Capital as the lens that Bourdieu Pierres through: Public relations,social theory,and rhetoric

In this paper, I explore the limitations of Bourdieu’s “capital” with the help of Burke’s four master tropes: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Both Bourdieu and Burke were concerned with theoretical reductionism. I claim that Bourdieu could not help but be reductive insofar as his metaphor of capital became the totalizing lens through which he understood society. First, I review Bourdieu’s forms of capital, noting how capital serves as the sine qua non of his theory of practice. Second, I situate Bourdieu within the PR literature. Third, I read Bourdieu’s “capital” through Burke’s (1941) four master tropes. Reading Bourdieu through Burke enables PR scholars to better understand the limitations in Bourdieu’s terminology, which leads to debunking, materialist reductionism, and relativism. I conclude with implications for future research adopting Bourdieusian and Burkean approaches to public relations.     

Disgusted subjects: the making of middle-class identities

Although the classed dimensions of ‘taste’ have, following Bourdieu, been widely discussed, expressions of disgust at perceived violations of taste have been less frequently considered in relation to class. This paper considers various expressions of disgust at white working‐class existence and explores what they might tell us about middle‐class identities and identifications. I argue that the narratives of decline and of lack present in such representations can be seen in terms of a long‐standing middle‐class project of distinguishing itself. Drawing on Bourdieu's critique of Kantian aesthetics, I argue that the ownership of ‘taste’ is understood as reflecting true humanity, and as conferring uniqueness. Ironically, however, this uniqueness is only achieved through an incorporation of collective, classed understandings. The paper calls for a problematization of a normative and normalized middle‐class location that is, I argue, given added legitimacy by a perceived decline in the significance of class itself. [A]n account of class, rank or social hierarchy must be thin indeed unless accompanied by an account of the passions and sentiments that sustain it (William Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, p. 245). Social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat (Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 479). What we read as objective class divisions are produced and maintained by the middle class in the minutiae of everyday practice, as judgements of culture are put into effect (Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture, p. 118).     

Bread and wine: Bourdieu's photography of colonial Algeria

The photography of Bourdieu, whilst documenting aspects of his sociological work in Algeria, problematizes the relationship between its photographic referents and their history. To grasp this relationship, I will decode the historical signification of three photographs taken by Bourdieu in the mid-1950s when Tillion published L'Algérie en 1957 and Sartre 'Le colonialisme est un système' situating Bourdieu's photographic and sociological work in relation to both Tillion and Sartre. Although the influence of Tillion on Bourdieu is discernable, especially in Sociologie de l'Algérie , their political positions are at variance. Bourdieu's snapshots provide us with a perspective on how to interpret the causes of the vagrancy and famine in colonial times. Despite his avowed hostility to Sartre, Bourdieu concurs with the latter's critique of colonialism. His three photographs together project a political affinity with both Sartre and Barthes. The impoverishment of native Algerian society was not due to the fact that it failed to catch the train of progress, as Tillion intimates; rather it resulted from its systematic despoilment by colonial France.     

Why the Sociology of Morality Needs Bourdieu's Habitus*

Though Pierre Bourdieu has been criticized for ignoring the moral dimensions of social judgments, I suggest that his habitus concept can provide a useful theoretical foundation for a sociological analysis of morality. If the habitus is revised in a way that recognizes the embodied nature of cognition, it can be treated as a foundation for moral judgments of the self and of others. A revised habitus concept can account for two processes by which moral judgments are shaped by social settings: (1) cultural influences on feelings and expressions of emotion; and (2) the ways moral metaphors are structured by embodied cognitive schemas. In both processes, universal bodily operations are employed in different configurations across cultural settings. I argue that a modified habitus concept that can account for these phenomena has significant implications for the sociological analysis of lay morality.     

Everyday morality in families and a critique of social capital: an investigation into moral judgements,responsibilities, and sentiments in Kyrgyzstani households

This article examines individuals’ lay understandings of moral responsibilities between adult kin members. Moral sentiments and practical judgments are important in shaping kinship responsibilities. The article discusses how judgments on requests of support can be reflexive and critical, taking into account many factors, including merit, social proximity, a history of personal encounters, overlapping commitments, and moral identity in the family. In so doing, we argue that moral responsibilities are contextual and relational. We also analyze how class, gender, and capabilities affect how individuals imagine, expect and discuss care responsibilities. We also offer a critique of social capital theory of families, suggesting that their versions of morality are instrumental, alienated, and restrictive. Although Bourdieu’s concept of habitus overlaps with our proposed moral sentiments approach, the former does not adequately address moral concerns, commitments, and evaluations. The article aims to contribute to a better understanding of everyday morality by drawing upon different literatures in sociology, moral philosophy, postcommunism, and development studies.     

Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Rancière on art/aesthetics and politics: the origins of disagreement, 1963–1985

Rancière published two substantial criticisms of the work of Bourdieu in the early 1980s. It is possible that these were provoked by his sense that he needed to oppose what he considered to be the sociological reduction of aesthetic taste offered by Bourdieu in Distinction (Bourdieu 1986 [1979]) at precisely the moment when he (Rancière) was beginning to articulate his commitment to the potential of aesthetic expression as a mode of political resistance. Except in so far as it draws upon some of the retrospective reflections offered by Rancière in his introductions to the re‐issues of his early texts, this paper examines the parallel development of the thinking of the two men up to the mid‐1980s – but not beyond. The discussion is situated socio‐historically and, by definition, does not seek to offer comparatively any transhistorical assessment of the values of the positions adopted by the two men. I argue that Rancière misrepresented the character of Bourdieu's sociological work by failing to recognize the underlying phenomenological orientation of his thinking. Bourdieu suppressed this orientation in the 1960s but, after the May events of 1968, it enabled him to expose the extent to which the practices of both science and art operate within constructed ‘fields’ in strategic distinction from popular primary experience. The challenge is to introduce an ongoing dialogue between primary and constructed cultures rather than to suppose that either social science or art possesses intrinsic autonomy.     

Marx,labour and emancipation in South African sociology: a preliminary rethinking

In a university and disciplinary environment where knowledge is increasingly commodified, this paper sketches a reconstruction of the mature Marx’s analysis of capitalism. I argue that his understanding remains methodologically powerful and helps to ground sociological analyses of the present. While accepting that there are good grounds for questioning the relevance of Marx in the wake of the South African political transition and the Post‐Fordist transformation of labour, this interpretation departs significantly from how Marx has generally been interpreted by sociologists and other social scientists in the country by foregrounding the commodity as the starting point of his social critique. Indeed, I argue that ‘class’ and ‘workplaces’, long a focus of radical sociologists, are on their own inadequate to grasp Marx’s concept of capitalism. Finally, drawing on the Frankfurt School, I suggest the importance of a critique of labour and the recognition of contradiction as the starting point of an emancipatory project.     

Is Bauman's bureau Weber's bureau?: a comment*

In his highly regarded and influential Modernity and the Holocaust Zygmunt Bauman launched one of the most passionate and sustained critiques of 'bureaucratic rationality' seen within social theory for some time. In so doing he drew heavily upon the work of Max Weber for support. In this brief paper I am interested in exploring the extent to which Weber really is the anti-bureaucratic ally Bauman claims him to be. In the first part of the paper I outline the main elements of Bauman's critique of bureaucratic rationality, drawing particular attention to its reliance upon a self-consciously Weberian theoretical lexicon. In the second part of the paper I seek to indicate that, despite his claims to be following in Weber's tracks, Bauman's conclusions regarding the moral vacuity of bureaucratic conduct are the very antithesis of Weber's own.     

Symbolic Violence and Collective Identity: Pierre Bourdieu and the Ethics of Resistance

Social movement researchers have only recently begun to make use of the rich explanatory leverage offered by Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. The normative implications of his framework remain almost entirely undeveloped. This paper seeks to redress these shortcomings by applying central concepts from Bourdieu's work—symbolic violence and his realist philosophy of science—to social movement analysis. Using North American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer collective identities to illustrate this application, the paper advocates shifting analysis of collective identities from models based on negotiation to one based on domination and advocates treatment of social movement organizations as sites of justice amenable to normative evaluation and critique.     

Pierre Bourdieu on social transformation,with particular reference to political and symbolic revolutions

This article challenges what is now the orthodoxy concerning the heritage of Bourdieu (1930–2002): namely, the judgement that his distinctive sociological innovation has been his theory of social reproduction, and that he has failed to provide a necessary theory of social change. Yet Bourdieu consistently claimed to offer a theory of social transformation as well as accounting for continuities of power. Indeed, he provides two substantive keys for an understanding of historical transformation—first, a theory of prophets (religious or secular) as the authors of heresies or “symbolic revolutions” that dispel current doxa; second, a theory of the “corporatism of the universal”: the role of intellectuals or other educated professionals in pursuit of social justice and other universalistic goals. Moreover, Bourdieu fuses his theories of “symbolic revolutions” with a materialist analysis of their social preconditions, including a fresh account of social crises. Crises—war, famine, recession, and especially the intensified precarity of the educated—have, for him, a profound impact, both within differentiated fields and across fields. Conflicts that become effectively synchronized across fields acquire great resonance within the wider field of power, particularly due to hysteresis or “maladjusted habitus.” Indeed, the appearance of crises, together with new prophetic heresies, leads the subordinate classes to question the taken-for-granted order of things and to orchestrate their resistance. Alongside his corpus of published writings, this article draws widely on Bourdieu’s posthumously published lectures. These cast a distinctive new light on how his well-known conceptual instruments can aid us in the study of historical change. They also expand on how social science itself might be used to facilitate progressive social movements.

     

The Evolution of a Contested Concept: A Meta‐Analysis of Social Capital Definitions and Trends (1988–2006)*

This paper offers a meta‐analysis that traces the contested meaning and use of social capital in sociological research over the last 18 years by focusing on journal article definitions. We identify six common definitions in use that closely correspond to the original—and in some cases, independent—formulations offered by Hanifan, Putnam, Coleman, Bourdieu, and Granovetter. Drawing from Kuhnian theory, we contend that these definitions illuminate deep divisions between those who understand social capital as a normative “cure‐all” ( Portes 1998 )—in the tradition of Hanifan, Putnam, and Coleman —and those who view it as a resource—in the tradition of Bourdieu and Granovetter—that may be used to create or maintain social inequality. The transition of social capital from preparadigm to paradigm status may potentially involve an integration of these approaches, but this will require greater consideration of power and inequality on the part of normative theorists, who are currently dominating the debate.     

The origins, early development and status of Bourdieu's concept of 'cultural capital'

The paper examines the context of the first introduction of the concept of 'cultural capital' in the sociology of education analyses undertaken in the early 1960s and published by Bourdieu in collaboration with Jean-Claude Passeron in 'Les etudiants et leurs etudes' (1964a) and Les Heritiers (1964b). It first considers the cultural contexts within which Bourdieu's thinking about culture originated--both in relation to his social origins and in relation to his intellectual training. It then examines the extent to which Bourdieu's early anthropological research in Algeria was influenced by his knowledge of American acculturation theory. It concludes that Bourdieu sought to use acculturation theory in a distinctive way--one which he articulated more confidently as he explored the relationship between agency and structural explanation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The specific educational researches which stimulated the articulation of the concept of 'linguistic' or 'cultural' capital belonged to the period in which Bourdieu was only just beginning to refine his post-structuralist philosophy of social scientific explanation. To use these concepts now involves deploying them reflexively in accordance with Bourdieu's later thinking rather than at face value as they were first developed during the period in which he and Passeron were 'apprentice' researchers.     

Ursache oder Urheber: Argumente gegen einen reduktiven IndividualismusCause or Creator: Arguments against Reductionist Individualism

In sociological action theory, individualistic positions typically criticize practice theoretical approaches in regard to their assumption that individual acts are the products of collective social processes. Instead, individualistic theories generally reduce every action and all social processes to individual actors. This critique on practice theoretical arguments, however, is based on a missing distinction between the cause and the creator of the social meaning of action. Drawing on conceptual distinctions between cause and creator, causality and coordination, and causality and constitution of meaning, I will reject the individualistic critique on theories of practice in this article. Furthermore, I will determine problems of a social theory that is based on an individualistic ontology more generally.     

Class analysis from a normative perspective

Distinguishing between an explanatory and a normative interest in social stratification, this paper considers the relation between class analysis and the value of equality. Starting from the familiar distinction between (in)equality of position and (in)equality of opportunity, and noting the extent to which mobility research focuses on the latter, it suggests that class positions can themselves be characterized in terms of the opportunities they yield to those occupying them. This enables the clear identification of the kinds of inequality that are and are not addressed by research findings presented in terms of class categories and odds ratios. The significance of those findings from a normative perspective is then discussed, and their limitations are emphasized--though the paper also explains in what ways they are indeed of normative relevance.     

Ethical–aesthetic critique of moral organization: Inspirations from Michael Haneke's cinematic work

This paper looks at the work of the Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke as an inspiration for developing an ethical–aesthetic critique of organization. Haneke's practice of film-making is located in the tradition of an ‘ethical parrhesia’, the courageous and often dangerous ‘truth-telling’, which aims at the transformation of being. Haneke's approach is then illustrated with an analysis of his film The White Ribbon. This example is taken to illustrate an ethical critique of moral organization and for analysing strategies that seek to instigate the open-ended moral reflection. By discussing implications of this form of critique, the paper contributes to the development of a critical aesthetics of organization that seeks to open a reflexive space on how we are formed in social and organizational life, and at what costs.     

MODERN TIMES: RELIGION,CONSECRATION AND THE STATE IN BOURDIEU

Bourdieu held that the state in modernity has become the primary agent of consecration, ‘the legitimation and naturalization of social difference’, a function formerly performed largely by religion. After clarifying the role of ‘religion’ in Bourdieu's work, this paper brings two empirical issues into dialogue with his ideas: social fragmentation in late-modernity, and the relation between temporalization and social structures in medieval and early-modern charity. His view that religion is anachronistic, that it was left behind by modernization misses its continuing, even increasing, importance. He overemphasized the centrality and authority of the state in modernity and distinguished too sharply between pre-modern gifting and modern market relations. Once these limitations are mitigated, Bourdieu's analysis can be redirected to account for the importance of religion as an agent of consecration globally today.     

Problems of the Healthy Lifestyle Discourse

Strategies for the prevention of disease and the promotion of health have a long history of individual-level interventions with the promotion of ‘healthy lifestyles’ being the primary target. The focus at an individual level devoid of social context has provoked a sociological critique of the prevailing healthy lifestyle discourse. This critique emphasises the social causes of health-related attitudes and behaviours in society, and the ideology of individual responsibility and ‘victim blaming’ that an individualist approach entails. At the same time, the prevailing notion of ‘health’ has been scrutinised within the framework of health promotion stressing a definition emphasising well-being and quality of life. This ‘positive’ definition of health broadens the possible reach of ‘healthy lifestyles’. Theoretical models emphasising structural aspects of the lifestyle construct have been produced. In this article, it is argued that while these models are based on the work of Bourdieu and his concept of habitus, they nevertheless overlook the importance of power and symbolic dominance in relation to the construction of ‘healthy’ and the understanding of lifestyles.     

Recognition and judgement in social work

The purpose of this article is to argue for recognition as a normative ideal for social work and to confront the ideal with the reality found in the social institutions. I shall use the concept ‘judgement’ to describe institutional routines and ways of thinking which constitute barriers to recognition. In the first part, I outline the normative ideal and show its relevance for practical social work on the basis of social clients’ experiences of disrespect. In the second, I explain the concept of judgement and criticise the prevailing forms of judgement to be found in social institutions. In my interpretation these pose an obstacle to recognition.     

Figured Worlds in the Field of Power

This article seeks to deepen our understanding of how structural relations of power should be understood in local accounts of activity and identity. Thus, we critically review the synthesis of Bourdieu and activity theory in Figured Worlds, analyzing two critiques of Bourdieu: his insufficient localism and his overemphasis on embodiment of habitus. We are left with Bourdieu’s overwhelming concern to explain how the field of power is locally refracted and critique its doxa in a field of opinion, while arguably doing so at the expense of imagination, self-authoring, and world making. We conclude with our own suggestions of a synthesis.     

Eros in the field? Bourdieu's double account of socialized desire

In his later works, Bourdieu draws extensively on psychoanalytic approaches in accounting for his concept of socialized subjectivity as bound to the social world by an intense affective grip. This emotional turn holds potential for further developing Bourdieu's account of subjectivity as a formation of socialized desire. However, in accounting for this socialized desire, Bourdieu relapses into a dualism of subjective and objective structures, incompatible with the Merleau‐Pontyian roots of his practice theory. Tracing this problem to the antagonism between desire and culture in the psychoanalytic accounts that Bourdieu draws on, I propose that the psychoanalytic scholar Hans Loewald's account of Eros may enable a move beyond this impasse, offering a promising conceptual basis for taking further the account of socialized subjectivity and socialized desire in Bourdieu's practice theory.