Bridget Fowler

Bio: Bridget Fowler is an academic researcher from University of Glasgow. The author has contributed to research in topics: Practice theory & Obituary. The author has an hindex of 16, co-authored 44 publications receiving 1231 citations.

Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory: Critical Investigations

Abstract: PART ONE: INTERPRETATIVE STUDIES Situating Bourdieu Cultural Theory and Sociological Perspectives Bourdieu's Cultural Theory Bourdieu, Postmodernism, Modernity The Historical Genesis of Bourdieu's Cultural Theory PART TWO: CRITICAL INVESTIGATIONS Bourdieu and Modern Art The Case of Impressionism The Popular and the Middlebrow Bourdieu, the Popular and the Periphery Conclusion

Reading pierre bourdieu's masculine domination : notes towards an intersectional analysis of gender, culture and class

Abstract: This article analyses Bourdieu's late work on masculine domination, in the context of his wider theory of practice. It assesses the logic of his argument and focuses particularly on the wide-ranging case he makes for women's complicity with such gender domination, alongside their opposition to it. The question of whether Bourdieu's sociology is unacceptably pessimistic about the possibilities for social transformation is then considered, taking up certain key contemporary debates about his work. The final section draws on Bourdieu's rudimentary sketches from various sources for an intersectionalist study of gender and class, deriving ultimately from the uncompromising exposure of economic and social interests in Distinction. Using independent evidence, it traces some of the less-remarked consequences of women's entry into well-paid employment on the labour market: not least, the impact of their work on the class structure and the recomposition of domestic labour on a class basis.

Reading Bourdieu on Society and Culture

Abstract: Introduction. Section I: Domination. Introduction to Section I. Thinking Feminism with and Against Bourdieu. Bourdieu, Social Suffering and Working--Class Life. Section II: Rationality and Politics in Bourdieu's Social Theory. Introduction to Section II. Reasons for Domination, Bourdieu vs. Habermas. A Militant Sociology: the Political Commitment of Pierre Bourdieu. Durkheim and Bourdieu: the Common Plinth and It's Cracks. Section III: The Sociolology of Culture. Introduction to Section III. Hidden Agenda Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton. A different Field of Vision: Gentleman and Players in Edinbugh, 1826--1851. The Mediated Manufacture of an 'Avant Garde': Bourdieusian Analysis of the Field of Contemporary Art in London, 1997--9. The English Intellectual Field in the 1790s and the Creative Project of Samuel Taylor Coleridge--an application of Bourdieu's Cultural Analysis. The Impact of Market Journalism: Pierre Bourdieu On the Media. Bourdieu and The Art Historians. Contributors. Index.

Women Architects and Their Discontents

Abstract: The article critically investigates recent assumptions that professional women are en route to equality with professional men by assessing the field of architecture as a case study. It addresses the poorer completion rates for women architectural students, together with the lower proportions of professionally registered and promoted women architects.The article explores, in particular, Bourdieu’s theories of gender divisions and higher professions as an explanatory grid for understanding these phenomena, deploying especially two late works, Masculine Domination (2001) and The State Nobility (1996). It is argued that the extended Bourdieusian theory of practice illuminates the interview data gathered from women architects, especially through its emphasis on a disposition to naturalize domination. While Bourdieu’s position is not without weaknesses, this theory sheds light on the difficulties women practitioners are found to face empirically, especially in combining architecture and parenting.

Nations and Nationalism

Abstract: Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Agency and Institutions: The Enabling Role of Individuals’ Social Position:

Abstract: Although early neo-institutional studies did not explicitly tackle the issue of agency, more recent studies about institutional entrepreneurship have brought it to the forefront. Institutional entrepreneur-ship has been presented as a promising way to account for institutional change endogenously. However, this notion faces the paradox of embedded agency. To overcome this paradox, it is necessary to explain under what conditions actors are enabled to act as institutional entrepreneurs. Some neo-institutional theorists have already addressed this issue. Their studies focus mainly on the organizational and organizational field levels of analysis. In this paper, I aim to complement their work by examining under what conditions individuals are more likely to engage in institutional entrepreneurship. By doing so, I take into account the individual level of analysis that neo-institutional theorists often tend to neglect. Relying on Bourdieu’s conceptualization of fields, I propose that individuals’ social posit...

Thinking with Bourdieu Against Bourdieu: A ‘Practical’ Critique of the Habitus

Abstract: 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.