Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 12:04:18 +0200 (EET)
From: Emrah Goker <egoker-AT-Bilkent.EDU.TR>
Subject: Re: Difficulty of sociology and "Can the ordinary agent speak?"



On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Bridget Fowler wrote:

> In my view the best discussion of these issues is in The Craft of Sociology 
> - an old text (1968 in France, but 1991 in the trans by Richard Nice ) - but 
> one that still has extraordinarily important things to tell us. The problem 
> is defined by Bourdieu et al derives from  a failure to construct the object 
> properly. They refer to the sort of empiricism that ignores the knowledge of 
> the social world that its members have in practice (eg when sociologists 
> affect a kind of cultural relativism which neglects the fact that members of 
> the social world themselves recognise that cultural practices -folk songs or 
> Bach cantatas - have different "objective" cultural "values" in hierarchical 
> terms).  This point is on p. 47 - but the whole of the section on the 
> problems of "constructing the object", using Bachelard's Applied Rationalism 
> is applicable (Part 3) and see also the Conclusion (especially p.72- 3 on 
> "Epistemological vigilance" and the problems of ethnocentrism). These 
> emphasis the need to construct, challenge and win agreement for a 
> sociological relational approach, by wresting the issues from the grip of 
> commonsense.
>          Bourdieu takes up many of the same points in his later interview 
> with Beate Krais, at the end of the English trans. He writes poignantly 
> about the need to avoid the view that the subjects of sociology are unaware 
> of social realities, irrational and passive, but also to guard against the 
> view that such members have a totally scientific approach to the world. I 
> find this formulation very helpful although of course it is also a theme in 
> The Logic of Practice and Outline before it.... 
> Bridget Fowler .>


I think what Carlsten asked and what Bridget very well related about the 
problem of objectification in sociology is a prevailing theme in many of
PB's works. One can find traces of the theme not only in _Outline for a
Theory of Practice_ or _The Logic of Practice_, but also in more
"empirical" works like _Homo Academicus_ or _Distinction_, where Bourdieu
expands on what the proper objectification ought to be in social
theorizing. If I am not mistaken, he tells us that establishing "objects"
in "doing" sociology is inevitable. His whole approach to class in
_Distinction_ is a monument to "objectification" without falling into the
traps of objectivism. 

[However, let me provoke: although he is against the Goldthorpean (or E.O.
Wrightean) approach of defining a pertinent property for class, does not
he fail to transcend the objectivist-subjectivist dilemma by talking about
over-determinism? (it must be in page 107 of Distinction) Or, do not we
see that occupation is the pertinent criterion defining class in his
statistical tables?]   

Furthermore, I believe he is following Alvin Gouldner's call for the
sociologist's being able to think on his/her sociological practice
(I have in mind Gouldner's majestic work on American sociologists -was it
Enter Plato?- and his chapter on reflexivity in _The Coming Crisis of
Western Sociology_). Could we perhaps add, borrowing from Spivak, that PB
offers the sociologist to somehow "unlearn" his/her privileges as the
"objectifying" agent, who is capable to reflect on what is happening
inside a field, unlike the "ordinary" agent unknowingly "breathing" the
domination of the field? 

Lastly, does the following contradict with the supposedly unprivileged
status of the social scientist: In an interview with Wacquant concerning
his book _The State Nobility_, he talks about his "dream" of an
international of intellectuals where they will not be vanguardists but be
a force of pressure and control on the government and state and perhaps
all forms of oppression. While he allows this "resistance" to the
intellectual, does not Bourdieu wrongly accuse Foucault (whom he calls in
that same interview "theorist of adolescent revolt") for his views on
resistance in general? 

But this is a whole different issue, of course. Anyway, is it a legitimate
question to be asked to Bourdieu: "Can the ordinary agent speak?"

Best wishes,

Emrah GOKER  


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