Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 08:33:03 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Alan C. Hudson" <ach1005-AT-hermes.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Bourdieu Seminar report


Dear All,
	Having had the opportunity to see Pierre Bourdieu speak yesterday
I feel kind of obliged to share things with the discussion list. 
However, before doing so I should like to add that I am not in anyway 
setting myself up as an expert. 

My interest in Bourdieu and expertise in understanding what he's on 
about derives from certain resonances with my own work in the area of 
political economy, and particularly ideas about regulatory spaces 
(which resonate with the idea of fields for me). It may be that other 
people who were at today's seminar in the Social and Political Sciences 
Faculty at Cambridge University were there  too - they may well be able 
to correct or modify my dodgy and limited understandings of what 
Bourdieu was on about.

That said, what I want to do is just convey a bit about what he was 
talking about today.

The title of the seminar was 'cultural capital' but in the event Bourdieu 
talked about his general approach to sociology/social science and some of 
the concepts which he finds useful for understanding society. He basically 
presented his framework for understanding social processes and practices.

To begin he emphasized the importance of reflexivity, an importance which 
was illustrated by his use of personal examples - for instance about the 
field of French sociology of which he is a part.

He then talked about the notion of habitus, and the dispositions that an 
actor has by virtue of his/her habitus, socialization experience, and 
education in the broad sense.

He then talked about the idea of being 'out of place' and how being out 
of place, by diminsihing one's capacity to act without thinking about what 
you're doing might make one more observant about what's really going on 
- noting that the founding fathers of sociology were outsiders, Jews 
on the whole.

He then talked about the idea of fields, or social spaces - arenas in 
which there are collective expectations, or rules of the game. The metaphor of 
games was important throughout the seminar. He suggested that within a field 
each person is faced with an objective structure of expectations, and is in a 
way located on a landscape - relief map as he said - of chances or 
possibilities.

He suggested that in looking at society/social processes one ought to 
look at the field of forces, or the landscape, and the particle within it, 
using the metaphor of particles and fields within physics to mirror people and 
capitals in social science.

He then talked about the importance of understanding things within their 
field or context, and argued that it is important not to abstract social 
processes from their context if we want to understand them.

He argued that looking only at interaction between agents misses the 
point that interactions occur in particular fields/social spaces, on 
particular playing fields. He talked about fields as invisible structures 
which shape interactions - in effect action at a distance in the 
language of physics

He then talked about the three roles that agents play in society, as 
priests, prophets, and sorcerers. I must admit I was a bit lost here 
as I'm not very familiar with Weberian sociology.

However, he said that priests or people in analogous positions claim a 
monopoly on truth and are backed up by bureaucracies. 

I then thought he got kind of Habermasian, suggesting that social life 
wasn't necessarily about trying to get and justify a monopoly on truth or 
rightness, but that it may be about trying to reach some agreement 
about what is true.

The basic point here was that a focus on interaction neglects the 
underlying structures or fields. In my (political-economy/geography) 
language the field seems to be the same as the regulatory landscape, 
where regulation means both reglementation and regulation in French.

The question that came to me at this point was: does speaking, or living, 
make a claim to a particular position in social space?

Something he emphasized throughout was that his concepts derive from his 
empirical work and are not really that much use in the abstract. I think 
this is interesting as it kind of explains why on this list we've got such 
diverse interests with people interested in Bourdieu/language, 
Bourdieu/education, Bourdieu/political economy and so on.

In questions somebody asked how one decides where a certain field ends 
and another begins. An important question I think, and one which within 
geography is asked in terms of where a region ends and begins. His rather 
circular (?) answer was that if you take something (event or person) out 
of a field and the field's  makeup, its identity and the rules of its 
game don't change, then that thing  shouldn't have been in the field. 
This seemed to me a kind of pragmatic approach to defining fields. That 
is, the field extends as far as it is useful for it to be extended for 
the purposes of understanding what is going on.

He talked about structures as provisional balances of power, and in 
response to  a question about which structures were most important (is 
the economic  determinant in the last instance?) he responded that 
universal answers couldn't  be given and that it all depends on context 
and the specific case.

A question that always crops up with me is that if everything depends 
upon  context, and habitus is about unconscious dispositions to act in 
certain ways,  why bother trying to understand and explain society, why 
do social science, why not just live/practice? His response to this, I 
think, was that as fields and the  structures that shape fields are 
unconscious social science is about making the  implicit explicit and 
thus showing the possibilities for shaping fields and society in 
different ways.

Anyway, that's what I picked up from the talk. As I said I'm no expert, 
but  perhaps this will provoke some discussion amongst the list. I hope 
so anyway.

best wishes,
alan

*****************************************************************************
Alan C. Hudson,

Department of Geography,		and		Fitzwilliam College,
University of Cambridge,				Cambridge,
CB2 3EN,						CB3 0DG,
United Kingdom.						United Kingdom.

Tel: 	+ 44 (0) 1223 333349 (Department - Direct line)
Tel:	+44  (0) 1223 333399 (Department - General Office)
Fax: 	+ 44 (0) 1223 333392 (Department)
E-Mail: ach1005-AT-cam.ac.uk
*****************************************************************************


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