
Karl Marx
Max Weber
Thornstein Veblen
Marcel Mauss
Ludwig
Wittgenstein

Influences Contd

From Weber, importance of domination and

symbolic systems in social life; social orders,
which he would transform into a theory of
fields
From Marx, concept of capital with respect to
social activity, not just economics
From Durkheim, deterministic style
From Mauss and Lvi-Strauss, structuralist
style and the tendency of social structures to
reproduce themselves
From Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, focus on the
body, action, and practical dispositions
(manifested in his theory of habitus)

Major Works

Outline of a Theory of Practice, 1977

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of
Taste, 1984
Homo Academicus, 1988
The Logic of Practice, 1990
Language and Symbolic Power, 1991
Free Exchange, 1995
The State Nobility, 1996
The Rules of Art, 1996
Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, 1998
Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market,
2003

Foci
Main

interests: power, symbolic

violence, academia, the relationship
between historical structures and
subjective agents (development of
methodologies), and language and
how it connects to power.
Other key ideas: cultural capital,
field, habitus, illusio, reflexivity,
social capital, and symbolic capital

Overview of Bourdieus
Work

work amounts to cultural sociology or theory of practice

Focused on empirical investigation
theorist label is too confining
habitus, field, and Cultural capital commonplace
in major sociological journals
Shares intellectual roots with poststructuralist or
postmodernist, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida
More of a social theorist, language is used by particular
actors for particular ends
Connection between structure and action
Uses conceptual tools to explain process of social life in
concrete settings
Trained as an anthropologist, and within structuralist
tradition

Bourdieus Work Contd

Politically engaged and had no affiliation;

supported work against influence of political
elites and neoliberal capitalism, but also
considered an enemy of French left
First published studies- fieldwork in Algeria
Accepted by English-language sociologists by
end of 1970s
Criticized theoretical theory, work more
concerned with developing ideas or concepts
rather than using them to understand the world
Remained active in research projects and was
subject of documentary, La sociologie est un
sport de combat (Sociology is a Combat Sport)

Contd
Work

emphasized how social classes (esp.

ruling and intellectual classes) preserve
social privileges across generations
despite the false idea of equality of
opportunity and high social mobility,
achieved through education
For him sociology was about exposing the
latent structures that influence actions
and combating symbolic violence
Produced hundreds of articles and three
dozen books, translated into two dozen
languages

Legacy
Impacted

several disciplines other than

sociology; works were considered classics in not
only sociology, but anthropology, education, and
cultural studies
Not seen as an ivory tower academic, but a
passionate activist for those he thought to be
subordinated by society
Influenced sociologists, such as Loc Wacquant,
who applied Bourdieus theory (participant
objectivization) to boxing, and Michel de Certeau
Most quoted living sociologist, including 7,000
web pages

Methodology
Based

on theoretical model in Distinction

Emphasizes need for empirical data and its
inseparability from the theoretical
Focus on practical examples and case studies
to show how theoretical applies to real world
Use range of observation and measurement
methodsquantitative and qualitative,
statistical and ethnographic, macrosociological
and microsociological, which are
meaningless oppositions, or indistinct in
their usefulnessall are necessary and linked
to each other

Methodology contd

Models of societies must be based on structures and

habitus rather than particularities and manifest
differences between two societies
Habitus = loose guidelines/framework/tastes which
influence social agents within a social position (to be
covered in more detail later)
Though basing model on structures of one society may
appear ethnocentric, this technique will produce models
more accurate and universally applicable than looking
at differences between unique aspects of culture, which
tends to such evils as racism and chauvinism
Ex.: urged Japanese to apply his model of 1970s French
society to contemporary Japanese society rather than
focusing on peculiar customs or roles in each society

Methodology contd
Habitus

and structure apply across time and

culture, but positions and practices do not;
therefore, focusing on the latter causes errors
and dated research, but the former generates a
universal model
Warns against looking at practices in isolation
from their influences (structure and habitus) and
attempting to compare between systems
Ex.: Golf in France and Japan seem to be the
same game, but may serve different roles and
be practiced by different social positions/classes.
At the same time, two other practices which
may seem different may actually serve similar
roles.

Social Space

Social Space

Positions and practices arrayed on graph (and in social

space) on one hand (y-axis) according to capital volume,
the total accumulation of social capital
On the other hand, positions and practices arrayed by
relative weight of two types of social capitaleconomic
and cultural
At left extreme of x-axis, positions possess relatively more
cultural capital than economic, and vice versa at right
extreme
Economic capital = money and material
Cultural capital = education
X-axis and its distinction between two capital types better
determines political leanings than y-axis; those with
relatively higher cultural capital tend to vote with leftist
parties; those with relatively higher economic capital tend
to vote right

Symbolic Space
Position-taking

= agents choices that

signal their position; ex.: country club
membership signals wealth
These choices, the differences between
a certain position and another,
constitute a symbolic set defining that
position
This symoblic set is like the set of
phonemes or sounds that comprise a
language

The Logic of Classes

Construction

of social space (set of

positions) allows creation of theoretical
classes
Theoretical classes exist only on paper;
Bourdieu warns against pretending they
exist as distinctive groups in reality
Bourdieus theoretical classes made of
positions close to each other in social
spacethose proximate on his graphwho
are most likely to interact and co-exist well

The Logic of Classes

contd

Bourdieu says his theoretical classes are more likely to

become real, Marxist classes (those mobilized for common
purposes) than ones based on gender or racial distinctions,
for ex.
But theoretical classes do not become real ones necessarily;
socially close positions and groups are simply probable to
unite; criticized Marx for making the leap from theoretical to
real
Says political parties could not survive uniting those distant
in social space, but certain circumstances, such as crisis or
nationalism, may temporarily, superficially bring them
together
Said [s]ocial classes do not exist; rather, [w]hat exists is a
social space, a space of differences which one cannot deny
and which persist when one expects to find homogeneity;
these are what are recognized as classes, but it is difficult to
categorize real people into classes

Discussion Questions
Do

you agree with Bourdieus focus on

structure and habitus rather than cultural
particularities in forming social models? If
so, what are some potential problems with
focusing on cultural particularities
instead?
Do you think Bourdieus distinction
between economic and cultural capital
and his arrangement of positions in social
space are valid across societies? Is
Bourdieus model sufficient?

Structures, Habitus, Practices

(1974, 1980)
Bourdieus

attempt at defining how

structures affect action, actions affect
structure, and so on- part of his theory of
practice
Believed it was possible to step down
from the sovereign viewpoint from which
objectivist materialism orders the world .
. .but without having to abandon to it the
active aspect of apprehension of the
world by reducing knowledge to a mere
recording.

 Claimed

peoples actions can be

explained by not only the structures that
they are living in as objective reality
enforcing its inescapable will, but by
their habitus
Bourdieu warns us to be careful not to
fall prey to appealing to context or
situation to account for variation
,exceptions and accidents - what he
called situational analysis- because
this type of analysis remains locked in
the framework of rule and exception

 The

theory of practice as insists,

contrary to positivist materialism,
that the objects of knowledge are
constructed, not passively recorded,
and, contrary to intellectualist
idealism, that the principle of this
construction is the system of
structured, structuring dispositions,
the habitus, which is constituted in
practice and is always oriented
towards practical functions.

Habitus
Habitus

is defined as systems of
durable, transposable dispositions,
structured structures predisposed to
function as structuring structures, that
is, as principals which generate and
organize practices and representations
that can be objectively adapted to their
outcomes without presupposing a
conscious aiming at ends or an express
mastery of the operations necessary in
order to attain them

 Habitus

is produced by the
conditionings associated with a
particular class of conditions of
existence
Habitus is regulated and regular, but
it does not require people to follow
rules in order to act in ways that
are predictable- can be collectively
orchestrated without being the
product of the organizing action of a
conductor

 Although

habitus is not conscious, the

responses of habitus may be
accompanied by a strategic calculation
tending to perform in a conscious mode
the operation that the habitus performs
quite differently, namely an estimation
of chances presupposing
transformation of the past effect into an
expected objective.
However, these responses are first
defined, without any calculation, in
relation to objective potentialities,
immediately inscribed in the present

 Because

habitus is created by past

experiences, early experiences have a large
affect on a persons perceptions- such
experiences can have more an affect on a
persons perception than objective reality
The very conditions of the production of
the habitus, a virtue made of necessity,
mean that the anticipation it generates
tend to ignore the restrictions to which its
validity of calculation of probabilities is
subordinated.

Practice is what people do meaning the

actions people take
Practice is produced by the habitus- both
individual and collective practices
Habitus is produced by history and by structures
(which are themselves a product of history and
of habitus)
This is because habitus, a product of history,
produces structures which promote practices in
accordance with that history- self-propagated
The structures characterizing a determinate
class of conditions of existence produce the
structures of habitus, which in turn are the basis
of the perception and appreciation of all
subsequent experiences

Habitus ensures active presence of past

experiences, which, deposited in each
organism in the form of schemes of
perception, thought and action, tend to
guarantee the correctness of practices
and their constancy over time, more
reliably than all formal rules and explicit
norms.
As an acquired system of generative
schemes, the habitus makes possible the
free production of all the thoughts,
perceptions and actions inherent in the
particular conditions of its production- and
only those.

 Being

the product of a particular class

of objective regularities, the habitus
tends to generate all the reasonable,
common-sense behaviors (and only
these) which are possible and which
are going to be positively sanctioned
It excludes all behaviors that would be
negatively sanctioned because they
are incompatible with objective
conditions

Practice
Practices

cannot be deduced either

from the present conditions which may
seem to have provoked them or from
the past conditions which may have
produced the habitus, the durable
principal of their production. They can
therefore only be accounted for by
relating the social conditions in which
the habitus that generated them was
constituted, to the social conditions in
which it is implemented

 The

unconscious is never
anything but the forgetting of
history which history itself
produces by realizing the objective
structures that it generates in the
quasi-nature of habitus
Habitus is the active presense of
the whole past of which it is a
product.

The real logic of action bring together two

objectifications of history- that in institutions and that in
bodies- or two states of capital, objectified and
incorporated
Habitus is what makes it possible to have institutionswe take advantage of the bodies willingness to regulate
to attain full realization of the institutionsProperty appropriates its owner, embodying itself in
the form of a structure generating practices perfectly
conforming with its logic and demands.
An institution is only complete and fully viable if it is
durably objectified not only in things, that is, in the
logic, transcending individual agents, but also in bodies,
in durable dispositions to recognize and comply with
the demands immanent in the field.- This means we
must be convinced of the validity of the bank and
banker as objective reality, not socially constructed
truths.

Discussion Questions
In

your social position what is your

habitus? What influences your
actions and choices?
Do you agree with Bourdieus idea
of habitus, or do you believe there
is some other concept that better
explains what
influences/motivates an agent to
act?

 The

literary or artistic field is a

field of forces and a field of
struggles.

The Field of Cultural Production

cont.
The Field of Cultural Production and the Field of Power

The

literary and artistic field is

contained within the filed of power,
while possessing a relative autonomy
with respect to it , especially as
regards its economic and political
principles of hierarchization.
It occupies a dominated position in
this field, which is itself situated at
the dominant pole of the field of
class relations.

The Field of Cultural Production

cont.
The Field of Cultural Production and the Field of Power

1.

Field of
Class Relations
2. Field of
Power
3.Artistic Field

+
2 3
- +

The Field of Cultural Production

cont.
The Field of Cultural Production and the Field of Power

This

is the site of a Double Hierarchy

Heteronomous
Economic

gauge of success
Success would be measured by, for
example, book sales, number of theatrical
performances, etc.
Autonomous
Degree

of Specific Consecration
The more completely it fulfils its own logic
as a field, the more it tends to suspend or
reverse the dominant principle of
hierarchization

The Field of Cultural Production

cont.
The Field of Cultural Production and the Field of Power
Relative

Autonomy

relative

autonomy:

1. ". . .the more autonomous it is, i.e. the more

completely it fulfills its own logic as a field, the more
it tends to suspend or reverse the dominant principle of
hierarchization.
2. whatever its degree of independence, it continues to
be affected by the laws of the field which encompasses
it, those of economic and political profit"
3. The more autonomous the field becomes, the more
favorable the symbolic power balance is to the most
autonomous producers and the more clear-cut is the
division between the field of restricted production . .
.and the field of large-scale production.. . .

The Field of Cultural Production

cont.
The Field of Cultural Production and the Field of Power

4. systematic inversion of the

fundamental principles of all ordinary
economies: that of business. . . that of
power.. .that of institutionalized cultural
authority.
5. specific capital: at a given level of
overall autonomy, intellectuals are, other
things being equal, proportionately more
responsive to the deduction of the
powers that be, the less well endowed
they are with specific capital.

The Field of Cultural Production

cont.
The Field of Cultural Production and the Field of Power

Notes:
Lack

of success is not in itself a sign

and guarantee of election.
Similarly, Box-office successes can
also be seen as genuine art.

The Field of Cultural Production

Cont.
The Struggle for the Dominant Principle of
Hierarchization

The

literary or artistic field is at all

times the site of a struggle
between the two principles of
hierarchization:
Heteronomous

v. Autonomous
Bourgeois art v. art for arts sake

The Field of Cultural Production Cont.

The Struggle for the Dominant Principle of
Hierarchization

The

state of the power relations in this

struggle depends on the overall degree
of autonomy possessed by the field.
That is the extent to which it manages
to impose its own norms and sanctions
on the whole set of producers, including
those who are closest to the dominant
pole of the field of power and therefore
most responsive to external demands.
This degree of autonomy varies
considerably from one period and one
national tradition to another.

The Struggle Within the dominant pole

Everything

seems to indicate that it

depends on the value which the specific
capital of writers and artists represents
for the dominant factions
Struggle

to conserve the established order

between the factions.
Bourgeoisie

and aristocracy
Old bourgeoisie and new bourgeoisie, etc.
Struggle

to conserve the established order

of production and reproduction of economic
capital.
The

less well-endowed intellectuals are the more

responsive they are to the powers that be.

 The

struggle in the field of cultural

reproduction over the imposition of
legitimate mode of cultural production
is inseparable for the struggle within
the dominant class to impose the
dominant principle of domination.
Human

Accomplishment
Competitors use their economic success to
say they serve interest other than their art.
The

more heteronomous the producer,

the less defense they have against the
dominant powers.

 In

short, the fundamental stake in

literary struggles in the monopoly of
literary legitimacy.
i.e.

the monopoly of the power to say with

authority who is authorized to call
themselves a writer.

Therefore

the definition of a writer will

always be historical.
i.e.

to say it will only reflect the current

state of the struggle at the time of analysis.

 The

boundary of the field is a stake

of struggles.
The job of the social scientist is to
describe a state of these struggles.
The field of cultural production
separates itself from other fields
because it represents on of the
indeterminate sites in the social
structure.

The effect of the

homologies
Creates

a sense of solidarity amongst

the cultural producers.
By obeying the logic of the objective
competition between mutually
exclusive positions within the field,
the various categories of producers
tend to supply products adjusted to
the expectations of the various
positions in the field of power, but
without any conscious striving for
such adjustment.

Positions and Dispositions

The meeting of two histories
To

understand the practices of writers

and artists is to understand that they are
the result of the meeting of two
histories:
1.

The history of the positions they occupy

2. The history of their dispositions
In

other words, there are little to no

guarantees.
Successive

generations with the same

disposition will have different outcomes.
The progression is not mechanical.

Discussion Questions
In

what ways does Bourdieus

theory of Cultural Production apply
to modern America?
Can you think of ways that
Bourdieus hierarchy is flawed?
1.Field

of Class Relations
2. Field of Power
3.Artistic Field