-
Sociology and Philosophy in the Work ofPierre Bourdieu,
1965751
DEREK ROBBINS University of East London
ABSTRACT The paper first offers a brief account of the
competition between theDurkheimian sociological tradition and
German philosophy in the period in whichBourdieu was a student at
the Ecole Normale Superieure. It indicates the intel-lectual
influences of the early years that Bourdieu subsequently
acknowledged andthen examines his use of the work of Weber in his
first book, Sociologie de lAlgerie(1958). The paper then focuses on
the development of Bourdieus thought fromthe mid-1960s to the
mid-1970s, a period in which he strategically presentedhimself as
an anti-humanist sociologist whilst also articulating a view of
sciencethat was in tune with phenomenological and ontological
philosophy. BourdieusSociology and Philosophy in France since 1945
(1967a) receives particularattention since his analysis of
sociology and philosophy in France in the post-warperiod was a key
element in his own position-taking in respect of the
twodisciplines. The paper then examines Bourdieus critiques of
Weber at this timeand suggests that his dissatisfaction with Webers
epistemology logically became adissastisfaction with the claims of
sociological explanation as such. There followedan attempt to
reconcile a commitment to social science with an allegiance
toelements of phenomenological thought. The outcome was a
willingness onBourdieus part to see reflexivity as a means to
problematiz- ing sociologicalexplanation more than as a means to
refining it or making it more sophisticated.The consequence was
that commitments to phenomenological ontology andsocial science
co-existed in this period. The balance was to change again
subse-quently in Bourdieus thought, and his responsivenesss to
changing conditionsexemplifies how we should ourselves rethink the
relations between possible futuresocial theories and the classical
theories of Western sociology.
KEYWORDS Bourdieu, phenomenology, philosophy, sociology,
Weber
Journal of Classical SociologyCopyright 2002 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi Vol 2(3): 299328
[1468795X(200211)2:3;299328;031196]www.sagepublications.com
-
The specificity of the title is significant in two respects.
Bourdieu insisted that therelations between disciplines or modes of
thinking are not immutable or atem-poral. In particular, the
relations between sociology and philosophy are, in hisword,
arbitrary, or, perhaps more precisely, socially and historically
contingent.In part, this article explores Bourdieus representation
of this contingency inFrench intellectual life, but it is also an
article that considers the contingencywithin Bourdieus own
intellectual production during one decade. I begin byoffering a
brief account of the competition between the Durkheimian
sociologicaltradition and German philosophy in the period in which
Bourdieu was a studentat the Ecole Normale Superieure. I indicate,
firstly, the intellectual influences of hisearly years, which
Bourdieu subsequently acknowledged, and then examine hisuse of the
work of Weber in his first book Sociologie de lAlgerie (1958). I
thenfocus on the development of Bourdieus thought from the
mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, a period in which he strategically
presented himself as an anti-humanistsociologist whilst also
articulating a view of science that was in tune
withphenomenological and ontological philosophy. Bourdieus
Sociology and Philos-ophy in France since 1945 (1967a) receives
particular attention since his analysisof sociology and philosophy
in France in the post-war period was a key element inhis own
position-taking in respect of the two disciplines. The article
examinesBourdieus critiques of Weber and suggests that his
dissatisfaction with Webersepistemology logically became a
dissatisfaction with the claims of sociologicalexplanation as such.
There followed an attempt to reconcile a commitment tosocial
science with an allegiance to elements of phenomenological thought.
Theoutcome was a willingness on Bourdieus part to see reflexivity
as a means toproblematizing sociological explanation more than as a
means to refining it ormaking it more sophisticated. The
consequence was that commitments to phe-nomenological ontology and
social science co-existed in this period. The balancewas to change
again subsequently in Bourdieus thought, and his responsivenessto
changing conditions exemplifies how we should ourselves rethink the
relationsbetween possible social theories and the classical
theories of Western sociology.
The State of French Sociology in the 1920sGeorges Davy published
Sociologues dhier et daujourdhui in 1931. It was acollection of
four studies on Espinas, Durkheim, McDougall in relation
toDurkheimian sociology, and Levy-Bruhl that had been published in
Frenchjournals during the 1920s, preceded by an article on La
Sociologie Franaise de1918 a` 1925, which had first been published
in English in The Monist in 1926. Inspite of the consideration of
American social psychology in the third study, thecollection was
narrowly nationalist. There were no references to Americansociology
or to Marx or Weber. The assessment of past and present
sociologistsindicated by the title amounted exclusively to a
consideration of the progress of anindependent French tradition.
Davy was a first-generation Durkheimian, which
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)300
-
meant that he saw himself as a second-generation positivist.
Born at the time ofComtes death, Levy-Bruhl and Durkheim separately
and differently as students atthe Ecole Normale Superieure in the
1880s began to give intellectual andinstitutional flesh to the
emergent sociology sketched in the Cours de philosophiepositive.
Born in 1883 and also a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure,
Davybecame associated with the Annee Sociologique cluster (Clark,
1973) in 1910,and as early as 1912 five years before the death of
Durkheim published achoice of Durkheim texts with an introductory
study of his sociological system ina series devoted to Les Grands
Philosophes. Franais et etrangers (Davy,1912).
Davy was an apologist for Durkheim. Writing his introduction to
Socio-logues dhier et daujourdhui in 1926, he celebrated the
pioneering work of Saint-Simon and Comte with their idea of a
distinct social reality, the object of adistinct social science as
objective as the other sciences (1931: 6), which was theorigin of a
positivist and rationalist sociology that, he argued, had been in
eclipsefor a good quarter of a century. Davy was convinced that
this sociology was goingto be reborn with the work of Espinas and
spread with the work of Durkheim andhis school. During this period
of eclipse presumably between 1900 and 1925 Davy was prepared to
acknowledge the importance of the followers of Le Play,particularly
in respect of their methodology, but there was no doubt in his
mindthat the future lay with the Durkheimians. He welcomed the
editions of the workof Saint-Simon which were published in 1924 and
1925 under the influence ofBougle and the appearance of key
posthumous editions of Durkheims work inthe mid-1920s, and he
warmly praised Bougles own work and that of Fauconnet,placing his
own texts, particularly Le droit, lidealisme et lexperience
(1922),within the same increasingly dominant Durkheimian movement.
The emergentintellectual dominance was in the process of being
underpinned by significantinstitutional developments. At the end of
his introductory article, Davy pointed tothe fact that sociology
had now been accepted within the Licence and had alsobeen
introduced as a subject for study in the ecoles normales primaires
and for thebaccalaureat. The mutual support of institutional and
intellectual trends wasconsolidated by the production of several
sociology textbooks, one of which washis own Elements de sociologie
(1924). Davy was confident that he was part of anunstoppable
resurgence of sociological analysis that was still firmly attached
tothe ideological and methodological commitments of the
mid-19th-centuryfounders.
Influences on French Thought after 1930Pierre Bourdieu was born
in 1930 and he studied at the Ecole Normale Superieurefrom 1951 to
1955. The situation was by then far from what Davy had
expected.Shortly before the year of publication of Sociologues
dhier et daujourdhui,Edmund Husserl had given what were to be
published as his Paris Lectures
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 301
-
(Husserl, 1964). By the mid-1950s, Merleau-Ponty had researched
the HusserlArchive in Louvain and was influential in disseminating
his ideas in France.Lyotard wrote a small introduction to
phenomenology in 1954 in which hediscussed Husserl and
Merleau-Ponty, and Bourdieus near contemporary at theEcole,
Derrida, was writing an introduction to a translation of Husserls
Origins ofGeometry (Derrida, 1974). Also in 1954, Foucault
participated in the translationof Ludwig Binswangers Traum und
Existenz, and wrote a long introductorydiscussion of existential
psychiatry for it. The influence of Heidegger was apparenthere as
it had been in the work of Sartre during the 1930s leading to
thepublication of LEtre et le neant in 1943. Meanwhile, Raymond
Aron had beenresponsible for introducing the work of Dilthey,
Rickert, Simmel and Weber in hisEssai sur la theorie de lhistoire
dans lAllemagne contemporaine (1938). Equally, ofcourse, Jean
Hyppolite in particular had been responsible for the renewed
interestin Hegel and for the consequential rise of Marxist
existentialism that has beendescribed in detail by Mark Poster
(1975). In parallel with this French interest inGerman thought in
the period between 1930 and 1960 was the tangible effect ofthe
period of the Second World War on the institutional situation of
sociology.Davys confidence was misplaced, for very tangible
reasons. Appended to RogerGeigers article Durkheimian Sociology
under Attack: The Controversy overSociology in the Ecoles Normales
Primaires (in Besnard, 1983) is a letter writtenin 1941 from the
Vatican City by the Vichy Regimes ambassador to the Vatican,who had
been a civil servant at the time of the introduction of sociology
into thecurriculum of the ecoles normales primaires, which Davy
celebrated in 1931. LeonBerard wrote:
Let us return to the program of the Ecoles Normales Primaires of
1920.. . . to these normal school students who came from the Higher
PrimarySchools, who had not done one hour of philosophy, they were
going toteach not philosophy, but, among the hundreds or thousands
of diversesystems, one fixed system of philosophy: Durkheims
sociology. I must tellyou that for several years the teachings of
that rabbinical ideologue hadbecome a sort of official and
practically obligatory academic doctrine. Thesociologists were in
possession of magisterial chairs at the Sorbonne. . . .From them
emanated the decisive and directing influences.
(Besnard, 1983: 135)
Only in 1941 could this anti-semitic opposition to sociology
have been so clearlyarticulated. There was, perhaps, an unholy
affinity between the French vogue forGerman philosophy that
developed in the 1930s and the decline of Frenchsociology in the
1940s. Certainly, in the interview of 1985 in which
Bourdieurecollected his student days, he insisted that sociology
teaching was intellectuallymoribund and that his fellow normaliens
treated the subject with contempt. Fed
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)302
-
the line by his questioners that philosophy was dominated by a
sociologist in theearly 1950s, Bourdieu replied:
No that was just the effect of institutional authority. And our
contemptfor sociology was intensified by the fact that a
sociologist could bepresident of the board of examiners of the
competitive agregation examin philosophy and force us to attend his
lectures which we thought werelousy on Plato and Rousseau.
(1990: 5)
Bourdieu was referring here to Georges Davy. Davys authority
epitomized forhim the contemporary condition of Durkheimianism. It
possessed institutionalcapital but had forfeited intellectual
capital.
Bourdieus Philosophical TrainingIn considering the relationship
of Bourdieus work to the classical tradition ofsociology, it is
important to keep firmly in mind the fact that he was trained
inphilosophy and was not at all formally educated either as a
sociologist or as ananthropologist. For his diplome detudes
superieures, he prepared a translation ofLeibnizs Animadversiones
in partem generalem Principiorum cartesianorum andwrote a
commentary on it under the supervision of Henri Gouhier, a
historian ofphilosophy. In one of his last interviews with Yvette
Delsaut (Delsaut & Rivie`re,2002) Bourdieu did not deny that
whilst he was teaching at the Lycee in Moulinsfrom 1955 to 1956 he
had registered to write a the`se detat under the supervisionof
Georges Canguilhem on Les structures temporelles de la vie
affective. Itappears that this did not materialize but, in the 1985
interview from which I havealready quoted, Bourdieu mentioned that
he had undertaken research into thephenomenology of emotional life,
or more exactly into the temporal structuresof emotional experience
(1990: 67), and it seems likely that he was referring tothis
unwritten or incomplete thesis. In the same interview, Bourdieu
suppliedmore information about the people who had influenced his
intellectual develop-ment when he was a student at the Ecole
Normale Superieure. There are severalimportant components of this
development.
First of all, Bourdieu acknowledged that he had read Being and
Nothing-ness very early on, and then Merleau-Ponty and Husserl. He
was, therefore, wellaware of what he called phenomenology, in its
existentialist variety. He arguedthat he had never really got into
the existentialist mood, but, neverthelessadmitted that:
I read Heidegger, I read him a lot and with a certain
fascination, especiallythe analyses in Sein und Zeit of public
time, history and so on, which,together with Husserls analyses in
Ideen II, helped me a great deal as
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 303
-
was later the case with Schutz in my efforts to analyse the
ordinaryexperience of the social.
(Bourdieu, 1990: 5)
It is easily possible to discern from these acknowledgements the
provenance ofBourdieus concern with the problem of the temporal
structures of affective life.
Secondly, the influence of Marx was negatively significant. In
the 1985interview, Bourdieu claimed that Marxism did not really
exist as an intellectualposition in the early 1950s in France, but
that I did read Marx at that time foracademic reasons; I was
especially interested in the young Marx, and I had beenfascinated
by the Theses on Feuerbach (1990: 3). This was the decade
beforeSartres Critique de la raison dialectique (1960) and before
the brief intellectualdomination of Althusser. Bourdieu was well
read in Marx but never committed toMarxism or to the universality
of Marxist explanation.
Thirdly, Bourdieu mentioned the influence of several
philosophers whoseclasses he attended whilst at the Ecole Normale
Superieure. He mentioned theinfluence on him of Henri Gouhier,
Georges Canguilhem, Gaston Bachelard, EricWeill, Alexander Koyre,
Martial Gueroult and Jules Vuillemin, and commentedthat:
All these people were outside the usual syllabus, but its pretty
muchthanks to them and to what they represented a tradition of the
history ofthe sciences and of rigorous philosophy . . . that I
tried, together withthose people who, like me, were a little tired
of existentialism, to gobeyond merely reading the classical authors
and to give some meaning tophilosophy.
(1990: 4)
There is a common thread that links many of the authors whom
Bourdieucites. That thread relates to Kant in that many of the
authors were engaged inacademic philosophical analysis of the
relevance of Kantian epistemology to thephilosophy of natural
science, either by reference to pre-critical philosophers suchas
Leibniz or to post-Kantian thinkers such as Fichte (see, e.g.,
Gueroult, 1930,1934; Vuillemin, 1954, 1955; Weill, 1963). These
authors can, crudely, be putinto two categories of thinking: on the
one hand, those, like Canguilhem andBachelard, who were
particularly interested in developing a philosophy of scienceor a
historical epistemology with respect to scientific explanation;
and, on theother hand, those who were more concerned to engage
philosophically with thework of Kant, or post-Kantians like Fichte,
or varieties of neo-Kantianism. Indifferent ways, however, this
third strand of influence on Bourdieus thoughtinvolved
consideration of the social or historical contingency of scientific
explana-tion. We have Abdelmalek Sayads testimony (1996) that what
was impressiveabout Bourdieus teaching of Kant at the University of
Algiers in the last few years
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)304
-
of the 1950s was that it used Kantian philosophy to inform
methodologicalpractice in social science observation. Bourdieu was
interested in Kant and theneo-Kantians to advance reflexive
sociological inquiry. His interest in the Critiqueof Practical
Reason, for instance, was that Kantian insights should be deployed
toimprove the exercise of reason in practice.
This disinclination to philosophize abstractly is also evident
in Bourdieusremarks about the fourth strand of influence on his
early thinking structuralism.He attacked Levi-Strauss for
appropriating the linguistic science of Saussure insuch a way as to
maintain the status of philosophy. Making glancing blows
againstFoucault, Derrida and Barthes, Bourdieu criticized the
tendency of the 1960s todraw freely on the profits of scientificity
and the profits associated with the statusof philosopher in using
the -ology effect archaeology, grammatology andsemiology to give
pseudo-empirical substance to theoretical speculation pre-cisely at
the time when, rather, it was necessary to question the status
ofphilosopher and all its prestige so as to carry out a true
conversion into science.In short, as Bourdieu put it, although I
made an attempt in my work to put intooperation the structural or
relational way of thinking in sociology, I resisted withall my
might the merely fashionable forms of structuralism (1990: 6).
Bourdieualso lectured on Durkheim and Saussure at the University of
Algiers, but hisinterest, as in the case of the lectures on Kant,
was methodological rather thansystematic he was trying to establish
the limits of attempts to produce puretheories (1990: 6).
Bourdieu confirmed many of these influences in a paper that he
gave inAmsterdam in 1989. In the article that was subsequently
published in Englishtranslation as Thinking About Limits, Bourdieu
wrote:
What I now very quickly want to address is the epistemological
tradition inwhich I have begun to work. This was for me like the
air that we breathe,which is to say that it went unnoticed. It is a
very local tradition tied to anumber of French names: Koyre,
Bachelard, Canguilhem and, if we goback a little, to Duhem. . . .
This historical tradition of epistemology verystrongly linked
reflection on science with the history of science. Differ-ently
from the neo-positivist, Anglo-Saxon tradition, it was from
thehistory of science that it isolated the principles of knowledge
of scientificthought.
(1992a: 41)
This may have been a strategic statement, just as, equally, may
have been theremarks offered in the 1985 interview. The 1985
interview was with, amongstothers, Axel Honneth, who, at the time,
was research assistant to JurgenHabermas, and Bourdieu may well
have been wanting to emphasize the nature ofhis philosophical
trajectory away from academic philosophy towards practisingsocial
anthropology precisely so as to differentiate his own position from
that of
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 305
-
Habermas. Equally, the Amsterdam paper was presented at the time
in whichBourdieu was seeking to emphasize the potential for
universalization of theparticular French tradition to which he
belonged in opposition to the threat ofuniversal conceptual
domination posed by the American positivist tradition. Thiswas the
period of his engagement with American social science as manifested
inSocial Theory for a Changing Society, which he co-edited with
James Coleman(Coleman and Bourdieu, 1989) following a conference
held in Chicago, and, inparticular, of Bourdieus Epilogue to that
publication entitled On the Possibilityof a Field of World
Sociology. These are necessary caveats to be entered inrelation to
Bourdieus retrospective account in the late 1980s of his
earlyintellectual development. For the purposes of this discussion,
however, I want toexamine some of Bourdieus earliest texts,
especially some of those writtenbetween 1965 and 1975 during the
period in which he developed his distinctiveconcepts and in which,
I shall argue, he sought to reconcile his knowledge of theclassical
tradition of sociological explanation with his philosophical
disposition togive social science a new kind of epistemological
foundation.
Bourdieus First BookThe tension between philosophy and sociology
had already been apparent inBourdieus first book: Sociologie de
lAlgerie (1958). As I have already indicated,Bourdieus intention
was to transfer his philosophical interest in the phenomeno-logical
analysis of emotions and intersubjectivity to apply to the larger
issues ofcross-cultural adaptation that he witnessed in relation to
the Algerian response toFrench colonial intervention in North
Africa. He needed to establish a status quoante of Algerian
cultures in order, subsequently, to analyse processes of
culturaladjustment. This was the motive forcing him to find ways of
describing thetraditional organization of Algerian tribes. A
descriptive sociology was a necessaryinstrument to develop a
descriptive phenomenology of acculturation processes.
Attention has always focused in particular on Bourdieus
discussion of theKabyle culture in the second chapter of his book.
This is understandable becauseKabyle culture was always a point of
reference in his thinking, even, for instance,as late as in his
contribution to the discussion of gender issues in La
dominationmasculine (1998). Durkheim had also cited the Kabyles as
evidence for theexistence of the kind of mechanical solidarity that
he called politico-familialorganization in Chapter 6 of The
Division of Labour in Society (1933). Bourdieudid not cite Durkheim
in the Bibliography or the text of Sociologie de lAlgerie,but the
two sources of information cited by Durkheim (Hanoteau and
Letour-neux, 1873; Masqueray, 1886). It seems likely, therefore,
that Bourdieus inter-pretation of the social organization of the
Kabyles derived from the same sourcesas did Durkheims
interpretation, but there is nothing to suggest that Bourdieuwas
endorsing Durkheims distinction between mechanical and organic
solidarityor, indeed, that he was engaging directly with Durkheims
text at all. By contrast,
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)306
-
Bourdieus Bibliography does contain Webers Gesammelte Aufsatze
zur Reli-gionssoziologie (19201). Apart from the mention of several
American texts onacculturation, the reference to Webers volume is
the only explicitly theoreticalone in the Bibliography. There are
also many references to texts on Islamic lawand Islamic religious
practices (including Chelhod, 1958; Letourneau, 1950).The
discussion of the Kabyles focuses on berber law but has no
reference at all toreligion.
It is the rather more neglected chapter on the Mozabite culture
(Chapter4) that mainly appears to be the product of Bourdieus
reading in the secondaryliterature that he cited. His discussion of
the Mozabites overtly operated with thelanguage that is familiar to
us from the first part of the Aufsatze that is separatelypublished
as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber,
1930).Bourdieu started with the paradox of Mozabite culture that it
stimulatedsophisticated and dispersed commercial activity across
North Africa whilst retain-ing tight social and cultural cohesion.
He sought to find the why and the how ofthis paradox, and Webers
interpretation of the relationship between Calvinismand capitalism
provided a ready-made, off-the-peg explanation. The Mozabiteswere
adherents of a heretical sect of Islam and the heresy was based on
twoprinciples derived from a strict interpretation of the Koran
that all believers areequal and that every action is either good or
bad. On this basis, Bourdieuproceeded to describe the Mozabites as
religious dissidents:
Thus these equalitarian rigorists, according to whom religion
must bevivified not only by faith but also by works and purity of
conscience, whoattach great value to pious intention, who reject
the worship of saints, whowatch over the purity of morals with
extreme severity, could be called theProtestants and Puritans of
Islam.
(1958: 45/1962b: 39)
The adoption of Weberian terminology is blatant. The chapter has
a sub-headingcalled Puritanism and Capitalism and it concludes that
the soul and the life of theMozabites
. . . are organized around two distinct centers which stand in
the sameopposition as the sacred and the profane. Thus it is that
the modernisticadaptation to the world of finance and business does
not contradict therigid traditionalism of the religious life but,
on the contrary, preserves itand makes it possible.
(1958: 58/1962b: 545)
It needs to be said, of course, that Sociologie de lAlgerie was
probablywritten quickly in difficult circumstances as the Algerian
War of Independence wasbecoming more intense, and it also needs to
be accepted that this was the first
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 307
-
publication of a relatively young man. The point is not so much
the inadequacy ofthe analysis as the nature of the inadequacy.
Bourdieu was prepared to usewhatever sociological explanations were
to hand and which seemed plausibly to fitthe historical,
ethnographic records with which he was working. He did not
tryrigorously to defend the analogy that he deployed between
Kharedjite Abadhitesand Calvinists, concentrating only on the
formal similarities without referring tosubstantive differences
between dissident Islam and dissident Christianity, pre-cisely
because his interest was not at all in the validity of the
sociologicalexplanation as such. Bourdieus accounts of the original
social organization of theAlgerian tribes were only of interest to
him in as much as they could be regardedas objectifications of the
putative subjective values of those people whom he wasto interview
in their new situations in Algiers. The accounts were
discursiveexercises. Although the first edition of the book was
entitled Sociologie delAlgerie, the English translation of 1962 was
entitled The Algerians, by whichtime, also, the findings were
differently presented. By 1962, Bourdieu, back inFrance, had
attended some of the research seminars of Levi-Strauss, and
theEnglish text contains diagrammatic representations of the
social/spatial organiza-tion of a Kabyle house that anticipate La
maison kabyle ou le monde renverse(Bourdieu, 1970b). This was
Bourdieus most Levi-Straussian article, but itsubsequently became
clear that there was no more conviction on his part aboutthis
ethnological gloss than there had been in his use of Weberian
discourse. Whatwe see in Bourdieus own critique of some of his
earlier Levi-Straussian pieces inthe first part of Esquisse dune
theorie de la pratique (1972) is not so much thediscovery of a new
methodological position as the articulation of a position thatwas
able to accommodate the artificiality of the explanatory discourses
that he hadexploited in his formative intellectual apprenticeship
in North Africa. It is to thisprocess of articulation that we must
now turn.
Champ Intellectuel et projet createurBourdieus thought always
developed within the framework of an intellectualmatrix. He
simultaneously pursued ideas within and between compartments
sothat, for instance, the articulation of his philosophy and
methodology in respect ofhis Algerian anthropological research
emerged in the early 1970s after a decade ofresearch and reflection
that could be thought to belong to the sociology ofculture and
education. The difficulty is to know where to break into this
matrix soas to try to represent it. However, I take as my starting
point the article that wasfirst published in a special number of
Les Temps Modernes in 1966 devoted to theproblems of structuralism:
Champ intellectuel et projet createur (1966d). Sincereturning to
France from Algeria, Bourdieu had published two books arising
fromhis sociological work there, and also several articles that
were pursuing lines ofinquiry derived from the Algerian studies
notably in relation to time, honourand work. After several years
lecturing at the University of Lille, Bourdieu was
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)308
-
established as a lecturer in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales and as aresearcher in Arons research group, the
Centre de Sociologie Europeenne. He hadundertaken studies of the
experience of students in French higher education,particularly
students of philosophy and sociology at the University of Lille
whenhe was teaching there. The same mixture of concerns was present
in this work ashad been present in the Algerian research. Les
heritiers: les etudiants et la culture(1964) focused on the
curriculum as a mechanism of acculturation, and Bourdieupublished
the results of questionnaires that attempted to generate a profile
of thecultures of students prior to their academic studies. He had
been involved with aproject on photography and photographic clubs,
which resulted in the publicationof Un art moyen: les usages
sociaux de la photographie in 1965, and also with aproject
analysing the attendance at French, and then selected
European,museums/art galleries, which resulted in the publication
of Lamour de lart in1966 (1966a). That year saw the publication of
Condition de classe et positionde classe (1966b) and Une sociologie
de laction est-elle possible? (1966c),both of which were
essentially theoretical, the former in relation to structuralismand
the latter in opposition to Alain Touraine, but there had been very
littlereason to anticipate the developed argument of Champ
intellectuel et projetcreateur neither the articulation of the
concept of field nor the application tocultural history. The
opening paragraph needs to be given in full. Bourdieubegan:
In order that the sociology of intellectual and artistic
creation be assignedits proper object and at the same time its
limits, the principle must beperceived and stated that the
relationship between a creative artist and hiswork, and therefore
his work itself, is affected by the system of socialrelations
within which creation as an act of communication takes place, orto
be more precise, by the position of the creative artist in the
structure ofthe intellectual field (which is itself, in part at any
rate, a function of hispast work, and the reception it has met
with). The intellectual field, whichcannot be reduced to a simple
aggregate of isolated agents or to the sumof the elements merely
juxtaposed, is, like a magnetic field, made up of asystem of power
lines. In other words, the constituting agents or systemsof agents
may be described as so many forces which, by their
existence,opposition or combination, determine its specific
structure at a givenmoment in time. In return, each of these is
defined by its particularposition within this field from which it
derives positional properties whichcannot be assimilated to
intrinsic properties. Each is also defined by aspecific type of
participation in the cultural field taken as a system ofrelations
between themes and problems; it is a determined type of
culturalunconscious, while at the same time it intrinsically
possesses what could becalled a functional weight, because its own
mass, that is, its power (or
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 309
-
better, its authority) in the field cannot be defined
independently of itsposition within it.
(1966d: 865/1971d: 161)
This was a new voice and a new approach. Bourdieu was announcing
thatthe sociology of knowledge in general and of artistic
production in particularshould not be predicated on the
autonomisation of historical producers studied inrelation to a
currently imposed construction of their supposed social
contexts.Rather it should be founded on the analysis of those
impersonal, objective systemswithin which communication takes place
and within which meanings are imma-nently established. Although
Bourdieu cited Williamss Culture and Society(1958) in his article,
nevertheless that book exemplified the approach that he wasseeking
to criticize. For Bourdieu, Williamss work placed texts and authors
thathad been selected, evaluated and esteemed within the literary
critical discourse ofhigh culture in relation to a hypostatized
context that was the construct of theequally high-culture discourse
of social and economic history. The resultingsociology of
literature was not an analysis of the system of historical
socialrelations within which texts functioned but, instead, a
current construction of arepresentation of the past that was
dependent on elements that had been falselyrendered independent and
that functioned ideologically in the present as acreative project
within a present intellectual field. Bourdieus fundamental
objec-tion was to the post hoc or detached imposition of a
structure on phenomena that,in fact, participate in the
construction of their own structures.
Although this summary represents the emphasis of Bourdieus
position, itis, nevertheless, falsely realist. Bourdieus opening
sentence is very important inindicating the epistemology that he
was taking for granted. There are twocomponents. There is, first of
all, the insistence that sociological analysis entailsthe analysis
of the system of social relations within which individuals operate
andwithin which their individualities are defined, but, secondly,
there is the insistencethat this way of seeing intellectual and
artistic production is a necessary corollaryof adopting a
sociological perspective. The principle must be perceived andstated
concerning the boundaries of sociological explanation rather in
termscomparable to mathematical proof. There is no claim here that
reality is beinganalysed. The account of reality that is disclosed
by sociology is a function of thesociological mode of perception.
It does not exclude other modes of perceivingthe same phenomena and
offering alternative accounts of those phenomena.Bourdieu was
clearly committed to the sociological account that he was
explicat-ing but, nevertheless, the attainment of dominance in
representations of realityhad nothing to do with the objective
phenomena and everything to do with theconflict between modes of
perception or the contest between faculties. Althoughthe opening
half-sentence may seem an almost casual introduction, it
doesdisclose Bourdieus attachment to a neo-Kantian epistemology
and, already, awillingness to apply that epistemology reflexively.
As we shall see, it was also a neo-
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)310
-
Kantianism that was derived from the Marburg School and, in
particular, ErnstCassirer, rather than from Rickert, Windelband and
the south-west GermanSchool of neo-Kantianism. Rickert had written
The Limits of Concept Formationin Natural Science (1986) in order
to argue that contingent individual behaviourin history could be
analysed not by adopting the procedures of natural science butonly
by adopting an alternative methodology specific to and inherent in
thedifferent phenomena. Bourdieu appears to have believed, instead,
that delimita-tions of explanatory discourses are themselves
historically contingent. Limits haveto be acknowledged and
declared, but they are not intrinsic. Bourdieus disquietabout
Webers methodology derives, in part, from the latters attachment to
thephilosophical orientation of the south-west German neo-Kantian
School. Bour-dieus neo-Kantianism merged with Bachelards historical
epistemology andresisted transcendentalism. We have to accept that
we proceed as if sociologicalexplanation were valid (to use the
title of a text by another influential neo-Kantian, Hans Vaihinger
[1924]), but we seek to make this provisionalitydominant for
extraneous reasons.
Sociology and Philosophy in France since 1945There is no need to
consider further here the substance of Champ intellectuel etprojet
createur. For our purposes, the introductory passage of the article
clarifiesBourdieus purpose in writing Sociology and Philosophy in
France since 1945:Death and Resurrection of a Philosophy without
Subject in the following year(1967a). This was an article that was
never published in French but only,internationally, in Social
Research. Within the international field of sociology,Bourdieu was
seeking to offer an insider view of the sub-field of
Frenchsociology to an outsider readership. Within the article,
therefore, he attemptedto provide an objective social history of
intellectual relations in France between1945 and 1966 from a
systematically sociological perspective adopted at the endof this
period, whilst, at the same time, he endeavoured to contextualize
his ownintellectual agency during those years. The experiment was
as much an attempt inthe intellectual field to explore the
boundaries of subjectivity and objectivity as, inthe
anthropological field, his Celibat et condition paysanne (1962a)
had been inrespect of the social situation in his native Bearn.
Publication in Social Researchwas an attempt to place the article
outside the immediate field of production andconsumption that was
the object of the articles inquiry. The connection withChamp
intellectuel et projet createur was made explicit in the opening
para-graph. From the outset, therefore, the methodology adopted in
the article waslinked to the position that Bourdieu had already
articulated within the social andintellectual trajectory under
consideration:
The reader will find in this paper neither a systematic history
of thesociological or philosophical events and schools which have
succeeded one
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 311
-
another in France since 1945, nor a philosophy of the history of
philoso-phy or of the history of sociology, but a sociology of the
main trends ofsociology which, in order to restore their full
meaning to works and todoctrines, tries to relate them to their
cultural context, in other words,tries to show how positions and
oppositions in the intellectual field areconnected with explicitly
or implicitly philosophical attitudes. It is withthis in mind that
we have prepared this outline of a sociology of Frenchsociology,
which aims at uncovering unconscious affinities rather
thandescribing declared affiliations, and at deciphering implicit
purposes ratherthan accepting literally declarations of intent.
(1967a: 162)
As this passage indicates, Bourdieus article focused on the
changing relationsbetween philosophy and sociology in the
particular socio-economic conditions ofpost-World War II France. In
Les heritiers (1964), Bourdieu had already inspectedthe social
contingency of the student selection of these subjects of study,
and itcould be said that he was now analysing the social
contingency of how thesesubjects were themselves constituted for
student consumption. It was an approachthat anticipated the
abstract discussion of the arbitrariness of curriculum contentin La
reproduction (1970a), but the constant, tacit frame of reference
wasBourdieus own position-taking between the two intellectual
disciplines the onewithin which he was trained and the other that
he was employed to transmit. Thesub-text of his argument and of his
position-taking related to the contemporaryvogue for quantitative
sociological research as it has developed in the UnitedStates. He
contended, however, that such research is ultimately nothing but
aneo-positivism that seeks its guarantee in American sociology and
civilization(1967a: 164). He claimed, in other words, that the
apparent indifference ofAmerican empirical social science to
philosophy and theoretical speculation waspredicated on positivist
philosophy. Bourdieu found it ironical that empirical socialscience
could only re-establish itself in France by resurrecting the
anti-philosophical philosophy of the Comtist tradition.
The view that Bourdieu tried to express in the article was,
essentially, thatthe empiricist social science that was a form of
neo-positivism was inadequateprecisely because it was founded on an
inadequate philosophy of social science.What was required was a new
kind of empirical practice grounded in post-positivist philosophy
of science. Again, the irony for Bourdieu was that structural-ism
had generated humanist reaction because, like Durkheimianism, it
seemed totreat social facts as things, but the shortcoming of
structuralism, as ofDurkheimianism, was that it was
methodologically insufficiently anti-humanist.Bourdieu paid
specific attention to some articles by Merleau-Ponty, and
arguedthat in his De Mauss a` Levi-Strauss (1959) Merleau-Ponty
granted ethnologyits philosophical emancipation, but he did not
fail to reserve to philosophy theright to re-interpret or, better,
to arouse the existential significance of the
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)312
-
inanimate structures built up or discovered by the ethnologist
(1967a: 167).Bourdieu claimed that the accommodation between
existential philosophy andsocial science achieved by the
intellectuals of the previous generation was one thatpreserved
freedom and voluntarism within a pseudo-scientistic and
pseudo-deterministic structural analysis whereas what was needed
was the delimitation ofa social science theory and practice that,
by concentrating on the systemicrelationalism of observed
phenomena, would rule out any explanatory recourse tothe
supposition of the existence of free human agency within those
systems. Sucha supposition was, for Bourdieu, an interpolation from
outside the immanentsystem that was merely a projection of the
disposition towards existentialistphilosophy on the part of the
scientific observers.
Bourdieu accused Levi-Strauss of the same underlying humanist
orienta-tion, arguing that he brought out in the role of the
ethnologist what must havesurpassed the fondest expectations of a
phenomenologist (1967a: 167) in thefollowing passage from his
Foreword to Sociologie et anthropologie:
The apprehension (which cannot be objective) of the unconscious
formsof the activity of the mind nevertheless leads to
subjectivation; for, after all,it is a similar process that, in
psychoanalysis, enables us to recover our self,however alienated
and, in ethnological investigation, to reach the mostalien of other
persons as if he were another self of ours.
(Levi-Strauss, 1950: xxxi, quoted in Bourdieu, 1967a: 167)
Bourdieu proceeded to argue that this humanist social science
found support inthe intellectual climate of the years of
Occupation, Resistance and Liberation. Theexistential philosophy
that was homologuous with social and political experienceduring the
period of its production did a disservice to social science by
down-grading it for 15 years. Bourdieu discussed the stance adopted
by Sartre and wasonly prepared to acknowledge that the latters
intellectual endeavours werebeneficial in breaking with the
canonical rules and subject-matter of universityphilosophy, which
had the effect of liberating anthropological science from
theconventions that had held it prisoner (1967a: 180).
This was an influence that Bourdieu was recognizing as of latent
value forhis own project, but the article looked next at the
reaction to existentialism in theearly 1960s and he claimed that
the emergent empirical sociology in France wasfounded on the
illusion of a first beginning and, by the same token, on
ignoranceof the epistemological problems posed by any scientific
practice, as well as ondeliberate or unwitting disregard of the
theoretical past of European science(1967a: 184). This
epistemological ignorance was encouraged by the social andeconomic
conditions in which public and private bureaucracies began to look
tosociology to provide legitimation of their policy intentions.
Bourdieu quotedLucien Goldmanns then recent comment that future
historians will probablyidentify the years 1955 to 1960 as the
sociological turning-point in France
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 313
-
between crisis capitalism and organization capitalism,
accompanied by a transitionfrom philosophical, historical and
humanistic sociology to the a-historical socio-logical thinking of
today (Goldmann, 1966: 6, quoted in Bourdieu, 1967a:190).
The position Bourdieu was adopting in Sociology and Philosophy
inFrance since 1945 on the eve of the May events in Paris of 1968
is complicated,but it can be summarized in the following way. The
second-generation Durk-heimians in whom Davy had placed such
confidence in 1931 had, for Bourdieu,lost contact with the
pioneering intellectual achievement of the early
Durkheim.Durkheimianism had routinized positivism and had become
assimilated to institu-tionalized university philosophy. There had
been a shift towards a spiritualizationof the conscience collective
in Durkheims own late work and this had partly beenthe consequence
of seeking institutional accommodation with philosophicalopponents.
The immediate post-war period had seen an explicable rise in
liber-tarian philosophy, and this had inhibited the progress of the
scientific analysis ofsocial systems. Structuralism had
accommodated phenomenology and philosoph-ical individualism whilst
American empirical sociology was becoming popularbecause it
presented itself as unphilosophical and, for this reason, was
uncriticallycompliant with the orientations of organization
capitalism. What was needed wasan empirical social science that was
grounded on a sound epistemology. One ofthe problems of the war
period was that the institutional links that maintaineddialogue
between philosophy and social science were severed and, for a
while, theintellectual discourses existed in isolation from each
other. Bourdieu pointedhopefully to the fact that all but
non-existent between 1950 and 1960, researchworkers with a
philosophical background, and more especially graduates
inphilosophy or from the Ecole Normale, find their way into the
research institu-tions that had been established without them
(1967a: 208).
The philosophers now cited as contributing to a new engagement
ofphilosophy with social science were Bachelard, Piaget, Gueroult,
Canguilhem, andVuillemin, none of whom was associated with the
dominant non-universityphilosophy spearheaded by Sartre. The
philosophies produced by these intellec-tuals were
. . . predisposed, by the very object they choose for themselves
and by theway in which they approach it, to lend sociology the
theoretical assistanceit needs, if only by posing the generic
question of the conditions that makepossible any scientific
practice.
(1967a: 211)
Significantly, Bourdieu also commented in a footnote that what
these intellectualshad in common was that they came from
working-class or lower middle-classbackgrounds and primarily from
the provinces (1967a: 211 fn.54).
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)314
-
Bourdieus purpose in writing Sociology and Philosophy in France
since1945 is now clear. Having initially dabbled with
Levi-Straussian thinking in theearly 1960s, he had then, in seeking
to present himself as a sociologist, beentempted by American
quantitative methods. The detailed statistical appendices toLamour
de lart suggest this temporary temptation. However, by
1966/7,Bourdieu was committed to establishing a new reconciliation
between philosophyand sociology that would underpin the empirical
practice of the research groupthat he was to lead from 1968.
Equally, he began to articulate a philosophy ofsocial science that
would enable sociologists to be politically engaged
withoutaccepting the Sartrian philosophy of engagement. At the same
time, he sought tooutline a theory of social science that
emphasized research practice and was quiteseparate from the
practice of university social science teaching. In his own terms,he
was about to begin the process of establishing an intellectual
field of socialscience discourse within which his own creative
practices would be legitimated,and it was logical that this
preparatory period should culminate in the launchingof the journal
Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales in 1975, which was
tofunction for Bourdieus theory of practice as the Annee
Sociologique had forDurkheimianism.
Emergent Philosophy of Social ScienceThese were very productive
and significant years for Bourdieu. In 1967 (1967b)he published his
translation into French of Panofskys Gothic Architecture
andScholastic Thought (1957), concluding with a postface the
argument of which is,in part, repeated in Syste`mes denseignement
et syste`mes de pensee (1967c).Panofsky was a disciple of Cassirer,
and Bourdieu was clearly interested inCassirers thought throughout
this period. Not only did he cite CassirersStructuralism in Modern
Linguistics (1945) and his Sprache und Mythos(1925) in articles,
but, as General Editor of Le Sens Commun series for LesEditions de
Minuit, Bourdieu was responsible for organizing the translations
intoFrench of five works by Cassirer between 1972 and 1977, notably
the threevolumes of La philosophie des formes symboliques (1972)
and Substance et fonction:Elements pour une theorie du concept
(1977). Bourdieu produced Le metier desociologue in 1968 (1968a).
This was subtitled Epistemological Preliminaries andwas intended as
the first of several volumes that would be of practical value
toresearch students. It offered a blueprint for the theory of
sociological knowledgethat he was counterposing against
structuralism. Indeed this was the title of anarticle which
appeared in 1968 in Social Research, almost as a companion
piecewith Sociology and Philosophy in France since 1945.
Structuralism and Theoryof Sociological Knowledge (1968c) was never
published in French. In 1970,Bourdieu published La reproduction:
Elements pour une theorie du syste`me den-seignement (1970a). The
following year he published both Une interpretation dela theorie de
la religion selon Max Weber (1971a) and Gene`se et structure du
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 315
-
champ religieux (1971b). There were other significant texts in
these years, but Iwant to highlight the section of the first
chapter of Esquisse dune theorie de lapratique, precede de trois
etudes dethnologie kabyle (1972), which was publishedseparately in
translation in 1973 as The Three Forms of Theoretical Knowledge.All
these texts of these years, and others of the same period,
cross-refer richly, butI want to examine in detail the abstract
statement of theory that Bourdieu offeredin Structuralism and
Theory of Sociological Knowledge (1968c); his applicationof that
theory in seeking to reinterpret the work of Max Weber; and,
finally, theconsequences of his attempt to extend his theory of
sociological practice in hisreconsideration of his Algerian
fieldwork.
Structuralism and Theory of SociologicalKnowledgeAt the
beginning of Structuralism and Theory of Sociological
Knowledge,Bourdieu insisted that the importance of structuralism
was that it introduced anew scientific method rather than that it
was a new explanatory theory:
The theory of sociological knowledge, as the system of
principles and rulesgoverning the production of all sociological
propositions scientificallygrounded, and of them alone, is the
generating principle of all partialtheories of the social and,
therefore, the unifying principle of a properlysociological
discourse which must not be confused with a unitary theory ofthe
social.
(1968c: 681)
Bourdieu was trying to specify the boundaries of a properly
sociological dis-course as much here as in the opening sentence of
Champ intellectuel et projetcreateur. The defining character of
sociology lay in its method rather than in itsfindings. It followed
that classical theorists such as Marx, Durkheim and Weber,totally
different in their views of social philosophy and ultimate values,
were ableto agree on the main points of the fundamental principles
of the theory of theknowledge of the social world (1968c: 682).
This was the guiding principle behind Le metier de sociologue
(1968a),which assembled passages from ideologically diverse
sociological practitioners inorder to demonstrate and communicate
the unity of sociological meta-science.In accordance with Comtes
contention, the meta-scientific unity of sociology isunited with
science in general. It participated in the identity of principles
uponwhich all science, including the science of man, is founded
(1968c: 682). Tacitly,Bourdieu was attempting to rescue the correct
understanding of Comte fromDurkheims distorting interpretation.
Positivism was not advanced by Comte asthe particular methodology
of the social sciences but, rather, social science wassimply the
application to social relations of the principles underlying all
scientific
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)316
-
endeavour. Although this is never explicitly stated, Bourdieus
position wasComtist in that by rejecting substantialist in favour
of relational thinking, hewas excluding religious, metaphysical or,
more generally, humanist reference fromsociological method: The
originality of anthropological structuralism lies essen-tially in
the fact that it attacks from first to last the substantialist way
of thinkingwhich modern mathematics and physics have constantly
striven to refute (1968c:682).
The influence of the non-existentialist philosophers of science
is evidenthere. Bourdieus article was devoted to seeking to explain
the ways in which, tocount as social science, the abstract thinking
of mathematics and geometry has tobe applied impersonally to social
and cultural relations, which are essentiallyrelations between
persons. As Bourdieu puts it:
To remove from physics any remnant of substantialism, it has
beennecessary to replace the notion of force with that of form. In
the same waysocial sciences could not do away with the idea of
human nature except bysubstituting for it the structure it
conceals, that is by considering asproducts of a system of
relations the properties that the spontaneoustheory of the social
ascribes to a substance.
(1968c: 692)
Bourdieu on Weber
There is no space to explore the manifest influence here of
Cassirers Substance etfonction. The important point is that
Bourdieu was seeking to make the identifica-tion of immanent
systemic relations the keystone of the sociological
methodunderpinning his research practice and that of his
colleagues. In order tolegitimate the sociological practice that he
was advocating, he wrote two articlesin which he deliberately
distinguished his approach from that of Weber (in Uneinterprtation
de la theorie de la religion selon Max Weber, 1971a) and
indicatedthe ways in which his meta-scientific perspective enabled
him to assimilate thetheories of religion of Marx, Weber and
Durkheim in (Gene`se et structure duchamp religieux, 1971b). The
title of the latter implies the basis of Bourdieuscritique of Weber
in the former. For Bourdieu, Weber failed to acknowledge
thesignificance of the objective religious field within which
individuals were consti-tuted. By extrapolating types, Weber
imposed extraneously constructed cate-gories on situations that
should be understood as categorially self-constituting.Bourdieu
made explicit the limited texts of Weber from which he was
working,and it would seem that he was now providing a critique of
those texts that he haduncritically exploited in Sociologie de
lAlgerie (1958). Bourdieu argued in Uneinterpretation de la theorie
de la religion selon Max Weber that a latently
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 317
-
interactionist interpretation was always present in Webers
analyses. To demon-strate this, he pointed to four passages in
which he claimed that Weber acknow-ledged that the behaviour of
conceptual types magician, priest and prophet isin reality
constructed in interactive practice. Without denying Webers
insights,Bourdieu claimed that we can make a break from Webers
explicit methodology todisclose what he was really suggesting.
However, we also need to make a secondbreak. The first break
liberated the interactions of agents from the imposition
oftypological conceptualization. The second break involves
recognizing that agentsare not themselves autonomous. Rather, the
analysis of the logic of interactionshas to be subordinated to an
analysis of the objective structures within which theinteractions
have meaning for the agents. Individual agency has to be
understoodin terms of the field within which it is exercised.
Without this second break, thedanger is that interaction will be
understood inter-subjectively or inter-personally,leading to
psychological abstraction. By working with explanatory types,
Weberused particular exemplars to analyse the general.
Scientificity was constructed and voluntarism apparently avoided by
generalizing from particular case-studies,but Weber failed to
understand that his types were actually the products of thesystem
within which they operated rather than autonomous instruments by
whichthe system could be extraneously explained by observers.
Bourdieu elaborated his objection most explicitly in the
followingfootnote:
Amongst the omissions resulting from his failure to construct
the religiousfield as such, Max Weber presents a series of
juxtaposed points of viewwhich each time are derived from the
position of a particular agent. Themost significant omission,
without doubt, is the absence of any explicitreference to the
strictly objective relationship (because established throughtime
and space) between the priest and the original prophet and, by
thesame token, the absence of any clear and explicit distinction
betweenthe two types of prophecy with which every priesthood must
deal theoriginal prophecy whose message it perpetuates and from
which it holds itsauthority and the competing prophecy which it
combats.
(1971a: 6 fn. 5)2
Bourdieu proceeded to argue that a religious field functions to
satisfy religiousneed, but this can only be poorly defined if it is
not specified in terms of theneeds of different groups and classes.
Bourdieu claimed that Weber did notattempt such an elaboration of
the constellation of interests in competitionwithin a religious
field, even though he did feel obliged to take precise account
ofthe particular needs of every professional group or every class.
In evidence,Bourdieu referred to Webers discussion in Status
Groups: Classes and Religionand added: Another analysis of the
differences between the religious interests ofpeasants and petit
bourgeois town-dwellers can be found in the chapter entitled
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)318
-
Hierocratic Domination and Political Domination (Bourdieu,
1971a: 7 fn.7/1987: 135 fn. 3). Again, Bourdieu was suggesting that
Weber instinctivelyappreciated that there were competitions for
dominance that could only bedescribed in terms of interaction and
could not be analysed typologically.
The example Bourdieu chose here to suggest the inadequacy of
Webersmethodology is significant because the relations between
peasants and town-dwellers were the objects of his analysis in his
Algerian work as well as in Celibatet condition paysanne (Bourdieu,
1962a), and the difference between thestructuralist comparative
analysis of the universalized concept of the peasantcondition and
the analysis of the structure of relations within particular
systemsconstituting the peasant position was the starting point for
the general discussionin Condition de classe et position de classe
(1966b). What Bourdieu was arguinghere in respect of religious
interests, he was also saying in respect of the politicalfield in
Lopinion publique nexiste pas (1971c).
A final example of Bourdieus critique of Weber relates to the
notion ofcharisma. Bourdieu wrote:
As well as occasionally succumbing to the nave representation of
charismaas a mysterious quality inherent in a person or as a gift
of nature . . . evenin his most rigorous writings Max Weber never
proposes anything otherthan a psycho-sociological theory of
charisma, a theory that regards it asthe lived relation of a public
to the charismatic personality. . . .
(1971a: 1415/1987: 129)
Bourdieus claim was that Weber, at best, regarded charisma as
something thatwas invested in an individual by a social group. By
contrast, Bourdieu contendedthat charisma has to be understood to
be an attribute that is comprehendedscientifically in terms of the
objective structure of relations by which it isconstituted. It is
measurable abstractly like a magnetic force and not by recourseto
social psychological interpretation. He concluded:
Let us then dispose once and for all of the notion of charisma
as a propertyattaching to the nature of a single individual and
examine instead, in eachparticular case, sociologically pertinent
characteristics of an individualbiography. The aim in this context
is to explain why a particular individualfinds himself socially
predisposed to live out and express with particularcogency and
coherence, ethical or political dispositions that are
alreadypresent in a latent state amongst all the members of the
class or group ofhis addressees.
(1971a: 16/1987: 131)
In subjecting the work of Weber to an epistemological critique,
Bourdieuwas consolidating the sociological methodology advanced in
his Structuralism
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 319
-
and Theory of Sociological Knowledge (1968c). Bourdieu would
appear to havebeen repudiating the implicit phenomenology of his
early fieldwork and the Levi-Straussian philosophical ethnology of
his texts of the early 1960s, and legitimatinghimself as the
spokesperson, expressing himself with particular cogency
andcoherence, for the new philosophical sociology that was the
product of the socialand historical developments he had outlined in
Sociology and Philosophy inFrance since 1945 (1967a). The situation
was, I believe, more complicated thanthis, and the complexity has
to be discussed in order to approach a properunderstanding of
Bourdieus position in relation to the classical tradition
ofsociology. He positioned himself within sociology by reference to
a perceivedinadequacy of Webers methodology. Webers use of types
was an artificial orarbitrary imposition on phenomena that
possessed inherent systemic meaning. Indefining the boundaries of
sociological explanation, however, Bourdieu was awarethat
sociological explanation as such represented a discursive
imposition that wasas artificial or arbitrary as typological
imposition within the discourse.
The Three Forms of Theoretical KnowledgeIn spite of Bourdieus
criticism of Merleau-Ponty in Sociology and Philosophy inFrance
since 1945, he was only strategically renouncing his earlier
phenomeno-logical interests. The philosophical influence of
Merleau-Pontys La structure ducomportement (1942) was particularly
evident in Celibat et condition paysanne(1962a) and in Bourdieus
development of the concepts of habitus and hexis,whilst
Merleau-Pontys La phenomenologie de perception (1945) was reworked
inBourdieus Elements dune theorie sociologique de la perception
artistique(1968b). At the same time as Bourdieu was defining the
limits of social scientificexplanation, he was also reflecting on
the pre-logical, ontological realities thatsocial science purported
to describe. The framework of Le metier de sociologue(1968a) was
based on an adoption of Bachelards emphasis on the need to
makeepistemological breaks so as to understand the social
conditions of production ofscientific explanation. It appeared,
therefore, to advocate a sociology of sociologyor a reflexive
sociology as a necessary procedure for constructing and
verifyingsociological findings. The epistemological breaks were
presented as the means bywhich sociological explanation could be
refined. However, by the time thatBourdieu published The Three
Forms of Theoretical Knowledge in 1973, theepistemological breaks
were serving a broader purpose. They were functioning toallow the
sociological analysis of sociological objectivism to become a means
bywhich ontic realities might be disclosed. The dense passage is
familiar but needs tobe presented in full:
The social world may be subjected to three modes of theoretical
know-ledge, each of which implies a set of (usually tacit)
anthropological theses.The only thing these modes of knowledge have
in common is that they all
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)320
-
stand in opposition to practical knowledge. The mode of
knowledge weshall term phenomenological (or, if one prefers to
speak in terms ofcurrently active schools, interactionist or
ethnomethodological) makesexplicit primary experience of the social
world: perception of the socialworld as natural and self-evident is
not self-reflective by definition andexcludes all interrogation
about its own conditions of possibility. At asecond level,
objectivist knowledge (of which the structuralist
hermeneuticconstitutes a particular case) constructs the objective
relations (e.g. eco-nomic or linguistic) structuring not only
practices but representations ofpractices and in particular primary
knowledge, practical and tacit, of thefamiliar world, by means of a
break with this primary knowledge and,hence, with those tacitly
assumed presuppositions which confer upon thesocial world its
self-evident and natural character. Objectivist knowledgecan only
grasp the objective structures of the social world, and
theobjective truth of primary experience (from which explicit
knowledge ofthese structures is absent) provided it poses the very
problem doxicexperience of the social world excludes by definition,
namely the problemof the (specific) conditions under which this
experience is possible.Thirdly, what we might refer to as
praxeological knowledge is concernednot only with the system of
objective relations constructed by the objectiv-ist form of
knowledge, but also with the dialectical relationships betweenthese
objective structures and the structured dispositions which
theyproduce and which tend to reproduce them, i.e. the dual process
of theinternalization of externality and the externalization of
internality. Thisknowledge presupposes a break with the objectivist
knowledge, that is, itpresupposes investigation into the conditions
of possibility and, conse-quently, into the limits of the
objectivistic viewpoint which grasps practicesfrom the outside, as
a fait accompli, rather than construct their generativeprinciple by
placing itself inside the process of their accomplishment.
(1973: 534)
The Phenomenological ContextThe way to make sense of this
passage is to set it in a phenomenological context.Robert
Sokolowskis brilliantly lucid Introduction to Phenomenology (2000)
helpsus to understand what Bourdieu was doing in this passage. In a
chapter entitledAn Initial Statement of What Phenomenology Is,
Sokolowski argues that inorder to understand what phenomenology
is,
. . . we must make a distinction between two attitudes or
perspectives thatwe can adopt. We must distinguish between the
natural attitude and thephenomenological attitude. The natural
attitude is the focus we havewhen we are involved in our original,
world-directed stance, when we
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 321
-
intend things, situations, facts, and any other kinds of
objects. . . . We donot move into it from anything more basic. The
phenomenological attitude,on the other hand, is the focus we have
when we reflect upon the naturalattitude and all the
intentionalities that occur within it. It is within
thephenomenological attitude that we carry out philosophical
analyses. Thephenomenological attitude is also sometimes called the
transcendentalattitude.
(2000: 42)
Sokolowski clarifies the relationship between the two attitudes
by specifying moreclearly the distinguishing characteristics of the
phenomenological attitude:
There are many different viewpoints and attitudes even within
the naturalattitude. There is the viewpoint of ordinary life, there
is the viewpoint ofthe mathematician, that of the medical
specialist, the physicist, the politi-cian, and so on. . . . But
the phenomenological attitude is not like any ofthese. It is more
radical and comprehensive. All the other shifts inviewpoint and
focus remain cushioned by our underlying world belief,which always
remains in force, and all the shifts define themselves asmoving
from one viewpoint into another among the many that are opento us.
The shift into the phenomenological attitude, however, is an all
ornothing kind of move that disengages completely from the
naturalattitude and focuses, in a reflective way, on everything in
the naturalattitude, including the underlying world belief.
(2000: 47)
Viewed from this perspective, the first epistemological break
advocated byBourdieu in The Three Forms of Theoretical Knowledge
enables objectivistscientific knowledge, but the objectivism
remains within the domain of naturalattitudes. The second
epistemological break, however, enables an entirely differ-ent
perspective to be achieved in relation to all natural attitudes. By
thisreconciliation or synthesis of a philosophy of science derived
from Bachelard andthe process of phenomenological reduction derived
from Husserl, Bourdieu wasable to maintain a strictly subjectless
or anti-humanist methodology of socialscience whilst allowing for
the agency of beings within a life-world. Bourdieuscriticism of
Merleau-Ponty and Levi-Strauss had been that they both allowed
theirphilosophical positions to distort the truly positivist
scientificity of sociologicalinvestigation. His accommodation of
philosophy and sociology allowed for a cleardemarcation between the
possible achievements of sociology and ontology.Bourdieus second
epistemological break is not a meta-scientific posture withinthe
field of sociology. Instead, it represents a sociological way to
phenomeno-logical reduction. Sokolowski suggests that phenomenology
offers two possibleways to achieve reduction, bracketing or the
epoche. The first is a Cartesian way
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)322
-
that subjects all to doubt, and the second is an ontological way
to reduction thathelps us to complete the partial sciences. We move
out to wider and widercontexts, until we come to the kind of widest
context provided by the phenom-enological attitude (2000: 53).
Bourdieus insistence that tout est social(1992c) enabled him to
identify ontological and sociological analysis such that hetried to
subject all discourses to sociological reduction without
privileging thesociological practices of the natural attitude.
Bourdieus dual use of sociological inquiry has to be clearly
stated. Thisdual function explains the way in which throughout his
career he sought to shiftintellectual perspective between differing
public discourses or fields, sometimespresenting himself as an
anthropologist, a sociolinguist, a cultural sociologist
orphilosopher, without relinquishing his fundamental commitment to
a sociologicalapproach. He approached the Coming Crisis of Western
Sociology (Gouldner,1971) in the perspective of Husserls The Crisis
of European Sciences andTranscendental Phenomenology (1970).
SummaryThis article has focused on the brief period in which
Bourdieu was bothlegitimating himself within the field of sociology
and simultaneously laying thefoundations for a theory of practice
that would subject all scientific discourses tophilosophical
scrutiny. Although there is clear evidence for the suggestion
herethat Bourdieu appropriated phenomenological thinking and
grafted it to thephilosophy of science, it also has to be firmly
said that he did not share thetranscendental dispositions of either
Husserl or of some of the neo-Kantians.Although he took advantage
of the descriptive procedures of phenomenologicalanalysis, Bourdieu
did not, unlike Husserl, believe that phenomenology securedthe
supreme status of philosophy. As Sokolowski puts it: To move into
thephenomenological attitude is not to become a specialist in one
form of knowledgeor another, but to become a philosopher (2000:
47).
Bourdieu wrote The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger (1991)
toshow that Heideggerian philosophy could be subjected to
sociological/phenomenological reduction, and Pascalian Meditations
(2000) was also anattempt to celebrate the kind of philosophizing
that would not become ossified asacademic philosophy. The truth,
therefore, must be that Bourdieu exploitedphenomenology whilst
rejecting its transcendental pretensions. In effect,
phe-nomenological reduction was, for him, an heuristic device
within the naturalattitude that owed its pragmatic results to
claims of transcendence that he did notaccept. We can conclude that
Bourdieus relationship to the classical tradition ofWestern
European sociology was unique. As he sometimes stated, he was
anoblate someone who could not fully let go of the intellectual
position intowhich he had been initiated, in spite of his
scepticism. It remains to be seenwhether Bourdieus ambivalent
resolution of his personal, social and intellectual
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 323
-
inheritance his habitus will continue to provide the paradigm
that we need foran ongoing synergy between social research and
philosophical reflection. If aconclusion is appropriate when all
situations require continuous intellectualadjustments, my view
would be that Bourdieu was aware that international
social,political and cultural developments are occurring that
cannot readily be under-stood by reference to a circumscribed
discourse (sociology) generated in oneparticular place and time
(Western Europe from the middle of the 19th century).The insight
that I have explored in this article was that we now urgently need
toconstruct shared discourses that seek to theorize internationally
shared experi-ences expressed in particular and different
conceptual languages. BourdieusReponses: Pour une anthropologie
reflexive (1992b) was translated as An Invitationto Reflexive
Sociology. The English title missed Bourdieus point, and his
emphasisneeds to be the starting-point for an endeavour that will
have the possibility ofreviving social theory internationally
without simply endorsing our local socio-logical tradition.
Notes1. Throughout this text I refer to all collaborative
publications with which Bourdieu was involved as
if they were the work of Bourdieu alone. The full details of
authorship are given in thebibliography. For a discussion of the
way in which Bourdieu stimulated collaborative activity, seethe
interview between Bourdieu and Yvette Delsaut in Delsaut and
Rivie`re (2002: 177239).
2. This is my translation. The footnote does not appear in the
English translation of the article(Bourdieu, 1987). Another
footnote in this English translation indicates that it is a
slightlymodified version of the original French article and was
written in 1985.
ReferencesAron, R. (1938) Essai sur la theorie de lhistorie dans
lAllemagne contemporaine.
Paris: Vrin.Besnard, P. (ed.) (1983) The Sociological Domain:
The Durkheimians and the
Founding of French Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.Bourdieu, P. (1958) Sociologie de lAlgerie. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de
France.Bourdieu, P. (1962a) Celibat et condition paysanne,
Etudes rurales 56:
32136.Bourdieu, P. (1962b) The Algerians. Boston:
Beacon.Bourdieu, P. (with J.-C. Passeron) (1964) Les heritiers: les
etudiants et la culture.
Paris: Editions de Minuit.Bourdieu, P. (with L. Boltanski, R.
Castel and J.-C. Chamboredon) (1965) Un
art moyen: les usages sociaux de la photographie. Paris:
Editions deMinuit.
Bourdieu, P (with A. Darbel and D. Schnapper) (1966a) Lamour de
lart. Paris:Editions de Minuit.
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)324
-
Bourdieu, P. (1966b) Condition de classe et position de classe,
Archiveseuropeennes de sociologie VII(2): 20123.
Bourdieu, P. (with J.D. Reynaud) (1966c) Une sociologie de
laction est-ellepossible?, Revue franaise de sociologie VII(4):
50817.
Bourdieu, P. (1966d) Champ intellectuel et projet createur, Les
Temps Modernes246: 865906. Translated as Bourdieu, 1971d.
Bourdieu, P. (with J.-C. Passeron) (1967a) Sociology and
Philosophy in Francesince 1945: Death and Resurrection of a
Philosophy without Subject,Social Research XXXIV(1): 162212.
Bourdieu, P. (1967b) Postface to and translation of E. Panofsky,
Gothic Archi-tecture and Scholastic Thought. Paris: Editions de
Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. (1967c) Syste`mes denseignement et syste`mes de
pensee, Revueinternationale des sciences sociales XIX(3):
36788.
Bourdieu, P. (with J.-C. Chamboredon and J.-C. Passeron) (1968a)
Le metier desociologue. Paris: Mouton-Bordas.
Bourdieu, P. (1968b) Elements dune theorie sociologique de la
perceptionartistique, Revue internationale des sciences sociales
XX(4): 64064.
Bourdieu, P (1968c) Structuralism and Theory of Sociological
Knowledge,Social Research XXXV(4): 681706.
Bourdieu, P. (with J.-C. Passeron) (1970a) La reproduction:
elements pour unetheorie du syste`me denseignement. Paris: Editions
de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. (1970b) La maison kabyle ou le monde renverse, in
J. Pouillon andP. Maranda (eds), Echanges et communications:
melanges offerts a` ClaudeLevi-Strauss a` loccasion de son 60e
anniversaire, Paris and The Hague:Mouton. Translated as Bourdieu,
1970c.
Bourdieu, P (1970c) The Berber House or the World Reversed,
Social ScienceInformation IX(2): 15170.
Bourdieu, P. (1971a) Une Interpretation de la theorie de la
religion selon MaxWeber, Archives europeennes de sociologie XII(1):
321.
Bourdieu, P. (1971b) Gene`se et structure du champ religieux,
Revue franaisede sociologie XII(3): 295334.
Bourdieu, P. (1971c) Lopinion publique nexiste pas, Noroit
155.Bourdieu, P. (1971d) Intellectual Field and Creative Project,
in M.F.D. Young
(ed.) Knowledge and Control. London, Collier-Macmillan.Bourdieu,
P. (1972) Esquisse dune theorie de la pratique, precede de trois
etudes
dethnologie kabyle. Geneva: Droz.Bourdieu, P. (1973) The Three
Forms of Theoretical Knowledge, Social Science
Information XII(1): 5380.Bourdieu, P. (1987) Legitimation and
Structured Interests in Webers Sociology
of Religion, in S. Whimster and S. Lash (eds), Max Weber,
Rationalityand Modernity. London: Allen & Unwin.
Bourdieu, P. (1990) In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive
Sociology. Oxford:Polity.
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 325
-
Bourdieu, P. (1991) The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger.
Cambridge:Polity.
Bourdieu, P. (1992a) Thinking about Limits, Theory, Culture, and
Society 9:3749.
Bourdieu, P. (1992b) Reponses: pour une anthropologie reflexive.
Paris: Editions duSeuil.
Bourdieu, P. (1992c) Tout est social, Magazine litteraire, 302:
10411.Bourdieu, P. (1998) La domination masculine. Paris: Editions
du Seuil.Bourdieu, P. (2000) Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge:
Polity.Cassirer, E. (1925) Sprache und Mythos, Studien der
Bibliothek Warburg,
Leipzig VI.Cassirer, E. (1945) Structuralism in Modern
Linguistics, Word I: 99120.Cassirer, E. (1972) La philosophie des
formes symboliques. Paris: Editions de
Minuit.Cassirer, E. (1977) Substance et fonction: elements pour
une theorie du concept.
Paris: Editions de Minuit.Chelhod, J. (1958) Introduction a` la
sociologie de lIslam. Paris.Clark, T.N. (1973) Prophets and
Patrons: The French University and the Emergence
of the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.Coleman, J. and P. Bourdieu (eds) (1989) Social Theory for a
Changing Society.
Boulder, CO, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview.Davy, G. (1912)
Emile Durkheim: choix de Textes avec etude du syste`me socio-
logique. Paris: Societe des Editions Louis-Michand.Davy, G.
(1922) Le droit, lidealisme et lexperience. Paris: Alcan.Davy, G.
(1924) Elements de sociologie. Paris: Delagrave.Davy, G. (1931)
Sociologues dhier et daujourdhui. Paris: Alcan.Delsaut, Y. and
M.-C. Rivie`re (2002) Bibliographie des travaux de Pierre Bour-
dieu. Pantin: Le Temps des Cerises.Derrida, J. (1974)
Introduction to E. Husserl, Lorigine de la geometrie, 2nd rev.
edn. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Durkheim, E. (1933)
The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Macmillan.Foucault, M.
(1954) Introduction to L. Binswanger, Le reve et lexistence.
Paris:
Desclee de Brouwer.Goldmann, L. (1966) Sciences humaines et
philosophie. Paris: Gonthier.Gouldner, A. (1971) The Coming Crisis
of Western Sociology. London:
Heinemann.Gueroult, M (1930) Evolution et la structure de la
doctrine de la science chez
Fichte. Paris.Gueroult, M (1934) Dynamique et metaphysique
Leibniziennes. Paris.Hanoteau, L.A. and A. Letourneux (1873) La
Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles.
Paris.Husserl, E. (1964) The Paris Lectures. The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff.
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)326
-
Husserl, E. (1970) The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomen-ology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press.
Letourneau, R. (1950) LIslam contemporain. Paris: Ed.
Int.Levi-Strauss, C. (1950) Sociologie et anthropologie. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de
France.Lyotard, J.-F. (1954) La phenomenologie. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France.Masqueray, E. (1886) Formation des cites
chez les populations sedentaires de
lAlgerie. Paris.Merleau-Ponty, M. (1942) La structure du
comportement. Paris: Presses Uni-
versitaires de France.Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945) La phenomenologie
de la perception. Paris: Gallimard.Merleau-Ponty, M. (1959) De
Mauss a` Levi-Strauss, La Nouvelle revue franaise
82: 61531.Panofsky, E. (1957) Gothic Architecture and Scholastic
Thought. New York:
Meridian.Poster, M. (1975) Existential Marxism in Postwar
France: From Sartre to
Althusser. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Rickert, H.
(1986) The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.Sartre, J.-P. (1943) LEtre et
le neant. Paris: Gallimard.Sartre, J.-P. (1960) Critique de la
raison dialectique. Paris: Gallimard.Sayad, A. (1996) Abdelmalek in
Interview, in D. Robbins (ed.) Pierre Bourdieu:
Masters of Contemporary Social Thought (Vol. 1). London: Sage,
2000.Sokolowski, R. (2000) Introduction to Phenomenology.
Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.Vaihinger, H. (1924) The Philosophy of As If: A
system of the theoretical, practical,
and religious fictions of mankind. London: Kegan Paul.Vuillemin,
J. (1954) Heritage kantien et la revolution copernicienne.
Paris.Vuillemin, J. (1955) Physique et metaphysique kantiennes.
Paris.Weber, M. (19201) Gesammelte Aufsatze zur
Religionssoziologie. Tubingen:
J.C.B. Mohr.Weber, M. (1930) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism. London:
Unwin Univesity Books.Weill, E. (1963) Proble`mes kantiens.
Paris.Williams, R. (1958) Culture and Society, 17801950.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Derek Robbins is Professor of International Social Theory at the
University of East London, where he alsois Director of the Group
for the Study of International Social Science in the School of
Social Sciences. Heis the author of The Work of Pierre Bourdieu
(1991) and of Bourdieu and Culture (2000); the editor ofthe
four-volume collection of articles on Bourdieu in the Sage Masters
of Contemporary Social Thoughtseries (2000); as well as author of
many articles on Bourdieus work. He is currently editing two
furthercollections of articles in the Sage Masters of Contemporary
Social Thought series: the first set on Jean-
ROBBINS PIERRE BOURDIEU, 196575 327
-
Franois Lyotard; and the other a second, post-mortem, set on
Bourdieu. He is writing a book on TheInternationalization of French
Social Thought, 19502000 and is researching the influence of the
Frenchreception of Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy on the
development of French social science.
Address: School of Social Sciences, University of East London,
Longbridge Road, Dagenham, Essex RM82AS, UK. [email:
[email protected]]
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 2(3)328