Date: Fri, 01 Mar 1996 14:42:04 +0100
From: Bengt Carlsson <bengtc-AT-algonet.se>
Subject: Re: Bourdieu Seminar report


At 12.14 96-02-29 -0500, you wrote:
>
>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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>
Why not think about fields as battle-fields? A field is constituted of
people who are battling over something. Like the social value of sociology.
They fight for and protected their work against other displines, and they
fight among themselves over the right meaning of sociology. To be a member
of sociology-field, you have to think sociology is worth fighting for.

My french could be much better, but I think Bourieu uses the word "champ",
which more clearly have this double meaning of field and battlefield.

Regards

Bengt Carlsson

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