From: S.Pines-Martin-AT-iaea.org
Subject: RE: Sociology or epistemology?
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 14:04:55 +0200


Dear Jukka,
It is good to hear a gentle voice again amongst this clamour! It's the
first time I participate in a list (I've been blabbing here since last
month), and I guess I'm not yet used to its confusions - I don't know if
you had read my previous postings on "materialism"/"realism", etc. I was
trying to figure out something for myself, with the help of others, but
I think the discussion went astray. Excuse me if my reply was a bit
off-edge. I will comment on your reply a bit:
>I find him
>exceptionally clear materialist. Therefore I don't think pursuing the
>issue is worth of bandwidth.  (Well, there's of course always the
>question concerning the concept of materialism lurking behind the next
>corner...) On the other hand there are folks who are studying the
>basics and desperately trying to find out what the hell 'materialism'
>really means. However, figuring that out would take another list
>Philosophical-materialism-and-social-theory or somesuch.  Perhaps
>Spoons...?
I had tried to make sense out of what 'materialism' means in the context
of Bourdieu's work. Of course that entails research into its more
general meanings, its history, etc.; but I do not think that we need to
go so far. I feel it is a pertinent issue, not to be waved aside for
being too philosophical or general, nor worth pursuing into a full-blown
philosophical disquisition. The point I had wanted to make was that
Bourdieu's materialism --or his insistence on it, and the grounds for
that insistence, are not exceptionally clear, but that it could
meaningfully be clarified in the context of his writings. He himself
does not do it, so I thought I might try to interpret. Some people seem
to take offense with this, and I intuit why, but not yet entirely. (One
has to develop a specific "sense" for this list ... )
>it isn't totally insignificant whether
>our very basic concepts or categories are of idealist or materialist
>nature. Thinking that doesn't necessary improve anyone as a
>sociologist or whatever, but it may give us some clarity in relation
>to concepts we use so that we can avoid conceptual confusions.  My
>interruption was based on idea that expressions such as "materialist
>sociology" or "sociological epistemology" (despite the fact that I
>have used them, too, and probably will use them in contexts where I
>can't grant that everyone knows exactly the specific phil. nature of,
>say, epistemology or materialism) might be confusing, because they
>combine philosophical threads or disciplines with sociology. Thereby
>the differences between phil. and soc.  tend to be wiped out and the
>result wouldn't be particularly enlightening for anyone.
I agree entirely, and that is the reason why I have tried being explicit
in saying that when I delve philosophically into Bourdieu's work, I am
fully aware of the possible consequences, namely that I might blur the
important differences between a more or less impractical philosophical
and a more or less practical sociological mode of conceptualising,
argumenting, and last but not least: "knowing". I think it is up to
everyone to make these differences clear for themselves, but I see no
point in censuring anyone whose thoughts cross over from one aspect of
thought and practice to the other -- censure may well make sense if it
is productive, i.e., if it points out exactly where and why a certain
argument is inadequate, but I see no point in entrenching the
philosophy/sociology divide on some purportedly undisputable, a priori
grounds (philosophical ones...).
>There surely is more to individual than what is described and
>explained in sociology (or any other human/social science, for that
>matter), but the question is: what theory or theoretical tools account
>in most economic and effective way the basic characteristics of
>individual in relation to his/her social environment? And vice versa:
>what theory draws in the most effective way the basic contours or
>structures of some social formation (say, a group), its internal
>workings ("logic"), its relations and nature of them to other
>formations and (finally) to individuals belonging to that particular
>formation?

>One point in favor of PB: in "standard sociology" (whatever that
>means) it's supposed that we are individuals, and yet social
>environment constitutes us as "agents" or "actors" (whatever). Yet
>there haven't been much theorisation on the problem that follows from
>this reasonable basic supposition: what and where our individuality
>resides if we are of our social environment? How should we think of
>individuality (as something different to social world and "psychic" or
>somesuch functions and structures of social origin) in relation to
>social world? PB's and his forerunners' work on the concepts of
>habitus and field has been important in bringing (theoretically,
>conceptually) together the basic threads of human individual and of
>more or less immediate social world where he/she acts ("field"). It's
>economic and powerful effort.
I think that the individual/social dichotomy carries with it the inertia
of a substantialist mode of thinking that Bourdieu attempts to break
with, namely with a relational mode of thought, i.e., a different way of
appraising (and thereby fulfilling) the "essence" of concepts and their
bearing on reality. I am not quite sure about what I am saying now, but
I believe that on the objectivist level --which Bourdieu prioritises as
a first step, a necessary "break", as against subjectivism and
phenomenology-- he does not conceive of the individual nor of the social
entity (structure, organism or whatever) in substantial, but rather in
functional/relational terms. In this way we have something like
"differentials" of practice, and an "integral" of social interaction (I
am drawing on some of Ernst Cassirer's favourite metaphors). Individuals
are, from this perspective, "elements" but in a
structuralist/relationalist sense, that is, as positions defined by
their relationship to so many others, all of which is "structural".
Against the fallacies of structuralist theoreticism however, Bourdieu
fashions his concepts of habitus/field in such a way that the
determination of practices is not thought of like a mechanical
fulfilment of the theoretically constructed model ... well, we all know
about that. The point is, that Bourdieu wishes to reinsert the
phenomenological and subjective moments back into his analysis, on
epistemological grounds. I tend to think of it in the following way, and
this is what I was trying to get to previously, and now I will try to do
it very succintly: we could think of the objectivist moment as a
rational one which is antithetical to all *spontaneity*. It breaks with
the illusions of spontaneity in our preferences, acts, etc.
"Spontaneity":  something that arises out of itself, im-mediacy. The
relational construction of logical models is anything but im-mediatist,
it is through and through mediative. Now, spontaneity is immanent to the
subjective moment, and what idealists like Cassirer used to do was to
equate reason (mediation) with spontaneity (immediation), even though
Cassirer was not a subjectivist (he has an interesting article on this,
called "Was ist Subjektivismus?" - "What is subjectivism?") . It seems
to me that Bourdieu's materialism, which drives so forcefully against
spiritualism, is in itself in a specific way "spiritual" (and he does in
fact conceive his sociology sometimes like a "spiritual exercise"!!).
How so? Because he rejects the illusions of spontaneity, in order to
reveal in what ways the subject is determined, i.e., the internalisation
of objective structures, etc. For this, nothing better than materialism,
nothing better than pointing out to constraints and determinations
external to consciousness. Yet I must confess that I was truly amazed by
the last sentence in his introduction to the "Sense Pratique" ("The
logic of Practice" in English translation I think): that he wishes to
contribute to the construction of "something like a subject", even if it
may only be through an awareness of its determinations! See my point?
Bourdieu's materialism is very relative: relative to a non- or
anti-narcisist reflexive project of social liberation. I put it like
this: we can never step outside of our immediate sense of practical
social engagement, yet we can destroy the ideologies and illusions of
freedom in order to *realise* freedom by becoming aware of the ways in
which we are not free. Instead of ascribing freedom to a mystifying
"human spirit", as something immanent to it (and to "reason"), we simply
strive for freedom in a positive way. If we cannot step out of our
spontaneity-limits (our subjectivity) in daily practice (and those who
often speak so self-assuredly of "habitus" and "field", sorcerors or
apprentices, presume on such powers), then we can at least *optimise*
this spontaneity --our practical response to social reality-- with a
sociologically acquired knowledge of its objective determinations. OK,
now I've done it. I'm waiting for some scathing remarks...
Yours
Sergio
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