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This paper is the product of a roundtable discussion held at the international conference Horizons of Engagement: Eternalizing Bourdieu, organized by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of Belgrade, Serbia, the Centre for Advanced Studies of The University of Rijeka, Croatia, the École Normale Supérieure of Paris, France, and the French Institute in Serbia. The event was planned on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of one of the world’s leading sociologists - Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002). The greatest indicator of the scope of Bourdieu’s influence is the fact that he has become the world’s most cited sociologist, ahead of Émile Durkheim, and the world’s second most cited author in social sciences and the humanities, after Michel Foucault and ahead of Jacques Derrida. As part of this discussion, we address the subject of “Bourdieu and Politics”, politics - broadly constructed. We evoke Pierre Bourdieu’s involvement in public affairs during the 1990s, while taking into account the concept of the collective intellectual that Bourdieu introduced into social sciences by giving it a specific meaning.

Efforts to move sociology beyond the nation state and international relations theory have both been plagued by several limitations and dualisms. Recent research has begun to find ways beyond the problems by turning to Pierre Bourdieu's relational conception of social structure and practice. Yet one specific relational structure forming a key part of the puzzle has been neglected or merely implicitly assumed so far: the space of nation states. After clarifying the structural‐constructivist nature of this concept, we aim to specify it by constructing an empirical model of the contemporary space of nation states using a specially compiled dataset and tools of geometric data analysis. The analysis reveals the distribution of powers on the world scene, and more specifically, the uneven possession of two varieties of "meta‐capital" understood as capacities to regulate the value and exchangeability of certain capitals and to decree what even defines a legitimate "state". We argue that the nation state, which is accurately understood as a contingent construct and well‐founded fiction from a Bourdieusian viewpoint, should not be excluded when analyzing the expression and reproduction of contemporary global power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales is the property of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Langage & Societe is the property of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The text constitutes an analysis of the notion of field - its limits and its importance in the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and in other sociological approaches which draw on his theory. The author opens his considerations with a return to the genesis of the notion in Pierre Bourdieu's works, that is to the formative period of the theory, culminating in the 1970s. The author then goes on to ponder the practical application and empirical scope of the notion of field, and concludes the article with the presentation of a methodological use of the notion of field in data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of RAP: Revista Brasileira de Administração Pública is the property of RAP: Revista Brasileira de Administracao Publica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales is the property of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revue d'Histoire des Sciences Humaines is the property of Editions de la Sorbonne and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyses social capital structures in the field of power, based on data from the Norwegian Power and Democracy Survey on elites. Separating between objectified, institutionalised, embodied, and inherited social capital, and inspired by Bourdieu's approach, we analyse the relations between social capital and the other forms of capital by way of specific multiple correspondence analysis and ascending hierarchical cluster analysis. First, we find that the level of institutionalised social capital varies from one fraction of the Norwegian elite to another. Secondly, the range of networks established through previous work experiences is related to field seniority. Thirdly, the positions of highest endogamy are situated in the religious field, and to a lesser extent, in the scientific field, and in the juridical field. Finally, the 'core of the core' is defined by actors who are strongly interconnected inside what is called 'the tripartite system', with a high level of multipositionality and intersectorial connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse the space of the world's central bankers since the second half of the 1990s on the basis of a collection of public biographical data. The world's central bankers compose a global "reference space' for the study of ECB leaders. ECB leaders are distinctive in certain dimensions of this space, especially in relation to the Asian (Japanese and Chinese) central bankers and, although to lesser extent, in relation to the US Federal Open Market Committee members. These distinctions relate to the properties of two different sub-groups of ECB members of the Governing Council: one group composed of the members of the executive board, and another comprising the governors of the national central banks. This article stresses the methodological use of Geometric Data Analysis when applying a multi-level and sociological perspective to the central bank's decisions and discourses: in the process of examining the relevant social space, this approach allows us to study the inter-individual social variations between agents at a micro-level and to analyse institutional differences in behaviour as a probable, consequence of these variations. Monetary strategies and economic discourses of central banks are analysed as the probabilistic products of a combination of individuals' orientations, which in turn are the results of variations in their biographical experiences, based on different cultural and cognitive dispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a sociological analysis of central banking elites associated with the global financial crisis of 2007, sometimes referred to as the sub-prime mortgage crisis. It provides a comparative analysis of members of monetary boards of the United States Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of Japan using multiple correspondence analysis. An in-depth analysis using biographical information of members of the Conseil de la politique monétaire (CPM) of France for 1994 through 1998 is also presented. Other topics explored include academic affiliations, the political associations of bankers, dates of birth, and career trajectories.

This article, in the line of Bourdieu (1989), belongs to the research domain about elites and the field of power. Using data from the Norwegian Power & Democracy survey on elites, conducted in 2000, it specifically seeks to uncover the main dimensions and fractions in the Norwegian field of power. Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) has been used to address this issue. The three main findings are these: firstly, our results show that the three most important principal dimensions in the field are an economic capital axis, then an educational and social capital axis, and then an axis separating the judicial positions from positions in culture, organizations and politics. Secondly, the political positions are the most accessible. Thirdly, the public judicial group is the most homogeneous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel" can be analyzed as a process of social construction of public intellectuals in a precise sense, similar to the one which emerged in France during the "affaire Dreyfus": intellectual producers (scientific, literary, artistic) are given the opportunity to demonstrate their sphere of activity and legitimacy in order to take positions on various moral or political problems. This makes them more similar to Foucault's "specific intellectual" than to Sartre's "total intellectual". "Nobel economists" are given a particular social authority on the basis of their scientific performance and expertise (even though these performances and expertise appear very far from "real life" economic and social problems). The alchemy of the process of construction and conversion of symbolic capital which occurs for Nobel economists rests on the social construction of a specific scientific symbolic capital, associated to an academic field: economics. This symbolic capital appears to be closely related to particular economic institutions and stakes, such as central banks and economic policies: behind a specific scientific legitimacy, one finds a complex system of interdependence which interrelates distinct social fields and defines the circulation of symbolic capital. The consequence of this construction include the disqualification of other kinds of legitimacy emerging from the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the analysis of François Simiand and Maurice Halbwachs concerning the sociological bases of economy. According to the vocabulary used by Durkheimian sociologists, Pierre Bourdieu's contribution of economic sociology is both a methodological, and positive nature. On the other hand, Simiands intellectual energy centered on epistemology and methodology of social sciences, and especially on the criticism of wrong erudite outlooks and wrong categories. Furthermore, economists that engaged in the labor union or social movements tend to consider wage claim.

Economic beliefs play a central role in the social construction of economic reality. It is necessary to include in the programme of a new economic sociology the active contribution of the main producers of economic beliefs, namely the economists. The role of economists in the reproduction of the social order can, to a certain extent, be described as the function of a central bank of economic beliefs. Economists are the producers of economic beliefs that are received, interpreted, used by various kinds of social actors in everyday life. In a situation of crisis like the one the French government faced in December 1995, it seems more and more obvious that they are becoming the ultimate reference, the lender of last resort for most contemporary social actors - economic leaders, technocrats, politicians, unionists, intellectuals, etc. To understand this particular position, one needs to consider economists as members of a specific social field, which has its own laws, regularities and structure. The social characteristics (especially the distribution of their kinds of capital, and the relative dispositions of economists) define their positions in this social space. It is then necessary to determine the relative autonomy of this field and its interdependence with other social spaces (for example, the field of enterprises, the bureaucratic, political and media fields, etc.). The main hypothesis developed here is the idea that the field of economists is less autonomous than it is usually thought to be, at least by many economists, and its structure is very similar to that of the field of power (and, among others, the opposition between economic and intellectual powers). In the general interdependence and homologies between social fields, the logic of the field of economists is a key contribution to the production of the symbolic economic order. The word 'science' applied to economics refers not only to an epistemological issue but also to the symbolic aspect of the order we refer to when we talk about economic reality, economic argument, economic constraints, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on legitimacy and trajectories of central bank managers. A social process of neutralization can be observed from the study of the particular methods of construction and legitimization of independent institutions, which are the central banks and of the social characteristics of agents who supposedly embody this independence, the central bankers. Multiple correspondence analyses is used to explore the structure of these particular social spaces. The space of the academic and professional trajectories of central bank governors testifies to the coexistence and rivalry between different types of legitimacy. There are insiders, who come from the central bank institution on the one hand, and outsiders, whose legitimacy may be academic, economic or political, on the other hand. There are leaders, who come from the financial world and the private sector on the one hand, and then leaders who come from the political or university arenas. Central banks are the places where these different forms of legitimacy affront each other and combine. This phenomenon of neutralization, which concerns authorities made up of wise men officiating as guardians of money, has now become self-evident.