Showing papers by "Michèle Lamont published in 1998"

Book ReviewsFin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason. By Jeffrey C. Alexander. London: Verso, 1995. Pp. vii+231.

Abstract: Fin de Siècle Social Theory is Jeffrey Alexander’s response to recent development in sociological (and social) theorizing. In this book, the author tackles everything “post” and improved (including things modern, “anti,” and “neo”). At the request of the book review editor, I will only comment on the chapter that has not been previously published and which makes up almost half of the book, the author’s attaque en règle on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This is true, genuine, feisty, polemical Alexander, and he takes no prisoners. His argument can be schematized as follows. (1) Bourdieu’s critique of structuralism and attempt to restore agency ignores the tradition of practical action theory (namely Peircian pragmatism), with the result that he inflates the originality of his own theoretical contribution while turning structuralism into a “vulgarized enemytradition” (p. 135). (2) His concept of habitus “binds actors tightly to the social world” (p. 143) and downplays the relative autonomy of culture (i.e., the existence of universalistic ideals that can be generalized across contexts and exist beyond the hierarchical structures of material life). In a provocative and original comparison between Bourdieu’s work and psychoanalytic and developmental theories of the self (p. 145), Alexander argues that in the former, there is no self or moral choice possible since a critical distance from social structure cannot be attained. (3) Bourdieu conceptualizes action as only cognitive and strategic, at the exclusion of communication and collective obligations; affective dispositions and symbolic schemas cannot be motivational sources for action, only “practice as profit-seeking.” (4) Similarly, Bourdieu’s concept of field is reductionist because it presumes a homology between field dynamic and broader social relations. (5) Bourdieu’s empirical work is primarily a means to elaborating discursive commitments. It suffers from the same problems as the theoretical work, namely “the impoverished understanding of meaning, the caricature of motivation, the inability to conceptualize the interplay of sensible self and differentiated institutions in contemporary society” (p. 171). (6) Bourdieu’s critical theory is not critical because it leaves no room for differentiating between democratic and totalitarian societies and for capturing the place of moral judgment and deliberation in the public sphere. (7) Bourdieu is less original than he claims because, in fact, he is a closet neo-Marxist who “conceives of actors as motivated by a structure of disposition which merely translates material structures into the subjective domain” (p. 136). Responding to Alexander’s polemical spirit, Bourdieu aficionados will undoubtedly take exception to many of his interpretations, grounding their own reading in the sanctioned guidelines that Bourdieu kindly provides. A fair and dispassionate assessment of the merit of each critical