File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0004, message 32


Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 22:39:40 +0100
From: Karl Maton <karl.maton-AT-dtn.ntl.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: Neglect of Bhaskar/Philosophy of Science



> A key part of Pierre Bourdieu's project seems to be informing the
> formulation of social scientific questions with epistemological questions,
> particularly in the philosophy of science.

I'm intrigued by this, as someone who uses both Bhaskar and Bourdieu.  I
would describe Bourdieu as someone interested in epistemology, but not
someone who can offer an epistemology, whatever he might proclaim. 
Without going into it in too much depth here, Bourdieu offers a
sociology of knowledge in place of epistemology.  It was in fact for
this very reason that I first turned to critical realism.  

> Bourdieu (at least in "The Craft of Sociology") discusses the work of the
> sociologist as a kind of practice, an intervention in the real that (under
> ideal conditions) creates a dynamic interplay between theoretical
> constructs and empirical observation, a practice that has effects (good or
> bad/desirable or undesirable) in the entire field of social practices.
> 
> Despite Bourdieu's avowed anti-ontological stance, he seems to be close to
> a lot of CR ideas about the social sciences, the historical situatedness of
> knowledge construction and the intransitive aspects of the real that
> condition it etc.

I always struggle to find any notion of the intransitive in Bourdieu's
work.  Don't get me wrong, I find his approach immensely useful, but he
tends to emphasise the transitive, the socially and historically
situated aspects of knowledge. 

> So Bourdieu's innovations in reflexive sociology might be one tangent for
> the introduction of CR ideas to the social sciences.

As I say above, I use Bourdieu's field approach, but I find his
'reflexive epistemology' of little help in enabling one to avoid the
Mannheimian problems of the sociology of knowledge.  I agree entirely,
though, that his relationist sociology (like that of Elias, for example)
is very compatible with CR.  Indeed, my theoretical framework builds
upon PB, CR, along with Bernstein, Boudon and a touch of Elias.  

But, though I don't want to sound anti-PB, I do want to sound a note of
concern about PB's 'epistemology' which, IMHO, ultimately suffers the
same problems that Popper so forcefully demolished in Mannheim's
approach.  

With best wishes,

Karl 

Karl Maton
School of Education, University of Cambridge

Correspondence address:
108 Avenue Road Extension, Leicester LE2 3EH
Tel: 0116 220 1066
Email: karl.maton-AT-dtn.ntl.com
Email: karl-AT-criticalrealism.com

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and
the truth of the imagination
Keats


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