Reflexivity and its Consequences

TL;DR: The work of Pierre Bourdieu owes much of its distinctive qualities to its reflexive character, to the incisive and recurrent analysis of what it means to practise social science, to be an academic, or to speak out as an intellectual as mentioned in this paper.

Abstract: The work of Pierre Bourdieu owes much of its distinctive qualities to its reflexive character, to the incisive and recurrent analysis of what it means to practise social science, to be an academic, or to speak out as an intellectual. The sociology of the intellectual world for Bourdieu is not so much a particular research specialty as an indispensable precondition for social scientific research. Reflexivity in this sense is a working method, recognizable in all of his various undertakings, whether they concern his research and teaching, the publishing of Liber and Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, or his current activities in finding ways to redefine and revive the critical role of intellectuals.1 If, in contrast to this reflexive stance, there is anything lacking in Bourdieu’s writings, it is indeed the plain and spontaneous adherence to the established intellectual models. Bourdieu never quite identified himself with what was readily available, neither with the professorial fate of the academic specialist, nor with the Sartrean figure of the ‘total intellectual’. For a young French philosopher, originating from a province at about maximum distance from the capital, who had made it to the Ecole normale superieure, it was rather unusual, to say the least, to start ethnographic and sociological fieldwork in Algeria. Bourdieu’s subsequent work, marked by an unfailing refusal of the predominant dichotomies (theory/ research, objectivism/subjectivism, holism/individualism), testifies to the same unease with the primary divisions of the academic universe. His inability and unwillingness to be satisfied with the existing options is aptly illustrated by the dictum he quotes from Karl Krauss, the Viennese critic and writer: ‘Were I forced to choose between two evils, I would choose neither one’ (Bourdieu, 1997: 129). This inclination, visible in his way of constructing sentences and developing arguments, is at the root of acclaimed innovations in various research fields, and has, more generally, led him to conceive of social science as a reflexive endeavour. Bourdieu’s use of neither-nor reasoning is no rhetorical device, commonly employed to nestle oneself comfortably in the middle of two (often fictitious) extremes, but a way of gaining distance from the dominant views, allowing a reflection upon what is at stake for whom, and why some things are conceivable from one point of view, whereas others are not. This reflexive urge, which simultaneously questions a specific object and those who question the object in question, is present from his earliest work onwards. European Journal of Social Theory 2(3): 298–306