Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 13:58:02 +0000
From: R.J.R.Cook-AT-reading.ac.uk (Roger Cook)
Subject: Bourdieu and (Critical) Realism


I too am grateful to Lynne  Pettinger for the reference, presumably it is
this passage that she is referring to.

When I am accused of limiting myself to the specificity of the French case,
it is because a realistic or substantivist reading is given to
analyses that aim to be structural or, even better, relational (I refer
here to the opposition established by Ernst Cassirer between
"substantive concepts" and "functional or relational concepts"). A
substantive or realistic reading stops at practices (for example
playing golf) or consumptions (for example, Chinese cuisine) that the model
attempts to account for and conceives the correspondence
between social positions, or classes thought of as substantial entities,
and tastes or practices as a mechanical, direct relation. Thus, on
this naive reading, one is entitled to see a refutation of the model in the
fact that - to give perhaps too facile an example for the sake of
clarity - American intellectuals affect to like French cuisine, whereas
French intellectuals prefer to patronize Chinese or Japanese
restaurants; or even in the fact that luxury boutiques in Tokyo or on Fifth
Avenue often have French names whereas their counterparts
in Paris's Faubourg Saint Honore flaunt English names such as "hairdresser."
    The substantivist mode of thinking, which is that of common sense (as
well as of racism, even when euphemized under the guise of a
blindly ethnocentric sociology) and which tends to consider the activities
or preferences of definite individuals or groups in a definite
society at a definite point in time as substantial properties inscribed
once and for all in a sort of essence, leads to the same mistakes in
the case of comparison not across different societies but across time in
the same society.
Pierre Bourdieu 'Conclusion: For a Sociogenetic Understanding'. Bourdieu:
Critical Perspectives 272-3

I also thought I would post this passage of Bridget Fowler's on the
relation of Bourdieu's thought to critical realism:

Bourdieu is a realist in terms of social theory, or, more precisely, his
theory fits into the 'new realism' or 'transcendental realism'
associated in Britain with the work of Roy Bhaskar (1979), Andrew Sayer
(1990), Russell Keat and John Urry (1982). Bourdieu
rarely uses the term 'realism' himself, but his approbatory use of the
concepts 'materialist' and 'genuinely materialist' entails a realist
theory, or, more precisely, a perspectivally enriched realism (Bourdieu,
1990:3, 1993:915; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:155). Thus
his theory is premised on the existence, within the limits of megaperiods,
of the social equivalent of 'intransitive objects' in the natural
world such as forces of gravity. These are the generative social relations
which possess more causal powers than others: especially
those structured around the cultural and economic bourgeoisie, the state
and patriarch (1990:7). As against positivists, realist accept
that explanation may involve analysis in terms of unobserved entities
(although not by invoking 'violent abstraction' [Sayer, 1989:131],
as I shall argue below). As against rationalists, realists claim that the
unobserved and intransitive relations and objects are not
unknowable. Rather (and here they are one with other kinds of empirical
scientists), realist theories about unobserved entities depend
on the generation and testing of hypotheses, within which there is always
the possibility of making mistakes. Finally, although the
'transcendental' element of realism is a reference to the intuitive nature
of the concepts of social theory and, as such, possesses an
affinity with Kantian rationalism, it differs from rationalism in that
these categories of thought are acquired via socialization. The new
realism makes claims about (relatively) invariant relations in social life
which go beyond the constant conjunctions of logical
positivism. However, its empirical propositions have no absolute status,
but are only claims to truth, to be tested as adequate through
the intersubjective judgement of the scientific community.
    The realist project is unavoidably affected by the peculiar nature of
the subject matter of the social sciences. Bhaskar has contended
that there are three ways in which the ontological status of the social
differs from that of the natural:


       (i) Social structures, unlike natural structures, do not exist
independently of the activities they govern; (ii) social structures,
       unlike natural structures, do not exist independently of the agents'
conceptions of what they are doing in their activity; and (iii)
       social structures, unlike natural structures, may be only relatively
enduring (so that the tendencies they ground may not be
       universal in the sense of space-time invariant). (Bhaskar 1979:38)


    For these reasons, subjective understanding of social agents is
crucial. For realist social science, interpretative or 'verstehen'
sociology has come 'out of the ghetto' (Outhwaite, 1987:63). The
understanding of the reasons or intentions behind action under
certain circumstances consists in a type of explanation. There may,
however, be other, semi- or unconscious forces operating which
also have causal force and which sociology must elucidate. Fundamental in
this category are the various ways in which domination is
objectified and reified throughout human history.
Bridget Fowler "Introduction to 'Understanding'"


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