Pierre Bourdieu: theorizing the digital

ABSTRACT

Pierre Bourdieu is known for his research in the areas of education and cultural stratification that led to a number of theoretical contributions informing the social sciences. Bourdieu’s interrelated concepts of field, capital, and habitus have become central in many approaches to inequality and stratification across the social sciences. In addition, we argue that Bourdieu’s ideas also feature in what is increasingly known as ‘digital sociology.’ To underscore this claim, we explore the ways in which Bourdieu’s ideas continue to have a major impact on social science research both on and with digital and Internet-based technologies. To do so, we offer a review of both Bourdieusian theorizing of the digital vis-à-vis both research on the social impacts of digital communication technologies and the application of digital technologies to social science research methods. We contend that three interconnected features of Bourdieu’s sociology have allowed his approach to flourish in the digital age: (1) his theories’ inseparability from the practice of empirical research; (2) his ontological stance combining realism and social constructionism; and (3) his familiarity with concepts developed in other disciplines and participation in interdisciplinary collaborative projects. We not only reason that these three factors go some way in accounting for Bourdieu’s influence in many sociological subfields, but we also suggest that they have been especially successful in positioning Bourdieusian sociology to take advantage of opportunities associated with digital communication technologies.     

The Science of Practice and the Practice of Science: Pierre Bourdieu and the History of Science

Pierre Bourdieu is one of the most celebrated and widely known French sociologists of his time. During his long and very productive career, Bourdieu worked not only on very diverse areas of sociology, such as art, religion, the legal system, and education, but also on the culture of the Kabyle, on the marriage strategies of bachelors in Southern France, and on the sociology of the French intellectuals of his era. However, despite his international influence, his work has remained virtually unutilized within most contemporary historiography of science. This article aims to fill this lacuna. After a short presentation of his main theoretical concepts, I discuss Bourdieu's work on scientific practice. I then present his more historically oriented work and finish by suggesting some ways Bourdieu's insights can be useful for history of science.     

Pierre Bourdieu: Economic models against economism

The use of economic analogies by Bourdieu has often been the object of much criticism. For some scholars, it reveals an “economistic” vision of the social world too much inspired by neoclassical economics. For others, it is a kind of mechanical metaphor transposed to cultural phenomena in a determinist way, as in the holistic (Marxist) tradition. To understand this usage and to refute these contradictory criticisms, we return to and focus on the very first occurrences in the 1958–1966 period – the focus of our article – of what Bourdieu would call a “general economy of practices” in his book Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique. Two central aspects, often forgotten by critics, are presented here: first, the close but very particular link between his work and economics as a growing scientific discipline during these years; second, the criticisms Bourdieu makes of the economic model as a general scientific tool for the social sciences. If one insists only on one of the two sides of the coin, one risks misunderstanding Bourdieu’s original scientific habitusand intellectual project. By contrast, this “double” position opens the possibility of an “integrated” vision of social and economic factors of practices, thanks to the introduction of the “cultural” and above all the “symbolic” dimensions of social life.     

In memoriam: Pierre Bourdieu 1930–2002

Theory and Society -     

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.     

The historical universal: the role of cultural value in the historical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu

Best known for his pioneering study Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, in which the aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness is accounted for as the expression of a class ethos, Bourdieu has become something of an icon of relativism. In thus effecting a Bakhtinian 'discrowning' of official hierarchies of the arts, he is often celebrated for his concern to place all tastes, popular and high, on a similar footing, equally rooted in specific class practices. Only a careless inattention could support such a conclusion. From his early interventions in French cultural policy debates up to and including The Rules of Art and Pascalian Meditations (1996), Bourdieu has consistently repudiated the view that a sociological approach to questions of aesthetic judgment must result in a levelling form of relativism. In exploring why this should be so, this paper considers the issues at stake in the forms of 'historical universalism' that are associated with Bourdieu's account of the autonomy of the aesthetic sphere. It does so with a view to identifying some of the difficulties underlying his understanding of sociology as a historical practice.     

Pierre Bourdieu and the sociology of religion: A central and peripheral concern

Although some of Bourdieu’s most basic concepts have their roots in the sociology of religion, religion itself has, in appearance, only a marginalized status within his work. This article focuses on the genesis of religious field and how the theories of Durkheim, Mauss, and Weber fold into the notion of field defined by Bourdieu. Religious field must be understood within the symbolic economy as well; divisions of symbolic labor are therefore discussed in relation to segmented and non-segmented societies. Finally, Bourdieu’s analysis of institutions, in particular the Catholic Church, further help us understand the use and evolution of religious field in his work and shed light on the sociologist’s understanding of the movement from religious beliefs toward aesthetic ones.     

For a probabilistic sociology: A history of concept formation with Pierre Bourdieu

Theory and Society - This article uses a history of concept formation focused on Pierre Bourdieu’s probabilism to provide the groundwork for a probabilistic sociology. We argue that not only...     

Suburban class habitus: applying Pierre Bourdieu’s visual sociology to the city

Streetscapes of two middle-upper-class suburbs in Melbourne, the State capital city of Victoria, Australia, are photographically compared. Selected pairs of pictures from each streetscape are discussed and contrasted, each pair being considered for how it illustrates one of the five aspects or dimensions in the chosen photographs from the respective suburbs. The near-similarity, yet subtle differences, seen from the street, in the housing and property facades in these suburbs, makes the comparison more difficult, but potentially more useful in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus manifesting not just in people as individuals but in their lived environment. This embodied class imperative is described in interpreting the selected photograph pairs as producing a suburban class habitus in how inhabitants inscribe suburban class distinction into where they live. Using photographs as a methodological tool like Bourdieu means that the point of these visual streetscape representations of each suburb is not summative, deploying the term as a neat or easy label, but aims to be consistent with Bourdieu’s approach as a way of investigating the complex socioeconomic and sociocultural mechanisms by which the naturalised class sense is expressed physically in these presentations of self from the street-views they offer.     

Pierre Bourdieu and intercultural education: it is not just about lack of knowledge about others

In response to the current intersection of pluralism, globalization, the histories and persistence of inequality in society and schools, and in response to well intended but potentially dangerous tendency toward the romantic versions of everyone’s points of views are valid and let us respect each other’s viewpoints in intercultural education, some intercultural educators are adamantly arguing that the goal of intercultural education must be to work against inequality and inhumanity linked to the system of domination and to foreground social justice. Joining the commitment of such intercultural educators within the framework of anti oppressive intercultural education, this essay shows how Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theoretical framework can help to problematize the psychologically based intercultural education that mainly focuses on benign differences. Using Bourdieu’s framework, the author demonstrates that the barrier to intercultural education is not just lack of knowledge about others, illuminates the process of intercultural exchange by at least partially unpacking the processes involved in representations and interpretations of differences in intercultural education, and suggests implications for anti oppressive intercultural education.     

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.

     

Making social work more Bourdieusian: why the social professions should critically engage with the work of Pierre Bourdieu

In recent years, some attempts have been made to ascertain if the work of the late Pierre Bourdieu has relevance for the work of social workers and others located in the social professions. It is important to support this exploration, but to expand it by also seeking to incorporate the overtly ‘political’ Bourdieu and to highlight some of the issues which preoccupied him. It is argued that his work, when viewed in a more rounded way, may contain a number of key ‘messages’ for social work in the early twenty-first century.     

The History of Social Thought and the History of Sociology

Abstract

Just as sociologists in the past have been insistent upon making a distinction between the history of social thought and sociological theory, so is it argued here than an equally important distinction be made between the history of social thought and the history of sociology. It is suggested that the history of social thought is no more useful to the advance of sociological theory than any other contiguously related field of study. Since the history of social thought is not directly concerned with the discipline of sociology, it is suggested that it be eliminated from the curricula of sociology. Not only is this area of study unlikely to contribute to the development of sociological theory but also such a study can have unanticipated consequences that hinder such a contribution. The genetic fallacy is less likely to be committed when the distinction between the history of social thought and the history of sociology is kept clearly in mind.     

Consumer Evaluation Research: Implications for Methodology,Social Policy,and the Role of the Sociologist*

Consumer evaluation research is defined and analyzed as an experimental model for establishing a link between social science research and public policy. The paper reports the results of an 18-month longitudinal study of an experimental citizen evaluation group. Participant observation was the method used to organize the data. The impact of the model on methodological issues, such as objectivity, researcher autonomy, and control over research decision-making, is discussed. Implications of the CER model for integrating social research and public policy formulation are analyzed.     

Social explanation and socialization: on Bourdieu and the structure, disposition, practice scheme

The standard narrative of the sociology of education accounts for the perpetuation of relative differentials in class access to education by a structure‐disposition‐practice scheme in which the central explanatory weight is carried by properties of socialized agents. The dominant scheme of this kind is now that inspired by Bourdieu. In this context, it is, therefore, appropriate to interrogate the competence of socialization in sociological explanations of social events and processes. The argument adopts a position of scientific and critical realism, and it is suggested that a realist sociology might find in Bourdieu's approach, notwithstanding specific theoretical and conceptual weaknesses, a framework strong enough to sustain the multilevel explanations of inequality/difference necessary in the sociology of education.     

Thinking with Bourdieu Against Bourdieu: A 'Practical' Critique of the Habitus

There are two strands in Bourdieu's sociological writings. On the one hand, Bourdieu argues for a theoretical position one might term his practical theory which emphasizes virtuosic interactions between individuals. On the other hand, and most frequently, Bourdieu appeals to the concept of the habitus according to which society consists of objective structures and determined—and isolated—individuals. Although Bourdieu believes that the habitus is compatible with his practical theory and overcomes the impasse of objectivism and subjectivism in social theory, neither claim is the case; the habitus is incompatible with his practical theory, and it retreats quickly into objectivism. However, Bourdieu's practical theory does offer a way out of the impasse of objectivism and subjectivism by focussing on the intersubjective interactions between individuals.