Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 12:14:22 -0500
From: r36431-AT-nobel.si.uqam.ca (Yves Gingras)
Subject: Re: Bourdieu Seminar report



First thanks to Alan Hudson for his report on Bourdieu's talk at Cambridge.

I would like to comment that I do not think that it is "circular" to
maintain that "the field extends as far as it is useful for it to be
extended for
the purposes of understanding what is going on", because it is a matter of
historical development and each field has its own history, so that there
can be no a priori way to define the "boundaries", which are in fact
contested by the actors themselves. This question is like the one about the
"reative autonomy" of fields: it depends on time and place. It can be high
in a given period (think of science after 1945) and low at another (think
of science now). Bourdieu's approach suggest a social history of the
dynamic of fields.  I think the same applies to the the question of
"regions": it is the result of struggles between actors who want to define
space in a certain way (Think of "Quebec"!) and there is no absolute or a
priori definitions of boundaries. By the way there was a whole issue of
Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales devoted to the question of
regions (no 35 , 1980).

Thanks a gain for the report.

Yves Gingras
Departement d'histoire
Universite du Quebec a Montreal
Montreal, H3C 3P8




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