From: "Bryan Atinsky" <bryan-AT-indymedia.org.il>
Subject: [BOU:] On Sewell's Critique of Bourdieu in  "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation"
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 15:37:09 +0200


I have a question about the place of 'agency' in Bourdieu's works, and
especially in regard to the critique of Bourdieu in Sewell, William H. Jr.
1992 A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation. American
Journal of Sociology 98(1):1-29.

I am no expert on Bourdieu, but after having done a pretty thorough reading
of "The Logic of Practice", "Distinction", a partial reading of "Homo
Academicus", "Practical Reason", plus other works and articles, including
his interview with Terry Eagleton in Zizek's "Mapping Ideology" called "Doxa
and the Common Life," though I find so much of Bourdieu's work indespensible
to undertstanding the processes, structures and 'generative schemes' that
create social spaces, spatiality and temporality, identity, class, etc., I
also find his work frustrating in its lack of a place for agency internal to
the habitus, capital, field equation.

When I recently read Sewell's article (from 1992), I couldn't help but agree
with his critique of Bourdieu in this regard.  For instance:

"Bourdieu's habitus retains percisely the agent-proof quality that the
concept of the duality of structure is supposed to overcome.  In  Bourdieu's
habitus, schemas and resources so powerfully reproduce one another that even
the most cunning or improvisational actions undertaken by agents necessarily
reproduce the structure....Although Bourdieu avoids either a traditional
French structuralist ideal determinism or a traditional Marxist material
determinism, he does so only by erecting a combined determinism that makes
significant social transformations seem impossible. But is this powerful
implication of stasis really warranted? After all, the Kabyle society in
which Bourdieu carried out his fieldwork produced a momentous anticolonial
revolution shortly after Bourdieu returned to France to analyze his data."
(Sewell: 1992; 15)

In the interview with Terry Eagleton: "Even in the most economistic
traditioni that we know, namely Marxism, I think the capacity for
resistance, as a capacity of consciousness, was overestimated.  I fear that
what I have to say is shockingfor the self-confidence of intellectuals,
especially for the more generous, left-wing intellectuals.  I am seen as
pessimistic, as discouraging the people, and so on.  But I think it is
better to know the truth; and the fact is that when we see with our own eyes
people living in poor conditions...it is clear that they are prepared to
accept much more than we would have believed...It doesn't mean that the
dominated individuals tolerate everything; but they assent to much more than
we believe and much more than they know.  It is a formidable mechanism, like
the imperial system -- a wonderful instrument of ideology, much bigger and
more powerful than television or propaganda.  That is the main experience I
want to convey.  What you say about the capacity for dissent is very
important; this indeed exists, but not where we look for it -- it takes
another form." (Bourdieu in Zizek: 1994; 268-269).

Now, I think what he says here is important  and needs to be taken into
consideration, and he does allude to the capacity for dissent, but it seems
to me that the answer is always external to his statements.  It always
remains a generalized and elusive notion in his works (as far as I have
seen).

So what I want is for you to tell me that I am wrong.

Bourdieu's approach/theory is such a great tool, I would hope to be able to
use it also for an understanding of the ways in which agency functions as a
transformative element in the complex of social practices.


Thank you,

Bryan




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