Showing papers on "Field (Bourdieu) published in 2011"

Social Network Analysis: History, Theory and Methodology

Abstract: We live in a world that is paradoxically small and vast: each of us is embedded in local communities and yet we are only a few 'links' away from anyone else in the world. This engaging book represents these interdependencies' positive and negative consequences, their multiple effects and the ways in which a local occurrence in one part of the world can directly affect the rest. Then it demonstrates precisely how these interactions and relationships form. This is a book for the social network novice on learning how to study, think about and analyse social networks; the intermediate user, not yet familiar with some of the newer developments in the field; and the teacher looking for a range of exercises, as well as an up-to-date historical account of the field. It is divided into three sections: 1. Historical & Background Concepts 2. Levels of Analysis 3. Advances, Extensions and Conclusions The book provides a full overview of the field - historical origins, common theoretical perspectives and frameworks; traditional and current analytical procedures and fundamental mathematical equations needed to get a foothold in the field.

Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Prizefighter

Abstract: This article recounts how I took up the ethnographic craft; stumbled upon the Chicago boxing gym that is the central scene and character of my field study of prizefighting in the black American ghetto; and designed the book Body and Soul so as to both deploy methodologically and elaborate empirically Pierre Bourdieu's signal concept of habitus. Habitus is the topic of investigation: the book dissects the forging of the corporeal and mental dispositions that make up the competent pugilist in the crucible of the gym. It is also the tool of investigation: the practical acquisition of those dispositions by the analyst serves as technical vehicle for better penetrating their social production and assembly. The apprenticeship of the sociologist is a methodological mirror of the apprenticeship undergone by the empirical subjects of the study; the former is mined to dig deeper into the latter and unearth its inner logic and subterranean properties; and both in turn test the robustness and fruitfulness of habitus ...

A field study examination of budgetary participation and locus of control

Abstract: Revision of his Participation in budgeting, locus of control and organizational effectiveness : a field extension, 1980.

Mapping out the field of equality and diversity: Rise of individualism and voluntarism

Abstract: Drawing on 66 interviews with key actors in the equality and diversity field in the UK, we operationalize Bourdieu’s conception of the field, across the axes of individualism versus collectivism and regulation versus voluntarism, and map out the location of the key actors in this field. The contribution of this article is three-fold. First, we advance the understanding of the equality and diversity field at national level by analysing the accounts of the influential actors, whose interests and actions shape the field. Second, the article illustrates how the multi-actor and contested nature of the equality and diversity field manifests in these accounts, and presents evidence in support of policy and strategic thinking that goes beyond a single-actor focus. Finally, we contribute to the theoretical maturity and expansion of the equality and diversity scholarship through the use of Bourdieuan sociology.

Doctor in the lead: balancing between two worlds:

Abstract: The article examines the leadership of department heads in a university hospital in day-to-day practice. These ‘doctors in the lead’ bridge the medical and the management world in the hospital organization.They are better able to influence their colleagues’ clinical activities than a non-medical manager. This is, however not a trouble-free task. The concepts of Pierre Bourdieu—habitus, field and capital—guide the analysis of empirical material. The medical habitus influences the questions and dilemmas department heads face, as well as the ways in which they can exert influence on their colleagues. ‘Janus-faced’ they look at the medical and the management world with their two different logics. Sometimes they display managerial behaviour, but the medical habitus remains their second nature. Based on these findings we argue that the formal hierarchy of the hospital organization should be brought more in line with the informal professional hierarchy.

Professionalism as symbolic capital: Materials for a Bourdieusian theory of professionalism

Abstract: Pierre Bourdieu has given a brief but fierce critique of the concept of “profession” that calls for a more reflexive analysis of the professions and in fact suggests not using the concept at all. In this contribution, we explicate the gist of that critique and argue it is possible to analyze it in a Bourdieusian fashion. We regard professionalism as a form of symbolic capital, the substance of which is constantly at stake in power-driven contexts, both internally and externally. Professional fields are embedded in objective relations with other fields in what Bourdieu describes as a general field of power. Within each professional field, the legitimate substance of what it means to act in a “professional way” is constantly at stake. In turn, across various professional fields, within what Bourdieu describes as a larger field of power, the very idea or “formal content” of “professionalism” is subject to struggle and (re)negotiation. This power-centered view emphasizes professionalism is a scarce symbolic resource, an object of a process of consecration and a source of legitimate forms of acting and interpreting. It thereby de-essentializes talk of professions and professionalization.

Bourdieu, Historicity, and Historical Sociology:

Abstract: This article examines Bourdieu’s contributions to history and historical sociology. Bourdieu has often been misread as an ahistorical ‘reproduction theorist’ whose work does not allow for diachronic change or human agency. The article argues that both reproduction and social change, constraint and freedom, are at the heart of Bourdieu’s project. Bourdieu’s key concepts – habitus, field, cultural and symbolic capital – are all inherently historical. Bourdieu deploys his basic categories using a distinctly historicist social epistemology organized around the ideas of conjuncture, contingency, overdetermination, and radical discontinuity. The origins of Bourdieu’s historicism are traced to his teachers at the Ecole Normale Superieure and to the long-standing aspirations among French historians and sociologists to unify the two disciplines. The historical nature of Bourdieu’s work is also signalled by its pervasive influence on historians and the historical work of his former students and colleagues. Bourdieu allowed sociology to historicize itself to a greater extent than other French sociologists.

Entrepreneurship as an integrating mechanism for disadvantaged persons

Abstract: This paper theorises about a specific facet of social entrepreneurship, namely, the integration of disadvantaged persons into the field of entrepreneurship. Drawing from Bourdieu's theory of practice, the authors conceive of this integration as a power-laden process that reflects normative expectations imposed by field incumbents on entrants to the field that require them to both comply with and challenge existing field arrangements. Propositions outline the desirability and ability of disadvantaged persons to meet these expectations.

The Emergence of an Influential Practice: Food for Thought

Abstract: How do influential practices initially emerge? Bourdieu’s work offers an approach to answering this question and connecting local micro and field-level macro phenomena. We empirically build on this framework to analyse how the practice of using vegetables as gastronomic ingredients emerged in the field of haute cuisine at three-star chef Alain Passard’s Arpege restaurant. Based on multilevel and longitudinal data, we describe the practice and account for its emergence based on Passard’s habitus and his position in the field of haute cuisine. Our research contributes to the practice-based literature by highlighting the complicity between the agent and the field, and it contributes to institutional theory-based studies by accounting for the genesis of a new influential practice initiated by an individual insider.

Reflexivity and the Construction of the International Object: The Case of Human Rights

Abstract: Recent years have seen a surge of interest in applying the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu in international studies as part of a more general sociological turn observable in both international and European studies. However, different from earlier attempts at deploying Bourdieusian sociology in the context of international law, economics, and politics, most of this new Bourdieu-inspired constructivist political science research only marginally addresses what in many ways was the cardinal point of Bourdieu's work: his attempt at devising a reflexive sociology. This article's basic claim is that the most significant contribution Bourdieusian sociology can make to international (and European) studies is not achieved by adaptation or transplantation of key concepts (field, habitus, and so on) to a set of research objects that remain by and large predefined by other disciplines. Instead, I contend that it is by deploying the underlying sociological practice of Bourdieusian sociology to international objects in terms of conducting a reflexive sociology of the international. To substantiate my claim, I make three more specific arguments. In the first section, I argue for the need for “objectivizing” the research object in terms of “double reflexivity” with respect to both object and researcher. In the second part, I suggest that key Bourdieusian notions are precisely tools for this scientific operation by providing a relational and integrative approach. In the third part, I compare this approach with a cross section of research on international human rights and thereby suggest how it provides a different reading of the international.

Untimely Russia: Hysteresis in Russian-Western Relations over the Past Millennium

Abstract: This article draws on Pierre Bourdieu's sociology to explain how a lack of fit between a repertoire of bodily practices accumulated through history, on the one hand, (here, Russian habitus) and the field in which it is employed, on the other, (here, diplomacy) can take shape in world politics. Such “hysteresis” provides a longue duree reading that challenges both the realist idea that similar outcomes are due to invariant structures and the constructivist idea that structures “socialize” states. Social stability stems from agency, more specifically, from habitus. Our empirical examples are breaking points in Russian relations with neighbors: the Rus’ and the Eurasian steppe empires (ca. 800–1500), Muscovy's diplomatic interactions with Europe, and Russia's bid to join European international society and situation during the twentieth century. In each case, Moscow's relentless quest for equal status prompted quixotic practices that were often dismissed by Western countries and hampered the security of both ...

Bringing Pierre Bourdieu to Science and Technology Studies

Abstract: For many years, the most high profile work in science and technology studies (STS) did not theorize the place of power in the scientific field Scholars were not inclined to explore the extent to which the social organization of science affects who the winners and losers are in technoscientific struggles This began to change in the 1990s and recent years have seen a wide array of scholarship which explicitly or implicitly treats the scientific field, to paraphrase Pierre Bourdieu, as a field like any other, with its struggles, interests and distributions of power (eg, Frickel and Moore 2006; Kleinman 2003) Despite this growing attention to power, struggle, and inequality in science, relatively few scholars have integrated the conceptual tools developed by Pierre Bourdieu into their work (but see Albert et al 2008, 2009; Cooper 2009; Fourcade 2009; Hong, 2008; Kim 2009) The essays in this volume explicitly engage Bourdieu in their STS scholarship and set a provocative foundation for further work in the area In this introductory essay, we explore how major figures in STS conceptualize the scientific field and power within it We point to what we believe are some of the limitations in that work Finally, we outline a Bourdieusian perspective on technoscience and suggest how Bourdieu’s concepts might be profitably drawn on in STS scholarship

Is information systems a discipline? Foucauldian and Toulminian insights

Abstract: Following the Kleinian spirit, this study takes a critical view of the existing orthodoxy within information systems (IS) and reframes the ongoing discussion concerning the intellectual core, identity and disciplinary status of IS using the disciplinary analysis of Michel Foucault and Stephen Toulmin. Instead of limiting the discussion to specific paradigms, topics, subjects or content, it focuses on the characteristics, rules and goals of IS as an academic field. A disciplinary lens is used to frame what it means to be a field, discipline and science, and in the process the study uncovers four doxas that have shaped the development of the IS field: (1) the IS research community sees no difference between fields, disciplines or sciences; (2) IT changes so rapidly, and thus the IS field needs to change to remain relevant; (3) disciplines are by definition rigid, inflexible and uni-theoretical and (4) because IS is pluralistic, IS should not become a discipline. This study's analyses of the IS field's discursive formation and intellectual ideals offer novel perspectives that allow for the integration of the IS field's plurality and diversity. To transform the IS field from its multimodal existence into a vibrant, diverse, academically and socially relevant and influential discipline, the study proposes actionable strategies that include (1) agreeing on the intellectual ideals for IS, (2) focusing on conceptual formation, (3) focusing on theory construction, (4) erecting genealogical boundaries and (5) fostering the development of professional bodies.

Habitus, work and contributive justice

Abstract: The article explores the benefits of relating Bourdieu’s critical analysis of inequalities and domination to the theory of contributive justice. The latter is a normative theory concerning divisions of labour between jobs of different qualities that provide their holders with unequal possibilities for realizing their potential. Both approaches have Aristotelian influences in their emphasis on the development of dispositions and abilities through practice. It is argued that while this theory needs to consider the shaping of the habitus in early life prior to entry into the labour market, the concept of the unequal division of labour highlights a key structuring force of the social field. In so doing it makes explicit some justifications for Bourdieu’s critique of symbolic domination and the struggles of the social field that are left largely implicit in his work.

The role of familial habitus in shaping children's views of their future employment

Abstract: As the field of Geographies of Children, Youth and Families grows and diversifies as a testament to the active and vigorous interest in this area of research, the collection of papers presented wit...

Social capital in the field of power: the case of Norway

Abstract: This paper offers an analysis of social capital structures in the field of power, based on data from the Norwegian Power and Democracy Survey on elites, conducted in 2000. Separating between objectified, institutionalised, embodied and inherited social capital, we argue in favor of a Bourdieu-inspired approach, which necessitates an analysis of the relations between social capital and the other forms of capital. In order to explore these relations, and also patterns of homogeneity and heterogeneity in the field, we use specific multiple correspondence analysis and ascending hierarchical cluster analysis. This allows us to combine the description of network relations with a more finegrained analysis of capital structures. Firstly, we find that the level of institutionalised social capital varies from one fraction of the Norwegian elite to another. Political parties and business leaders are the most connected to other sectors, while church leaders are the least connected. Secondly, the range of networks established through previous work experiences is related to field seniority. The global volume of institutionalised social capital is, however, related to the opposition between political/organisational positions and judicial/military positions. Thirdly, the figurations of highest endogamy are situated in the religious field, and to a lesser extent, in the scientific fields, and in the police and the judicial sector. Finally, the 'core of the core' is defined by actors who are strongly interconnected inside what is called "the tripartite system", with a high level of multipositionality and intersectorial connections. The paper concludes by emphasising the need to examine the familial and historical dimensions of various social capital accumulation patterns, capital compositions and conversion strategies, claiming that this will help us to better understand the long term formation of stable elite positions and elite dynasties.

Localizing the Internet: An Anthropological Account

Abstract: At a critical time of democratic reform across many parts of Southeast Asia, Subang Jaya is regarded as Malaysia's electronic governance laboratory. The focus of the study is Subang Jaya's field of residential affairs, a digitally mediated social field in which residents, civil servants, politicians, online journalists and other social agents struggle over how the locality is to be governed at the dawn of the Information Era.A" Drawing on the field theories of both Pierre Bourdieu and the Manchester School of political anthropology, this study challenges the unquestioned predominance of networkA" and communityA" as the two key sociation concepts in contemporary Internet studies. The analysis extends field theory in four new directions, namely the complex articulations between personal networking and social fields, the uneven diffusion and circulation of new field technologies and contents, intra- and inter-field political crises, and the emergence of new forms of residential sociality.

Leadership as an elite field: Scottish banking leaders and the crisis of 2007-2009

Abstract: This paper addresses the question of the apparent auto-destructive behaviour of the leaders of the Scottish banks in the period 2005—2008. We apply Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital to a corpus of textual sources to identify how leaders of these organisations competed with each other for leadership capital. We therefore show, through analysis of a series of historically situated crises, how competition between senior banking leaders for positions of domination within the field of elite banking in Scotland, the UK and globally, eventually contributed to the destruction of the banks themselves as independent institutions. We believe that this Bourdieusian approach to leader—leader relations can offer some explanation of the apparently ‘irrational’ behaviours of the banking leaders in the economic crisis of 2005—2008.

Aportes del enfoque de las representaciones sociales al campo de la educación

Abstract: The article examines the relations between the field of study of education and the field of study of social representations. Its aim is to show the relevance...

Interstitial Power in Fields of Limited Statehood: Introducing a “Weak Field” Approach to the Study of Transnational Settings

Abstract: How does field theory unfold at the transnational level? How tailored is it to weakly differentiated international settings featured by limited statehood? By raising such questions, I do not wish to echo the analyses of those who consider that Pierre Bourdieu's work as quintessentially “franco-centric” and, as such, incapable of producing fruitful research hypotheses beyond its initial context of emergence. As Loic Wacquant has argued in his foreword to the English edition of The State Nobility , questioning in terms of “field of power” offers “a systematic research program on any national field of power provided that the American (British, Japanese, Brazilian, etc.) reader carries out the work of transposition” (Wacquant in Bourdieu 1996[1989]). In fact, the large range of usages of Bourdieu's theoretical toolbox suffices to prove its value when applied to or confronted with other cultures or other time periods. It may even be argued that such heuristic qualities are particularly relevant to the study of international affairs. Here, more than in any other research domain, there is a need to consider power relations beyond the political and administrative sites of command and to consider the wider set of competing institutions, professions, and resources in which power (forms of domination and types of legitimacy) is defined and actually operates. Here more than in any other research domain, there is a need to counter the effects of disembodied historical accounts of reified collectives (“states,” “NGOs,” “international courts,” “experts,” “politicians,” “civil servants”) colliding with one another. As field theory populates these institutions with competing actors and tracks their socialization, personal trajectories, and professional careers, it proves particularly suited to unveil transnational and cross-sector circulation of ideas and models. As such, it is a powerful research device when it comes to tracing the socio-genesis of transnational institutions and groups as …

The research practice of practice research : theorizing and situational inquiry

Abstract: An approach to practice research is presented. The main ideas of practice research is 1) to consider the empirical field in terms of practices, 2) to develop knowledge through situational inquiries ...

Field Analysis and Interdisciplinary Science: Scientific Capital Exchange in Behavior Genetics

Abstract: This paper uses Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to develop tools for analyzing interdisciplinary scientific fields. Interdisciplinary fields are scientific spaces where no single form of scientific capital has a monopoly and therefore multiple forms of scientific capital constitute the structures and stakes of scientific competition. Scientists compete to accumulate and define forms of scientific capital and also to set the rates of exchange between them. The paper illustrates this framework by applying it to the interdisciplinary field of behavior genetics. Most behavior geneticists envision their participation in the field as a means to compete for scientific capital in other fields. However, the scientific capital of behavior genetics has different values for scientists attempting to deploy it in different neighboring fields. These values depend on situations in each field and the ways behavior genetics mediates relationships among them. The pattern of relationships of exchange helps explain the social hierarchy and several features of knowledge production within behavior genetics.

From Bourdieu to Cultural Sociology

Abstract: This paper offers an account of Bourdieu’s rise to sociological ‘stardom’ in the last 30 years, giving special attention to the transnational dimensions of this process. It discusses the scope and relevance of his work to the field (in the making) of cultural sociology, showing how he contributed to its current form. It also presents the articles which constitute the contents of the journal special issue. The paper insists on the importance of assessing both the virtues and limits of Bourdieu’s intellectual legacy through the means of historicization and sociological self-understanding, these being preconditions that allow the furthering of the ‘progress of reason’ which Bourdieu himself located as at the core of scientific endeavours.