Bourdieu's Concept of Field (Sociology)

Introduction
The concept of field is being used more and more today in North American sociology as well as in Europe. There are three major and distinct if overlapping variants of field theory in the social sciences: the social-psychological perspective associated with the psychologist Kurt Lewin, the stratification and domination emphasis in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, and the interorganization relations institutionalism associated with Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell. While the latter exercises considerable influence in organization studies and draws upon Bourdieu, it is Bourdieu’s conceptualization that currently elicits inspiration across the broadest range of substantive areas of sociological investigation. For Bourdieu, fields denote arenas of production, circulation, and appropriation and exchange of goods, services, knowledge, or status, and the competitive positions held by actors in their struggle to accumulate, exchange, and monopolize different kinds of power resources (capitals). Fields may be thought of as structured spaces that organize around specific types of capitals or combinations of capital. In fields actors strategize and struggle over the unequal distribution of valued capitals and over the definitions of just what are the most valued capitals. Like a magnetic field, the effects of social fields on behavior can be far reaching and not always apparent to actors. A field perspective stands in sharp contrast to broad consensual views of social life even though actors within a field share common assumptions about the worth of the struggle and the rules by which it is to be carried out. The concept of field stands as an alternative analytical tool to institutions, organizations, markets, individuals, and groups though all of these can be key components of fields. Field analysis brings these separate units into a broader perspective that stresses their relational properties rather than their intrinsic features and therefore the multiplicity of forces shaping the behavior of each.
Overview of the Concept of Field
The concept of field originates in the physical sciences where one finds varied expressions in electromagnetism, Newtonian gravitation, and Einstein’s theory of general relativity (Hesse 1970). It tries to understand motion among objects without some substantive medium such as through the forces of gravity, electricity, or magnetism. Unlike the conventional understanding of causality where variable A somehow directly impacts B, field theory understands motion as structured by a set of forces whose relations create effects that do not reduce to the properties of individual units. In his philosophy of science, Cassirer 1953 best articulated this shift from substantialist to relational thinking in modern science where the object of investigation becomes the system of force relations rather than the properties of particular substances. In the social sciences, Martin 2003 identifies and discusses three major and distinct if overlapping variants of field theory: the social-psychological perspective of Gestalt theory associated with Lewin 1951, the stratification and domination emphasis in Bourdieu’s field theory, and the interorganization relations institutionalism associated with DiMaggio and Powell 1983. While the latter exercises considerable influence in organization studies and draws upon Bourdieu, it is Bourdieu’s conceptualization that currently elicits inspiration across the broadest range of substantive areas of sociological investigation. Moreover, as Martin and Gregg 2015 argues, it is Bourdieu more than anyone else who offers an exemplary field theoretic framework for research in the social sciences today.
Cassirer, Ernst. 1953. Substance and function, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. New York: Dover.
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From a philosophy of science perspective explains the relational view of field theory.
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DiMaggio, Paul, and Walter Powell. 1983. The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48:147–160.
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A benchmark statement identifying reasons for transorganizational consistencies that renewed institutional analysis in the study of organizations. They bring a relational view to the structuration of a field.
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Hesse, Mary B. 1970. Forces and fields: The concept of action at a distance in the history of physics. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
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Useful explanation of the logic of fields in physics and the physical sciences.
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Lewin, Kurt. 1951. Field theory in social science. New York: Harper.
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A classic statement of Lewin’s social-psychological field perspective that Bourdieu references in his early work.
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Martin, Levi John. 2003. What is field theory? American Journal of Sociology 109.1: 1–49.
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Martin offers an analytical review of field perspectives starting with classical electromagnetism to Kurt Kewin’s social-psychological perspective, Bourdieu’s field analysis, and DiMaggio and Powell’s interorganizational relations view. Martin identifies the formal properties of field analysis, highlights Bourdieu’s field analytical approach, both its strengths and weaknesses, and compares fields to institutions. His central concern focuses on the nature of social scientific explanation offered by field theory; he finds it superior to conventional approaches for understanding the regularity of human behavior.
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Martin, John Levi, and Forest Gregg. 2015. Was Bourdieu a field theorist? In Bourdieu’s theory of social fields. Edited by Mathieu Hilgers and Eric Mangez, 39–61. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
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This chapter builds on Martin 2003 but focuses on Bourdieu’s field theoretic perspective and makes the case that it holds the most promise for field-oriented social scientific explanation today.
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Overview of Bourdieu’s Conceptualization of Field
“Field” (champ) is a key spatial metaphor in Bourdieu’s sociology. Compared to his widely recognized conceptual language of cultural capital, habitus, practices, strategies, and reproduction, Bourdieu formalized somewhat later in his work the concept of field. Bourdieu first applied the concept to the French intellectual and artistic worlds as a way to call attention to the specific interests governing those cultural worlds of disinterest (Bourdieu 1971a, Bourdieu 1971b, Bourdieu 1983, Bourdieu 1985). The concept is further developed from the conjuncture in the late 1960s of Bourdieu’s research in the sociology art with his reading of Max Weber’s sociology of religion (Bourdieu 1991), particularly the idea in Weber 1946 of independent “spheres of value.” Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 97) defines a field as “a network, or configuration, of objective relations between positions. These positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they imposed upon their occupants, agents, or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc.).” For Bourdieu, field is an abstract concept—a heuristic tool—that permits the researcher to construct methodologically a space of activity that emerged historically and is structured by opposing positions in function of specific types of capital (power resources) and by a dynamic of struggle between the occupants of those positions. The positions are defined relationally by structured oppositions that distribute across different types of capital. Bourdieu 1993 speaks of the “invariant laws” or “universal mechanisms” that are structural properties characteristic of all fields to various degrees (see p. 72). Bourdieu’s concept of field draws its full significance within a broader conceptual program that includes the ideas of habitus, capital, social space, field of power, doxa, and illusio. Embedded in the concept is a critical methodology, a view of action, a view of power, and a political vision for sociology absent from other social scientific approaches using the language of field. See Swartz 2013 for an elaboration of this understanding. Presentation of key features of the concept can be found in Swartz 1997 and Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992. A special issue of Bourdieu’s journal Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (Bourdieu 2013) includes transcripts of some of Bourdieu’s lectures on the concept.
Bourdieu, Jérôme, ed. December 2013. Special issue: Théorie du champ. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 200.
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The entire issue of this journal founded by Bourdieu is devoted to the concept of field. It includes edited transcripts of eight seminars from May 1972 to January 1975 that Bourdieu devoted to the concept of field. This special issue also includes original contributions by several sociologists who follow Bourdieu’s thinking closely. Available only in French.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971a. Champ du pouvoir, champ intellectuel et habitus de classe. Scolies 1:7–26.
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One of the earliest uses of the language of field (“champ”) in Bourdieu’s work.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971b. Intellectual field and creative project. In Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education. Edited by Michael F. D. Young, 161–188. London: Collier-Macmillan.
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One of Bourdieu’s earliest formulations of the intellectual field.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1983. The field of cultural production, or the economic world reversed. Poetics 12 (November): 311–356.
DOI: 10.1016/0304-422X(83)90012-8Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analysis of fields of cultural production that situates them within the field of power. Can also be found in Bourdieu 1993, cited under Cultural Fields in Bourdieu’s Work.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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This is the most detailed empirical field analysis of social-class lifestyles in France and considered one of Bourdieu’s most significant contributions to stratification research.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1985. The market of symbolic goods. Poetics 14 (April): 13–44.
DOI: 10.1016/0304-422X(85)90003-8Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Where Bourdieu describes the different interests and dynamics characterizing fields of cultural production for restricted audiences and those for mass audiences. Can also be found in Bourdieu 1993, cited under Cultural Fields in Bourdieu’s Work.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Genesis and structure of the religious field. Comparative Social Research 13:1–43.
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Where Bourdieu draws from Max Weber’s sociology of religion to give one of his early formulations of the concept of field.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. Some properties of fields. In Sociology in question. By Pierre Bourdieu, 72–77. London: SAGE.
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A 1976 talk in which Bourdieu outlines the key features of fields.
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Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press.
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See in particular “The Logic of Fields” (pp. 94–115), which offers in a readily accessible interview format responses by Bourdieu on how he has employed the concept of field analysis in his own research. It gives a good sense of the structural properties of fields and the methodological orientation Bourdieu uses in constructing them.
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Swartz, David. 1997. Culture and power: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press.
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This widely cited introduction to Bourdieu’s work identifies the structural properties of fields, including the field of power, and the methodological orientation Bourdieu uses in constructing them. See in particular Chapter 6, “Fields of Struggle for Power” (pp. 117–142).
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Swartz, David L. 2013. Metaprinciples for sociological research in a Bourdieusian perspective. In Bourdieu and historical analysis. Edited by Phillip S. Gorski, 19–35. Durham, NC, and London: Duke Univ. Press.
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This paper shows how Bourdieu’s concept of field is situated within a broader theoretical framework of metaprinciples that guide how he thinks sociological analysis should be undertaken.
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Weber, Max. 1946. Religious rejections of the world and their directions. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Includes Weber’s classic discussion of “spheres of value,” which inspired Bourdieu’s early formulation of his concept of field. Originally published in 1915.
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Collections of Work on Fields
There are relatively few collections of field analyses but three stand out. The special issue Théorie du champ in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (Bourdieu 2013) includes edited transcripts of eight seminars from May 1972 to January 1975 that Bourdieu devoted to the concept of field. This special issue also includes original contributions by several sociologists who follow Bourdieu’s thinking closely. The Bernhard and Schmidt-Wellenburg 2012 volumes offer a variety of applications and address key methodological and theoretical issues. And Hilgers and Mangez 2015 reviews and critically assesses the theoretical background of Bourdieu’s field analysis and offers illustrative field analyses of culture, education, and literature and state formation and public policy.
Bernhard, Stefan, and Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg, eds. 2012. Feldanalyse als Forschungsprogramm. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.
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These two volumes currently represent the most comprehensive collection in German of papers exploring conceptual, methodological, and empirical applications of field analysis. Vol. 1: Der programmatische Kern and Vol. 2: Gegenstandsbezogene Theoriebildung. Available only in German.
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Bourdieu, Jérôme, ed. December 2013. Special issue: Théorie du champ. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 200.
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Special issue of Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales devoted entirely to the concept of field; includes excerpted transcripts with notes of Bourdieu’s 1972–1975 seminars devoted to the concept. Available only in French.
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Hilgers, Mathieu, and Eric Mangez, eds. 2015. Bourdieu’s theory of social fields: Concepts and applications. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
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Of particular interest to social theory, sociology of culture, and political sociology, this is a useful collection of papers around the following three topics: first, a review and critical assessment of the theoretical background of Bourdieu’s field analysis including strategies to overcome its shortcomings; second, illustrations of field analyses in education, French literature, and culture; and third, field analyses of state formation and development and public policy in different contexts.
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Methods for Field Analysis
Bourdieu’s preference for a relational approach to field analysis leads him to reject linear modeling techniques in favor of correspondence analysis, which is a multivariate statistical technique that is a graphical variant of discriminant analysis and multidimensional scaling for categorical data (Lebaron 2013). Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 230) recommends starting field analysis with a cross-tabular comparison of rows of agents across columns of a variety of properties. Columns of properties that differentiate the greatest number of agents are selected to identify the system of variations among agents. Correspondence analysis displays the association between rows and columns of a data matrix as points in multidimensional space such that similarities and dispersions of clusters of points are emphasized and readily visible. For Bourdieu, correspondence analysis is “a relational technique of data analysis whose philosophy corresponds exactly to what, in my view, the reality of the social world is. It is a technique which ‘thinks’ in terms of relation, as I try to do precisely with the notion of field” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 96). Duval 2013 and Lebaron 2013 offer in French useful overviews that stress the conceptual link between Bourdieu’s concept of field and the statistical and graphic display dimensions of field analysis. Le Roux and Rouanet 2004 offers in English a mathematically more developed explanation of correspondence analysis with several illustrative applications.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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See pp. 96–97 and 224–235, where the connection is made between relational thinking, the concept of field, and correspondence analysis.
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Duval, Julien. 2013. L’analyse des correspondances et la construction des champs. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 200:111–123.
DOI: 10.3917/arss.200.0110Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Duval shows the importance of correspondence analysis in Bourdieu’s critical thinking about social science method, its usage in Bourdieu’s own field analytic work, and that of others following his inspiration. This article also illuminates key features of multiple correspondence analysis—from data collection guided by concepts to statistical logic and graphic display—for sociological reasoning. Available only in French.
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Greenacre, Michael J. 1984. Theory and applications of correspondence analysis. London: Academic Press.
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A rigorous mathematical explanation of correspondence analysis.
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Lebaron, Frédéric. 2013. Géométrie du champ. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 200:107–109.
DOI: 10.3917/arss.200.0106Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This short paper shows the elective affinity between multiple correspondence analysis and Bourdieu’s field analytic perspective on the social world. Available only in French.
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Le Roux, Brigitte, and Henry Rouanet. 2004. Geometric data analysis: From correspondence analysis to structured data analysis. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
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This book offers a rigorous linear algebraic formalization of geometric data analysis (another name for multiple correspondence analysis) and shows how this technique relates to conventional statistical methods. It also offers three extensive applications from medicine, political science, and education, illustrating its usefulness.
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Cultural Fields in Bourdieu’s Work
Cultural production is where Bourdieu elaborated his field analysis most fully. He first forged his concept of field for the literary sphere (Bourdieu 1971a, Bourdieu 1971b) but went on to develop an analysis of the religious field (see also Religion) before applying the concept to the scientific world (Bourdieu 1975) and then other spheres of cultural production, especially the worlds of art and literature (Bourdieu 1983, Bourdieu 1985, Bourdieu 1993, Bourdieu 1996).
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971a. Intellectual field and creative project. In Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education. Edited by Michael F. D. Young, 161–188. London: Collier-Macmillan.
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Where Bourdieu first formulates his concept of the literary field.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971b. Champ du pouvoir, champ intellectuel et habitus de classe. Scolies 1:7–26.
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One of the earliest uses of the language of field (“champ”) in Bourdieu’s work. Here he formulates intellectual field analysis in contrast the traditional focus by art historians on individual biography to understand the origins of artistic expression.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1975. The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason. Social Science Information 14.6: 19–47.
DOI: 10.1177/053901847501400602Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bourdieu’s field analysis of the sociology of science.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1983. The field of cultural production, or the economic world reversed. Poetics 12 (November): 311–356.
DOI: 10.1016/0304-422X(83)90012-8Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analysis of fields of cultural production that situates them within the field of power.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1985. The market of symbolic goods. Poetics 14 (April): 13–44.
DOI: 10.1016/0304-422X(85)90003-8Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Where Bourdieu describes the different interests and dynamics characterizing fields of cultural production for restricted audiences and those for mass audiences. Can also be found in Bourdieu 1993.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
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A collection of some of Bourdieu’s most important writings on the sociology of cultural production, Flaubert and the French literary field, and the sociology of artistic perception.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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Bourdieu’s best-known analysis of the origins and structure of the French literary field, notably his analysis of Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, and includes pointers for a social scientific analysis of works of art more generally. Here Bourdieu develops his field perspective for the artistic field but makes it clear that this approach should apply to other kinds of fields.
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Cultural Field Analyses
Bourdieu’s work has inspired hundreds of cultural studies. The few references listed here elaborate fairly closely Bourdieu’s model and illustrate the diversity in potential application. Heise and Tudor 2007 takes a comparative look at the film-as-art movements in the 1920s and 1930s in Brazil and Britain. Anheier, et al. 1995 finds that German writers are differentiated in their literary field positions particularly by amounts of social and cultural capital. Ley 2003 examines the role of artists in gentrification. Lipstadt 2003 offers one of the few field analyses in architecture. Meuleman and Savage 2013 explores Dutch cosmopolitan cultural tastes. Oware 2014 examines the place of rap music in the field of cultural production. Sapiro 2003 looks at the historical change in relationship between the French state and literary market, and Sapiro 2010 brings a field perspective to the globalized market of literary translations in the United States and France. And Savage and Silva 2013 reviews key features and central ambivalences of the concept of field for cultural analysis, particularly in the case of newly emerging popular forms.
Anheier, Helmut, Jurgen Gerhards, and Frank P. Romo. 1995. Forms of capital and social structure in cultural fields: Examining Bourdieu’s social topography. American Journal of Sociology 100.4: 859–903.
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Studies a group of German writers and literati in the city of Cologne as a social topography of field positions that are relationally differentiated by varying amounts of economic, social, and cultural capital. The authors use blockmodeling procedures by making a connection between field as a social topography and the concept of structural equivalence in network analysis. They find that elite and marginal writers are sharply differentiated relative to social and particularly cultural capital, which further separates high and low culture in the periphery sector of writers. Economic capital plays a lesser role.
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Heise, Tatiana, and Andrew Tudor. 2007. Constructing (film) art: Bourdieu’s field model in a comparative context. Cultural Sociology 1.2: 165–187.
DOI: 10.1177/1749975507078186Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Applies Bourdieu’s field approach to the film-as-art movements in the 1920s and 1930s in Brazil and Britain. The study finds that the consecration of art and artists is much more centralized under authoritarian regimes in Brazil at that time and more diverse in Britain. The heteronomy/autonomy opposition is found to be useful, though in Brazil the heteronomous forces are more political than in Britain.
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Ley, David. 2003. Artists, aestheticisation and the field of gentrification. Urban Studies 40.12: 2527–2544.
DOI: 10.1080/0042098032000136192Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper makes extensive use of Bourdieu’s conceptualization of the field of production and extends Bourdieu’s thinking to the field of gentrification. With data from Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, this study shows the role of artists in contributing to gentrification.
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Lipstadt, Hélène. 2003. Can “art professions” be Bourdieuean fields of cultural production? The case of the architecture competition. Cultural Studies 17.3–4: 390–419.
DOI: 10.1080/0950238032000083872Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper examines the “field effects” of several architectural competitions from 1401 to 1989
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Meuleman, Roza, and Mike Savage. 2013. A field analysis of cosmopolitan taste: Lessons from the Netherlands. Cultural Sociology 7.2: 230–256.
DOI: 10.1177/1749975512473991Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This field analysis examines geographical range in Dutch preferences for music, films, and books. It shows that taste for cosmopolitan items is multifaceted with distinct social differences among respondents for specifically Dutch cultural items, European forms of culture, and American popular culture.
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Oware, Matthew. 2014. (Un)conscious (popular) underground: Restricted cultural production and underground rap music. Poetics 42 (February): 60–81.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2013.12.001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the case of “underground” rap music in the field of cultural production and finds that underground rap music blurs the boundaries between restricted and large-scale production as represented by noncommercial and commercial rap respectively.
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Sapiro, Gisèle. 2003. The literary field between the state and the market. Poetics 31.5–6: 441–464.
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Looking at the French case, this paper looks at the external constraints imposed on the literary field from its early dependence on the state and clients to modern control by the market and French cultural policy to protect to some degree the autonomy of the literary field from the market.
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Sapiro, Gisèle. 2010. Globalization and cultural diversity in the book market: The case of literary translations in the US and in France. Poetics 38.4: 419–439.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2010.05.001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper uses the concept of field to analyze the effects of globalization in the book market of literary translations in the United States and France.
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Savage, Mike, and Elizabeth B. Silva. 2013. Field analysis in cultural sociology. In Special issue: Field analysis in cultural sociology. Edited by Mike Savage and Elizabeth B. Silva. Cultural Sociology 7.2: 111–126.
DOI: 10.1177/1749975512473992Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This introduction to a special issue of Cultural Sociology on field analysis in cultural sociology identifies key features of Bourdieu’s concept and calls attention to central ambivalences or tensions. It also identifies ways illustrated by the included articles of stressing the dynamic side of field analysis, particularly in the newly emerging contemporary cultural forms such as pop music, comedy, etc., and their potential for comparative analysis including in transnational spaces, and probes the materiality of cultural relations.
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Food
The production and consumption of food can take on cultural field–like properties as has been the case of gastronomy (the pursuit of culinary excellence) in France. Ferguson 1998 and Ferguson 2006 examine the historical rise of French gastronomic practices, and Fantasia 2010 explores the more recent trends in which the field of haute cuisine grows in autonomy as a cultural field yet is increasingly oriented by big business concerns.
Fantasia, Rick. 2010. “Cooking the books” of the French gastronomic field. In Cultural analysis and Bourdieu’s legacy: Settling accounts and developing alternatives. Edited by Elizabeth Silva and Alan Warde, 28–44. London and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
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This paper can be read as a more recent and somewhat different emphasis in analysis of the French gastronomic field offered by Ferguson 1998 and Ferguson 2006. Fantasia stresses more than Ferguson the institutional and material conditions that contribute to the growing autonomy of French gastronomy from other cultural fields. He also documents the recent interpenetration of “industrial cuisine” and “haute cuisine” so that the traditional autonomy associated with the latter requires more and more today a symbolic facade.
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Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. 1998. A cultural field in the making: Gastronomy in 19th-century France. American Journal of Sociology 103:597–641.
DOI: 10.1086/210082Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This study of the rise of gastronomy in 19th-century France permits an instructive illustration of how the concept of field can be used to offer more complex and complete understandings of the production, organization, and discursive articulation of particular cultural experiences. It draws direct inspiration from Bourdieu’s concept and shows its analytical distinctiveness in comparison to related notions of “culture” and “world.” The historical and sociological development of the “gastronomic field” can serve as a model for understanding when other cultural practices come to function as a field.
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Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. 2006. Accounting for taste: The triumph of French cuisine. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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In this book Ferguson elaborates well beyond the argument presented in Ferguson 1998 by adding considerable detail on French gastronomic practices. The book shows the importance of writings and texts in the formation of an expansive and nationalized culinary discourse of enduring significance.
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Economic Sociology
Bourdieu did not specialize in economic sociology but some of his earliest work enters into critical dialogue with economic views of action and markets. His concept of field is receiving considerable attention today in that subfield. In his posthumous book on the French housing market, Bourdieu 2005a and Bourdieu 2005b does situate Bourdieu’s thinking relative to key perspectives in contemporary economic sociology such as network analysis and the embeddedness of action. The key conceptual section “Principles of an Economic Anthropology” outlines how Bourdieu conceptualizes the economic field. Bourdieu 1996 looks at the social and educational background of large firm leadership in France. Swedberg 2011 reviews the ensemble of Bourdieu’s writings for relevant economic sociology topics and notes how Bourdieu subordinates the logic of markets to that of fields. Fligstein and McAdam 2012 draws inspiration from Bourdieu to formulate a general field framework, whereas Hanappi 2011 looks at implications for an economic theory of action.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The state nobility: Elite schools in the field of power. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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Pages 300–369 are devoted to Bourdieu’s study of big business CEOs and their role in the field of economic power in France.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005a. Principles of an economic sociology. In The handbook of economic sociology. Edited by Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg, 75–89. New York and Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Where Bourdieu outlines his fundamental positions regarding the analysis of modern economic life.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005b. The social structures of the economy. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
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Here Bourdieu brings his concept of field and general sociological framework into critical dialogue with economic sociology and offers an empirical analysis of public policy and the housing market in France. He challenges fundamental assumptions of orthodox economics and proposes a broader constructionist sociology and anthropology of economic transactions. The key conceptual section is “Principles of an Economic Anthropology,” where Bourdieu outlines his conceptualization of the “economic field.”
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Fligstein, Neil, and Doug McAdam. 2012. A theory of fields. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Drawing some inspiration from Bourdieu’s concept of field, the book includes an analysis of the mortgage crisis of 2008.
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Hanappi, Doris. 2011. Economic action, fields and uncertainty. Journal of Economic Issues 45.4: 785–803.
DOI: 10.2753/JEI0021-3624450402Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The paper outlines the key theoretical assumptions of Bourdieu’s field and habitus approach to the economy and relates it to the embeddedness tradition in economic sociology. In particular, the paper examines how to conceptualize economic agency, including different notions of uncertainty, in light of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework.
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Swedberg, Richard. 2011. The economic sociologies of Pierre Bourdieu. Cultural Sociology 5.1: 67–82.
DOI: 10.1177/1749975510389712Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Reviews the ensemble of Bourdieu’s writings for relevant material for economic sociology and calls attention to how Bourdieu situates interactions between sellers and buyers within economic field structures.
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Education
The concepts of cultural capital, forms of symbolic power, and habitus have been the most influential of Bourdieu’s concepts in educational research. Still, Bourdieu 1988 and Bourdieu 1996 employed the concept of field in key analyses of French education and the concept now inspires considerable educational research. The growing interest in employing the concept of field in the sociology of education is illustrated by the numerous papers in the British Journal of Sociology of Education since 2000 (see in particular Grenfell and James 2004). Karabel 2005 draws inspiration from the concept in his landmark work on elite college admissions in the United States. Brosnan 2010 illustrates its usefulness for analyzing medical schools. Ferrare and Apple 2015 argues for connecting the micro experiences of actors to the macro structures of educational fields. By contrast, Rawlings and Bourgeois 2004 uses field analysis to explore institutional niches of agriculture schools in US higher education.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1988. Homo academicus. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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Bourdieu’s field analysis of the French university professorate at the time of May 1968 student revolt.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The state nobility: Elite schools in the field of power. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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A conceptual and detailed empirical deployment of field analysis on preparation for and structure within the elite French grandes écoles, the field of power, and big business leadership.
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British Journal of Sociology of Education. 1980–.
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This is the professional journal that has carried since the turn of the twenty-first century perhaps the most extensive conceptual and empirical field analyses in educational research in Britain.
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Brosnan, Caragh. 2010. Making sense of differences between medical schools through Bourdieu’s concept of “field.” Medical Education 44.7: 645–652.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03680.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that medical education in the United Kingdom can be conceptualized as a field within which medical schools compete for different forms of capital, such as students, funding, and prestige. Competition within the field helps to maintain inter-school differences with respect to curricula, reputations, and types and levels of resources.
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Ferrare, Joseph J., and Michael W. Apple. 2015. Field theory and educational practice: Bourdieu and the pedagogic qualities of local field positions in educational contexts. Cambridge Journal of Education 45.1: 43–59.
DOI: 10.1080/0305764X.2014.988682Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper offers a micro focus on the direct experiences of actors within the more macro view of cultural fields they find in Bourdieu’s work. The focus is on how students construct, experience, and struggle over meanings in the local contexts of schools and universities. The authors emphasize the relational qualities of those experiences and look at student perceptions of track/curriculum choices in terms of local knowledge and meanings available to them. Hence the paper stresses the complex linkages between field macro structures and the psychological and phenomenological aspects of field positions.
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Grenfell, Michael, and David James. 2004. Change in the field: Changing the field: Bourdieu and the methodological practice of educational research. British Journal of Sociology of Education 25.4: 507–523.
DOI: 10.1080/014256904200026989Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Uses field analysis to illuminate contemporary currents in educational research in Britain.
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Karabel, Jerome. 2005. The chosen: The hidden history of admission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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This award-winning study of elite college admissions offers a social and cultural history that employs the concept of field to analyze the struggle over admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton that was formative of the particular system of college admissions in the United States today.
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Rawlings, Craig M., and Michael D. Bourgeois. 2004. The complexity of institutional niches: Credentials and organizational differentiation in a field of U.S. higher education. Poetics 32.6: 411–437.
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Elaborates from Bourdieu’s idea that fields generate systems of differentiation to explore institutional niches in the case of agriculture schools in US higher education.
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Intellectuals
Bourdieu 1971, in a field perspective on intellectual life, examines the historical emergence of intellectuals as they gain relative autonomy from external influences, the internal differentiation among intellectuals as they struggle for cultural recognition and authority, and the ways that certain types of intellectual intervene in the public arena. Ringer 1992 compares German and French humanists and social scientists through the lens of different national intellectual fields. Sapiro 2004 examines the types of political activism employed by French writers in the 20th century, and Swartz 2003 offers a field analysis of Bourdieu’s own political activism as an engaged sociologist.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. Intellectual field and creative project. In Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education. Edited by Michael F. D. Young, 161–188. London: Collier-Macmillan.
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One of the earliest formulations of the intellectual field.
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Ringer, Fritz. 1992. Fields of knowledge: French academic culture in comparative perspective, 1890–1920. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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This historical sociology of knowledge compares the academic cultures of French and German humanists and social scientists around 1890 to 1920. The differences in educational ideals and practices are attributed to differences in intellectual fields and the composition of the two middle classes.
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Sapiro, Gisèle. 2004. Forms of politicization in the French literary field. In After Bourdieu: Influence, critique, elaboration. Edited by David L. Swartz and Vera L. Zolberg, 145–164. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
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Employs the concept of field to understand the role of political stance in shaping the careers among 20th-century French writers. Sapiro correlates the writer’s cultural field position with his conception of literary work and form of politicization. She identifies four types of political expression among French writers: “notabilities,” esthetes,” avant-garde,” and “writer-journalists.”
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Swartz, David L. 2003. From critical sociology to public intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and politics. Theory and Society 32.5–6: 791–823.
DOI: 10.1023/B:RYSO.0000004956.34253.fbSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines Bourdieu’s own political activism in his later years relative to his professional career and the changing character of the French intellectual field in relationship to politics and the mass media.
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Professions
Bourdieu viewed his concept of field as useful for analyzing the professions because it stresses the multiple and often conflicting resources and strategies employed by agents in their struggle for professional authority. Emirbayer and Williams 2005 offers an illustrative analysis in the case of social work.
Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Eva M. Williams. 2005. Bourdieu and social work. Social Science Review 79.4: 689–724.
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Rich source of research suggestions for how Bourdieusian field analysis might be used to bring a relational understanding to social work systems and practices, with focus on homeless services in New York City.
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Law
Apart from a long theoretical paper (Bourdieu 1987), Bourdieu published relatively little on law. However, Bourdieu 2012 does devote considerable attention to the historical role of jurists in the development of the modern state. And his field perspective on law has generated some ground-breaking research in that substantive area. Madsen 2010 shows central role played by lawyers in the emergence in post–World War II Europe of human rights as a legitimate concern for European legal and political institutions.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1987. The force of law: Toward a sociology of the juridical field. Hastings Journal of Law 38:209–248.
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Bourdieu applies the properties of field to jurisprudence that is viewed as site of competition to monopolize the right to determine the law.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 2012. Sur l’état: Cours au collège de France, 1989–1992. Paris: Seuil.
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This collection of twenty-three lectures includes numerous passages where Bourdieu reflects through historical secondary analysis on the key role played by lawyers and law in the development of the modern state as a field of contention to monopolize the means of symbolic as well as physical violence.
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Madsen, Mikael Rask. 2010. La genèse de l’Europe des droits de l’Homme: Enjeux juridiques et stratégies d’État (France, Grande-Bretagne et pay scandinaves, 1945–1970). Strasbourg, France: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg.
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This book draws inspiration from Bourdieu’s concept of field to describe the reemergence of the central concern for human rights after World War II. Exists only in French.
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Vauchez, Antoine. 2008. The force of a weak field: Law and lawyers in the government of the European Union (for a renewed research agenda). International Political Sociology 2.2: 128–144.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-5687.2008.00040.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Looks at the central role played by law and lawyers in the construction of the European Union as a field.
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Mass Media
Bourdieu 1998, an explosive, polemical, and widely read indictment of media journalism in 1996, clearly marked his interest in the mass media. As Benson 1999 shows, the concept of field proved to be key in shaping what might be called the distinctly Bourdieusian approach to media sociology. Benson and Neveu 2005 identifies the journalist field and Couldry 2003 invites consideration of how both the mass media and the state intersect in the field of power. And Krause 2011 applies Bourdieu’s idea of fields of cultural production to the history of US journalism.
Benson, Rodney. 1999. Field theory in comparative context: A new paradigm for media studies. Theory and Society 28:463–498.
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006982529917Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Demonstrates for researchers what a field perspective of media studies looks like.
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Benson, Rodney, and Érik Neveu, eds. 2005. Bourdieu and the journalistic field. Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity.
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Offers the most elaboration and critical evaluation to date of the application of field theory to the mass media in both France and the United States. Demonstrates methods for measuring field autonomy and spatially mapping journalistic fields and discusses similarities and differences between field theory, new institutionalism, hegemony, and differentiation theory.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. On television. New York: New Press.
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Here Bourdieu argues that all of the fields of cultural production, including the fields of science, law, and politics, have come to be structurally constrained by the journalistic field which is today dominated by television. Media visibility has come to be a key and constraining standard for modern cultural and political life.
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Couldry, Nick. 2003. Media meta-capital: Extending the range of Bourdieu’s field theory. Theory and Society 32.5–6: 653–677.
DOI: 10.1023/B:RYSO.0000004915.37826.5dSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Develops the idea of media meta-capital as a conceptual tool for understanding how mass media along with the state exercises power over the rules of the game in the field of power. Couldry outlines a research program for identifying the role of the state and the mass media and their interrelationship in the categorization and classification of the social world.
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Krause, Monika. 2011. Reporting and the transformations of the journalistic field: US news media, 1890–2000. Media, Culture & Society 33.1: 89–104.
DOI: 10.1177/0163443710385502Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This field analysis historicizes the journalistic ideals of public service through news gathering and reporting as a distinctive cultural practice and identifies their institutional foundation. It examines the changing degree of autonomy of the American journalistic field relative to business interests and politics. And it examines multiple media forms and compares the field properties of journalism to other fields, notably the economic and political fields.
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Organizations
Bourdieu’s concept of field has found its way into organization sociology largely through the landmark work of DiMaggio and Powell 1983, which drew upon the idea of field in formulating the authors’ widely influential neo-institutional perspective. Fligstein and McAdam 2012 likewise draws inspiration from Bourdieu’s concept in using the language of field to analyze meso-level organizational realities. By contrast, Emirbayer and Johnson 2008 offers a more thorough Bourdieusian perspective for analyzing organizations as fields and organizations as units within larger fields.
DiMaggio, Paul, and Walter Powell. 1983. The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48:147–160.
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Offers an expanded view of Bourdieu’s concept of field—though one that downplays the dimensions of power and competition—that has become a key orienting pole in the new organizational institutionalism.
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Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Victoria Johnson. 2008. Bourdieu and organizational analysis. Theory and Society 37.1: 1–44.
DOI: 10.1007/s11186-007-9052-ySave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors draw on all three of Bourdieu’s pillar concepts (habitus, capital, and field) and propose a relational approach to the study of organizations. They argue that field analysis with inattention to habitus and a relational perspective offers a very impoverished view of fields. Using these concepts. the authors reframe existing thinking about organizations, particularly from the neo-institutional and resource dependence schools. They recommend studying both organizations-in-fields and organizations-as-fields.
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Fligstein, Neil, and Doug McAdam. 2012. A theory of fields. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199859948.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Draws inspiration from Bourdieu’s concept of field to invite organizational researchers to pay more attention to meso-level social realities rather than focusing on individual organizations as units of analysis.
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Political Field
Bourdieu 1991 and Bourdieu 2000 identify the political field as a relatively autonomous subfield within the field of power and distinct from the state. Caro 1980 outlines the distinctive features of the political arena as a field. Dulong 2010 documents the historical development of the French political field. Eyal 2005 analyzes the Czech political field in the post-communist era. Stark and Bruszt 1998 examines the role of the political field in post-communist economic transformations in Central Europe. Mudge 2011 brings a field perspective to shifts in the traditional left-right political party spectrum in Western democracies due to the rise of neoliberalism. And Ray 1999 finds that differences in political fields help explain differences in women’s protest movements in India.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Political representation: Elements for a theory of the political field. In Language and symbolic power. Edited by John B. Thompson, 171–202. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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Bourdieu identifies distinctive features of the political field and political capital and the problems that professionalization of political leadership pose for genuine democratic representation. Here Bourdieu distinguishes between a political field and an apparatus.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 2000. Propos sur le champ politique. Lyon, France: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.
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Includes an interview, lecture, and discussion on the political field. Available in French only.
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Caro, Jean-Yves. 1980. La sociologie de Pierre Bourdieu: Éléments pour une théorie du champ politique. Revue française de science politique 6 (December): 1171–1197.
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Identifies the key features Bourdieu sees as distinctive about the political field. Available in French only.
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Dulong, Delphine. 2010. La construction du champ politique. Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
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A historical construction of the French political field that identifies a fundamental tension between the professionalization of political elites and the public. Available in French only.
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Eyal, Gil. 2005. The making and breaking of the Czechoslovak political field. In Pierre Bourdieu and democratic politics: The mystery of ministry. Edited by Loïc Wacquant, 151–177. Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity.
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Elucidates the concept of political field for the purpose of analyzing post-communist politics in Czechoslovakia. The empirical analysis focuses on the round-table negotiations between the regime and the opposition in 1989 and the polarization of the political field between the Czech right wing and left wing.
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Mudge, Stephanie Lee. 2011. What’s left of leftism? Neoliberal politics in Western party systems, 1945–2004. Social Science History 35.3: 337–380.
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Uses the concept of the political field to show how the traditional left-right axis in Western democracies has been modified by rising neoliberal politics. Using an index of neoliberalism based on policy positions, Mudge finds that this historical shift has occurred across the left-right spectrum among mainstream parties and this move has been particularly the case in “third wave” policies of left parties. The field perspective highlights how political categories in electoral politics are contested and whose historical meanings can shift over time, most notably in what it means to be “left” politically.
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Ray, Raka. 1999. Fields of protest: Women’s movements in India. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
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Uses the concept of political field to illuminate differences in women’s protest movements in Calcutta and Bombay. Finds that differences in ideology, mobilization issues, tactics, and successes are better explained by a field analytical framework than by opportunity structures or general structural trends such as general living conditions (similar for women in both cities), modernization, and demographic variables like education, fertility, and labor force participation.
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Stark, David, and László Bruszt. 1998. Postsocialist pathways: Transforming politics and property in East Central Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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The concept of the political field is used to examine economic transformation and democratization in post-Soviet East Central Europe.
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Religion
While Bourdieu drew extensively from Marx’s, Durkheim’s, and Weber’s respective analyses of religion to develop his sociology of culture (Dianteill 2003, Rey 2007, Swartz 1996), he himself wrote only ten texts that address religion more or less centrally. The conceptually most important are Bourdieu 1987 and Bourdieu 1991. Bourdieu and Saint Martin 1982 is his most extensive empirical study in religion.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1987. Legitimation and structured interests in Weber’s sociology of religion. In Max Weber, rationality and irrationality. Edited by Scott Lash and Sam Whimster, 119–136. Boston: Allen & Unwin.
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In this paper Bourdieu reconceptualizes Weber’s classic types of religious leaders (prophet, priest, and magician) to show that their interactions need to be understood in terms of their structured interests in the religious field.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Genesis and structure of the religious field. Comparative Social Research 13:1–43.
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This is Bourdieu’s most widely cited analysis of religion. It examines the historical origins of an autonomous religious field and explores its structure and social functions.
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Bourdieu, Pierre, and Monique de Saint Martin. 1982. La sainte famille. L’épiscopat français dans le champ du pouvoir. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 44.45: 2–53.
DOI: 10.3406/arss.1982.2165Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is Bourdieu’s most extensive empirical investigation of religion. The study offers a field analysis of French Catholic bishops and documents a fundamental polarity in terms of degree of identification with the institution, despite official claims of unity, between those for whom the church provides a channel for upward social mobility and those who enter their religious vocation as heirs of considerable social and cultural capital. Available only in French.
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Dianteill, Erwan. 2003. Pierre Bourdieu and the sociology of religion: A central and peripheral concern. Theory and Society 32.5–6: 529–549.
DOI: 10.1023/B:RYSO.0000004968.91465.99Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A key theoretical resource for Bourdieu’s concept of field comes from Max Weber’s sociology of religion. This paper points up the irony that while Bourdieu drew substantially from the classical works by Durkheim, Marx, and Weber in the sociology of religion to develop his conceptual tools for analyzing culture, Bourdieu himself devoted relatively little attention to the study of religion. This paper documents the origins of Bourdieu’s concept of field in Max Weber’s sociology of religion and explores the way it was employed by Bourdieu in his analysis of institutions, particularly the Catholic Church, and how Bourdieu’s thinking can be a rich source of theoretical inspiration for students of religion.
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Rey, Terry. 2007. Bourdieu on religion: Imposing faith and legitimacy. London and Oakville, CT: Equinox.
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An introduction to Bourdieu’s theory of practice as it pertains to the study of religion, this book includes a detailed discussion of the religious field with a substantive example from colonial New England.
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Swartz, David. 1996. Bridging the study of culture and religion: Pierre Bourdieu’s political economy of symbolic power. Sociology of Religion 57:71–85.
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This essay examines key features of Bourdieu’s sociology of culture, particularly how he elaborates from Karl Marx and Max Weber’s sociology of religion, to offer a political economy of religious practices. Particular attention is given to the concept of field as the most relevant of Bourdieu’s concepts for this undertaking.
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Social Movements
Bourdieu did not systematically engage social movement research with his concept of field, though social movements and a field perspective did inform his political activism (Bourdieu 2002). Nonetheless, several features of his field perspective are applicable to social movement research, as the programmatic article Ancelovici 2010 suggests. Crossley 2003 applies field to protest movements. Yadgar 2003 offers an interesting field analysis of a political/religious movement in Israel, Fligstein and McAdam 2012 brings a field perspective to the civil rights struggle for racial equality in the United States, Bloemraad 2001 applies the concept to the 1995 Quebec independence movement, and Ray 1999 looks at women’s protest movement in contemporary India.
Ancelovici, Marcos. 2010. Esquisse d’une théorie de la contestation: Bourdieu et le modèle du processus politique. Sociologie et sociétés 41.2: 39–62.
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Brings the concept of field to the political opportunity/process framework of social movements as developed by Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly, and Doug McAdam. The concept of opportunity structures is redefined as “field opportunity structures” to permit their application to a far greater range of sites of social mobilization, such as religion, that are carriers of political consequences but not directly linked to the state or political field. Available only in French.
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Bloemraad, Irene. 2001. Outsiders and insiders: Collective identity and collective action in the Quebec independence movement, 1995. In The politics of social inequality. Edited by Betty A. Dobratz, Lisa K. Waldner, and Timothy Buzzell, 271–305. New York: JAI.
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In this study of the 1995 Quebec independence movement, the idea of “mobilization playing fields” is used to argue that collective identity cannot be separated from political mobilization.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. Interventions, 1961–2002: Science sociale et action politique. Marseille, France: Agone.
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Chronicles Bourdieu’s political activism and illustrates how he brought a field perspective to many of his political stances.
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Crossley, Nick. 2003. From reproduction to transformation: Social movement fields and the radical habitus. Theory, Culture, & Society 20.6: 43–68.
DOI: 10.1177/0263276403206003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Crossley sees fields of protest as emerging around specific forms of capital that actors use to launch campaigns directed at other fields. Fields of protest are also important sites of socialization for movement activists.
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Fligstein, Neil, and Doug McAdam. 2012. A theory of fields. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199859948.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Draws on selected features of Bourdieu’s concept to analyze the civil rights struggle over racial equality in the United States.
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Ray, Raka. 1999. Fields of protest: Women’s movements in India. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
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Finds that differences in ideology, mobilization issues, tactics, and successes of women’s protest movements in Bombay and Calcutta are better explained by a field analytical framework than by the popular opportunity structures framework in social movements or by general structural trends that are popular in modernization perspectives, such as general living conditions (similar for women in both cities) and demographic variables like education, fertility, and labor force participation.
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Yadgar, Yaacov. 2003. SHAS as a struggle to create a new field: A Bourdieuan perspective of an Israeli phenomenon. Sociology of Religion 64.2: 223–246.
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Argues that the SHAS political/religious social movement in Israel can be best understood as an emerging field.
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Stratification
Bourdieu’s sociology is having a growing influence on social stratification research, particularly his landmark book Distinction (Bourdieu 1984) and his study of elite educational institutions in relation to structures of power (Bourdieu 1996). (See also Field of Power). Bourdieu 1984 is key to understanding Bourdieu’s concept of social class, his conception of the social class structure, and his cultural analysis of class distinctions in modern France. Both Bourdieu’s field of power and his view of the modern state are central to how he thinks power is distributed in modern stratified societies. Bourdieu 1996 conceptualizes and empirically analyzes the central place of the French state in providing elite educational channels and social networks in the formation of public leadership in France.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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This is the most detailed empirical field analysis of social class lifestyles in France and considered one of Bourdieu’s most significant contributions to stratification research. One of Bourdieu’s most cited works that lays out his conception of the social class structure as a multidimensional social space, which he also considers as the field of social classes. Fields also designates arenas of taste that mediate social class relations.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The state nobility: Elite schools in the field of power. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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In this book Bourdieu replaces the language of “dominant class” or “upper class” with “field of power” to offer a more differentiated and multidimensional view of the concentrations of power in modern societies.
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Field of Power
Central to Bourdieu’s field analysis of stratification in modern societies is his concept of the field of power. This type of field is conceptually elaborated in Bourdieu 1996. In the interview Wacquant 1993, Bourdieu elaborates on this key concept. Medvetz 2012, a study of think tanks in the United States, relates them to the field of power.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The state nobility: Elite schools in the field of power. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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Offers Bourdieu’s most conceptually elaborated and empirically informed analysis of the field of power in France.
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Medvetz, Thomas. 2012. Think tanks in America. Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226517308.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The field of power informs this study of the historical formation and current form and functioning of think tanks as “a constitutively blurry network of organizations, themselves internally divided by the opposing logics of academic, political, economic, and media production” (p. 23).
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Wacquant, Loïc J. D. 1993. From ruling class to field of power: An interview with Pierre Bourdieu on La Noblesse d’Etat. Theory, Culture, & Society 10.3: 19–44.
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Interview where Bourdieu identifies key features of the field of power and specifies the central role that elite educational institutions (grandes écoles) play in the field of power in France.
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The State
Bourdieu 1994 and Bourdieu 2012 offer a field perspective on the modern state as that ensemble of bureaucratic fields that monopolizes the means of symbolic as well as physical violence and regulates relations within the field of power.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1994. Rethinking the state: Genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field. Sociological Theory 12.1: 1–18.
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Here Bourdieu offers his conceptualization of the state as a bureaucratic field rather than a unitary actor.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 2012. Sur l’état: Cours au collège de France, 1989–1992. Paris: Seuil.
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Bourdieu’s 1989–1992 Collège de France lectures on the rise of the modern state, its field structure, and social functions. Available only in French.
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Transnational and Global Fields
Bourdieu himself confined most all of his empirical research employing the concept of field to France but offered suggestions here and there in his writings how the concept of field might be applied beyond national borders (see, for example, Bourdieu 2005). As Sapiro 2014 points out, Bourdieu did not intend the concept to be restricted to national settings. Numerous scholars have explored how fields of power transcend national boundaries. Cohen 2011, Cohen 2013, and Kauppi 2003 examine this for the European Union. Dezalay and Garth 2002 shows how the imperial processes of exporting neoliberal economics and the US concept of the rule of law (an independent judiciary) to Latin America are mediated by national fields of struggle for state power. Go 2008 proposes the idea of global fields to compare the imperial powers of Great Britain and the United States and Steinmetz 2007 uses the German case to examine the colonial state in relation to the metropolitan country.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005. Postscript: From the national to the international field. In The social structures of the economy. By Pierre Bourdieu, 223–232. Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity.
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A sharp critic of globalization, Bourdieu saw national economic fields increasingly subordinated to a “global financial field” largely controlled by American financial institutions.
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Cohen, Antonin. 2011. Bourdieu hits Brussels: The genesis and structure of the European field of power. International Political Sociology 5.3: 335–339.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-5687.2011.00137_3.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Applies the concept of the field of power to the “expanding constellation of national and supranational institutions and agents” that are forming a “nascent European field of power.” To use Bourdieu’s terminology these agents are engaged in the struggle over the “dominant principle of domination” or the “legitimate principle of legitimation” at the level of the European Union.
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Cohen, Antonin. 2013. The genesis of Europe: Competing elites and the emergence of a European field of power. In Transnational power elites: The new professionals of governance, law and security. Edited by Niilo Kauppi and Mikael Rask Madsen, 103–120. London and New York: Routledge.
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Stresses the strategic role of elites, particularly professionals of politics/law, in shaping an emerging European field of power at the expense of traditional political monopolies.
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Dezalay, Yves, and Bryant G. Garth. 2002. The internationalization of palace wars: Lawyers, economists, and the contest to transform Latin American states. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226144276.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In what they dub “palace wars” Dezalay and Garth examine intertwined power struggles within national fields and between national fields as elites pursue multifaceted strategies of internationalization and nationalization. This work looks at the case of the field strategies of North American lawyers and economists in four Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.
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Go, Julian. 2008. Global fields and imperial forms: Field theory and the British and American empires. Sociological Theory 26.3: 201–229.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9558.2008.00326.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This work introduces the idea of “global fields” to compare and contrast two hegemonic empires, that of Great Britain in the 19th century and that of the United States in the post–World War II period.
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Kauppi, Niilo. 2003. Bourdieu’s political sociology and the politics of European integration. Theory and Society 32.5–6: 775–789.
DOI: 10.1023/B:RYSO.0000004919.28417.7cSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper applies the concept of political field and political capital to the European Union. Kauppi argues that the European Union is a transnational political field in formation, taking on some of the functions of the nation-state but slow to develop a European civil society and effective democracy.
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Sapiro, Gisèle. 2014. Le champ est-il national? Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 200:70–85.
DOI: 10.3917/arss.200.0070Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Points out that while the concept is usually employed within the framework of a single national state, nowhere in his writings does Bourdieu delimit the concept of field by a methodological nationalism.
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Steinmetz, George. 2007. The Devil’s handwriting: Precoloniality and the German colonial state in Quingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226772448.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This work applies the concept of field to study the colonial state in southwest Africa, Oceania, and Qingdao (Kiaochow in China) under imperial Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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