A Bourdieu, The Sociology Of Culture And Cultural Studie A Critique

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Bourdieu, the Sociology of Culture andCultural Studies: A Critique

Mary S. Mander*

This article explores both the contributions and the drawbacks of the work ofFrench sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Habitus and symbolic violence, terms centralto Bourdieu's thought, are explicated, as well as his critical assessments ofmethodological and epistemological problems in current social scientific research.In particular the drawbacks of public opinion polls and survey research, and theproblematics of the social scientist as social subject, are treated. Bourdieu'smetaphorical preferences are highlighted to indicate the assumptions he makesregarding social scientific practices and the hidden pitfalls of adapting his workwholesale to the field of communications. Finally, the social paradigm underpinning Bourdieu's work is compared with that underpinning a cultural studiesapproach to the study of communications.

Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist, is an important figure in ourfield and of our time. He has produced what one critic calls themost comprehensive and elegant system since Talcott Parsons(DiMaggio, 1979; see also Sulkunen, 1982; Inglis, 1979; Thompson,1984). In the space of this article I cannot do full justice to the bodyof Bourdieu's theoretical and empirical work. The entire oeuvre,both in the original and that which is translated into English, appearsto be dominated by theoretical rather than empirical considerations,and consequently I tend to emphasize that portion of his work. Inwhat follows I shall identify and elucidate two concepts central toBourdieu's thinking: habitus and symbolic violence. The first term isimportant because the entire corpus of Bourdieu's thought is builtupon it. The second is of central importance to those interested in thestudy of communications. Secondly, I shall make a series of observations concerning the methodological, empirical or linguisticproblems Bourdieu's work either addresses or confounds. Finally, Ishall compare certain aspects of the paradigm underpinningBourdieu's work with that of cultural studies as it is practised in

*Mary Mander is Associate Professor, School of Communications, PennsylvaniaState University, 215 Carnegie Bldg., University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.

European Journal o/Communication (SAGE, London, Newbury Park, Beverly Hillsand New Delhi), Vol. 2 (1987), 427-53.

428 European Journal of Communication

Great Britain (cf. Hall, 1980; Sparks, 1977) and the USA. I take intoaccount the assessment made some years ago by Garnham andWilliams (1980) of this major figure's contribution to the sociologyof culture. Some might argue that, in the process of going everywhere, I get nowhere. Yet I see little value in critiquing Bourdieu'swork without at the same time indicating what readers of the EJCmight find particularly useful in his work.

Concepts Central to Bourdieu's Thought

HabitusIt is useful to begin by elucidating two major concepts in Bourdieu'sthought: habitus and symbolic violence. Habitus is of criticalimportance to his theory of social practice. It is a term whichsurfaces early in his body of work (1967: 344) and which consistentlyreappears throughout with little, if any, variation of meaning.Briefly, it is a system of unconscious schemes of thought and perception or dispositions which act as mediation between structures andpractice (1973a: 72). While the family (Bourdieu, 1977: 77-8) is thelocus of the inculcation and development of an individual's habitus,it is the educational institution whose task it is to transmitconsciously this system of unconscious schemes. The school'sexpress function is 'to transform the collective heritage into anindividual and common unconscious' (1969: 118).

Habitus, too, accounts for the reproduction of social and culturaldomination because the thoughts and actions it generates· are inconformity with objective regularities, or empirically observableregularities in social action. It refers to the principle of a structuredbut not structural praxis (1968b: 705-6). While the actions itgenerates are not structural, habitus itself is; it 'generates meaningful practices and meaning-giving perceptions' (1984: 172) andstrategies (1973b: 64). Habitus is a product of the environment orconditions of existence and is mediated by the family in the form oflessons in morality, taboos, worries, rules of behaviour and tastes. Itaccounts for intergenerational conflict because it instills differentdefinitions of what is possible and impossible or what is natural andwhat is scandalous (1973b: 66; 1977: 78). At the collective level,habitus is responsible for the continuities and regularitiesempirically observable in the social world (1973b: 73). Thus, tospeak of habitus is to remind oneself that interpersonal relations arenever individual to individual and that 'the truth of the interaction

Mander: Bourdieu's Sociology of Culture 429

never completely resides in the interaction itself' (1973b: 72; 1977a:81).

Besides being a socializing agent, habitus, then, is a structuralprinciple as well (as Barthes's myth). Moreover, Bourdieu sees it as aset of dispositions, in the sense that the term disposition describes away of being, an habitual state or a predisposed inclination (1977:214, n.l). Agents are possessed by these dispositions such thathabitus becomes a modus operandi (1977: 18). Habitus is both asocially constituted structure of cognition and a motivating structureas well. Dispositions, being the internalization of objective structures, are such that the practices of members of a group or a classtake an objective meaning that is unitary, systematic, and transcendent of both individual and collecti:ve intentions and projects(1977: 81). Social class, therefore, is not an aggregate of biologicalindividuals, but a system of objective determinations in relation to aset of dispositions (1977: 85). Each individual disposition is astructural variant of a group (in non-stratified society) or a classhabitus (in a stratified society) (1977: 86).

Similar to disposition, cultural arbitrary is a term closelyconnected to habitus. Every established order appears to be 'natural'to members of that order, whether one is speaking of a nation, asociety, or a class (1977, p. 164). In other words the cultural order,meaning in this case the cosmological and political order, iscompletely arbitrary because it is one among many possible orders.Yet, because of the fit between the internal structures (individualdispositions and empirically observable objective structures [theschool system, the class system, festivals of celebration, commonplaces, etc.] ), this cultural arbitrary is perceived as self-evident andnatural, and in consequence it goes unquestioned (1977: 160,80; cf.Thompson's somewhat different interpretation, 1984: 57). In otherwords, from childhood on, human beings never encounter nature inthe universe as science understands it; the social order intervenesbetween the individual and the world with 'a whole universe of ritualpractices and also of discourses, sayings, proverbs, ,all structured inconcordance with the principles of the corresponding habitus', all ofwhich make the world conform to myth (1977, p. 167) and turnhistory into nature (1977: 78).

Every culture incorporates a doxie, as compared to an orthodox,relation to the social world. Members of a group or class recognizethe legitimacy of the culture by misrecognizing its purely arbitrarynature. The cultural arbitrary thus embodies the universe of the


undiscussed (see Figure 1), where arbitrary classifications appear tobe necessary.

Take, for example, the practice of sport. Conceived as the trainIngground for manly virtues (courage and fair play), sport inculcatesthe will to win in future leaders, but a will to win within the rules. Theconcept of fair play is, according to Bourdieu, an aristocraticdisposition utterly at odds with the more plebian goal of victory at allcosts (1978: 824-5). The history of sport is the history of a process ofrationalization in the form of a corpus of rules and specializedgoverning bodies having the right to institute standards governingparticipation in the sport and to penalize infractions of these rules ofbehaviour. This process ensures predictability and calculability(1978: 824).

The school is the site where one acquires a distant disposition to

FIGURE 1Outline of a Theory of Practice

universe of the undiscussed(undisputed)

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Source: Pierre Bourdieu (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Copyright ©Cambridge University Press, reprinted by permission.


the body: gymnastics, for example, makes the exercise of the bodyan end in itself. The frequency of sporting activity rises verymarkedly with educational level (in France) and declines more slowlywith age as educational level rises. The French working class, for.instance, typically abandons sports at marriage, which signifiesentry into the responsibilities of adulthood (1978: 823).

Sport reflects all the features of the taste of the dominant class, themembers of which prefer golf, tennis, sailing, riding, skiing orfencing, and practise them in exclusive places (country clubs).

The sporting exchange takes on he air of a highly controlled social exchange,excluding all physical or verbal violence, all anomie use of the body (shouting,wild gestures etc.) and all forms of direct contact between the opponents (who areoften separated by the spatial organization and various opening and closing rites).Or, like sailing, skiing and all the Californian sports, they substitute man's solitarystruggle with nature for the man-to-man battles of popular sports (not to mentioncompetitions, whieh are incompatible with a lofty idea of the person) (1984: 217).

Furthermore, Bourdieu does not explain the class distribution ofsporting activities solely in terms of economic capital. There areother, often hidden, entry requirements and socializing techniqueswhich keep certain sports closed to working classes. For example,family tradition and early training can act as barriers or vehicles toentry.

Differences in tastes of luxury and tastes of necessity are furtherelucidated by the eating habits of various classes. In Distinction,Bourdieu (1984: 184-90) compares the yearly household expenditures on food for fractions of the dominant class: teachers, professionals, and industrial and commercial employers. Professionalsspend a high proportion of their budget on expensive items: meat,fresh fruit, vegetables, fish. and shellfish, cheese and aperitifs.Teachers spend more on milk products, bread, sugar, fruit preservesand non-alcoholic drinks. Industrial and commercial employersdiffer from the others in that they give more importance to cerealbased foods, especially cakes and pastries, and wine, meat preservesand game. These eating habits cannot be considered independentlyof a whole lifestyle since preparation and cooking are connected todomestic economy and division of labour among the sexes. On theone hand a taste for casserole~, which require both time and interestto prepare, is linked to a traditional view of sex roles, and hence tothe French working class. On the other hand, women in thedominated fractions of the dominant class (e.g. teachers) tend to


devote less time to traditional household chores. Often their cuisinereflects the need to save time. Overall, things as diverse as foodpreferences and sporting habits are a product of habitus. Thus, it isbest seen as a complex system of dispositions.

The range, imagination and verve of Bourdieu's work with regardto class habitus can be readily seen and appreciated in his attempt torender his theoretical model of social space, class habitus and theircorresponding tastes in Figures 2 and 3. The first re.presents the spaceof social conditions as organized by the distribution of various kindsof capital. The second presents lifestyles in which social conditionsmanifest themselves. There are limitations to such a representation(see 1984: 126-31), but such a synoptic schema brings together areasw.hich the usual sociological classifications separate. Through theirjuxtaposition, one can readily appreciate the relationships betweenproperties and practices characteristic of a group. He has groupedaround various classes and class fractions certain distinctive featuresmaking up their lifestyles.

Symbolic ViolenceBesides habitus, symbolic violence and a closely associated concept,symbolic power, playa central role in the thinking of Bourdieu.References to these concepts are scattered throughout his writings,but he treats them extensively in Outline of a Theory of Practice(1977) and in the first half of Reproduction in Education, Societyand Culture (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Briefly, symbolicviolence is exerted whenever any power imposes meanings andimposes them as legitimate by concealing the power relations whichare the basis of its ability to impose those meanings. Accordingly,pedagogy in all its appearances, in the home, in the workplace, in theschool and in the media, is symbolic violence. This concept is applicable to any social formation understood as a system of power, whichis the precondition for the establishment of pedagogic communications or the imposition and inculcation of a cultural arbitrary by anarbitrary means (education). The pedagogy which assumes a place ofdominance among all pedagogies is the one corresponding to theobjective interests of the dominant groups or classes. Any pedagogicaction is accompanied by authority, which gives it its persuasivepowers; thus any pedagogic activity which revealed the violentaspect of its symbolic power would be self-destructive. Thisauthority is especially powerful because it is unrecognized as such. It


is 'never more total than when totally unconscious' (Bourdieu andPasseron, 1977: 13).

The violent aspect of symbolic violence might best be renderedthrough example. American primary schoolteachers often treat theirpupils with great affection. To do so, Bourdieu believes, is to gainpossession of a very subtle instrument of repression: the withdrawalof affection. Most of us have had occasion to experience this kind ofpunishment. Many times, however, it was done with the idea ofaltering behaviour in a beneficial way, e.g. to curb a tendency to lieor steal or cheat. For Bourdieu all cultural choices are arbitrary and,apparently, equally 'good'. Conceding the fact that choices arearbitrary (e.g. in some cultures bribery is practised as a fine art),what then are we to do? Bourdieu never says.

Messages in any pedagogic transaction cannot be reduced to asimple communication. Always the power relations between thedominant and dominated classes determine the 'limits within whichthe persuasive force of a symbolic power can act' (Bourdieu andPasseron, 1977: 25). Proof of this occurs when pedagogiccommunication is maintained even when the information content ofthe message is almost zero, as in the case of beginning teachers or alocal newspaper's truncated version of some national events.

Finally, it should be noted that symbolic violence cannot beequated with cultural acquiescence. Pedagogic communication doesnot necessarily inculcate the information constituting a dominantculture. Rather, it inculcates the recognition of the legitimacy of thedominant culture (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977: 41). To recognizethe legitimacy of the dominant culture is, at the same time, torecogp.ize the illegitimacy of the dominated cultures. Testimony tothe force of symbolic violence is especially evident when individualsexclude themselves from, for instance, pursuit of a college education('that's not for the likes of me'), ostensibly accessible to all.

The learning process involved in the process of inculcation ofrecognition of legitimacy is irreversible (something of an indicationof teleological aspect of Bourdieu's theory). The habitus acquired inthe family is the basis of the reception and assimilation of messagesin the classroom. The habitus acquired in school, likewise, forms thebasis for reception and assimilation of messages produced and transmitted in the culture industry. Thus one of the strengths ofBourdieu's work is that he situates the influence of culture industry,mass media, in a much larger framework than we communicationsscholars are likely to do. Despite the fact that we have visited

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Source: Figures 2 and 3 are taken from PierreBourdieu (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique ofthe!udgment of Taste. Reprinted by permission ofHarvard University Press and Associated BookPublishers (UK) Ltd.

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436 European Journal oj Communication

thousands of classrooms in search of subjects to determine theimpact of, say, violence in television programming on children, littleaccount has been taken of the role of the school in the cultivationprocess. Much more has been accomplished concerning the dialecticof familial and mass media cultivation.

On a more negative note, his work in this area is written from theviewpoint of the elite. In other words he assumes the working classesdo recognize the culture of the elite as legitimate. I can find nothingin his work to indicate that he has actually tested whether or notmembers of the working class do believe in the inherent superiorityof the so-called dominant culture. In England or the United States,or elsewhere, such an assumption might or might not be borne up bythe facts. (Matthew Arnold once observed that everything inAmerica is against distinction.) Perhaps the situation is different inFrance, but Bourdieu's work as it is reported does not provideevidence for us to make an assessment.

Bourdieu and Scientific PracticeFurthermore, while Bourdieu's observations on the practice ofsociology may be disconcerting, in the sense that he describes somescientific practices as pernicious (1977: 2 and 9), the intricacy of hisresearch design, augmented as it is by an elegantly articulated theoryof social and cultural reproduction, bears close scrutiny. He hasmuch to offer those of us who have raised questions concerning theculture industry, whatever research paradigm we tend to favour. Hisis interpretive social science at its best: he utilizes rigorous statisticalmeasures which meet the criteria for success in ongoing positivesocial scientific research; he supplements his empirical data gathering with both a philosophy of sociology and a philosophy of socialrelations.

Methodological ProblemsHis reflections on scientific practice fall into two general categories:those directed towards methodological pitfalls and shortcomingsand those concerned with the epistemological questions underpinning social science. With regard to the former, his remarks onpublic opinion polls and survey research can be instructive. Publicopinion polls as they now exist, so he believes, have the dual consequence of actually destroying the study of pressure groups andopinions, and the study of dispositions not articulated through discourse, e.g. non-verbally. This is true for a variety of reasons. For


one thing, polls do not take into account the 'no replies'. This is, ineffect, what happens in elections when blank ballots are discarded.On close examination, however, he notes, in France women moreoften fall into this category and the margin between the two sexeswidens to the degree that the questions posed are political in nature.When a question has to do with degrees of knowledge (for instance,how best to treat nuclear waste) 'no replies' increase as one descendsthe class structure. On questions of ethics, however, the marginbetween the classes is slight. Also, the more a question generatestension or seems contradictory (for example, questions concerningthe repression of the Solidarity Movement in Poland-givencommunism's view of the importance of working-class cohesion),the more 'no replies' will be registered in that category. In otherwords, an analysis of the 'no replies' offers a range of interpretationsas to the meaning of the question posed and of the peoplequestioned. It also would undermine the fundamental, overall effectof every opinion poll: it creates the illusion that a unanimous publicopinion exists, which in turn legitimates this or that public policy(1979: 125).

Second, opinion polls take for granted that there is agreementabout what the problem is, or which questions are worth asking andwhich are not, or that all opinions have the same value (1979: 124).Yet there is much evidence to suggest that different classes are awareof laws governing cultural, political and social change to differentdegrees. To produce an opinion one refers to one's habitus, orsystem of values interiorized from birth onwards. However,Bourdieu argues that for an opinion to be produced, one mustperceive the question as political and apply political categories ofunderstanding to it. Surveys often assume that this condition exists apriori and across the board. Yet many answers that appear politicalare in reality a product of class ethos or habitus (1979: 126).

Thus, Bourdieu takes American sociologist Seymour MartinLipset to task for his views of the popular classes and their so-calledauthoritarian and repressive values. He argues that the statement,'The popular classes are repressive', is neither true nor false. Whenquestions deal .with changes in social relations, e.g. 'Are you infavour of open marriages?', they provoke negative responses as onedescends the class ladder. However, questions that deal with thetransformation of class power and structure, e.g. questions aboutstriking workers, provoke negative responses as one ascends theclass ladder (1979: 127). While popular classes do appear more rigid


concerning moral issues, they are much less so concerning thepolitical structure. This observation should prove fruitful to socialscientists in countries other than France who can easily replicateBourdieu's research design.

Overall, Bourdieu argues that the questions asked in publicopinion polls are not the questions of real concern to the peoplequestioned. Thus, he would favour an opinion survey in which theimperatives of scientific objectivity are overridden and people areprovided with a series of explicit positions taken by explicit groupsregarding an issue, such as legalized abortion (1979: 127).

[P]eople could place themselves not in relation to a question to which they mustinvent both an answer as well as problematic, but in relation to problematics andresponses which have already been prepared. In other words, the opinion surveywould be closer to reality if it totally violated the rules of objectivity and gavepeople the means to situate themselves as they really do in real practice in relationto already formulated opinions (1979: 127-8).

Most of Bourdieu's observations on survey research are scatteredthroughout his study of taste: Distinction: A Social Critique of theJudgment ofTaste (1984), a sociology of French culture summing upover a decade and a half of research. Many of his observationsusefully apply to the study of mass media attendance or programmepreferences and their corresponding gratifications. I say they areuseful because Bourdieu brings to his work great intellectualflexibility as well as an astounding capacity for very fine and subtledistinctions (no pun intended). To illustrate, let me refer to hisexplication of the function of genealogies in traditional societies. Itis commonly argued that genealogies legitimize the present socialorder (see Goody and Watt, 1968: 27-68). Bourdieu takes thisscientifically agreed-upon and taken-for-granted classification ofpurposes, and indicates that there is indeed a whole range ofpractices, beyond the function of ordering the social world, to whichthe uses of genealogies apply, and that the genealogical diagramanthropology constructs merely reproduce the official representation of the social structure. Thus Bourdieu opposes the official to thepractical uses of kinship. In a similar way the uses and gratificationstradition can draw on such distinctions as public versus private,explicit versus implicit, collective ritual versus practical strategy, etc.

Furthermore his emphasis on social life as a system of relationsleads him to express cautions concerning survey research. Thus asecond illustration of Bourdieu's usefulness concerns problems with


survey methods. 'Taste is the basis of all the features associated witha person' (1984: 174). The myriad dimensions of a person's beingconsciously and unconsciously communicate with and confirm oneanother. The same can be said for the social system as a whole. Thisoverdetermination is readily recognized when a particular feature,such as television viewing habits, is isolated for observation andmeasurement. Television viewing habits are 'contaminated' so tospeak by 'a whole set of features previously· or simultaneouslyperceived' (1984: 174). Consequently, a survey tends to detach afeature from a system of mutual relations (tone of voice, posture,style of dress, all sorts of mannerisms). This, of course, is recognizedby social scientists. However, what often goes unnoticed is the consequence of this detachment: deviations between classes or subcultures or subclasses are minimized.

This has important epistemological ramifications, and it underlines the difference between a positive approach to the sociology ofculture and an interpretive One. Each regards the social world from aparticular vantage point. They are often difficult to reconcile, butthey are not mutually exclusive pursuits. Both must use empiricalmeasures in order to understand 'real' social relations. The trick isnot to forget that descriptive or explanatory surveys arrive eitherbefore or after the battle for the possession of rare goods (economiccapital, status, etc.). In effect, a survey is like a photograph 'of agame of poker which freezes the balance sheet of assets' (1984:245).

Thus, the overriding importance of remembering all the properties a statistician handles; not just those he measures, but those hehimself uses to measure and classify. If nothing else, a survey canreveal a thorny problem: when a survey forgets to question itself, itforces itself' authoritatively on agents for whom it would not existoutside ofthat situation' (1984: 505, italics added). In his own surveyon taste, questions on personal photography, attitudes to photography, and other matters of taste, from interior decorating topreferences in music, cooking, film and clothing, were included. Inorder to account for the systems of taste, the closed questionnairewas abandoned in favour of extended interviews and ethnographicobservation (1984: 503-12) to get at the dispositions of the population under study. As a consequence, the cadre of interviewers wereable to take into account a whole modality of practices-the waythings were done and talked about, and every indication ofmanner.


As in all interpretive social science, the unwritten rule that 'onlydata collected in socially scientific conditions, Le. by preparedquestioning and observation, may enter into the scientific construction' (1984: 509), had to be transgre~sed.The advantage of broadening what is scientifically acceptable data, is the inclusion of all theinformation the sociologist possesses as a social subject (somethingBourdieu would have us never forget). This information must beverified by comparing it with the measurable data of observation.The result is a set of provisional systems of scientific propositionscombining internal coherence and fidelity to the facts, as well. ashighlighting the structure of relations between the propositions(1984: 512).

Epistemological ProblemsBesides these general observations on method, Bourdieu alsoexamines the epistemological dimensions of social scientificpractice. Some of his remarks in this area specifically concernFrench sociologists (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1967), but even theseobservations raise important questions for social scientists elsewhere. For example, Bourdieu reviews the history of Frenchsociology: the triumph of Durkheim, the advent of quantitativesociology, the re-birth of theory with the influence of Claude LeviStrauss. However, he notes, many descriptions which appear to bedealing with questions of fact in the history of sociology really dealwith an epistemological question which is never raised. Whateverphase sociology goes through, whether it means to or not, itexpresses philosophical options. The problem arises when theseunformulated or even unconscious epistemological questions areconfused with those questions posed to sociological practice, by andin the practice itself (Bourdieu and PasseroI?-, 1967: 164-6). Thequestions we raise for study, the hypotheses we construct for testing,may be more determined by the relation of the sociologist to his orher peers than by the relation of the investigator to the object ofstudy, e.g. the nuclear family's use of television or the adolescent'ssocialization via music.

Bourdieu further maintains that if the myriad of variationsobservable in a population under study can be explained via a singleprinciple, this is because these variations express a structure 'inwhich the complete system of relations governs the meaning of eachof them' (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977: 85). Thus, in a study of tasteor culture,


multivariate analysis would be likely to lead to a vicious circle or to reification ofabstract relations if the structural method did not restore to the logical classes distinguished by the criteria their full existence as social groups defined by theensemble of the relations which unite them and by the totality of the relationshipsthey maintain with their past, and through the intermediary of their past, withtheir present situation (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977: 85-7).

So, to avoid rendering fictitious explanations concerning televisionviewing or some such other problem in communications, it isimportant not to isolate or treat as isolable various properties whichcan only be understood really as elements in a structure andmoments in a process (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977: 87).

Bourdieu draws a picture of scientific practice as a 'field' , a set ofinterlocking power lines. The scientific field is the site of competitivestruggle for a monopoly of scientific authority or scientific competence, 'in the sense of a particular agent's socially recognizedcapacity to speak and act legitimately (i.e. in an authorized andauthoritative way) in scientific matters' (1975: 19). The winners ofthis struggle are adorned with an august array of insignia (researchprizes, citations in leading journals, chairs of important committeesor programmes) which modify social perception of technicalexpertise. Consequently, any judgements regarding a sociologist'sscientific capacities 'are always contaminated at all stages ofacademic life, by knowledge of the position he occupies in theinstituted hierarchies' (1975: 20).

Furthermore, every social scientist wants his work to be not onlyinteresting to himself but also important to others. Thus Bourdieu,in an attempt to describe the dialectics governing scientific research,argues that investments are made (consciously or otherwise) in anticipation of the average chances of profit. A sociologist's concentration on problems regarded as most important is explained by the factthat a discovery relating to the problem or a contribution to itssolution will yield greater symbolic profit. In part this accounts forscientific change rather than mutual legitimation-a problem towhich I shall return later: the degree to which a social paradigm,Bourdieu's or cultural studies, can account for social change. Here,the point is that every scientific choice (area of research, method,place of publication, etc.) is a political choice, a political investmentstrategy, in the process of which new scientific discoveries can be,and are in fact made, to the advantage of scientific cumulativity(1975: 22-3).

In sociological practice Bourdieu sees the employment of two strategies, one for conservation, the other for subversion. Those who are

442 European Journal oj Communication

dominant, those well-endowed with the capital of consecration,resort to conservation strategies aimed at 'ensuring the perpetuationof the established scientific order to which their interests are linked'(1975: 29-30). These social scientists continuously point to examplesof what deserves the name of science, and exercise censorship ofheretical productions, either by rejecting them outright or discouraging the intention of trying to publish them. In the sociologyof communications these battles have periodically occurred. Themost recent is the struggle interpretive sociology has had to engage into achieve recognition. Even today, when there seems to be a greatertolerance for various research strategies, there are countlessexamples of manuscripts being judged according to criteria ofevaluation not appropriate to the research paradigm (e.g. requiring aliterature review in an ethnographic study of rock fans, or requiringa researcher to construct an objectivist history when he is doingcultural history, which, like all interpretive social science, directs itsfocus to the reconstruction of history from the viewpoint ofindividual social actors in the drama).

Newcomers to the field can take the course of a risk-free investment of succession strategies involved in limited innovations withinauthorized limits; or they can choose subversion strategies, a morehazardous investment because the profits accruing from it willdepend on whether or not they can redefine the principles regardinglegitimate social science. As Bourdieu puts it, 'newcomers whorefuse the beaten tracks cannot "beat the dominant at their owngame" unless they make additional, strictly scientific investmentsfrom which they cannot expect high profits, at least in the short run,since the whole logic of the system is against them' (1975: 30). Again,most of us recognize this in our contemporaries and in our elderstatesmen. Where I tend to part company with Bourdieu is in thechoice of metaphors which guide his assessment of the practice ofsocial science, and indeed, all of cultural and social reproduction.

Metaphorical PreferencesBourdieu tends to favour two metaphors: game and capital. AsClifford Geertz (1980: 169) has said, the game analogy has becomeincreasingly used in contemporary social theory, in particular thework of the late Erving Goffman. It is related to the capitalmetaphor in the sense that games involve manoeuvring towardspayoffs. Speaking of social life as if it were a game has the advantageof suggesting an orderliness about human behaviour (we follow


rules). While Bourdieu's work does imply that a chessboardinevitability is at work in the social order, the game he refers to is arather grim one. He takes great pains to say that of all possible waysof reading his work, the worst would be a moralizing reading

which would exploit the ethical connotations ordinary language attaches to termslike 'legitimacy' or 'authority' and transform statement,s of fact into justificationsor denunciations; or would take objective effects for the intentional, conscious,deliberate actions of individuals or groups, and see malicious mystification orculpable naivety where we speak only of concealment or misrecognition (Bourdieuand Passeron, 1977: x).

Yet there is no question that whatever efforts the players in the gamemake, the cards are stacked against most of them. The teleologicaldimension of his research and theory bear witness to this. Bourdieu'sis a dog-eat-dog world in which human beings engage in ploys,artifices, strategies, bluffs and disguises to increase their own socialand cultural capital to the disadvantage of others.

Besides implying a certain orderliness and inevitability, the gamemetaphor also implies that what is engaged in is something of asham. This is particularly true with regard to intellectual and culturalendeavours, where Bourdieu concentrates his use of the metaphor.(He never uses it to describe working-class rituals or practices.) Thesociologist who undertakes an analysis of social science, he says, hasa particularly difficult time of it. He cannot really understand andexplicate what is at stake unless he takes as his object of study 'thegame as such, which governs his own strategies too and is alwaysliable to exert an insidious influence on his sociology' (1975: 40-1).Apparently Bourdieu does not believe that social science can beengaged in with the purpose of advancing human understanding.Yet it seems to me that, for every scientific hustler, there arecountless individuals engaged in the selfless and even altruistic effortall genuine enquiry requires.

I mention this to point out the inadequacy of Bourdieu's explication of scientific practice. If all we do in social science can beexplained in terms of a conscious or unconscious motive for increasing social and cultural capital, then the community of masters andscholars must have perfect knowledge of the stakes in the'game' andperfect knowledge of specific practices to win them. This clearly isnot always the case. In fact most of us, in the day-to-day helterskelter of our work schedules, are unaware of the accomplishmentsof others.


According to Bourdieu the French educational system, particularly philosophy classes, is adept at producing people whohave mastered the game and are determined to play it. In manyrespects Bourdieu himself is an example of that of which he speaks.He is fond of verbal gymnastics and semiotic manoeuvres. Thisaside, he consistently represents intellectual endeavours as a game.While all parts of the intellectual field are interdependent, some aremore powerful than others (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1967: 205). In achess game the future of the queen may depend on the lowly pawn,but the queen is still a much more powerful piece than any other. So

. too, in the intellectual field, while all parts are functionally interdependent, some bear greater weight than others and contribute to agreater degree to the structure of the intellectual field (1969: 105). Incommunications research in Great Britain, for example, criticalstudies exercise greater hegemony in the field than other branches 0 fresearch (interpretive social science or positive social science).

Teachers are especially prone to engage in and to authorize gameswith an institutional rule. Pedagogic authority is deflected from theschool onto the teacher's person. The teacher must display thesymbolic attributes of the authority of his mission. Like the gesturesof a surgeon or an acrobat, he must manifest symbolically the uniquequality of his calling. Bourdieu writes:

The most typically charismatic feats, such as verbal acrobatics, hermetic allusion,disconcerting references or peremptory obscurity, as well as the 'technical trickswhich serve as their support or substitute, such as the concealment of sources, theinsertion; of studied jokes or the avoidance of compromising formulations owetheir symbolic efficiency to the context of authority the institution sets up for them(Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977: 125, italics added).

Furthermore, pedagogic action always transmits more than content.Above all, it transmits the affirmation of the value of that content(Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977b: 125). The consequences ofauthorizing such games is to inculcate through the agency of theteacher a relation to the academic institution and, through this, arelation to language and culture, 'which is none other than that ofthe dominant class' (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977b: 125).

Various members of the class hierarchy play this game with ease.Some (e.g. petit bourgeois in France), however, do not know howto play the game of culture as a game. They take c~lture veryseriously; they think a cultivated man is one who 'possesses animmense fund of knowledge' (1984: 330). The language and culture


of the dominant class ultimately discredits and destroys the politicaldiscourse of the dominated, who must keep silent or use a borrowedlanguage which remains the only defence for people who can neitherplay the game nor spoil it, 'a language which never engages withreality but churns out its canonical formulae and slogans, and whichdispossesses the mandators of their experience a second time' (1984:462).

A second, related metaphor punctuating all of Bourdieu's work,from the early pieces on the Kabyle peasant (see 1964 and 1970) to hismore recent Distinction is capital. We live, says Bourdieu, in auniverse characterized by a 'more or less interconvertibility ofeconomic capital (in the narrow sense) and symbolic capital'(prestige or power) (1977: 177). Moreover, we are motivated in ourdaily lives to accrue profits of various kinds. Practice alwaysconforms to economic calculation even when it appears to be disinterested by playing for stakes which seem to be non-material (Le.symbolic, linguistic, educational, cultural or social capital). ThusBourdieu extends economic calculation to virtually every aspect ofdaily life and human endeavour. These various forms of capital canbe converted into other forms, as when symbolic capital in the formof the prestige attached to a famous family name is converted intoeconomic capital through an advantageous marriage.

As can be seen, there are many kinds of capital: symbolic(prestige, authority, renown), linguistic (the ability to speak well andto speak apropos of the situation), economic (land, material goods,money, investments), and cultural (the recognition and appreciationof artistic works deemed rare and valuable by the academy). CriticPaul DiMaggio (1979: 1468-9) rightly points out that, as the kinds ofcapital increase, 'the metaphorical currency undergoes inflation andits value declines accordingly'. He is also correct when he says thatcapital in Bourdieu's work is not a very precise tool. However, he isincorrect, I believe, when he describes it as a weak figure of speech.Precisely because it proliferates in Bourdieu's work, it reveals anenormous amount about his thinking. We have already noted theimplications of Bourdieu' s thought regarding social scientificpractice (1977, 1975). He would think me naive for arguing thatscientists, both physical and social, often spend long and unrewarding hours, not with a view to profit, economic or symbolic. Thereare, indeed, far greater profits to be had outside the academy-atleast in the USA. While it is true that we cannot all be investment bankers, many of us can be, and are employed by private


corporations that pay two or three times what universities do. Suchfirms include AC Nielson, AT and T, and Roper, Inc. However,some social scientists pursue work in the academy with the viewtowards improving the quality o( life for the earth's inhabitants,contributing substantively to human knowledge about the socialworld, or (more in line with Bourdieu's self-interest) for the pleasureto be had by serious reading and serious writing. Thus the profitmotive (economic or symbolic) alone is inadequate to explain whyhuman beings engage in the pursuit of scientific research. At rockbottom, Bourdieu's metaphorical preferences deny the moraldimension of human pursuits and refuse to recognize the ludic andexpressive quality of human experience. Human nature operatesaccording to the old classical liberal belief in self-interest, modifiedby the Freudian notion of the unconscious, to which the logic ofcamouflage or misrecognition is tied.

MisrecognitionMany more problems. arise when one considers the central roleplayed in Bourdieu's theory by the logic of camouflage. Simply put,the logic of camouflage comprises all the techniques through whichthe social system conceals truth: 'relations and their real configurations are in some way lost, confused, blurred, nullified, disfigured inthe intertwining of their appearances' (1968b: 694). For example, theseries madman, insanity, psychiatrist, mental institution, curedisguises the 'real' series: committed, commitment, forcedresidence, prison, concentration camp, etc. (1968b: 696). This isproblematic for two reasons. First, Bourdieu does not give thereader any criteria for evaluating his interpretation vis-a.-vis others.Why not interpret the madman and insanity series as follows: jester,humour, irony, caretaker, escape hatch, acceptance ofresponsibilityjor oneself? Bourdieu does not say.

Bourdieu sees misrecognition everywhere he looks: in sport anddancing (1978), in gift-giving, marriage, and ploughing (1977).However, he especially notes its working in education (seeparticularly Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) and in scientific practice(Bourdieu, 1967, 1969). The school appears to be democratic,equally accessible to all. In fact, only some (those with culturalcapital inherited from the family) receive the benefits of schooling.Thus the school ultimately entrenches socially conditioned inequalities of cultural competence. It treats cultural and social advantages


and disadvantages as natural inequalities or as talent (1968a: 607-10;see also 1973a: 83-6).

The advantage of this emphasis is that it reveals an importantcomponent in communications or signifying practices. Paradoxically, deep in the heart of much communication, whether seen as aprocess of exchange or as a process of social maintenance, liessecrecy, concealment and exclusion. These secrets are corporatelyheld, told and retold. They serve to bind a group together andexclude others. The disadvantage of Bourdieu's notion of misrecognition, the second problem raised by his theory, isepistemological in nature. How do we know the hidden meaning ofsocial acts? Bourdieu's notion about misrecognition bears strongresemblance to notions of hidden meaning which inform theCabbala and Cabbalistic practices. In the end this implies an 'elect':men like Bourdieu who have been chosen to reveal the truth hiddenfrom the naked eye.

Misrecognition reveals, too, the degree to which Bourdieu iswilling to assimilate statements of fact with statements of value.While much of what he says rules out the moral dimension inscientific practice, his o~n 'reading' of empirically observableregularities is very much a value-oriented one. The dichotomy of factand value disappears from view in most of his writing.

A statement of fact says something about the object it mentions, and, dependingon the properties of these objects, it is either true or false. A value judgement ismisunderstood if it is taken to ascribe a property to the object, act, or situation itmentions in the same sense in which a statement of fact is such an ascription; it istherefore literally neither true nor false. What it involves and misleadingly statesas the property of an object, act, or situation [scientific practice, psychoanalysis,cultural production] alone is the fact that this object, act, or situation causes in theone who makes the judgment a certain state ofmind, say, for instance, of positiveaesthetic appreciation or of moral approval (Bergman, 1951: 206, italics added).

This tendency to confound fact and value, to mistake value as aproperty of an object, act or situation, violates a basic tenet of socialscientific practice, whether interpretive or positive.

Two Paradigms: Bourdieu's and Cultural Studies

Definitions of Culture and Human NatureAnother problem arises connected with Bourdieu's use of the termculture. Most often he prefers the restrictive definition of culture as


an achieved state or a process of inner development by means ofeducation and the arts. He follows, too, the tradition of Rousseau,who attacked the notion of civilization as artificial and superficial,and as distinct from 'the natural state' (see Williams, 1977: 14). Themost cultured are also the most artificial (Bourdieu, 1968a: 608).Culture's primary function is class co-optation and legitimationprimarily through schooling, which, as we have said, on the surfaceappears to be democratic but in fact 'transforms socially conditioned inequalities in regard to culture into inequalities of success,interpreted as inequalities of gifts whiGh are also inequalities ofmerit' (Bourdieu, 1968a: 609; see also 167: 341-5; 1969: 110, andBourdieu and Passeron, 1977: 122). Having talent or being gifted is,in Bourdieu's way of thinking, a synonym for being socially andeconomically advantaged.

This is particularly true of intellectual and artistic 'creation' . I putthe word in quotation marks because Bourdieu's work as a wholedenies expressivity (see, for example, 1968a). This is, of course, verymuch at odds with Raymond Williams, who gives experience both acreative and an expressive dimension. For Bourdieu, works(painting, music, professorial lectures) are a product of a system ofsocial relations or the position of the artist or intellectual in thestructure of an intellectual field. An agent is defined by positionalproperties and the kind of participation in the cultural field, seen inthis sense as a system of relations between themes and problems. Inkeeping with the structuralist thrust of his thought, an agent's powerin the intellectual field cannot be defined independently of his position within it (1969: 89).

As indicated above, most often, Bourdieu uses culture in therestricted sense of cultivation or distinction in arts and letters. InDistinction, he begins by saying that we cannot really understandconsumers of cultural goods unless culture in the restricted sense 'isbrought back into "culture" in the anthropological sense, and theelaborated taste for the most refined objects is reconnected with theelementary taste for the flavors of food' (1984: 1). On occasion heargues that culture is a common set of master-patterns from whichan infinite number of individual patterns can be generated. According to him, there is a kind of intellectual and social programming towhich we are submitted at birth; this eventually becomes 'secondnature'. These patterns are not necessarily conscious. In fact it isprimarily through the cultural unconscious that an agent belongs toa society, an age, or, in the case of intellectuals, a school of thought


(1967: 342-3). However, even when using this less restrictive definition, Bourdieu is referring primarily to systems of scientific thoughtand schooling.

This, of course, is somewhat at odds with cultural studies.Williams, for example, argues for the reconciliation of twomeanings of culture: the traditional anthropological meaning (awhole way of life) and a creative meaning which involves extendingthe notion of creativity from art to all perception (see Williams,1961: 19-56). The latter sense is the one preferred by Geertz, who hasexercised an enormous influence on contemporary research, including cultural studies (see Walters, 1980; Higham, 1961; Wise, 1983;Lystra, 1983 and Berkhofer, 1972). Geertz treats cultures as systemsof shared meanings, as webs of significance. These meanings are notin people's heads, but are shared by social actors. They are public,not private (see Geertz, 1973: 5, 360). The cpnception of thinking asa social act renders it capable of being discovered through systematicempirical investigation (1973: 362). Yet Geertz also recognizes thatthe material vehicles of thought are elusive, complex, convolutedand incomplete. Thus we arrive at a serious disjuncture betweenBourdieu;s approach .to culture and that used by cultural studiespractitioners. This is a serious disjuncture not only because ofBourdieu's use of the restricted sense of the term. After all, thecultural studies' view would include the more restrictive one.However, unlike Bourdieu, neither Williams nor Geertz sees anunderlying structure. Nor do they tend to see unity, consistency andintegration in complex cultural practices. There is, more often thannot, contradiction and at least partial disintegration (see Geertz,1973; Williams, 1982; Keesing, 1974). For example, Geertz says:

In the very nature of the case ideas are more difficult to handle scientifically thanthe economic, political and social relations among individuals and groups whichthose ideas inform. And this is all the more true when the ideas involved are not theexplicit doctrines of a Luther or an Erasmus, or the articulated images of aHolbein, but the half-formed, taken for granted, indifferently systematizednotions that guide the normal activities of ordinary men in everyday life (1973:362).

Whereas Bourdieu views social practices as consistent in terms of thestructure of relations, Williams, Hall and Geertz all see them asinconsistent. In The Sociology ofCulture, Williams notes that whenconsidering cultural practices in so many societies as well as indiverse historical periods, 'it is clear that it would be unwise to


adopt, as our first theoretical construct, some universal or generalexplanatory scheme of the necessary relations between "culture"and "society" '(1982: 33, see also Parsons, 1972). This position canhardly be reconciled with Bourdieu's theory of cultural and socialpractices.

Furthermore, while Williams does identify experience and socialclass, Hall takes great exception to that view and argues for nonecessary (non)-correspondence (Hall, 1985: 94). Moreover, Hallcarves out a theoretical position founded on the open-endedness ofpractices and struggle:

To put that more concretely: an effective intervention by particular social forcesin, say, Russia in 1917, does not require us to say either that the Russian revolutionwas the product of the whole Russian proleteriat, united behind a single revolutionary ideology (it clearly was not); nor that the decisive character of the alliance(articulation together) of workers, peasants, soldiers and intellectuals who didconstitute the social basis of that intervention was guaranteed by their ascribedplace and position in the Russian social structure and the necessary forms ofrevolutionary consciousness attached to them. Nevertheless, 1917 didhappen-and as Lenin surprisingly observed, when 'as a result of an extremelyunique historical situation, absolutely dissimilar currents, absolutely heterogeneous class interests, absolutely contrary political and social strivings ... merged... in a strikingly harmonious manner (1985: 95).

Even more problematic, however, are Bourdieu's assumptionsabout the nature of human nature.

In Bourdieu's work man is the more or less rational animal of theEnlightenment. Human nature obeys certain timeless laws: laws ofinterest, laws of transformation. Geertzian versions of culturalstudies have abandoned the Enlightenment view of human nature inwhich man is seen as universally invariant. Instead, Geertz (1973)builds a case, largely from anthropological evidence, that there is nosuch thing as human nature, there are only human natures. He doesnot deny universal dimensions of human experience, but he doesmaintain that it is the differences between groups of men (in thegeneric sense of the word) that make us who, in essence, we are. TheMarxist definition of man, with its emphasis on historicity, alsofavours this view.

Explanations of Social ChangeBecause Bourdieu's work differs so radically with regard to thenature of man and the nature of social reality, he appears to havelimited value for those who practise cultural studies. However, I


would argue that his view of social change is useful, particularly fornon-Marxist versions of cultural studies. Bourdieu explains socialchange in a number of different ways: in terms of the distribution ofcultural capital, in terms of dialectics, and in terms of rupture. Thecultural field, including intellectual practices (social science) is transformed by successive restructurations, rather than by revolutions(1967: 342). These restructurations are linked to the distribution ofcultural or scientific capital, including potential recognition andpotential position of an agent or group in a given field (1975: 27).There is a permanent struggle in everygiven field between forces thatare more or less unevenly matched in terms of capital (1975: 29). Thecultural or scientific order is built up through 'competitive anarchyof self-interested actions' (1975: 33).

Bourdieu also explains change through reference to a dialecticalrelationship between a situation, on the one hand, and a habitus onthe other. The habitus functions

as a matrix oj perceptions, oj appreciations, and actions, making possible theaccomplishment of an infinite variety of tasks, thanks to analogical transfers ofschemes, practical metaphors, in the strictest sense of the term, which permit theresolution of problems having the same form ... that these results dialecticallyproduce (1973: 67).

The habitus 'arrives' at several junctures and assimilates andcorrects the'results that conjunction of the habitus and situations orstimuli produce. Consequently, Bourdieu is able to account for bothsocial stability and social change. He also tends to favour a theory ofchange which is incremental rather than revolutionary. In art, forexample, a particular style will dominate an age. It will reach itszenith and then decline as artists exhaust its possibilities. A period ofrupture will follow 'in which a new art of inventing is invented, inwhich a new form-generative grammar is engendered, out of joint.with the aesthetic traditions of a time or an environment' (1968a:599). He does not say what the cause or occasion of these ruptures is,except to allude to objective factors which determine the position ofthose who are engaged in cultural or scientific practices (see 1975:27-33, 1969: 111-12).

Finally, one of the most breathtaking aspects of Bourdieu's workis its capacity to account for both change and cohesion. I refer thereader to Outline ofa Theory ofPractice (1977: 64), where he showsthat while habitus produces homogeneous dispositions and interests,it also encourages conflict. This is so because those inculcated in a


particular habitus are inclined to recognize and pursue the samegoals, material or symbolic, whose rarity may arise from thecompetition itself. This is particularly useful for social scientistswhose traditions emphasize either conflict (Marx or Simmel) orcohesion (Parsons).

In conclusion, I generally agree with Garnham and Williams(1980) in their assessment of the importance of this elegant anddifficult oeuvre. However, I see far more problems than they whichare attendant on adapting Bourdieu's thought to sociologicalpractices in communications research. On the one hand, his explanations of social change are useful in some respects. Yet there are veryserious differences between the paradigm underpinning Bourdieu'swork and the paradigms underpinning positive social scientificapproaches to the study of culture and cultural studies. These differences ultimately limit the value of Bourdieu's work for researchersinterested in the sociology of culture or the cultural approach tocommunications studies.

NoteAn earlier version of this paper was presented at the IX World Congress of Sociologymeeting in New Delhi, August 1986. I wish to thank Dennis Gouran and BrianWinston for their critical comments on earlier drafts.

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