Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 21:20:47 -0500
From: George Free <gfree-AT-axxent.ca>
Subject: Re: [BOU:] On Sewell's Critique of Bourdieu in  "A Theory of



You could look at Bourdieu's "The Rules of Art" for an analysis of Flaubert and the genesis of the literary field. This is an example of social transformation and it might be possible to derive some aspects of a theory of social change from it...

George

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 15:37:09 +0200
Bryan Atinsky <bryan-AT-indymedia.org.il> wrote:

> 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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