2 Bourdieu and Foucault On Power and Modernity PDF

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Philosophy & Social Criticism
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DOI: 10.1177/019145379602200603
1996 22: 55 Philosophy Social Criticism
Ciaran Cronin
Bourdieu and Foucault on power and modernity
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Ciaran Cronin
Bourdieu and Foucault on
power
and
modernity
Abstract Foucaults
theory
of
disciplinary power
and Bourdieus
theory
of
symbolic power
are
among
the most innovative
attempts
in
recent social
thought
to come to terms with the
increasingly
elusive
character of
power
in modern
society.
Both theories are based on cri-
tiques
of
subject-centered analyses
of
power
and offer
original
accounts of modern social institutions. But Foucaults
critique
of the
subject
is so radical that it makes it
impossible
to
identify any
deter-
minate social location of the exercise of
power
or of resistance to its
operations.
Bourdieus
theory
of
practice
in terms of the
symbolically
mediated interaction between the habitus and social structure avoids
these
problems by connecting
relations of domination both to identi-
fiable social
agents
and to the institutions of the modern state.
However,
Bourdieus
strategic
model of social action remains too
narrow to allow for the
possibility
of autonomous
agency
and an
emancipatory political praxis.
The
theory
of
symbolic power
must be
supplemented by
a normative
conception
of
practical
reason if its
emancipatory potential
is to be realized.
Key
words
agency ·
habitus ·
modernity · power ·
resistance
The current crises of
legitimation besetting
advanced
capitalist
so-
cieties are due in
part
to the fact that
operations
of
power
have become
detached from
recognizable
structures of
political responsibility
and
accountability.
It is not
just
that the institutions of
representative
democracy
are
increasingly
circumvented
by decentered, desubjecti-
fied and diffuse forms of
power;
these
very
institutions and the dis-
courses of
legitimation
on which
they
are based seem to function as
instruments of
impersonal
forms of
power
that resist
straightforward
56
analysis
and
escape political
control. Part of our
predicament
is that
we lack an
appropriate conceptual
framework for
analyzing
how
power
functions in modern
society.
The
extraordinary
resonance of
Michel Foucaults
genealogy
of
power
is
undoubtedly
due to the fact
that it
promises
to show us a
way
out of this
predicament by
chal-
lenging
some of our most
deeply
held
philosophical
and
empirical
assumptions concerning
modern social and
political
institutions and
their
history. Taking
his orientation from Nietzsches
conception
of
genealogy,
Foucault
argues
that modern
power
can no
longer
be
understood as
something
invested in
subjects
who exercise it over
others with the sanction of
right
or
law;
on the
contrary,
since the 19th
century power
has
increasingly operated through impersonal
mechan-
isms of
bodily discipline
that
escape
the consciousness and will of indi-
vidual and collective social
agents.
Foucaults
originality
consists in his
attempt
to combine a relational
analysis
of
power
in terms of cease-
less social
struggles
with a
theory
of modernization as the
emergence
of a
complex
of
disciplinary
institutions which make
possible
the
pro-
duction of new forms of scientific
knowledge concerning subjects.
But as I will
argue
in the first
part
of this
paper
the
reception
of
Foucaults
genealogical
studies
suggests
that his
critique
of
subject-
centered notions of
power
is so radical that it becomes
impossible
to
identify any
social location of the exercise of
power
or of resistance to
power,
and his notion of the
disciplinary society
is too monolithic to
account for the diverse forms that
power
assumes in modern societies.
In the main
body
of the
paper
I will
argue
that Pierre Bourdieus
theory
of
symbolic power
shares some of Foucaults most valuable orien-
tations,
most
notably
his
scepticism concerning subjectivistic
theories
of action and his
emphasis
on the role of
bodily practices
in mediat-
ing
relations of domination. But Bourdieu avoids the
problems
that
beset Foucaults
theory
of
disciplinary power by according
a central
explanatory
role to a substantive
conception
of the
subject
as both
essentially
embodied and
socially
constituted. Bourdieus
theory
of
practice
in terms of the interaction between the
habitus,
the set of
sym-
bolically
structured and
socially
inculcated
dispositions
of individual
agents,
and social
fields
structured
by symbolically
mediated relations
of domination offers a more
empirically
sensitive
analytical
frame-
work for
decoding impersonal operations
of
power
than does Fou-
caults
theory
of
disciplinary power.
Thus the
theory
of
symbolic
power provides powerful analytical
tools for
understanding
our con-
temporary
situation and for
orienting
resistance to relations of domi-
nation.
But,
in
conclusion,
I will
argue
that Bourdieus
tendency
to
analyze
social interaction
exclusively
on the model of
strategic
conflict
undermines the critical
potential
of his
theory
of
practice
and of
57
modernization. It must be
supplemented by
a normative account of
discursively
mediated consensual action if it is to
provide
effective
orientation for an
emancipatory political praxis.
I Foucaults
genealogy
of
power
and the
Foucaults
genealogy
of
power
and the modern
subject
combines an
original philosophical conceptualization
of
power
with a revisionist
account of the
genesis
of modern
society.
These tasks are
essentially
interconnected in Foucaults
conception
of
genealogy,
for a
rigorously
nominalistic
approach
to
history
that
emphasizes
the lowliness of his-
torical
origins,
the
discontinuity
of
events,
and the
contingency
of iden-
tities
subject
to endless dissolution and
reconfiguration,
is the
discipline
of
thought by
which
metaphysical
notions of
originary meanings,
enduring
essences and an
objective teleology
in
history
can be over-
come.2 Thus Foucaults
philosophy
of
power
and his
history
of the
genesis
of modern social institutions and the modern
subject
are two
integral parts
of a
single enterprise
which aims at a
thoroughgoing
trans-
formation of our
understanding
of ourselves and of the modern world.
While it is
impossible
to do
justice
to the
complexity
of Foucaults
genealogical
works in a brief
discussion,
this
duality suggests
that their
significance
for
understanding
modern
power
can be reconstructed
along
two main axes:
(1) they
seek to effect a radical shift in the con-
ceptual
framework in terms of which we
generally
think about
power
and
(2) they present
an
original
historical account of the
genesis
of
modern institutions.
(1)
Foucaults innovations
along
the first axis involve a shift from
a substantive
conception
of
power
as invested
in,
and exercised
by
and
over, subjects
to a relational view of
power
as a function of a network
of relations between
subjects.
This shift involves a number of dis-
placements.
In the first
place,
Foucault
argues
that the view that
power
involves one individual or
group exercising
control over another
sys-
tematically misrepresents
how
power
functions in modern
society.
It
reflects a
juridical conception
which links
power
to
sovereignty
and
law;
on this
conception, power
is invested in certain individuals within
a hierarchical structure of
power relations,
it is exercised with the tacit
consent of those over whom it is
exercised,
and it
operates
in accord-
ance with a shared
conception
of
right
which sets limits to its
legiti-
mate exercise. But
modern, disciplinary power
does not involve a
special
relation of
authority
or control
alongside
other social
relations;
rather,
it functions in and
through
a
multiplicity
of social relations -
economic, familial, sexual,
etc. - to form a field of force relations that
58
encompasses
the whole of
society.3 Disciplinary power produces
its
effects
through
ceaseless local
struggles,
which form
strategic patterns
that are not reducible to the intentions and
purposes
of individual
agents
and that
crystallize
into
global
mechanisms of domination. It
is concerned not with the
legality
of conduct and the
punishment
of
transgressions
but with the normalization of behavior
designed
to
harness the
productive
and
reproductive capacities
of the
body.
Thus in a second
displacement
Foucault shifts the focus of ana-
lysis
from the
conscious, willing subject
to the
body: disciplinary
power
acts on the
body
to inculcate
normalized,
habitual
responses
through
which the modern
subject
is constituted as an effect and a
vehicle of
power.4
Whereas
sovereign power
is
negative -
it
prohibits
behavior that does not conform to the law -
disciplinary power
is
pro-
ductive :
through
minute and exhaustive
techniques
of
surveillance,
regulation
and examination
designed
to control
bodily
behavior in a
continuous
manner,
the modern
subject
is
literally
constituted as a
vehicle of
power
and an
object
of
knowledge.
The discourses and
experimental procedures
of the
emergent
human sciences that
explore
this new domain of
subjectivity
first become
possible
as a result of the
opportunities
for
surveillance, spatial
and
temporal regulation
and
examination of bodies afforded
by
modern
disciplinary
institutions
such as the
hospital,
the
prison
and the school. Hence Foucaults dis-
placement
of the
practical subject goes
hand in hand with a corre-
sponding displacement
of the
knowing subject,
who is denied the
epistemic privilege
that Greek
philosophy
associated with the
activity
of theoria and modern
epistemology
with the
apodictic
self-conscious-
ness of the Cartesian
ego.
Since Plato at
least,
Western
philosophy
has
viewed
power
as antithetical to
knowledge,
as
something
which dis-
torts our
perception
of the truth. Foucault takes aim at this tradition
with his
provocative
claim that there is no
power
relation without the
correlative constitution of a field of
power,
nor
any knowledge
that
does not constitute at the same time
power
relations, Thus the focus
of
analysis
must shift from the
subject
of
knowledge
to constellations
or
regimes
of
power-knowledge
relations and their historical trans-
formations.6
But with this another cherished
assumption concerning power
must be
abandoned, namely,
that which would enlist truth in the
service of
emancipation
from domination. The
implicit
contract on
which
juridical power
rests
presupposes
some shared
conception
of the
human interests to be realized
through
the exercise of
power,
so that
operations
of
power
that frustrate these interests can be criticized as
illegitimate
and
oppressive. Disciplinary power, by contrast,
does not
rest on a contract or on a shared
conception
of
justice;
as a result
59
resistance can no
longer
be understood on the normative model of
emancipation
from
unjust
social and
political
relations. But Foucaults
thesis that there is an essential interconnection between
power
and
knowledge
makes an even more radical break with the traditional
notion of
emancipation
in
implying
that there is no truth about
human
beings -
no real human interests or
authentic, unrepressed
sexual desires - to which an
emancipatory politics
could
appeal
against
the excesses of a
power
that has
overstepped
the limits of its
legitimate
exercise.7 Thus the ultimate
consequence
of Foucaults
radical
decentering
of the
knowing
and
willing subject
is to sever the
connection between resistance and normative
conceptions
of truth and
justice,
at least as these are
traditionally
understood.
(2)
Foucaults innovation
along
the second axis consists in chal-
lenging
Weberian accounts of modernization in terms of the functional
differentiation of
spheres
of social action and their consolidation in the
institutions of the modern
state,
on the one
hand,
and Marxist
accounts of modernization in terms of the
unfolding
of the inner
logic
of the
capitalist
economic
system,
on the other. We live neither in a
Weberian
society
dominated
by
the state nor a Marxian
society
increas-
ingly polarized
into two
antagonistic classes,8
but in a
disciplinary
society
in which social relations are
subject
to an
all-pervasive regime
of
normalizing discipline.
In
support
of this radical thesis Foucault
meticulously
documents the
development
of
techniques
of
discipline
in
a
range
of modern institutions - the
prison,
the
hospital,
the mental
asylum,
the
school,
the
factory
and the
military
barracks - and claims
that
they
have in the meantime
spread beyond
the walls of these insti-
tutions and now
shape every aspect
of life in modern
society.
He treats
the
prison
as emblematic of institutions in which new
technologies
of
power
were
forged
around the isolation of individuals and the exhaus-
tive surveillance and
regulation
of their
bodily
behavior in both
space
and time. These institutions served at the same time as the labora-
tories of the
emergent
human
sciences, making
it
possible
to observe
inmates
minutely
and to
register
and
codify
the effects of
regulations
and coercive
measures;
and the
design
and
operation
of these insti-
tutions were in turn modified and rationalized in
light
of the crimino-
logical, psychological,
medical and
pedagogical knowledge
whose
production they
made
possible.
Thus to the extent that
disciplinary
power
has disseminated
throughout
the social
body,
we are
caught
in
a
progressively
more
highly integrated
feed-back mechanism of
power-knowledge
which is
beyond
the control of
knowing
and
acting
subjects.9
The
analysis
of modernization as a transition from one
global regime
of
power-knowledge
to another reflects a Nietzschean
conception
of
history
which
rejects
the
teleological assumption
that
60
there is some ultimate truth about human
beings
which is
gradually
being
uncovered
by
science or that the
history
of
political
institutions
represents
a
progress
toward a more
just
social order.
But
setting
aside for the moment the
question
of how much sense
Foucaults thesis of the
makes of our
contempor-
ary situation,
I want to
argue
that the
conceptual
constraints
imposed
by
his
critique
of
subjectivism already
restrict in
problematic ways
the
explanatory potential
of the model of
disciplinary power.
Instead of
locating power
in individual or collective social
agents,
Foucault ana-
lyzes contemporary power
in terms of
impersonal
relations of force
and
strategies:
...
power
must be understood in the first instance as the
multiplicity
of force relations immanent in the
sphere
in which
they operate
and
which constitute their own
organization;
as the
process which,
through
ceaseless
struggles
and
confrontations, transforms,
strength-
ens,
or reverses them ...
[and]
as the
strategies
in which
they
take
effect,
whose
general design
or institutional
crystallization
is em-
bodied in the state
apparatus,
in the formulation of the
law,
in the
various social
hegemonies.lo
To focus the
analysis
of
power
on
strategies
rather than individuals or
groups
is
potentially illuminating
in
suggesting
that
strategies
have his-
tories of their own that cannot be reduced to the
intentionality
of indi-
vidual
agents
or to class interests at a
particular
moment. But
divorcing
the
concept
of a
strategy
from
subjects altogether,
as Foucault seems
to do when he
says
that
power
relations are intentional and nonsub-
jective,
has
paradoxical consequences
because the notion of a strat-
egy
is
essentially
related to those of
agency
and social
practices. 11
As
Charles
Taylor
has
argued,
cases where individual or collective actions
have unintended
consequences provide
us with
examples
of
purpose-
fulness that cannot be reduced to the conscious
motives, choices,
or
decisions of individuals or
groups;
but we can
plausibly
claim that such
consequences
exhibit
strategic patterns only
if we can relate them to
the conscious ends and
purposes
of identifiable social
agents.12
Fou-
caults
strategies, by contrast,
seem to
crystallize spontaneously
out of
a chaos of
shifting
relations of force between
interchangeable subjects
and to float free of
any specific
social relations. Thus while his
critique
of
subjectivism goes
some
way
toward
explaining why
mechanisms of
power
in modern
society
seem to
escape
individual
control,
it runs the
risk of
reducing power
to a
play
of forces unconnected with
recogniz-
able human concerns.
In Foucaults
genealogical analyses
the
body
seems to take over the
role
played by
the
subject
in traditional
analyses.
But the
body,
61
considered in abstraction from an embodied
subject,
is neither a
plaus-
ible
target
of
power
nor a
possible
source of resistance to its
opera-
tions. As an
empirical
matter,
the
operations
of
power
outside the
confines of coercive institutions such as the
prison
and the
asylum
do
not
necessarily,
or even
generally,
take the form of direct
bodily
con-
straint or coercion nor do
they always
involve
surveillance;
for
example, class,
racial and
gender
domination are so insidious
precisely
because
they
function in
large part through
the internalization of
repressive
schemes of
interpretation
of self and
world,
often in an
unconscious manner and
by
dominant and dominated
agents
alike.13
And on a
conceptual level,
in
describing power
on the naturalistic
model of relations of force between
bodies,
Foucault is in
danger
of
undermining
the essential reference of the
concept
of
power
to social
relations
altogether
and
assimilating
it to notions of
energy,
force and
discharge
that
properly apply
to
physical
nature On the other
hand,
it
might
be
objected
that Foucaults
goal
is not to
jettison
the
subject
altogether
but to
challenge
the
assumption
of the
philosophy
of con-
sciousness that the
subject
is a
self-originating
source of
meaning
and
action
by showing
that the modern
subject is,
to a certain
degree
at
least,
an effect of
disciplinary power.
But without some account of how
individual
identity
is constituted
through
the internalization of social
schemes of
interpretation
and
evaluation,
this
approach
is in
danger
of
reducing
the
subject
to a mere reflex of
bodily
habits induced
by
external stimuli.15
Moreover,
the role that Foucault
assigns
to the
body
renders the notion of resistance to
power problematic
because it is not
clear how the
body
as such can function as a source of resistance to
power.
In certain
places
Foucault
speaks
of resistance in terms of the
revolt of the
body, citing
as an
example
the intensification of sexual
desire in
response
to the increased
scrutiny
of childrens
sexuality by
psychology
and
medicine;
but the intensification of desire seems more
like a
causally
induced
effect
of
power
than an instance of resistance
to
power. 16
These
problems
are
symptomatic
of more
deep-seated
difficulties
concerning
the
possibility,
or even the
intelligibility,
of resistance oc-
casioned
by
Foucaults
attempt
to dissociate the
concept
of
disciplinary
power
from normative
conceptions
of
right
and
justice,
which he
assimilates in a reductive manner to the
legalism
of the
juridical
model:
I then wanted to show ... the extent to
which,
and the forms in
which,
right (not
simply
the laws but the whole
complex
of
apparatuses,
insti-
tutions and
regulations responsible
for their
application)
transmits
and
puts
in motion relations that are not relations of
sovereignty,
but
of domination,.17
By treating right
in
general
as an instrument of
domination,
Foucault
tacitly
denies
any
constitutive connection
62
between
power
and discourses of
legitimation,
and hence between
resistance to
power
and the normative idea of liberation from dom-
ination.18 But while the norms of
right
and
justice
embodied in the
laws and institutions of a
particular
state at a
particular
time
may
be
repressive,
the
concept
of
right
is not exhausted
by any factually
existing
laws and
institutions,
as Foucault seems to
suggest
in the
passage just quoted,
for the latter can
always
be criticized as
unjust,
and hence as instruments of domination. And without some notion of
right
and
legitimacy
that does not
represent
it
merely
as an instrument
of
power,
the idea of resistance ceases to have
any
normative
import.
It is
perhaps
the realization that
genealogy
would
thereby
forfeit its
potential
to orient resistance to domination that led Foucault to
specu-
late about the
possibility
of a new form of
right
which would be anti-
disciplinarian
and liberated from the
principle
of
sovereignty.
But what
an
anti-disciplinarian
notion of
right
would involve he does not
specify,
other than to
say
that it would break with the
juridical
con-
ception
of individual
rights
There would be no
problem
here if Fou-
cault were
willing
to renounce
any
connection between
genealogy
and
an
oppositional politic;
but that would be at odds with the subversive
rhetoric of his own
writings
and
sympathetic
commentators have
generally
seen the value of his work to lie in
part
in its subversive
politi-
cal
implications.2o
The close interconnection that Foucault asserts between
power
and
knowledge
creates further
problems concerning
the
possibility
of
resistance. If
disciplinary power
is an effect of the
systematic,
totaliz-
ing
discourses of the human
sciences,
it would seem that resistance
must be local and undirected and whatever effects of truth it
might
generate
would be at best
ephemeral. Perhaps
this is what led Foucault
to connect
genealogical analysis
with the revival of
subjugated
know-
ledges
that
preserve
the
memory
of
past
social
struggles
but are dis-
qualified
as
inadequate by
the established canons of scientific
rigor.
Genealogy
as anti-science would elaborate these
popular knowledges
into a historical
knowledge
of
struggles
that could be
deployed
tacti-
cally against
the
tyranny
of
organized
scientific discourse and the cen-
tralizing powers
associated with it.21 With the idea of
reviving
suppressed knowledge
Foucault seems to
bring genealogy
into contact
with the
critique
of
ideology;
but then
genealogy
would have to
lay
claim to
objectivity
or truth in
opposition
to the established disci-
plines,
which contradicts his thesis that
power
and
knowledge
are
essentially
interconnected.
For this thesis entails that there is no
objec-
tive
standpoint
outside of relations of
power
from which the truth
could be ascertained: discourses are neither true nor false in themselves
but
merely generate
effects of truth.22 But then
genealogy
could
only
63
ground
a
counter-power
and would become as totalitarian as the
established sciences were it to
prevail.23
This
brings
us
finally
to the
question
of the
explanatory
force of
Foucaults
theory
of
disciplinary power
and its
empirical adequacy
as
a
description
of modern
society.
His
theory
of
modernity
in terms of
the
disciplinary
or carceral
society
turns on the claim that disci-
plinary techniques spread beyond
the closed institutions in which
they
originated
and
gradually
came to
pervade
modern
society
as a whole.24
But the
generalization
of the model of
disciplinary power
from an insti-
tution such as the
prison
or the
asylum
to the social
body
as a whole
is
highly problematic
because the
disciplinary techniques
Foucault so
carefully
describes seem
capable
of
functioning effectively only
within
closed institutions.25 The exercise of hierarchical
surveillance,
nor-
malizing judgment
and
systematic
examination calls for
organiz-
ational
resources,
coercive means of
enforcing
behavioral
regulations,
and instruments of data collection and
analysis
for which there are no
obvious
analogues
in the case of interactions outside of institutional
settings.
This
suggests
that Foucaults choice of the
prison
as the
exemplary
site of modern
power may
have
prejudiced
his
analysis
of
modern
society
as a whole. More
worrying
is that he
ultimately
failed
to establish a
convincing
connection between what he called the
microphysics
of
power -
the
strategic play
of domination and resist-
ance in which
subjects
act on one another - on the one
hand,
and the
global
constellations of
power
evoked
by
the
image
of the
disciplinary
society - large-scale
institutional
techniques
of surveillance and nor-
malization
grounded
in the
totalizing
discourses of the human sciences
-
on the other. As Foucault
depicts it,
the exercise of
power
at the local
level
always potentially
encounters resistance and relations of dom-
ination are
inherently subject
to reversal. But then he needs to
explain
how these
shifting
relations of
power
become stabilized into
enduring
strategic patterns
and
disciplinary
mechanisms
by showing,
for
example,
how the
strategies
and tactics of
agents
at the micro-level of
local
struggles
are conditioned
by,
and serve to
reproduce,
the
large-
scale institutions of the
disciplinary society.
But he offers no such
account.26
Moreover,
his
rejection
of
explanations
in terms of the state
or class relations
ultimately rings
false because he does not
explain
how we moderns could have been so mistaken in the
explanatory
cat-
egories
we
apply
to modern
society
both as theorists and as
lay
persons.
While his account of the
proliferation
of
techniques
for dis-
ciplining
bodies
certainly highlights previously underappreciated
aspects
of modern
history,
this cannot be the full
story.
Bourdieus
theory
of
symbolic power, by
contrast,
while
preserv-
ing
Foucaults
emphasis
on local
struggles
and
bodily conditioning,
64
relates the
analysis
of local interactions in a
convincing way
to
global
relations of domination between social classes mediated
by
the insti-
tutions of the modern state. The
superiority
of Bourdieus
approach
is
due in
part
to his
sensitivity
to the
symbolic aspects
of
power,
which
also enables him to
give
a more
plausible
account of the role of the
subject
in the exercise of
power
and
resistance,
but without reinstat-
ing
the discredited
conception
of the
subject
of the
philosophy
of con-
sciousness.
11
Symbolic power,
class
domination,
and the modern state
Bourdieus
analysis
of modern forms of
power
is based on the
appli-
cation to modern societies of a
theory
of
practice developed
in
anthropological
studies of a tribal
society -
that of the
Kabyles,
a
Berber
people
of
Algeria -
and assumes an
implicit theory
of moderniz-
ation whose outlines have become clearer
only
in his recent work. I
will
begin by examining
the
conceptions
of
agency, practice,
and social
structure that underlie his
theory
of
symbolic power (section 1)
before
turning
to his
analysis
of modernization and modern structures of
power (section 2)
and
describing
how
together they represent
an
advance over Foucaults
theory
of
power
and
modernity (section 3).
1
Bourdieu
attempts
to
go beyond
both
subjectivist
theories of action in
terms of the intentions or rational calculations of individual
subjects
and
objectivist theories,
such as
structuralism,
which
explain practices
in terms of rules
grounded
in collective
symbolic
structures.27 He ana-
lyzes practices
in traditional societies -
e.g.
the
exchange
of
gifts -
in
terms of a dialectical interaction between the
habitus,
the behavioral
and
cognitive dispositions
of individual
agents,
and the
objective
struc-
ture of the social world in which actions unfold. The habitus consists
of a
system
of
durably
inculcated
dispositions
that structure both the
agents
behavior and her or his
perceptions
and
representations
of situ-
ations of action and of the social world in
general.28
It is inculcated
through
the
everyday
behavioral
injunctions
and
petty disciplines,
often
indirectly
communicated
through gestures, by
which
parents
and
teachers
bring
the childs behavior into line with certain
prevailing
social
expectations.
These extend to such matters as
physical deport-
ment and
posture,
how food should be handled and
consumed,
the
place
and time in which it is
appropriate
to
speak,
in what
intonation,
with what forms of
expression,
etc.,
and are
generally
differentiated
65
along gender
lines. In the course of this
training
a whole vision of the
social world and of her or his
position
in it is communicated to the
child in the form of
implicit
cultural schemes of classification. Thus
the habitus reflects the relations of
power
that structure the social
world in which it is inculcated and the cultural
understandings
that
shape
social
practices
and are
objectified
in material culture. The
whole social
environment,
from the actions and utterances of others
to the
disposition
of domestic
space
in the traditional
house, conspires
to reinforce the individuals view of the world and of her or his
place
in
it,
and to elicit behavior that is
objectively
attuned to the constraints
of the
prevailing
relations of
power
without recourse to overt coercion.
The habitus functions as a
generative principle
of actions
only
in
relation to the structured social
space
in which it was constituted
(or
one
sufficiently
similar to
it);
it is not a
property
or set of
properties
of an
agent
considered in isolation but a
generative
scheme of
prac-
tices that functions
only
in relation to an
appropriately
structured
social
space.
The structure of the social world of a traditional culture is
determined both
by
relations between
agents
who
occupy
different
positions
in a hierarchical
power
structure and
by
a
system
of
sym-
bolic
oppositions
which
shape agents perceptions
of the social and
natural
worlds,
such as
dry/wet, right/left, even/odd, day/night,
etc.29
Relations of
power
are determined in
part by
material
resources,
specifically,
the wealth and the means of violence individuals can
command;
but to view
power
in traditional societies in
purely
material
terms would be to
misrepresent
their structure and mode of
repro-
duction. In a traditional
society
economic and
political power
are
inseparable
from the
operations
of
symbolic power
that
disguise
the
truth of social relations based on material
dependence
or on the
implicit
threat of force and
thereby
facilitate the
general acceptance
of
such relations.
Symbolic power
is the form material
power
relations
assume when
they
are
perceived through
social
categories
that
repre-
sent them as
legitimate.3
The shared schemes of
perception
and evalu-
ation
incorporated
in the habitus mask the arbitrariness of social
divisions
by inculcating
belief in their
legitimacy
or naturalness:
Systems
of classification which
reproduce,
in their own
specific logic,
the
objective classes,
i.e. the divisions
by sex, age,
or
position
in the
relations of
production,
make their
specific
contribution to the
repro-
duction of the
power
relations of which
they
are the
product, by
secur-
ing
the
misrecognition,
and hence the
recognition,
of the arbitrariness
on which
they
are
based;
in the extreme case ... the natural and social
world
appears
as self-evident.31
66
The shared cultural belief
system
on which
symbolic power
rests
Bourdieu calls the doxa: as a
structuring principle
of the
habitus,
it
underlies an
immediate, unreflective, bodily
adherence to a common-
sense view of the world which ensures that
practices
and the social
divisions and relations of domination
they reproduce
are
experienced
as self-evident and hence are taken for
granted.32
The existence of a
common-sense view of the world shared
by
all
agents regardless
of
their social
position
is a function of the cultural
homogeneity
of tra-
ditional
societies,
which is reflected in the relative
homogeneity
of the
habitus of different social
agents
and hence in the
probability
that
their actions and
experiences
will be harmonized with one another.
But this shared common-sense view of the world masks real differ-
ences in the interests of
agents
who
occupy
different
positions
in a
hierarchy
of
power
relations. Thus while dominant
agents
have a
vested interest in
upholding
the
principles
of vision and division of
the social world that
legitimate
their
position
of
dominance, symbolic
power
also
depends
on the
complicity
of the dominated in the form
of an
immediate, unreflective, bodily
adherence to these same
prin-
ciples.
Though
relations of
symbolic power depend
on the doxa and col-
lective
misrecognition, they
are as much an
objective part
of the
social world as are material
power relations,
since social
reality
is not
independent
of
agents representations
of it. The doxic
representation
of the social world is embodied in the schemes
incorporated
in the
habitus,
and the
dispositions
of different social
agents
ensure that their
actions are harmonized in such a
way
as to
reproduce
relations of
domination
automatically.
But the mutual reinforcement of
subjective
and
objective
structures is not a matter of mechanical determination.
Both the habitus and social structure are
shaped by
the
history
of
past
struggles
for material and
symbolic power. Though
the habitus func-
tions
primarily
as a
practical
sense - an immediate
bodily
awareness
of the
potentialities
and constraints of situations of action and an auto-
matic
adaptation
to them -
agents
can
exploit existing
relations of
symbolic power
in a
strategic
manner
by manipulating accepted rep-
resentations of the social world. Thus a scheme of classification which
reinforces male domination
by associating things
female with what is
sinister, secret,
treacherous and
magical
makes it
possible
for women
to cultivate a secret domain of
symbolic power
of
sorcery
and
magic
in
opposition
to the
official, public power
of men.
However,
the
cultural
homogeneity
of traditional
societies,
and the
ubiquitous regu-
lation of
practices by
the consensual schemes of the doxa and the
habitus,
mean that the
scope
for resistance to
operations
of dom-
ination in such societies is
relatively
limited.
67
Bourdieus
analysis
of
agency
as structured
by
relations of
power
and
systems
of cultural
knowledge
follows Foucault in
breaking
with
conceptions
of the
subject
rooted in the
philosophy
of consciousness.
Actions
generated by
the habitus cannot be
explained
in terms of the
conscious
representations
and calculations of the
subject
considered
in isolation from the social world which
shapes
the
subjects
behav-
ioral and
cognitive dispositions.
The habitus ensures that an indi-
viduals actions are attuned to the
objective
constraints of the social
world in which it is
constituted,
and hence that
they present
the
appearance
of calculation and
finality;
but this
appearance
is the result
of the
operations
of a
practical
sense whose
operation
does not
depend
on conscious reflection and rational calculation. The habitus encodes
cultural
background knowledge
in the form of schematic
oppositions
that cannot be reduced to
explicit
conscious
representations
or rules
of rational choice without
distorting
how
practical
sense
shapes
actions.33 Because the habitus encodes
implicit
cultural
knowledge,
the actions it
generates
have a social
meaning
that transcends the con-
scious intentions of the
agent
and is
inseparable
from the structure of
the social world and its
history.
On the other
hand,
the social context
from which actions derive their
meaning
does not exist
independently
of the actions and
perceptions
of individual
agents.
The social world
in both its
symbolic
and material
aspects
is
continually
created and re-
created
by agents through
their
perceptions
and
actions, though
under
the constraints of
history
embodied in the habitus. The habitus is not
a mere mechanical
imprint
of social structure in the
body
of the indi-
vidual,
in which case actions would be
just
one moment in the func-
tional circuit of
self-reproducing
social
systems.
While Bourdieu
stresses the
homogeneity
of the habitus of
agents
in traditional
societies, homogeneity
at the level of shared cultural schemes of
interpretation
is
compatible
with endless variations in individual dis-
positions resulting
from differences in
positions
in the social
hierarchy
of
power
relations. Ones habitus is
enduringly shaped by
such
socially
marked factors as ones
sex,
ones
position
in the
family,
ones
position
in the social field of class
relations,
and ones
trajectory through
social
space
over time.
2
Both social structure and the
habitus,
and hence the forms of
symbolic
power
that rest on their
interrelation, undergo
fundamental trans-
formations with the transition from traditional to modern forms of
social life. Bourdieu subscribes to Max Webers
general
account of
modernization as a
process
of rationalization
through
which forms of
68
social action become differentiated into autonomous domains or
fields of discourse and
practice.34
With the
development
of com-
modity
and labor markets and the
spread
of
money,
economic
exchanges
become
increasingly
dissociated from
symbolic
relations
between
agents
and wealth can function as economic
capital
in accord-
ance with the
logic
of the market.
Money
and the market function as
instruments of
objectification
of economic
capital
that enable social
agents
to
recognize
and
publicly acknowledge
the economic truth -
that
is,
the relations of material
power -
underlying
their
exchanges. 35
Economic differentiation
goes
hand in hand with the
emergence
of
autonomous fields of cultural
production -
most
importantly,
the
scientific
field,
the fields of art and
literature,
the field of
law,
and the
political
field - in which interactions also
obey
a
broadly
economic
logic
of
capital
accumulation. Culture in non-literate societies is the
shared
possession
of the whole
group:
all
agents bring
the same
schemes of
interpretation
and classification to their
interactions,
and
the
doxa,
the common-sense view of the
world,
is
collectively imposed.
But with the
spread
of
writing
and the
resulting
codification of cul-
tural
knowledge
and
practices, specialist producers
of
symbolic goods
emerge
who claim a
monopoly
of the
competence
to
produce legiti-
mate culture and
competition
between rival
producers opens up
the
dominant view of the world to contestation and
struggle.
When domains of
practice
are codified in
systems
of
explicit
rules,
the
practical
relation of
agents
to their
practices undergoes
a
profound
transformation. Codification makes
possible
a reflexive relation to
practices
that had
previously
been
regulated by
the
practical
sense of
the habitus. It
normalizes
practices by minimizing vagueness
and
ambiguity
in
interactions;
it
objectifies
them,
so that the different tem-
poral phases
of
practices
can be
grasped simultaneously; by making
them
public,
codification also
officializes practices
and contributes to
their
recognition
as
legitimate;
and
by formalizing practices,
it renders
them calculable and
predictable.36
The
resulting
rationalization of
practice gives
rise to new forms of
symbolic power.
The cultural com-
petence required
to
codify practices
is not
equally
distributed
among
members of different social classes and its
possession
confers control
over the
legitimate representations
of
practices
and of the social
world in
general.
Thus cultural
capital
accumulated within the
special-
ized fields translates into
symbolic capital,
the
power
to
impose
the
legitimate
vision of the social
world,
and
thereby
to reinforce - or to
challenge -
social divisions.37
Cultural differentiation
goes
hand in hand with the division of
modern
society
into
specialist producers
of cultural
goods,
such as
scientific
theories,
works of
art, legal interpretations
and
political
69
discourses,
and an
encompassing
social field of consumers who differ
in their levels of cultural
capital
and hence in their
ability
to under-
stand or consume cultural
products.
On the
consumption side,
cul-
tural
capital
is
closely
related to inherited economic
capital,
since
families seek to maintain and
improve
their social
position by
con-
verting
wealth into cultural
capital through
education
(e.g. by sending
their children to
university)
and cultural
consumption (e.g. through
theater-going
and museum
visits), thereby instilling dispositions
and
attitudes that later translate into economic
opportunities.
The
logic
of
capital
accumulation and conversion ensures that
capital goes
to
capital
with the result that the social field becomes
polarized
into a
dominant
pole
of those who are rich in economic and cultural
capital
and a dominated
pole
of those who are
relatively poor
in both forms.
Consequently,
modern societies can be
represented
as a
space
of social
positions
in which
agents
are distributed
according
to their total
volume of
capital,
their relative amounts of economic and cultural
capital,
and whether
they
are on an
upward
or downward social tra-
jectory. Agents
can be
grouped
into social classes
according
to their
proximity
in social
space,
the dominant class
comprising groups
rela-
tively
rich in economic
capital (professionals, executives)
and those
relatively
rich in cultural
capital (intellectuals,
academics and other
cultural
producers),
whereas the dominated class
comprises
those
poor
in
both,
such as farmers and unskilled
laborers,
with the differ-
ent fractions of the middle class in between. But social
space
in this
sense is a theoretical construct and the classes that
comprise
it are
classes on
paper,
not real classes in the Marxist
sense,
that
is,
col-
lective
agents
who act on the basis of shared class
interests;
it is
only
through political
mobilization that
agents
who are
sufficiently
close in
social
space
can be
galvanized
into real
political
classes.38 This means
that,
while the divisions of the social field reflect
enduring
relations of
domination,
class domination is not a direct effect of the coercive
actions of the dominant class but an indirect effect of the structure of
the social field.39
In order to understand how domination is mediated
by
social
structure we must examine the relation between the internal structure
of the
specialized
fields of cultural
production,
the structure of the
social
field,
and the institutions of the modern state. The cultural
fields are structured
by
relations of
power
between
agents
endowed
in different
degrees
with the
competence specific
to the field
(or
cul-
tural
capital),
where the relations of
power
at a
given
time are the
outcome of
past struggles
for cultural
capital
and for
monopoly
over
the
principles
of classification and evaluation of works and
compe-
tences. Cultural
producers
raise claims to
legitimacy
for their
70
products
whose
recognition
reflects back on the
producers
in the form
of
honor,
prestige
and
authority.
Thus control of the
principles
of
evaluation in terms of which claims to
legitimacy
are
adjudicated rep-
resents the
power
to
impose
the
recognized
definition of the field
(of
who
belongs,
of the
competences required
for
entry, etc.)
and to influ-
ence schemes of
interpretation
and evaluations of the social world
beyond
the
specialized
field.
Symbolic struggles presuppose
a shared
interest or investment in the stakes of the
struggle,
a belief in their
importance
that constitutes a shared doxa and is embodied in a field-
specific
habitus. The
field-specific habitus,
an intuitive feel for the
game
that ensures an immediate identification with the stakes and an
awareness of the
prevailing power
relations,
is what
separates
the
specialist
from the
non-specialist;
it is inculcated
through training
and
participation
in
struggles
within the field but it is
deeply
influenced
by
the
agents prior
social
conditioning,
the class habitus that
agent
has internalized as a
consequence
of a
position
in the social field. Thus
there exist
homologies
between the structure of the social field and
the relations of
power
within the cultural fields
through
which
they
mutually
influence one another. For
example,
social
scientists,
such
as economists and
sociologists,
wield
symbolic power
over how
lay
people
and other
professionals
view the social world in virtue of the
symbolic capital
of
reputation
and
personal authority they
have
acquired through symbolic struggles
in the scientific field. At the same
time,
the
convertibility
of economic into cultural
capital through
the
education
system
and cultural
consumption
ensures that most scien-
tists and other cultural
producers belong
to the dominant social class
and are
disposed
to advocate theories that reinforce the dominant
view of the world in virtue of their
affinity
with the interests of the
dominant class. Members of dominated
classes,
on the other
hand,
are
relatively
weak in cultural
capital
since
they
are less
likely
to
achieve educational
honors,
and hence do not have
equal
access to
the cultural and
symbolic
means to
challenge
the dominant view of
the world. Thus the dominant class exercises domination
indirectly
in virtue of the structural
homologies
between the social and cultural
fields without
any
need for direct acts of domination. The
complicity
of scientists and other cultural
producers
in
reproducing
relations of
domination is not a matter of a conscious decision to
promote
the
interests of the dominant
class;
it rests on the
homology
between the
structures of the social and the cultural
fields,
based on an
affinity
between class habitus and scientific
habitus, juridical habitus, etc.,
that ensures that the
aggregate
effect of the disinterested
pursuit
of
scientific truth or artistic excellence
by
different
agents
is to reinforce
class divisions.
71
The dialectical interrelation between class
struggles
in the social
field and
symbolic struggles
in the
specialized
cultural fields which
underlies relations of
symbolic
domination is
closely
bound
up
with
the
emergence
of the modern state as the
privileged
locus of
symbolic
power.
In contrast to accounts of the constitution of the state that
emphasize
the centralization of the means of
physical
violence or the
rationalization of fiscal
administration,
Bourdieu underlines the
importance
of the unification of cultural fields
through
which the
modern state
gained
a
monopoly
of the
power
to
produce
and
impose
the
categories
of
thought
that
agents apply spontaneously
to the social
world.4 The state - that
is,
those who act in the name of the state -
becomes both the
guarantor
of an
official,
national culture which
identifies itself with the
general interest,
and the
supreme regulatory
instance of the
practices through
which the behavioral and evaluative
dispositions
of the habitus are inculcated.41 Its
primary agency
is the
education
system
which contributes to the transformation of the dom-
inant culture into a
legitimate,
national culture
by conferring
academic
degrees
and official titles on cultural
producers
and is the means
by
which the norms of
legitimate
culture are inculcated in the habitus of
individual
agents.42 Among
the most
important
cultural
developments
in the
emergence
of the modern state is the institution of a
single
national
language through
the codification of
grammar
and norms of
correct
usage,
a
process
which
depends
on the
complicity
of
special-
ized cultural
producers, including linguists,
who treat the unified lan-
guage
as a
pregiven object
of
analysis,
and
writers,
who
provide
grammarians
with models of correct
usage.43
The
emergence
of a
national
language
and culture sanctioned
by
the state reinforces the
deepest
and most
enduring
relations of domination in modern
societies:
Cultural and
linguistic
unification is
accompanied by
the
imposition
of the dominant
language
and culture as
legitimate
and
by
the
rejec-
tion of all others as
unworthy (patois).
The accession of a
particular
language
or culture to
universality
has the effect of
relegating
others
to
particularity; moreover,
because the universalization of the exi-
gencies thereby
instituted is not
accompanied by
universalization of
access to the means of
satisfying them,
it favors both the
monopo-
lization of the universal
by
some and the
dispossession
of all
others,
who are
thereby mutilated,
in a certain
sense,
in their
humanity.44
The unification of culture and
language
leads not
only
to the devalu-
ation of
minority
cultures and dialects but also to the cultural and
political
disenfranchisement of members of dominated social classes.
For children from different social
backgrounds
are not
equally
72
predisposed by
their
family training
to master the norms of official
culture inculcated
by
the education
system;
thus in
rewarding
aca-
demic
achievement,
the education
system legitimizes
the results of
prior
social
conditioning by representing
them as the
expression
of
innate merit or
intelligence, thereby contributing
to the naturalization
of
arbitrary
class divisions.
Bourdieu views the state as a field of
power
in which
agents
who
occupy
dominant
positions
in the restricted cultural fields
struggle
for
control over the
power
invested in the institutions of the state to
impose
the official
representations
of the social world.45
Writers,
scientists,
bureaucrats and
jurists,
as well as
politicians,
can exert
sym-
bolic
power
over
agents perceptions
of the social
world,
but
only by
identifying
with the interests of the
state,
that
is,
the disinterested
interest in the universal or the
general
interest. The
processes
of cul-
tural and
linguistic
unification in which the state is constituted are also
processes
of universalization
by
which
particular competences
and
views of the world are endowed with universal
significance.
Hence all
agents
who want to
partake
in the
power
of the state must
present
at
least the
appearance
of disinterestedness and
adopt
the
language
of
neutrality
and
impartiality. However,
the field of
power,
as Bourdieu
construes
it,
should not be confused with the
political field,
which is
one of the
specialized
fields of cultural
production: politicians,
the
pro-
fessional
producers
of
political discourses, compete
with other cultural
producers
for control over the
power
invested in the state. Hence the
power
of the state cannot be
analyzed exclusively
in terms of the
politi-
cal
process,
as this is understood
by philosophical
theories of
political
legitimation. Indeed,
the real
problem
of
legitimacy
for Bourdieu is
that the established order is for the most
part accepted
as
unproblem-
atic and
that,
with the
exception
of crisis
situations,
the
question
of
the
legitimacy
of the state is never
posed.46
The dominant class is so
successful in
imposing
its domination because it can count on the com-
plicity
of the dominated which is extorted
through
the state-sanc-
tioned inculcation of the norms of the dominant culture.
3
Bourdieus
theory
of
symbolic power provides
a more fruitful basis for
a critical
analysis
of modern
power
than Foucaults
conception
of
disciplinary power.
It shows how
impersonal operations
of
power
are
mediated both
by
the
cognitive
and behavioral
dispositions
of indi-
vidual
agents
and
by global
features of social
structure,
in
particular
by
relations of domination between social classes and the institutions
of the modern state. It
thereby
allows for both the
subjective
and the
73
social
aspects
of
power
without
falling
into the forms of
subjectivism
and economism
rightly
criticized
by
Foucault. It also makes
possible
a more
empirically
nuanced
description
of the diverse forms
power
assumes in modern societies and
opens
the
way
to a more
plaus-ible
account of resistance.
Bourdieus
theory
of the habitus
recognizes
the
importance
of the
bodily aspects
of
agency
but avoids the
problems besetting
Foucaults
treatment of the
body by integrating
it into the circuit of
symbolic
power through
which relations of domination are mediated. Whereas
Foucault treats the
subject
as an effect of
disciplinary technologies
acting
on a mute and malleable
body,
Bourdieu holds that structures
of
subjectivity
are the result of the
incorporation
of
practical
and
cog-
nitive
dispositions
via the internalization of cultural schemes of
interpretation
and evaluation. Both thinkers accord a
key
role to
bodily disciplines
in the constitution of the
subject,
but the forms that
discipline
assumes in their
respective
accounts are
importantly
differ-
ent. Foucault
applies
the model of
disciplinary techniques,
which
developed
in closed institutions such as the
penitentiary
and the
asylum,
to modern
society
as a whole. The inculcation of the
habitus,
by contrast,
is the result not of novel
techniques
of surveillance and
normalization,
but of
everyday injunctions concerning posture,
manners,
correct
pronunciation,
etc., by
which
parents
instil into
their children behavioral
dispositions
and schemes of
perception
and
evaluation,
which are
subsequently
reinforced
by
the education
system.47
Modern forms of
power
are not the result of the
emergence
of new
technologies
for
disciplining
bodies -
though
these undoubt-
edly play
an
important
role in closed
institutions,
as Foucault
amply
demonstrated - but of the
normalization, objectification
and formal-
ization of
practices through codification,
which lead to new forms of
symbolic power
connected with the institutions of the modern state.
Bodily hexis,
the
culturally
constructed
way
of
holding
ones
body
and the
gestural
and verbal
style
one
uses,
is an
important
dimension
of the
habitus;
but the habitus is also a
cognitive structure,
the
product
of the internalization of cultural schemes of
interpretation
and evalu-
ation. Thus the
concept
of the habitus allows for the
inner, symbolic
dimensions of
personal identity.
At the same
time,
while Bourdieus
agent
is not a
passive
effect of
disciplinary power,
neither is she or he
the
sovereign subject
of the
philosophy
of consciousness. The schemes
of the habitus reflect the norms of the dominant culture
legitimated by
the
state,
which ensure that the dominant classes
enjoy
a
monopoly
over the
symbolic power
to
shape agents self-understandings.
But it remains
open
to
question
whether Bourdieu breaks suf-
ficiently
with the Foucauldian view of the
subject
as an effect of the
74
operations
of
disciplinary power
on the
body.
Foucaults treatment of
the
subject
is
problematic
because it does not allow for the
inner,
reflective dimension of
personal identity
and thus seems to reduce the
subject
to a collection of
acquired
behavioral reflexes. Bourdieus
account of the inculcation of the habitus
through
the internalization
of
symbolic
schemes of classification and evaluation
goes
some
way
toward
overcoming
this
limitation;
but it
stops
short of a
genuine
theory
of individual
identity.
For the
only principle
of individuation it
admits is the differentiation in the social
positions
of
agents:
differ-
ences in the habitus are a reflection of differences in the social con-
ditionings
of
agents
that result from the
positions they occupy
in social
space (their family background,
social
trajectory, etc.).
But a
theory
of
the
differentiation
of the
dispositions
of
agents according
to social con-
ditions does not amount to a
theory
of individualization and hence of
individual
identity.48
Without some account of how the
agent
can
come to reflect on and criticize the schemes of
interpretation
and
evaluation she or he has
internalized,
the
agents identity
remains a
mere effect of social
conditioning.
Bourdieu allows that the individual
can achieve some control in
shaping
her or his habitus in virtue of the
awakenings
of consciousness and
socioanalysis,49
that
is, through
the
objectification
of relations of domination in the social sciences that
cuts
through
the
mystifications
of the
doxa;
but he does not
explain
how the results of such
awakening
could be
integrated
into an auton-
omous
personal identity.
In order to do this he would have to extend
his
conceptions
of
agency
and
rationality
to include an account of how
repressive
schemes of
interpretation
of self and world can be
opened
up
to discursive criticism in
light
of
impartial
norms of social
justice.
Only through
critical
practical
discourses can
agents
liberate them-
selves from the
facticity
of social
conditionings
and constitute them-
selves as autonomous
agents.
But this would
presuppose
a richer
understanding
of the
political process
than Bourdieus
position allows,
as I will show.
Bourdieu
agrees
with Foucault in
viewing power
as a
dynamic,
relational
phenomenon
that
operates through
ceaseless
strategic
con-
frontations and
struggles.
But Foucaults
skepticism concerning expla-
nations of
power
in terms of social classes and the institutions of the
state leaves him at a loss to
explain
how local
strategic struggles
become stabilized into
enduring
relations of domination. Bourdieus
model,
by
contrast,
shows how local interactions are orchestrated
by
symbolic
mechanisms via the inculcation of the habitus in such a
way
that
agents
are led to
reproduce
relations of domination even
against
their own interests. But he
goes beyond
traditional Marxist
analyses
of class domination
by linking
the accumulation of economic wealth
75
to cultural mechanisms that enable those who
occupy
a dominant
social
position
to
impose
the vision of the world favorable to their
interests as
universal,
and hence as
legitimate.
Thus he avoids the
economism which reduces all social relations to
productive
forces and
voluntarist accounts of class
struggles
as
involving
direct conflicts
between social
groups
mobilized around class interests. The dominant
classes have no need to exercise
power directly through
actions moti-
vated
by
class interests because
they
can count on the
complicity
of
dominated
agents
in their own domination.
Hence,
resistance to class
domination cannot
simply
take the form of the
political
mobilization
of the dominated class
through
the
heightening
of class consciousness.
As Foucault
recognized,
traditional Marxist
theory
of
ideology
and
revolution remains
trapped
in the
philosophy
of consciousness: it
assumes that domination is mediated
by
the
ideological misrepresen-
tation of the true interests of the
proletariat,
so that
revolutionary
action can be
precipitated by transforming
the
proletariats represen-
tations of its true interests. But Bourdieus
theory
of the habitus
sug-
gests
that relations of domination are more
deeply
entrenched and
resistant to
change
than the
critique
of
ideology
would
suggest
because
they
are based on
bodily
schemes that
agents,
and
especially
those who
are
culturally
disenfranchised,
can
reflexively grasp
and control
only
within limits. Taken
together
with his
analysis
of the modern state and
of the cultural mechanisms
underlying
the mutual
convertibility
of
economic and
symbolic capital,
this
goes
a
long way
toward
explain-
ing why
the hierarchical relations of
privilege
characteristic of
capital-
ism have
proved
to be so resilient and
why oppositional political
energies
have been
consistently dissipated.
But what
scope,
if
any,
does Bourdieus
analysis
leave for resist-
ance to the
operations
of
symbolic power?
The
problem
of resistance
is addressed in Bourdieus work at the level of the
political
field and
at the level of the scientific
representation
of the social world. As
regards
the
political
field,
he is
skeptical
about the
possibility
of over-
coming
relations of domination
through
the institutions of
represen-
tative
democracy.
This is in
part
because
political
discourses of
legitimation
are
open
to
manipulation by
those who
monopolize
the
symbolic power
to
represent particular
interests as
universal;
but even
more
important
is the fact that the internal
logic
of
political struggles
between
politicians
and
parties
within the
political
field tends to
repro-
duce rather than to undermine relations of domination in the social
field. Dominated
groups
can
gain political representation only by
del-
egating authority
to
professional politicians
who exercise a
monopoly
over the forms of
political
discourse that are
socially recognized
as
legitimate,
and whose
political
stances are determined more
by
the
76
logic
of
struggles
internal to the
political
field than
by
the interests of
those
they
claim to
represent. Though ostensibly
the
representative
is
delegated by
the
group,
in fact the
representative
creates the
group by
providing
it with the
symbolic
means of
understanding
itself as a
group, especially
when its members are
relatively deprived
of the cul-
tural means of
publicly representing
their own interests. This means
that the more
culturally dispossessed
those it claims to
represent
are,
the more
likely
a
political party
is to be
organized
as an authoritarian
apparatus
of mobilization that demands
unquestioning allegiance
to
the official
party representation
of the
groups identity
and interests.
Thus
struggles
within the
political field,
with the
exception
of crisis
situations in which the
authority
of established
parties
and
represen-
tatives is
challenged,
tend to
reproduce
by
intensifying
the disenfranchisement of dominated
groups.so
As it
transpires,
the
primary
locus of resistance to
power
on
Bourdieus
analysis
is not the
political
field but the scientific
field,
since
scientific
representations
of social
practices
can
dispel
the
mystifi-
cations
underlying symbolic
domination
by revealing
the arbitrariness
of the social divisions it serves to
legitimate.
Bourdieu
agrees
with Fou-
cault that the social sciences are
deeply implicated
in modern forms of
power;
but he
goes beyond
Foucault in
showing
how scientists exert
symbolic power
in virtue of the
homology
between the scientific field
and the social
field;
and while Foucaults claim that
knowledge
necess-
arily generates
effects of
power
threatens to
collapse
the distinction
between
knowledge
and
power altogether,
Bourdieu accords scientific
discourse a
qualified autonomy
that enables it to
play a
role in facili-
tating
resistance to
power.
Like other cultural
producers,
scientists
exercise
symbolic power by shaping
the
categories through
which
agents perceive
the social
world; indeed,
the
potential symbolic
effects
of scientific theories are all the
greater
because science claims to
speak
in the name of the universal
(i.e.
of
reason)
and to be neutral and
impartial
with
respect
to social
struggles.
But the subversive
potential
of science vis-a-vis
existing
depends
on the
degree
of
autonomy enjoyed by
the scientific field at a
particular
time.
To the extent that the scientific field is subordinated to the
logic
of con-
version of economic into cultural
capital, struggles
within the scien-
tific field are
likely
to contribute to the
reproduction
of relations of
domination
by reaffirming
the dominant view of the world. The
greater
the
autonomy enjoyed by
the scientific
field,
the more
struggles
within the field conform to the intrinsic scientific
logic
of a
compe-
tition for truth in which
participants
must
fight
with reasons and
arguments.51
But in contrast to the
critique
of
ideology,
Bourdieu does
not view the critical
potential
of science as a
straightforward
matter
77
of
advocating
the truth in
opposition
to
ideological
distortions of
social
reality. Rather,
he
analyzes
it in terms of a
progress
of reason
which results from the fact that the internal
logic
of
symbolic struggles
within the scientific field
compels
scientists to advocate the interests
of the universal. In this
way,
he
attempts
to break with
metaphysical
conceptions
of reason as a transcendental
faculty
of the human mind
in favor of a
conception
of reason as the
product
of historical
struggles
subject
to the internal
dynamics
of the scientific field.52
However,
it is not clear that Bourdieus account of
symbolic
struggles
in the scientific field
supports
his
assumptions concerning
the
historical
progress
of reason and the
emancipatory potential
of scien-
tific
representations
of the social world. Science is
capable
of trans-
forming agents perceptions
of social
reality
because it raises
criticizable claims to
truth;
scientific
representations
enable
agents
to
recognize
the arbitrariness of relations of domination
by shattering
the
misrepresentations
of
symbolic power. However,
the
primary
stake in
the
struggles
in the scientific
field,
on Bourdieus
account,
is not the
production
of true statements or valid theories but the
socially recog-
nized
authority
to
speak
and act
legitimately.53
But if the
competition
for
symbolic power
within the scientific field does not lead to the
victory
of
positions
that are
justified
in a sense that can be
specified
independently
of the mere fact that
they
are
socially recognized,
there
is no reason to believe that it
necessarily
contributes to the
progress of
reason as
opposed
to a mere succession of
equally arbitrary represen-
tations of the social world. The
progress
of reason cannot be under-
stood
solely
in terms of
symbolic struggles among
scientists
independent
of some account of how the internal
logic
of scientific
research and
argumentation
leads to the
victory
of
positions
that are
justified
or true. The
disenchanting sociological gaze
that views the
history
of science in terms of
struggles
for dominance between advo-
cates of
competing positions
cannot
dispense
with an internal
analysis
of the
logic
of scientific discourse. That
being said,
it should also be
emphasized
that Bourdieus
analysis
of the structural
homologies
between the scientific and the social fields has the merit of
showing
how social science can contribute to the
reproduction
of relations of
domination in
spite
of,
and even in virtue
of,
its rhetoric of
objectiv-
ity
and disinterestedness.
III
Symbolic power
and
discursively
mediated
power
While Bourdieus
theory
of
symbolic power points
to the
possibility
of
resistance to
symbolic domination,
it does not
ultimately provide
the
78
conceptual
resources in terms of which resistance can be understood
as
emancipation
and hence can take on a
positive political significance.
Bourdieus
theory
of action limits the
scope
of
practical
reason to the
strategic
calculations of
agents
to maximize their share of the material
or
symbolic profits
at stake in different fields of action. While Bour-
dieu breaks with the narrow individualism of rational choice and utili-
tarian
conceptions
of
practical rationality
in
showing
how the
dispositions
and
preferences
of
agents
are
shaped by
social
forces,
this
represents
an advance at the level of social
explanation
rather than at
the level of the
theory
of action and
political theory.
While it leads to
penetrating empirical analyses
of mechanisms of
symbolic power
that
function behind the backs of social
agents,
it narrows the
scope
of
possible
resistance to relations of domination and
thereby
weakens the
critical force of the
theory
of
symbolic power.
For the
only options
it
leaves
open
to dominated
agents
are to accumulate sufficient economic
and cultural
capital
to attain a
position
of dominance
(the strategy
of
the
upwardly
mobile
classes)
or to
challenge
the
principles
of
per-
ception
and evaluation that
legitimate existing
relations of dom-
ination.
By challenging
the dominant
principles, symbolic struggles
may
succeed in
overthrowing arbitrary
social
divisions;
but without
an account of what would constitute a
non-arbitrary
social order -
that
is,
one which could claim
legitimacy
and form the basis for con-
sensual
political
action
guided by
shared interests - resistance can
only
lead to the substitution of one form of domination
by
another.
Without a more differentiated
conception
of
practical
reason that
allows for the
possibility
of consensual
political
action,
Bourdieu
cannot account for the
phenomenon
on which
symbolic power
depends,
the fact that in all societies interests which are
regarded
as
universal command social
recognition.
In traditional
societies,
the uni-
versal is the shared
possession
of the
group:
it is embodied in the
schemes of
perception,
classification and evaluation in terms of which
the members
recognize
themselves as a
group;
and individuals
acquire
the
symbolic capital
of honor and
personal authority by giving
at least
the
appearance
that their actions conform to the
publicly recognized
norms and customs of the
group.
In modern
societies, by contrast,
the
universal becomes the
monopoly
of the state and of those who can
appropriate
the
power
invested in the institutions of the state and its
symbols, specifically,
the
symbols
of national
identity
in terms of
which citizens understand who
they
are. Bourdieu assumes that all uni-
versal values are
merely particular
values that have been universalized
through
the mechanisms of
symbolic power.54
But values which
present
themselves as universal are
capable
of
mobilizing groups only
because their members do not view them as
embodying merely
79
particular
interests that have been
arbitrarily universalized;
and
whereas
perceptions
of
legitimacy
can be
manipulated,
the claim to
universality,
and hence
legitimacy,
of values can also be based on
reasons. In order to allow for this
possibility,
Bourdieu would have to
extend his
conception
of
practical
reason to
encompass non-strategic
interaction based on a
discursively
achieved
agreement concerning
shared interests and values. In this
way
alone is it
possible
to conceive
of the mobilization of resistance to relations of domination which is
based not
simply
on the universalization of the interests of a
particu-
lar social
group
but on interests that can claim more
general validity.55
The constitution of a
just
social order
presupposes
in turn that
agents
can
adopt
a
reflexive,
critical attitude toward their
socially
constructed
identity by breaking
the hold of
repressive
schemes of
interpretation
and evaluation internalized in the habitus. Thus a
genuine emancipa-
tory politics
calls for the cultivation of
non-repressive
structures of
self-identity
in dialectical interaction with
discursively
mediated struc-
tures of
intersubjectivity.
University of
Illinois at
Chicago,
USA
Notes
I would like to thank Thomas
McCarthy
for his comments on an earlier
draft of this
paper.
1 The
following
remarks will focus
primarily
on
Discipline
and Punish
(New
York:
Vintage, 1979)
and The
History of Sexuality ,
Vol. I
(New
York:
Vintage, 1990)
and on related
essays
and interviews from the
1970s.
My reading
is motivated
by
a limited concern - to what extent
do Foucaults
genealogical writings provide
a framework for
analyz-
ing
and
criticizing
relations of domination in modern
society? -
and
does not claim to do
justice
to his work as a whole. Nevertheless I
believe this narrowness of focus is
justified by
the fact that his
genealogical writings
mark a clear
departure
from his earlier work
and are in
important respects
inconsistent with the ideas he was
developing
before his
death,
a fact overlooked
by
those who
argue
for
a
greater unity
and
consistency
in his
thought
as a whole than Fou-
cault himself was wont to claim for it.
2
Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,
in
Language,
Counter-
Memory,
Practice
(Ithaca,
NY: Cornell
University
Press, 1977),
80
pp.
139-64.
Drawing
on
Nietzsche,
Foucault advocates a form of his-
torical
writing
which would overturn
metaphysical conceptions
of
meaning
and truth
by showing
that historical
origins
are
irreducibly
contingent
and
multiple,
that the self is the result of traces inscribed
in the
body by contingent events,
and that
history
is an endless series
of
struggles
for domination devoid of
any teleological meaning.
On
Foucaults
concept
of
genealogy
see Hubert L.
Dreyfus
and Paul
Rabinow,
Michel Foucault:
Beyond
Structuralism and Hermeneutics
(Chicago,
IL:
University
of
Chicago Press, 1983), pp.
104ff.
3 cf. Charles
Taylor,
Foucault on Freedom and
Truth,
in David
Couzens
Hoy (ed.)
Foucault: A Critical Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell,
1986), p.
84.
4
Discipline
and
Punish ,
p.
29;
cf.
Foucault,
Power/Knowledge
(New
York:
Pantheon, 1980), p.
98: The individual is an effect of
power,
and at the same time ... it is the element of its articulation. The indi-
vidual which
power
has constituted is at the same time its vehicle.
5
Discipline
and
Punish,
p.
27;
cf.
Power/Knowledge, p.
52.
6
Discipline
and
Punish, p.
28: it is not the
activity
of the
subject
of
knowledge
that
produces
a
corpus
of
knowledge,
useful or resistant
to
power,
but
power-knowledge,
the
processes
and
struggles
that tra-
verse it and of which it is made
up,
that determines the forms and
possible
domains of
knowledge.
7 Thus Foucault not
only rejects
the Marxist
theory
of class domination
that locates
power
in a
particular
social
class;
he must also
reject
a
Marxist
revolutionary politics
informed
by
an ideal of
emancipated
social relations in which the free exercise of human
capacities
would
be
possible.
8
Discipline
and
Punish, pp.
26-7. While Foucault is critical of the
economistic
assumptions
of Marxist class
theory,
he does acknow-
ledge
a historical link between
bodily disciplines
and the
growth
of
capitalist
modes of
production
and
accumulation;
see
ibid., pp.
218-21 and
History of Sexuality,
Vol.
I, pp.
140-4.
9 On the affinities between Foucaults model of the
and
systems theory
see Axel
Honneth,
The
Critique of
Power
(Cambridge,
MA: MIT
Press, 1991), pp. 183-4, 193-4.
10
Vol.
I, pp. 92-3;
cf.
Discipline
and
Punish, pp.
168-9.
11
Vol.
I, p.
94. Foucault
goes
on to
say
that
power
relations are imbued with calculation and that no
power
is exercised
without a series of aims and
objectives.
But this does not mean that
it results from the choice or decision of an individual
subject.
Yet it
is difficult to conceive of
calculations, aims,
or
objectives
that are not
tied to the choices and decisions of
agents
or
groups.
Indeed the
81
following passage suggests
that Foucaults main concern is to
deny
that
strategies
of
power originate
from
above,
in a
ruling
caste or
those who control the state
apparatus.
But then he owes us some
account of who are the
subjects
of the local tactics of
power -
the
cynics
of what he calls the local
cynicism
of
power -
and how these
tactics become stabilized into
comprehensive systems.
12
Taylor,
Truth, pp.
86-7. This is confirmed
by
Foucaults own later
analysis
of the
concept
of
strategy
in a text in
which he
clearly
distances himself from some of the
assumptions
of
his
genealogical
works: The
Subject
and
Power,
in
Dreyfus
and
Rabinow, Beyond
Structuralism and
Hermeneutics, pp.
224-5. It is
significant
that in
explicating
the idea of
strategies
without strate-
gists
in their
study (cf. pp. 108-9), Dreyfus
and Rabinow introduce
a notion of social
practices
that
plays
no role in Foucaults own dis-
cussions.
13 This is not to
deny
the
significance
of such
practices
as
police
har-
rassment of racial minorities and
rape
and
wife-beating
as exercises
of
domination;
but even
they
can be assimilated
only
with
difficulty
to Foucaults model of
disciplinary technologies.
14 Foucaults later assertions
that,
in order for a
power relationship
to
exist,
the other over whom
power
is exercised must be
recognized
as a
person
who acts
(The Subject
and
Power,
p.
220)
and that
[p]ower
is exercised
only
over free
subjects,
and
only
insofar as
they
are free
(ibid., p. 221)
read like a belated
recognition
of these con-
ceptual
constraints on the notion of
power.
No
comparable
assertions
are to be found in the
genealogical writings.
15 cf.
Jurgen Habermas,
The
Philosophical
Discourse
of Modernity
Frederick G. Lawrence
(Cambridge,
MA: MIT
Press, 1987), pp.
287-8. Habermas
argues
that Foucaults account of the constitution
of the self
through bodily conditioning
does not allow for the indi-
vidualizing
effects of socialization - the fact that individuation is
inseparable
from self-determination and self-realization - because its
objectifying perspective
effaces the
symbolically
and
linguistically
structured nature of the medium in which socialization takes
place.
On the
problematic implications
of Foucaults
rejection
of hermeneu-
tic
approaches
to social
analysis
see Thomas
McCarthy,
Ideals and
Illusions
(Cambridge,
MA: MIT
Press, 1991), pp.
50-3.
16
Power/Knowledge, pp.
56-7;
cf. Kevin
Olson,
Habitus and
Body
Language:
Towards a Critical
Theory
of
Symbolic Power,
Philo-
sophy
and Social Criticism
21(2) (1995): 23-34,
who
argues
that the
central role Foucault accords the
body
cannot be reconciled with his
general conception
of
power.
17
95-6.
82
18 cf.
Taylor,
Truth, pp.
90-3.
19
Power/Knowledge, p.
108. William
Connolly argues
that Foucault
aspires
to a
conception
of
rights
attached not
merely
to the self as
subject,
but
especially
to that which is defined
by
the normalized
subject
as
otherness,
in
Taylor, Foucault,
and
Otherness,
Political
Theory 13(3) (1995):
371. But what a
right grounded
in otherness
would consist
in,
whose
right
it would
be,
or what kinds of claims it
would
ground,
remain unclear.
20 Thus
Connolly,
for
example, argues
that Foucaults rhetorical
devices are
designed
to incite the
experience
of discord or
discrep-
ancy
between the social construction of
self, truth,
and
rationality
and that which does not fit
neatly
within their folds
(Taylor,
Fou-
cault,
and
Otherness,
p.
368).
The trouble with such
readings,
it
seems to
me,
is that the
category
of otherness
by
definition resists
theoretical
specification -
it
is,
after
all,
what is excluded or
sup-
pressed by
discourse - so that it all too
easily
serves as a
generalized
source of
suspicion
of
any analytical
framework or
political
program,
but has no determinate
empirical
content or
political impli-
cations of its own.
21
81-4.
22
ibid., p.
118.
23 cf.
Habermas, Philosophical
Discourse
of Modernity, p.
281.
24
Discipline
and
Punish, pp. 211-12; Power/Knowledge, p.
72.
25 The
generalization
of the
disciplinary paradigm
from closed insti-
tutions to
society
as a whole also marks a controversial methodo-
logical
shift in
Discipline
and Punish from a
descriptive history
of
institutions and a
speculative theory
of
modernity;
cf. Michael
Donnelly,
On Foucaults Uses of the Notion
"Biopower",
in
François
Ewald
(ed.)
Michel Foucault
Philosopher
(New
York: Rout-
ledge, 1992), pp.
201-2.
26 cf.
Honneth, Critique of Power, pp.
191-2.
27
See,
among
numerous accounts of this
opposition
in his
writings,
Bourdieu,
Outline
of
a
Theory of
Practice
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977), pp. 1-6, 21-30, 72-8;
The
Logic of Practice
(Stanford,
CA: Stanford
University Press, 1990), pp. 25-51;
In Other
Words
(Stanford,
CA: Stanford
University Press, 1990),
pp.
124-5.
The main
targets
of his
critique
of
subjectivism
are thinkers in the
phenomenological
tradition, principally Sartre,
Schütz and Gar-
finkel,
while his
critique
of
objectivism
is aimed
primarily
at Lévi-
Strauss.
28
Outline, p.
72; Logic of Practice, pp.
53-4.
29 For a
diagram
of the
symbolic
scheme of
oppositions
which structure
the
Kabyle
vision of the world
(whose underlying principle
is the
83
division of labor between the
sexes),
see
Outline,
p. 157,
and
Logic
of Practice, p.
215.
30
Logic of Practice, pp.
112 ff.
31
Outline, p.
164.
32
ibid., p.
80.
33 For an
illuminating interpretation
of the habitus as embodied social
understanding
see Charles
Taylor,
To Follow a
Rule ...,
in
Craig
Calhoun et al.
(eds)
Bourdieu : Critical
Perspectives (Chicago,
IL:
Chicago University Press, 1993), pp.
54-9.
However,
the assimilation
of the habitus to the
background knowledge
of the lifeworld tends to
obscure the fact
that,
in addition to cultural
knowledge,
it also
encodes relations of
power.
34 cf. Scott
Lash,
Modernization and Postmodernization in the Work of
Pierre
Bourdieu,
in
Lash, Sociology of
Postmodernism
(London:
Routledge,
1990),
pp.
237-65.
35 In
precapitalist
societies the material truth of economic
exchanges
is
systematically disguised by symbolic
relations between
agents:
wealth
can be
put
to work
only by cultivating personal
relations of
depen-
dence and
obligation,
and
upper
limits are set to accumulation
by
the
fact that
maintaining personal prestige
demands
heavy
material
expenditures
on ones
clients;
cf.
Outline, pp. 191-4; Logic of
Prac-
tice, pp.
123-9.
36 In Other
Words, pp.
80-4.
37 The transformation of cultural
capital
into the
symbolic power
to
create social facts and
impose
social divisions is
particularly
evident in
the field of
law;
cf.
Bourdieu,
The Force of Law: Toward a
Sociology
of the
Juridical Field,
Hastings
Law
Journal
38
(July
1987):
814-53.
38 In Other
Words, pp. 117-18; Bourdieu, What
Makes a Social Class?
On the Theoretical and Practical Existence of
Groups, Berkeley
Journal of Sociology
32
(1987): 1-17; Language
and
Symbolic
Power
(Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
University Press, 1991), pp.
229-51.
Bourdieu criticizes Marxist class
theory
for
failing
to take account of
its own
theory effect,
the fact that in
declaring
the existence of classes
and of class interests it contributes to their realization.
39
Bourdieu,
Raisons
pratiques:
Sur la théorie de laction
(Paris: Seuil,
1994),
p.
57;
La Noblesse dEtat: Grandes écoles et
esprit
de
corps
(Paris:
Editions de
Minuit, 1989), pp.
554-5.
40 Raisons
pratiques, p.
101. Bourdieu
argues
that the concentration of
symbolic capital
in the state is the
precondition
of the consolidation
of the other forms of
capital
into autonomous fields
(ibid., p. 116).
Elsewhere he describes the state as the central bank of
symbolic
credit
(La
Noblesse
dEtat, p.
538).
41 Raisons
pratiques, pp.
125-6.
84
42 See La Noblesse dEtat for a
comprehensive analysis
of the
key
role
played by
the education
system
in the
reproduction
of relations of
domination in modern
society,
with
particular
reference to the French
elite
grandes
écoles.
43
Language
and
Symbolic Power,
pp.
44-9. Bourdieu has in mind
specifically
the
political process by
which the French
language
became
the official national
language
of the French
state,
which entailed the
devaluation of
regional
dialects and the cultural and
political
disen-
franchisement of
speakers
of those dialects.
However,
the controver-
sies unleashed
by proposals
to make
English
the official
language
of
the USA and the forces
ranged
on either side of the
dispute
attest to
the
generalizability
of Bourdieus model to other societies.
44 Raisons
pratiques, p.
116
(my translation).
45
ibid., pp. 56, 109;
cf. La Noblesse
dEtat, pp.
375 ff.
46 Raisons
pratiques, p.
128.
47 Thus I would
question
the claim that surveillance and
normalizing
judgment,
as
techniques
of
objectification, play a major
role in the
inculcation of the habitus
(cf. Olson,
Habitus and
Body Power,
pp. 38-9).
The effectiveness of
symbolic power depends
on the fact
that it
goes
without
saying,
that it does not need to resort to the
objectification
of individuals
through specific techniques
of surveil-
lance and
judgment.
48 On the distinction between differentiation and individualization
see
Jürgen Habermas,
Individuation
through Socialization,
in Post-
metaphysical Thinking (Cambridge,
MA: MIT
Press, 1992), pp.
150-1;
cf.
above,
n. 15.
49 In Other
Words, p.
116.
50 See
Language
and
Symbolic Power, pp.
171-202,
where Bourdieu
argues
that the authoritarian tendencies of
working-class parties
are
a reflection of the fact that both
party
officials and their clients are
relatively deprived
of the cultural means of
representing
their inter-
ests and hence are
dependent
on the
party apparatus
for the
rep-
resentation and confirmation of their social
identity.
51
Bourdieu,
The
Specificity
of the Scientific Field and the Social Con-
ditions of the
Progress
of
Reason,
Social Science
Information 14(6)
(1975):
19-47.
52 Raisons
pratiques, pp.
132-3, 165-6,
234-5.
53 cf.
Lash,
Modernization and
Postmodernization,
p.
244.
54 Raisons
pratiques, p.
166.
55 Whereas Foucault effaces the connection between
power
and
legiti-
mation
by analyzing power
in naturalistic
terms,
Bourdieu
recognizes
that all
genuine power,
in contrast to naked
force, depends
on the
practical recognition
of those over whom it is exercised
(La
Noblesse
85
dEtat, p. 549).
But he falls short of a normative
conception
of
power
that could form the basis of a critical social
theory by assimilating
legitimation
to
denegation,
the various
symbolic strategies designed
to dissimulate the arbitrariness of
power.

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