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While the Bourdieusian concepts of capital and relational configurations of positions and position-takings have recently been fruitfully employed to theorize global fields, this paper argues that the concepts of illusio and doxa are especially conducive to analyzing the globalization of a field as an expansion into and transformation of formerly independent national arenas. In deploying the concept of illusio as a (quasi-libidinous) investment in the game, globalization is here first and foremost framed as a process in which more and more actors in various contexts ‘succumb’ to specific field logics that orient them to transnational structures. By emphasizing the concept of doxa as the taken-for-granted fundamentals of a field, the paper furthermore calls attention to the mechanisms that help forge and globalize the tacit presuppositions and shared ontologies on which such logics build. Focusing on a field of global Christian missions that emerged during the nineteenth century, the paper illustrates how its competitive logic of proselytization was introduced into the religious arena of India. It highlights how Western notions of religion gained ground among local traditions and pulled them into a game in which numerical relations of adherents mattered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a contribution of a set of interrelated innovative thinking to revitalize the sociological understanding of the notion of the habitus. It discusses contributions by sociologists exploring the sources of Bourdieu's inspiration from psychology and psychoanalysis to the development of the concept, and brings in new thinking inspired by authors and frameworks that branch out of sociology to bring into sociology fresher thinking. Three areas of concern about habitus are focused on: firstly, the objectivism and subjectivism dichotomy; secondly, the plasticity or rigidity of the concept; and thirdly, the implications of intangibles attached to the notion. The paper introduces a Special Section including five articles on theoretical and empirical explorations bringing exciting perspectives to creative and critical sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a unitary notion of the habitus present in Bourdieu's early works and its transformation along his sociological career, to later conceptions of a fragmented habitus concept to examine contemporary relationality and social change. The career of the concept of habitus in Bourdieu shows that interplays of habitus and fields are seen to demand increasing labour of integration from individuals as social life becomes more differentiated. The paper claims the need for sociology to engage with field analyses to advance explorations of the habitus and to acknowledge the potential pliability of the concept. It is suggested that sociology may adopt the psychoanalytic notion of 'standing in spaces' (and associated notions of 'liminality' and experiences in interstitial positons) for a productive development of the notion of fragmented habitus, and to enhance proposals that view the social with a history that is made available to humans to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to elucidate some of the similarities between the Bourdieusian and a psychoanalytical approach to understand the individual and the social, and to describe Bourdieu's relation to psychoanalysis. The paper begins by reflecting upon the way a research on anorexia was received and perceived by some psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Such a case study puts into light several analogies between Bourdieu's theoretical position, his epistemological style and psychoanalysis. Then, some texts by Bourdieu, especially a discussion with the psychoanalyst and sociologist Jacques Maître, are analysed in order to further explore Bourdieu's position vis-à-vis psychoanalysis and to assess the influence of psychoanalysis on his conception of the individual habitus. Finally, the paper discusses the possible contradictions arising between these borrowings and the principles of Bourdieusian epistemology. The paper thus suggests that the Bourdieusian approach is better analysed as a 'sociologization'of psychoanalysis rather than as an approach complementing or integrating psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores practices that produce and reproduce domination in and through organizational hierarchies and shows how high levels of employee turnover were managed within a UK-based call centre through the use of culturally bound employment practices. Using ethnographic methods the paper explores the experience of managerial retention strategies from the perspective of employees and draws upon some of the theoretical resources employed by Pierre Bourdieu, specifically in relation to his concern with structures of subordination, and with the ways that processes of symbolic violence appear legitimate. The paper therefore makes three contributions to our understanding of the sociology of work generally and the management of labour turnover in service industries specifically; first, it extends understanding of the cultural basis of retention strategies. Second, it explores the 'lived experience' of these strategies. Finally, it considers the relevance of Bourdieu's analysis for making sense of these practices in action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This general introduction locates the GBCS papers on the elite, and their respondents, within a context. It emphasizes some of the key points made by the respondents in order to intervene in a discussion about what is at stake in doing sociological research on class. It draws attention to the differences between on the one hand status and stratification, and on the other class struggle perspectives, and hence the difference between a hierarchical gradational analysis and a relational one based on the struggle between groups over value. I begin to answer a question raised by many of the respondents in this special issue: 'what is the question that the analysis of class is designed to answer?' I also draw attention to some of the problems with Bourdieu's 'structuring architecture', showing how the partial reproduction of Bourdieu presents fundamental problems, leading to a Great British Stratification Survey ('GBSS') rather than a GBCS. The different trajectories in class analysis that confusingly merge over the concept of culture in the present are briefly mapped, showing very different intentions in analysis. I argue that to understand class we need to understand the processes of classification: exploitation, domination, dispossession and devaluation, and their legitimation. Overall this special issue extends the sociological debate on class into a larger political frame about injustice, classification and value. It develops arguments from anthropology that maintain that it is the ability to define what value is (through culture) that is the ultimate difference in politics and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on domestically violent men typically takes an oppositional logic of gender. While the significance of class in researching domestically violent men is identified, class and gender are often treated as separate entities that do not complicate each other. Drawing upon group observations and in-depth interviews, this paper identifies how intersections of class and gender manifest in the counselling experiences of domestically violent Taiwanese men. From a Bourdieusian feminist analysis, the authors analyse (1) how class distinctions serve to (re)produce gendered hierarchy; (2) how contradictory experiences of gender reveal a relational understanding of class; and (3) how the gendered nature of domestically violent men is inscribed with a meaning of (working) class specificity for maintaining middle-class 'purity'. In analysing men's multiple and conflicting experiences, this paper contributes to research on domestically violent men by showing how class and gender are actively constructed and not produced in a monolithic/invariant way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the political possibilities and limitations of compassion. My aim is to consider how and under what conditions compassion is elicited and whether such emotions can institute social transformation. Whilst compassion is understood to be located in political and cultural contexts, this paper investigates the extent to which compassion shapes those contexts in terms of political imaginaries. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu I consider the ways that compassion positions people in relations with 'sufferers' affectively, including shaping perceptions and understandings of causes and effects. To illustrate this I examine visual representations of drug use, one from a Barnardo's child poverty advertising campaign and the other a photo-ethnography of drug suffering. Focusing on the imagery of the syringe as a moving device I show how the object reworks the affect of compassion in ways that require critique and contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the French Revolution constituted the basic metaphor through which Pierre Bourdieu perceived and analyzed gender hierarchies; that the class structure of the ancien régime and the mechanisms of its legitimation were the major metaphors he used through his scathing critiques on the order of the sexes; and that the ideals of liberté, égalité and fraternité were always his reformatory aims for a just, gender-neutral society. The paper shows how this preoccupation with the Revolution of 1789 structured Bourdieu's analysis of gender relations and sexual identities in contemporary society. It exposes the ways in which he identified men with the nobility and women with the third estate; it presents his analyses of the role that traditional ideologies and state bureaucracies play in legitimating this arbitrary order of masculine domination; and it analyzes his proposals for a sexual revolution while exposing the counter-revolutionary forces that persistently negate attempts to reform gender hierarchies. Fundamentally, this new reading of Bourdieu's exegeses on gender suggests that he was working with a ready-made interpretive scheme, a model of society that he was inclined to see as always reproducing itself: the ancien régime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital is one of the most widely used (in both scholarly and non-scholarly contexts) and one of the least critically examined concepts in Bourdieu's framework. This article aims at questioning the objectivist standpoint from which the concept of social capital has been developed, by looking into the interpretative processes which shape it. In doing so, it proposes a new understanding of the notion of imagined social capital, which has gained prominence in the literature of the last several years. The contribution of the current paper lays in elaborating on the ways in which the existing notion of imagined social capital can be put in dialogue with Bourdieu's work and in introducing the overlooked, yet fundamental question of otherness into the debate on imagined social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholarship on global and transnational fields has been emerging, hitherto contributions have rarely or not explicitly discussed how Bourdieu's field theory has to be altered when its use expands from a national to a global scale. Starting from the premise that a global field is not a national field writ large, this paper discusses strategies and elements for revising field theory for use beyond national borders. Specifically, the article first proposes analogical theorizing as a systematic approach for extending and modifying the tools of field theory at a global level. Analogical theorizing offers a method for constructing the object in a global context in a way that goes beyond rescaling and minimizes the risk of deductive reification. Against this background and drawing from research on the global visual art field, the article offers criteria for delineating a global field and distinguishes relative functional and vertical autonomy. Finally, it discusses how the concept of ‘relative vertical autonomy’ contributes in three ways to the development of global field analysis: for theorizing emergence; examining global-national interdependencies; and denationalizing Bourdieu's concept of ‘national capital’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a sympathetic critique of Bourdieu's work in terms of the tension between its critical intentions and its leanings towards sociological reductionism. Although Bourdieu argues against such reductionism in his methodological pronouncements, his empirical studies tend to reduce actors' putative disinterested judgements to functions of their habitus in relation to the social field and to unconscious strategies of distinction. Further, his concept of (non-monetary) forms of capital occludes the difference between use-value and exchange-value and the corresponding distinction between the pursuit of goods and the pursuit of distinction, which are vital for both explanation and critique. Moreover his suspicion of normative judgement on the part of social science and his concealment of his own normative standpoint subvert his critiques. Thus in relation to Bourdieu's analysis of the role of misrecognition in social life I argue that this requires a delineation of the extent of justified recognition. In developing the argument I draw upon Adam Smith's analysis of moral sentiments and his critique of undeserved recognition and the pursuit of distinction. Where Bourdieu is dismissive about moral issues, Smith treats moral sentiments as irreducible to interest or instrumental action and as a significant element in the reproduction of social order. The paper concludes with some implications for the nature of critique in social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pierre Bourdieu's famous theory of educational reproduction is often depicted by critics in simplistic terms: individuals either have plenty of cultural capital, and thus symbolic mastery and school success, or they do not and develop practical mastery and vocational interests instead. Social mobility, deviant trajectories and resistance, on the other hand, are seemingly impossible. The nature of Bourdieu's writing fuelled this perception, but implicit in his early work, and elaborated in his later writings, is the idea that class and capital possession are fully relational, gradational and refracted by family dynamics, thereby suggesting the existence of all manner of possible shades of difference between the two poles of reproduction. This paper, whilst acknowledging that reproduction is still the major feature of the education system in the UK, thus revisits Bourdieu's thesis and sketches some of the manifestations of this intermediate zone of educational performance, namely social space travel, the Icarus effect, recovered trajectories and pathways born of dispersed family fields. In so doing it draws on a qualitative research project examining the life histories of adults from a variety of class positions in Bristol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on two qualitative studies which looked at diet, weight and health from a social class perspective, we use Bourdieu's theory of habitus to help explain the different food and eating practices undertaken by families with young teenagers. Whilst the families displayed considerable reflexivity when making decisions about what to eat on a daily basis, the analysis highlighted that everyday behaviours are still bounded by distinctions of taste, according to social position. The paper includes an examination of the relationships between different forms of capital and whether form or functionality is prioritised within families. We show the importance of temporal frameworks when interpreting classed food and eating practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper was provoked by viewing various selections of the photos taken by Bourdieu in Algeria in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part considers three stages in the production and consumption of Bourdieu's photos. The possibility that the third of these stages – the gallery display of Bourdieu's photos in the present – might be a betrayal of the sociology of photography and of art galleries that Bourdieu attempted in the 1960s leads to the discussion of the second part of the paper. Part 2 first contextualises the work on photography undertaken within the Centre de Sociologie Européenne in the early 1960s and then, secondly, discusses the emergence of divergent sociologies of photography in the work of Bourdieu and Passeron. The purpose of the discussion is to ask which of the theories of photography which developed in association with Bourdieu's photographic activity now enables us better to respond to Bourdieu's photographic products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having taken taking as one of its starting points a concern to avoid fetishising method – or employing any form of method for its own sake – this paper then argues that visual methods of research may be particularly helpful in investigating areas that are difficult otherwise to verbalise or articulate. These include Bourdieu's understanding of habitus; our predisposed ways of being, acting and operating in the social environment that Bourdieu himself suggests are ‘beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit’ (Bourdieu, 1977 : 94). Having outlined what Bourdieu means by habitus and considered some of the difficulties surrounding its operationalisation, the paper goes on to consider Bourdieu's own use of photography and understanding of photographic practice. It is then argued that we can move beyond Bourdieu's position by employing visual methods specifically to uncover and illuminate aspects of habitus. Where research participants are directly involved in this process this also means that visual methods can be potentially transformative, allowing for the development of forms of critical self-awareness amongst research participants of the sort that Bourdieu attributes to ‘socioanalysis’ ( Bourdieu, 1999 : 611). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Bourdieu's huge contribution in sociologically operationalizing some of the principles contained in Husserlian phenomenology, this paper argues that by drawing more from this source his criticisms of opinion polls can be extended theoretically and methodologically. In particular, by being aware of the transitions from doxa or ‘dispositional opinion’ to reflective opinion, Husserlian phenomenology gives a theoretical basis which we can draw on to make concrete methodological elaborations, such as in the use of ‘identification bid’ questions, of Bourdieu's account of the drawbacks of opinion polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptual framework of ‘field’ proposed by Pierre Bourdieu and his model of the literary and artistic fields in nineteenth-century France are widely applied to studies of the development of the literary and artistic fields in other regions and the fields of other cultural practices. These researches, while showing similarities to Bourdieu’s model, reveal the distinct forms of nomos which those different fields developed through localised contingencies. In other words, their findings highlight the cultural specificity of the cases on which Bourdieu’s field theory is based. The main purpose of this paper is to argue that the field theory can be beneficially applied to cross-cultural cases provided that its culturally specific elements are clearly identified. For this purpose, I focus on one particular aspect associated with the nomos of Bourdieu’s model – the orientation toward autonomy – to argue for its cultural specificity, which becomes clearer when it is compared to a distinct case of the artistic field in early-twentieth-century Japan. My case study shows that the Japanese artistic field did not develop the same form of autonomy as Bourdieu’s model, but it also discloses the processes in which a certain form of nomos was shaped through the struggles between the artistic field and other fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the classed dimensions of ‘taste’ have, following Bourdieu, been widely discussed, expressions of disgust at perceived violations of taste have been less frequently considered in relation to class. This paper considers various expressions of disgust at white working-class existence and explores what they might tell us about middle-class identities and identifications. I argue that the narratives of decline and of lack present in such representations can be seen in terms of a long-standing middle-class project of distinguishing itself. Drawing on Bourdieu's critique of Kantian aesthetics, I argue that the ownership of ‘taste’ is understood as reflecting true humanity, and as conferring uniqueness. Ironically, however, this uniqueness is only achieved through an incorporation of collective, classed understandings. The paper calls for a problematization of a normative and normalized middle-class location that is, I argue, given added legitimacy by a perceived decline in the significance of class itself. [A]n account of class, rank or social hierarchy must be thin indeed unless accompanied by an account of the passions and sentiments that sustain it (William Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, p. 245). Social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat (Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 479). What we read as objective class divisions are produced and maintained by the middle class in the minutiae of everyday practice, as judgements of culture are put into effect (Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture, p. 118). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In public and private sectors alike, decision-making is increasingly carried out through the employment of 'algorithmic actors' and artificial intelligence. The apparent efficiency of these means in the eyes of politicians and the public has made recourse to them possible. Along with this belief in their efficiency, however, fears emerge that nonhuman actors have displaced judicious human decision-making. This article examines this belief and its contestation, drawing on overlapping notions of 'delegation' in the political sociologies of Bruno Latour and Pierre Bourdieu. We undertake two case studies of attempts to delegate decision-making to algorithms: the 2020 UK 'A-level' grade determination and the Australian 'robodebt' welfare funds recovery scheme. In both cases, the decision-making delegated to algorithms was publicly discredited as critics invoked a different form of fairness than the one used by those deploying the technology. In the 'A-level' case, complainants drew on a grammar of individual merit, while complainants in the 'robodebt' case made a technical critique of the algorithm's efficiency. Using a theory of delegation, we contribute to understanding how publics articulate resistance to automated decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bourdieu's early fieldwork which included field observation, statistical analysis, and the use of photography to capture, represent, and analyse Algerian society in its complexity, took place within the unusual context of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). A number of his photographs of Algerian life depict the physical dislocation of Algerian peasantry into shanty towns largely as the result of rapid socio-economic and cultural change introduced by French colonisation and war. Although this fieldwork was to fundamentally shape his subsequent oeuvre, substantive issues which arose out of this research including colonialism, racism, and migration, tended to disappear in his later writings. This paper will argue that Bourdieu's discussion of colonialism in his early work, together with arguments developed by his student and co-author, Abdelmalek Sayad, provide a basis for understanding contemporary processes of ethno-racial domination and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today Pierre Bourdieu is well known as one of the most important social scientists of the 20th century. One of the outstanding qualities of his work has been his innovative combination of different methods and research strategies as well as his analytical skills in interpreting the obtained data (his ‘sociological gaze’). In this paper, we attempt to retrace the development of an extraordinary way of doing social research and show the benefit of Bourdieu's visual sociology for his empirical fieldwork and sociological theory. The article particularly stresses the significance of his photographic archive, which has long been ignored within the appreciation of Bourdieu's work. Studying Bourdieu's photography gives access to his œuvre in several new ways: not only can we understand how Bourdieu became an unconventional sociologist practicing his craft in the midst of a colonial war. Bourdieu's visual anthropology also offers an insight into the status nascendi of Bourdieu's sociology in all its elementary forms and contents. Through his photography Boudieu demonstrated the concepts of ‘habitat and habitus’, the material and symbolic living conditions of the Algerian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article paints the portrait of Yvan, a skinhead who lived in close proximity to the streets and to life at the margins, with all its attendant violence, before dying at the age of 28. While the salient features of this portrait might seem to be social relegation and brutal racism, the value of this text is to be found in the complexity and nuance that Yvan brought to the descriptions of his own life. This insider perspective follows on from the tradition of biographical studies dedicated to the process of 'becoming deviant' inaugurated by the first sociologists of the Chicago School, while at the same time providing the material for a theoretical proposition expressed through the concepts of brutalized life and reflective violence. Much of Yvan's life was a litany of violence, which he first endured, then threw back in society's face and perpetrated himself, no doubt precisely because this life of his had been brutalized by such all-permeating violence. These two concepts have the potential to be extended to other cases and to enrich sociological debates about forms of violence that cannot fully be explained by situational and practical approaches (such as those of Randall Collins), or by perspectives that focus on structural and symbolic factors (as in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu). The notions of reflective violence and brutalized life therefore transcend Yvan's biography to form his sociological legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, ‘fear’ in its diverse facets is a topic growing in relevance in the media discourse. However, apart from analyses of individual psychic pathologies or general macro-sociological diagnoses, it has been largely neglected in (empirical) social sciences. The increasingly influential works of Bourdieu are no exception here, even though the concept of habitus inherently transcends positive interests such as lifestyle preferences, as analyzed in La Distinction. This becomes explicitly clear in his late works, above all in La Misère du monde, where the dispositions of agents are described in terms of the fears and worries associated with their positions in the social space and societal transformation processes. In this article the authors show that concerns, fear, and worries are constitutive characteristics of the habitus by investigating the structure of ‘fear manifestations’ in relation to the social space. Following Bourdieu’s conception, they construct a model of the Norwegian social space by applying Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to survey data. They then investigate how questions on fears and concerns are related to the capital structure of the space. The article concludes with a discussion of the findings and a reflection of their implications for a sociology of symbolic domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a series of arguments about social fields, subfields, and social spaces that can help us understand empires and colonies. First, we have to assume that the scale of fields is not always coextensive with the boundaries of the national state but is often much larger, or smaller. Imperial fields are among the most spatially extensive ones, though they may not be as territorially extensive as truly global fields. Second, we need to make a distinction between imperial fields and imperial social spaces (based on Bourdieu's distinction between social fields and social spaces). The third argument is that colonies in modern empires were characterized by two different kinds of fields: fields that were simply extended into the overseas territories, versus completely separate fields unique to one or more of the colonies. The colonial state is an example of a field that is specific to the colony. By contrast, scientific fields were often simply extended from the metropole into the colonies, encompassing both. The fourth argument concerns subfields. Transported into imperial realms, this distinction suggests that some colonial offshoots of fielded metropolitan practices do not constitute separate fields but are nonetheless differentiated from their main overarching field. These four points are illustrated with examples from British, French and German imperial policy, colonial statecraft and colonial sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing interest in transnational fields and their influence on national-level dynamics, existing literature has not yet addressed the processes involved in creating such fields in the first place. This article provides insight into the complexities involved in national–transnational interactions amidst national and transnational field formation. It examines the nascent transnational humanitarian field of the late nineteenth century through the work of the emerging Red Cross Movement in the 1860s–1890s, drawing primarily on the archive of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The findings show that National Red Cross (NRC) societies employed a discourse drawn from a transnational cultural arena in order to gain central positioning in their national fields and to convince other parties of their necessity. Conversely, NRCs used nationalism as a form of symbolic capital in establishing themselves in their national fields, seemingly at odds with their cosmopolitan aspirations. Thus, by contrast to the ideal-typical representation of global humanitarianism as non-national, these findings suggest that nationalism and impartial humanitarianism are historically intertwined. More broadly, the article argues that national-level field dynamics as well as nationalism play important roles in the creation of transnational fields, even when field actors present themselves as acting for universal causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his later works, Bourdieu draws extensively on psychoanalytic approaches in accounting for his concept of socialized subjectivity as bound to the social world by an intense affective grip. This emotional turn holds potential for further developing Bourdieu's account of subjectivity as a formation of socialized desire. However, in accounting for this socialized desire, Bourdieu relapses into a dualism of subjective and objective structures, incompatible with the Merleau-Pontyian roots of his practice theory. Tracing this problem to the antagonism between desire and culture in the psychoanalytic accounts that Bourdieu draws on, I propose that the psychoanalytic scholar Hans Loewald's account of Eros may enable a move beyond this impasse, offering a promising conceptual basis for taking further the account of socialized subjectivity and socialized desire in Bourdieu's practice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty-five years ago Pierre Bourdieu asserted that food preferences, as much as any other element of culture, are distributed within a space of difference more or less homologous with the social space of class positions. Plumbing data on annual spends on all manner of food items, he detected two key oppositions - a taste for the light versus a taste for the heavy on the one hand and a taste for rich foods versus a taste for healthy and exotic foods on the other - and located their generative principles in differences of volume of capital and composition of capital respectively. Deploying a correspondence analysis of similar data using the 2010 Living Costs and Food Survey, supplemented by data from the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey and the 2003 Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Survey, we seek to examine whether comparable differences in expenditure and preferences are observable in contemporary Britain and, consequently, to illuminate the current structure of the food space and its homology with class. Ultimately, we conclude that Bourdieu's general model is essentially transposable from 1960s France to the UK at the dawn of the 21st century, though we put additional emphasis on the ethical dimension of food consumption, and reflect on the prevalent instances of symbolic violence it underpins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates and controversies have highlighted several issues surrounding sociological research, which relate to the general conditions under which it is undertaken and how this is changing. There is a pressing need to respond to these issues as a whole, in particular by examining what they tell us about research practices. This article argues that a consideration of themes raised by the American television drama The Wire is useful for facilitating such a response, since it may be read as a discussion of working conditions within neoliberal societies. The following themes are pertinent here: the need to reflect upon the terms by which research is framed by funders, to take adequate time to conduct and complete research, and to encourage critical debate within research. Whilst these relate to influential epistemological discussions by Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Burawoy, this reading of The Wire is particularly helpful for highlighting the practical and inter-relational situations in which sociological research is carried out but which tend not to receive the systematic attention they deserve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically discusses Pierre Bourdieu's views on ethics and normative evaluations. Bourdieu acknowledged that people hold ethical stances, yet sought to show that these stances are - unconsciously - conducive to obtaining symbolic power and legitimizing hierarchy. The first part of the article looks at this argument and charts the shifts it went through particularly in the early 1990s. The second part discusses ontological and empirical critiques of the ethics as ideology argument and suggests the latter to be more salient, as Bourdieu proposed his argument as an empirical rather than as an ontological point. The reason why he nevertheless found the ethics as ideology explanation fitting to nearly all the cases he studied, as the third part argues, is not simply that reality 'obliged' him to do so, but his circular definition of symbolic capital as qualities that are worthy of esteem. This definition makes his argument of ethics as ideology unfalsifiable and impedes him from distinguishing between cases when legitimate power is the aim of ethics and between those when it is merely their side effect. The article concludes by suggesting ways in which Bourdieu's work can be fruitfully incorporated into the study of ethics once the tautology is resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, social scientists have argued that general pro-environmental attitudes have diffused throughout American society, rendering socio-demographics largely irrelevant in predicting support for such issues. The public reaction to the issue of climate change, however, is an exception to this narrative. While media bias, ideological framing, and business influence are often invoked to explain public apathy, I argue that ignoring class and culture in determining why climate change is so divisive is a potentially significant oversight. Using the cultural theory of Bourdieu, I examine how the conception of and reaction to climate change varies with economic and cultural capital using data from 40 interviews of Boston-area respondents. The results suggest that climate change may indeed be a 'classed' issue - both in how the respondents conceive of it in the first place, and how they speak of social class in the context of it. The results suggest that social scientists should go beyond rational-choice and media framing explanations, to take two prolific examples, in exploring how disagreements on the importance of climate change persist in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though contemporary discussions of class have moved forward towards recognizing a multidimensional concept of class, empirical analyses tend to focus on cultural practices in a rather narrow sense, that is, as practices of cultural consumption or practices of education. As a result, discussions within political sociology have not yet utilized the merits of a multidimensional conception of class. In light of this, the article suggests a comprehensive Bourdieusian framework for class analysis, integrating culture as both a structural phenomenon co-constitutive of class and as symbolic practice. Further, the article explores this theoretical framework in a multiple correspondence analysis of a Danish survey, demonstrating how class and political practices are indeed homologous. However, the analysis also points at several elements of field autonomy, and the concluding discussion therefore suggests the need for further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological inquiry into the natural sciences has shown that they are contingent, social constructions. However, Science Studies research has been obstructed by epistemological conflicts about the nature of science and theoretical perspectives upon studying it. Bourdieu's sociology of science is under-utilized in this field, as he addresses these obstructions and offers a way forward. Bourdieu argues that researchers have failed to distinguish between sociological and philosophical approaches in social science, thus committing the ‘scholastic fallacy’. In conjunction with this fallacy, the logic of the Science Studies field produces a tendency towards disciplinary confusion, philosophical radicalization, and crisis. These patterns were expressed in the ‘science wars’. The field has followed a philosophical path rather than a sociological one, and its progress has been obstructed. While some of Bourdieu's philosophical arguments remain problematic, his reflexive sociology allows us to differentiate philosophical from sociological approaches, providing an alternative direction for Science Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent data show that middle class consumers have an omnivorous pattern of consumption or tastes, contrary to Bourdieu's predictions of a snob pattern of consumption. To explore the implications of Bourdieu's framework for omnivorousness further, we make use of the anthropological view of consumption to analyse Spaniards' musical tastes and consumption. Results showed a variety of omnivorous patterns of musical consumption associated with upscale consumers: a higher position on the social ladder was linked to more omnivorous tastes and greater use of technologies that free the consumer from fixed periodicities in music consumption. We found that different types (economic, social and cultural) and levels of capital do configure subjects' structural constraints and hence, their tastes in musical genres and the technological media used to consume them. Consequently, the combination of all three types of capital helps to explain the omnivorous consumption (elitist but inclusive as well) of upscale consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pierre Bourdieu's approach to sociology has been so widely recognized as being innovative that his innovations can be said to have been academically incorporated to the degree of having-been-innovative. On the other hand, the more recent work of Bruno Latour seems to offer a fresh innovative impetus to sociology. Over against Bourdieu's relational sociology, Latour's relationist sociology overcomes the subject-object dichotomy, and abandons the notions of ‘society’ and ‘the social’. In this contribution, a comparison is made between the ideas of Bourdieu and Latour on the question of what sociology should look like, specifically focusing on their respective ideas on what can be called the relational. A Latourian critique of Bourdieu is provided, as well as a Bourdieusian analysis of Latourian sociology. Rather than ending up with two different ‘paradigms’, an attempt is made on the basis of Foucault's archaeology of discourse to view Bourdieusian and Latourian sociology as distinct positions within a discourse on the relational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Becoming a proficient glassblower involves an indispensable shift away from cognitive readings of practice towards corporeal readings, marking the development of proficient practical knowledge. In learning glassblowing myself in the course of an ethnography of handicrafts in New York City, the subtleties of apprenticeship, the modes of reading and understanding the practice, both cognitive and corporeal, have emerged, complexifying our understanding of the transmission, development, and modalities of practical knowledge. Such ethnographic dissection brings phenomenological considerations to bear on the question of achieving proficient practical knowledge, and enables us to sharpen our understanding of the role of meaning in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay examines the construction of collective memory through the writing of obituaries with an analysis of the social theory of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The author connects obituaries to feminist efforts to highlight individual women's unknown histories, and raises issues of class domination and gender relations in connection with obituaries. The history of obituary writing is also outlined.

The article examines the concept of emotions through sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's notion of capitals, the most well-known of which is cultural capital. More specifically, the author presents a case study of maternal emotional engagement in children's education as a means to investigate the gendered nature of emotional capital and its relationship to social class.

The article discusses the need for understanding gender as a type of lived social relation in order to bridge the divide that exists between material feminists and cultural feminists. The ways in which the concept of agency can be used in order to connect the notion of identity to the more abstract concept of social structure are outlined. This is done through an examination of sociologists Judith Butler's and Pierre Bourdieu's theories on performative agency and Bourdieu's phenomenological notion of social space.

The article examines the embodiment of class and gender in a subject through the conferring of social identity on it. The author utilizes French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's understanding of the cultural and symbolic aspects of class divisions in order to investigate this idea of the imposition of social norms. More specifically, the connection between class distinction and gender are analyzed through the lens of Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, with particular focus given to the construction of feminine identity. The ways in which class and gender identity can inform political struggles are then discussed, with focus given to mothers' protests against housing for child sex abusers in the early 21st century and their depictions in the press.

The article discusses the ways in which drug addiction and non-human matters such as drugs can be incorporated into sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's social theory of the habitus, largely through an examination of the ethnographic work "In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio," by Philippe Bourgois. The author examines Bourgois' conception of the relationship between crack addiction, social suffering and exclusion, and gender relations, and goes beyond Bourgois' theory by examining how drugs such as crack and heroin become involved in the social. To do this, she discusses British child poverty campaigns and social realist films on heroin addiction.

The article discusses the social theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, with particular focus given to his understanding of class, gender, and sexuality, as well as the implications of his thought for feminist theory. Bourdieu's definition of gender as sexual difference is explained, and the connection he draws between social identity and sexual identity is outlined. The author explains how Bourdieu's social theory of habitus has been utilized by feminists in order to incorporate class analysis into feminist theory.

The article discusses the relationship between class analysis and feminist theory, with the author focused both on the ways in which class analysis informs feminist theory and how it has been used to critique feminist theory. The criticism of feminist theory based on the perceived centrality of family/household systems to class and gender constructs is first examined. The author then goes on to question the validity of social constructionists' sharp separation between the biological idea of "sex" and the sociocultural notion of "gender" when speaking categorically of women in order to question whether or not women represent their own type of social class. Particular focus is given to the aforementioned concepts' place in the social field theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

The article discusses understandings of the self within the cultural and social theory espoused by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, with particular focus given to his theory of habitus, or the internalization of culture. The ways in which the self is understood to be based on the acquisition of property with its value determined relative to technology. The author explains the attachment of a certain exchange value to various cultural activities that are believed to benefit the self and outlines the connection between economic and moral value in Bourdieu's social theory.