Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 20:04:51 +1100 (EST)
From: Maude Frances <mfrances-AT-extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>
Subject: Re: 


Jo Helle Valle quoted a sentence from Outline... , which s/he suggests is 
characterised by 'unnecessary complication and vagueness.' 

I agree, it is complicated - but I still have to disagree about its
vagueness. As I have argued previously I think that Bourdieu's apparently
convoluted sentences are, when broken down, very precise. In the present
case it could be read: 'The conjuncture capable of transforming practices
...into collective action ...is constituted in the dialectical
relationship between ... a habitus ...and ... an objective event which
exerts its action of conditional stimulation calling for or demanding a
determinate response, only on those who are disposed to constitute it as
such because they are endowed with a determinate type of dispositions [the
rest of the sentence is in brackets as a qualifier of 'dispositions'.] 

The sections I have left out (after 'practices' and 'habitus') are
elaborations and contextualisations, and, like most of the rest of the
sentence simply going over and further clarifying material he has covered
in the previous few pages. The point (much simplified and reduced) that he
does make in this sentence is that collective action comes about from a
'fit' between a particular habitus and objective conditions for that
particular action. 

What a single, albeit long and complex, sentence presented in this way 
does not show is the extent to which the concepts within that sentence 
have been gradually and carefully presented and put together over the 
preceding pages. Read in this context it makes a lot of sense, because it 
is simply adding one further stage to a precisely and elaborately 
constructed argument.

I don't want to suggest that Bourdieu could not have presented the same 
argument in a less challenging style; my point is simply that complexity 
should not be equated with vagueness. In *An invitation to reflexive 
sociology* B addresses the allegations that his work is unreadable and 
his later work indicates that he has attempted to modify his style to 
make it accessible to more readers. In much of his later writing, which is 
much more 'readable', he goes over the stuff he wrote in *Outline* which 
was published in French 24 years ago. 

Maude
Anthropology
University of Sydney

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