John W. Mohr Department of Sociology University of California
Transcript of John W. Mohr Department of Sociology University of California
BOURDIEU'S RELATIONAL METHODIN THEORY AND PRACTICE
John W. Mohr
Department of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara
Paper Presented at the
American Sociological Association Meetings,
Washington D.C., August 2000
In a Special Session organized by David Swartz
entitled "Cultural Producers and Politics:
The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu"
.
* Thanks to Roger Friedland and Marc Ventresca for helpful insights and discussion on
the arguments presented here. Research on this paper has partially been supported by a
grant from the UCSB Institute for Social and Behavioral Research. Contact info:
Abstract
A key tenet of Bourdieu's project is his rejection of what he refers to as "substantialist"
approaches to social science which he identifies with positivistic formal methodologies.
In place of this, Bourdieu makes a compelling case for the use of a relational
methodology in analyzing social life. His theorization of relationism is both
sophisticated and far-reaching and it provides the foundation for many of his theoretical
constructs. In spite of the richness of these theoretical formulations, however,
Bourdieu's actual research practice tends to come up short, often reflecting the same sort
of linear methodological presuppositions which he has otherwise so eloquently
dismissed. Drawing upon an approach to relational analysis that takes inspiration from
the American network analytic tradition, I seek to demonstrate in this paper how
Bourdieu's research practices are far less relational than his theoretical statements would
seem to suggest. I emphasize a close reading of two different elements of Bourdieu's
work, his research on cultural capital and his work on the analysis of institutional fields.
Bourdieu's Relational Method in Theory and Practice
John W. MohrDepartment of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara
One of Pierre Bourdieu's key meta-theoretical assertions is that sociologists
should embrace a relational rather than a substantialist approach. A substantialist
approach privileges things rather than relations and, as such, has a tendency to reify the
social order and to embody a positivist orientation to social research. In contrast,
Bourdieu holds up the ideal of a relational analysis. A key tenet of such an approach is
that objects under investigation are seen in context. Their meaningfulness is determined
not by the characteristic properties, attributes, or essences of the thing itself, but rather
with reference to the field of objects, practices, or activities within which they are
embedded.
In this paper I argue that Bourdieu's conception of relational analysis is extremely
important for three reasons: it emphasizes the interpretative character of institutional life,
it relies on a structuralist method of interpretation, and it provides an empirical
mechanism for linking the duality of culture and practice. I also argue that Bourdieu's
theory is better than his practice. Specifically I look at the way in which he seeks to
operationalize his conception of relational analysis and I argue that though his methods
are in some respects quite well crafted (because they emphasize the significance of
analyzing the duality of culture and practice) they are in other respects quite limited. This
is because they are founded upon the methodological habitus of mainstream social
science which imposes measurement practices that reflect what Andrew Abbott (198x)
has described as a General Linear Reality. I argue that though a linear (dimensional)
orientation has many useful purposes it may not be well suited to describing the kinds of
relational processes that Bourdieu's theory of relational analysis brings to the fore.
Instead, I suggest the use of a more topological model of space such as that developed by
network theorists. At the end of the paper I offer some examples of what this might look
like.
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Bourdieu's Theory of Relational Analysis
Bourdieu's embrace of a relational as opposed to a substantialist mode of analysis
is a reflection of his debt to structuralism. It was, after all, the principal accomplishment
of Saussure (19x) to have initially made this move in linguistics. The foundation of
Saussure's accomplishments was his insight that meaning is patterned out of systems of
similarity and difference . The ability to discern differences in sounds depends upon the
repertoires of sound distinctions that operate within a larger system of language. One
important implication is the arbitrariness of the sign. According to Saussure meanings are
not linked to any essential characteristic of the sounds to which they are associated.
Instead, meanings are built up out of patterns of difference between alternative
signifieds. This is, in simple terms, precisely what Bourdieu embraces with his argument
about the need for relational analysis.
But it is important to put this intellectual maneuver in context. For one very
significant implication is that Bourdieu intends by this maneuver to signal his concern for
the inherent meaningfulness of social forms and the concomitant demand that
sociological research be grounded in an interpretative approach. Institutions, according
to Bourdieu, can be (and indeed, must be) read like a language. This is perhaps the most
important implication of Bourdieu's embrace of a relational mode of analysis.
But it is also important to see how his reliance on a structuralist theory of
interpretation matters. It has always been an important virtue of structuralism that
meanings are treated as data to be analyzed in accordance with a set of formal theories
and methods. Another highly significant feature of Bourdieu's work is his ongoing
embrace of a particular kind of empirical social science. Indeed, for my taste, it is this
insistence of Bourdieu on the need to combine an ongoing and reflexive theoretical
stance with a relentlessly empirical and data oriented research program that makes his
work so very appealing. I would submit that the use of a structuralist model of
interpretation (with its emphasis on meanings as being constituted through and by
systems of difference ) is another critical element of Bourdieu's orientation because it
provides a vehicle through which Bourdieu's concern with formal analysis can bee
brought together with his framing of institutional life as meaningfully constituted.
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However, it should also be said that Bourdieu is also not a structuralist in the
older sense of the term. Structuralism in the traditional sense, the structuralism of
Suassure, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, and the like, had some very significant and ultimately
critical flaws. The most damaging of these, I believe, is the problem of the what might be
called the infinite textuality of social life. Here is where Derrida and the post-
structuralist settled in with a most devastating impact. Wherever a meaning can be
deduced in the structuralist sense through its location within a systems of differences, so
too can an infinity of other differences be identified that leave the meaning to be seen as
arbitrary and imprecise. Any pretense toward certainty of interpretation is by this logic
and inherently hegemonic effort of imposing one difference as primary over and against
others. The implications of this are potentially devastating for any sociological project
that both privileges meaning while also hoping to advance a more scientific or, more
formally grounded style of investigation.
While post-structuralism as an intellectual movement swept across Europe and
eventually, across the humanities in the United States as well, Bourdieu refused to make
that that turn. And indeed, it was here, probably more than anyplace else that Bourdieu
has made what I think is probably his most important contribution to an empirical
sociology of culture. It is through the development of practice theory that Bourdieu
accomplishes this and provides something of a barrier against the infinite textuality of the
world. He does by asserting that meanings are always and invariably embedded within
domains of practical activity. Thus to know something is to know it from the perspective
of its locatedness within a material and sensual world. Meanings live in the world
because they derive from the material experience of the world. It is this maneuver that
allows him to slip the noose of structuralist methodology. By anchoring his interpretative
approach in a theory of practice, Bourdieu provides us with a reason to see some
meanings as more valid, more meaningful, more empirically measurable than others. It is
because they are linked through forms of practice that any particular set of differences
should be seen as meaningful, and thus as being constitutive of a given discursive form.
This does not imply, however, a determinancy of the material over the ideal.
Rather, for Bourdieu, the two domains are mutually constitutive. Practices are equally
dependent upon and constituted by ways of knowing and understanding. To engage in a
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practice is always to put in place a frame of understanding, a set of ideas, a cultural text.
Indeed, it is the intrinsic duality of these two domains — of the cultural and the practical
— which completes Bourdieu's transformation of a structuralist method of interpretation
into his own approach to relational analysis. It is not just that features of institutional life
are meaningful because they are constituted through systems of difference, they are
meaningful because they are implicated in forms of practice and through that implication
their intrinsic institutionally specific differences are constituted. If institutions can be
read like a language, it is only by looking for them in the texts of institutional practice.
Bourdieu's Relational Analysis in Practice
Bourdieu is not simply an advocate for a relational analysis, he is an
accomplished practitioner. Indeed, it is in the doing of empirical work that his most
sophisticated meta-theoretical concerns have emerged. Consider, for example,
Bourdieu's analysis of the relationship between cultural capital and class structure. In a
long series of work stretching back to the early 1960's Bourdieu has sought to criticize
the seemingly objective character of the French system of educational stratification. For
Bourdieu, the system is neither objective in the sense of being universalistic and
unbiased, nor is it objective in the Marxist sense of being driven purely by the materiality
of class hegemony. Rather Bourdieu shows that the educational system is founded on an
implicit system of reward according to which those students who are able to successfully
participate within the refined nuances of elite culture are accorded greater respect,
intellectual resources, and institutional success.
His work on cultural capital is an example of the way that Bourdieu treats
institutions as interpretative domains. It is meanings that are at work here. The process by
which students' stock of cultural capital is transmuted into institutional success relies on a
communicative system of understanding. Students share meaning with teachers and other
mentors. Important educational tasks are geared toward demonstrations of the very sort
of cultural refinement that a familiarity with the form and content of high culture can
provide. Moreover, aside from the type of intellectual mastery that is involved, there is a
far more basic social process at work. Students with high levels of cultural capital are
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able to incite a common sense of identity and co-membership with key institutional
gatekeepers.
This is also a good example of how Bourdieu treats culture and social structure as
dually constituted. It is one's orientation toward culture that produces the objective
outcomes of one's educational outcomes and class trajectory. Thus, culture produces
social structure. But it is one's class origins that produce the sorts of fundamental
orientation and cultural habitus that shapes one's stock of cultural capital and determines
one's likelihood of success within this institutional sphere. Social structure produces
culture.
There is another level of practice involved in this research as well, it is the
practice of empirical analysis and the evaluation of social data which Bourdieu uses to
test and demonstrate the broader sociological arguments highlighted in this discussion.
One can see this, for example, in Distinction, Bourdieu's book on class culture and taste
in France. I have included here (see figure 1) one of Bourdieu's classic figures from
Distinction in which he superimposes two graphs, one which represents the space of
social positions and the other the space of cultural tastes. The figure is constructed in
such a way that the space is organized along two dimensions, a vertical dimension
representing the overall volume of capital (from low to high), and a horizontal dimension
representing the overall composition of capital. This latter dimension runs from a
measure (on the left) of a high proportion of cultural capital and a low proportion of
economic capital to (on the right) the inverse measure reflecting a low proportion of
cultural capital and a high proportion of economic capital. This space is then used to
identify the social location of different groups (or what Bourdieu describes as class
factions). Private sector executives are located toward the right side of the graph (because
their capital is largely economic) and towards the top (because they possess a lot of
capital). Artistic producers are located at about the same point on the vertical dimension
(because they too have a lot of capital) but they are off to the far left because their capital
is largely composed of cultural (rather than economic resources).
Here again, we see Bourdieu's relational analysis expressed in the practice of his
sociological research. Class locations are defined relationally within a space that is
defined by one's orientation toward culture. And, here, in the same space we see
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superimposed both a mapping of class locations and a mapping of cultural tastes. As
with his work on education, Bourdieu's argument is that class and culture are mutually
constitutive. One's class location is defined by one's relationship to culture and culture is
defined by the social organization of class positions.
Finally, consider the more generalized concept of field as developed by Bourdieu.
The basic arguments here are the same. Indeed, it is possible to trace out a clear line of
development from Bourdieu's early work on educational stratification and cultural
capital on to the more generalized analyses of a wide array of institutional fields. The
concept of the field is ubiquitous in Bourdieu's work (though it was largely absent from
his earlier writings). Fields are “relatively autonomous social microcosms”
corresponding to regions of institutional life. Examples include the field of art, academia,
the religious field, the legal field, and so on (Bourdieu, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1991).
Bourdieu defines the concept of a field in such a way as to embrace and express his
notion of relational analysis. Each field is defined by a set of social relationships (or
social locations) that are organized according to a shared understanding about the
meaning of what goes on inside the field or, as Bourdieu puts it, each field consists of
“spaces of objective relations that are the site of a logic and a necessity” (Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992, p. 97).
Here, the duality of culture and practice is very much in evidence. According to
Bourdieu, one’s position within a field is determined by one’s relationship to the system
of meaning that is operating there (one’s stock of field specific capital). At the same time
the system of meaning that provides the foundation for the habitus of action within a
field is itself determined by individuals and groups who occupy positions which enable
them to shape and determine the character and contours of the meaning system which
dominates the field. In this sense the concept of a field is very much driven by
Bourdieu's concern with developing a relational analysis. Every field is a site within
which some type of capital operates and, thus, each field includes a fundamental metric
according to which any given individual (or group or profession, or class fraction) can be
assessed vis-à-vis others according to their relative possession of field specific capital. It
is this which determines their likelihood of having power and success within that sphere.
For Bourdieu, fields are always arenas of conflict. Individuals and groups struggle for
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objective locations within the field which enable them to determine the meanings which
will come to be recognized as legitimate. Thus, "(t)he juridical field is the site of a
competition for monopoly of the right to determine the law" (Bourdieu, 1987, p. 817).
The Limitations of Bourdieu's Practice
Bourdieu, of course, has many critics, and I am one. Unlike most critics, however,
my concern is less with Bourdieu's theoretical orientation which, quite frankly, I find to
be just about as impressive as any contemporary sociologist that I can think of, but rather
with his practice. In other words, it is not with his ambitions for a relational analysis that
I find fault, but rather with his method of operationalizing the theory, his practical use as
an empirical sociologist. Of course, if we are to accept Bourdieu's argument about the
duality of culture and practice, and I do, then it is in some sense impossible to be critical
of his method and not also be critical of his theory at the same time and that will also be
true in this case. Nonetheless, it is the methodological part of his work with which I am
most concerned.
My concerns have to do with the way in which Bourdieu's relational analysis is
operationalized through measurement and specifically, through the imposition of the
kinds of assumptions that derive from what Andrew Abbott (19xx) has described as
sociology's general linear reality. Consider again the model of social space depicted in
figure 1. As I've already noted, this model has a number of virtues. It treats institutional
domains as meaningful space. It invokes a structuralist method of interpretation in the
sense that it is the system of differences between social locations that is seen as being
meaningful and it captures the duality of culture and practice by locating class fractions
according to their stance vis-à-vis cultural capital and cultural lifestyles at the same time
that the meaning of cultural goods is in some sense defined by their appropriation by
class fractions. However, there is also something very limiting about this model and it
has to do with the fact that similarities are always ordered in a linear relationship, in this
case defined by two dimensions of capital volume and capital composition. I see two
problems with this.
First, other cultural logics and orientations are simply absent from the
measurement of this space. Everyone, no matter who they are or where they are assessed
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in accordance to their degree of possession of the cultural styles and knowledge of the
elite class fractions. While Bourdieu uses this metric quite self-consciously as a way of
highlighting the ways in which power is manifest within the space, the conceptual
demands are, I believe, ultimately too severe. Other forms of cultural mastery, other
styles of communicative knowledge, other caches of culturally specific skills are simply
erased from the model.
Second, the field is seen to be driven entirely by the logic of the macro-level
struggle over the defining dimensions of this space. It is one's orientation toward the
dominant culture and one's struggle to locate ones' self there that is seen to be relevant.
Other conflicts, other engagements and, especially, more localized struggles over
resources and positions are not taken into account in this model. And yet a field is
always composed of many alternative battles and competitions, not only those that
concern the dominant forms of capital.
Of course these types of critiques are not new. Others have made much of these
types of problems in Bourdieu's work. However my emphasis again is not on the way in
which Bourdieu's concepts (of cultural capital, fields, and relational analysis more
generally) have been specified but the ways in which he has been driven to operationalize
them in these types of linear models. What I propose is that we re-think the concept of a
measurement space in terms of a non-linear analytic and, in the process, we go back to
consider what Bourdieu's theoretical constructs might look like in such from the
perspective of such an analytic orientation.
Kurt Lewin's Concept of Field Space
As a way to develop this argument I would like to go back to consider the work of
social sciences' original field theorist, Kurt Lewin. Lewin adapted the concept of field
space from its origins in theoretical physics to his research on social cognition. A
member of the Berlin gestalt psychology group, Lewin was familiar with the work of
Kohler and Koffka on perceptual totality (the preeminence of the whole over the parts)
and their use of the concept of “field” as an organizing principal. But Lewin differed
from the gestalt theorists in several ways. He was more curious about human motivation
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than he was about perception and more interested in how social situations affected
cognition than in how the mind itself functioned. These differences increased when
Lewin fled Hitler’s Germany in the early 30’s, took a position as director of the Child
Welfare Research Station at the University of Iowa, and began studying interaction in
children’s play (Deutsch and Krauss, 1965; Mey, 1972).
Lewin was both impressed by the complexity of the phenomena he set out to
study and convinced that a more methodologically rigorous approach was needed. He
turned to the natural sciences for inspiration and found it in Einstein’s discussion of field
space as a "totality of coexisting facts which are conceived of as mutually
interdependent" (Lewin, 1951, p. 240). Lewin began to use this concept to construct
models of an individual’s “life space” which he described as “the person and the
psychological environment as it exists for him” (Lewin, 1951, p. 57). These were
essentially cognitive maps of individual’s choice situations. They included “specific
items as particular goals, stimuli, needs, social relations, as well as more general
characteristics of the field as the atmosphere (for instance, the friendly, tense, or hostile
atmosphere) or the amount of freedom.” The definition was pragmatic. The life space
included within it “everything that affects behavior at a given time” (p. 241).
The most distinctive feature of Lewin’s concept of a field was the type of
mathematics which defined it. Inspired by the work of the German philosopher Ernst
Cassirer, Lewin was convinced that life spaces were essentially relational systems.i
Objects in the life space stood in particular relation to one another but their location could
not be defined in precise metric terms. Thus it was impossible to specify precise
dimensions, linear measurements, or definable coordinate systems within which objects
could be located inside an individual’s life space.
Topology theory, a branch of mathematics concerned with the formal analysis of
relational systems, provided Lewin with a rigorous foundation for conceptualizing such a
space. Lewin used topology theory to construct a spatial model which possessed neither
metric extension nor dimensional orientation.ii Rather, he saw the life space as a
collection of regions, each of which represented a relevant element of the individual’s
experience (see figure 2). The “meaning” of each region was defined by its location vis-
à-vis the other regions within the life space. The individual, represented as a
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dimensionless “point-region” in the space, was seen as affected by objects (spatial sub-
regions) that exerted positive and negative forces.
Perceived goal objects have a “demand-character.” Food is “inviting”; itseems to say “Come on.” Punishment is “repellent,” and things that lead toit seem to “force us away.” Hence the goal objects themselves exert field-forces and they are said to have either a positive or a negative valence(Allport, 1955, p. 152).
Behavior is caused by an individual’s “locomotion” through the field which is determined
by tensions associated with various regional boundaries, barriers, vectors, and fields of
force.
Though he drew heavily upon topology theory, Lewin ultimately found these
mathematical conventions to be too constraining. In particular he felt the need to be able
to superimpose indicators of direction, force, and distance traveled on top of the more
purely relational topological framework in order to capture the complex dynamics of
objects within his space. He called the resulting amalgam “hodological space” and
claimed that this was a space that “permits us to speak in a mathematically precise
manner of equality and differences of direction, and of changes in distance, without
presupposing the 'measuring' of angles, directions, distances, which is usually not
possible in a social-psychological field" (1951, p. 150-151).
His attempt to represent complex social phenomena inside the parameters of
hodological space were sometimes complicated and obscure. But this was a result of his
insistence on tackling the enormous complexities of social existence in a fashion that was
unfailingly concrete. Rather than moving to higher levels of abstraction, Lewin insisted
on staying at the level of concrete situations which he sought to represent in relational
terms. Everything that mattered was present and visible and precisely located with
respect to everything else in the field space.
In a sense Bourdieu is the most important contemporary successor to Lewin's
project. Bourdieu’s linkage to Lewin is rather tenuous; he was not one of Lewin’s
students and Lewin was only one of many intellectual inspirations for Bourdieu’s work.iii
Nonetheless, Bourdieu’s research exemplifies the principles enunciated by Lewin. He is
an eloquent advocate for the necessity of seeing the duality of subjective and objective
social phenomena, he insists upon the importance of a “relational mode of thinking,” the
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concept of “field” is central to his research, and he consistently grounds his empirical
work in formal measurement and analysis. However, there is no trace of Lewin's
measurement space (his hodological approach) in Bourdieu's operationalization of the
concept of field. In a sense this is not very surprising. Hodlogical space was surely an
anachronism and a rather clumsy analytical tool to wield. However the limitations of
hodological space need not drive one to the kind of linear measurement strategies
employed by Bourdieu. This is because other developments, after Lewin, point to a
different way of measuring space that preserves the topological orientation that was so
critical to Lewin's project.
Lewin had an enormous impact on U.S. social science even though the
hodological approach to field theory practically disappeared after his death. Evidence of
his influence is widely scattered. In psychology, the idea of cognitive dissonance (an
outgrowth of Lewin’s ideas about the reduction of cognitive tension) was developed by
his student Leon Festinger (Deutsch and Krauss, 1965). In sociology Katz and
Lazarsfeld drew upon and popularized Lewin's concept of channels and gatekeepers in
their book, Personal Influence,iv and Richard Emerson's work on exchange theory derives
in part from Lewin's conceptualization of power.v The single most important legacy of
Lewin’s work, however, was social network analysis. Like Lewin’s field space, network
models are topological. Elements are defined relationally according to the pattern of ties
which exist between them. There is no metric extension in this space (distance is
calculated by the number of links separating two nodes) and no dimensional orientation
(for example, up, down, right and left are undefined).
While a number of intellectual antecedents to modern network theory can be
identified,vi Lewin’s early use of topological mathematics was clearly one of the most
significant.vii It was Lewin’s student, Alex Bavelas (1948), who developed one of the
first mathematical approaches to analyzing the network structure of groups by
formalizing and extending Lewin’s (1938) concepts of centrality and distance in
hodological space. When Dorwin Cartwright succeeded Lewin as Director of the
University of Michigan’s Research Center for Group Dynamics he initiated a
collaboration with Frank Harary, a mathematician, to evaluate the potential usefulness of
"hodological space" in research on social systems. Harary found that basic concepts of
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the Lewin-Bavelas formalization were equivalent to those in a young branch of
mathematics known as "graph theory" (Harary and Norman, 1953). This discovery put
Lewin's hodological space in a broader intellectual context (Harary, Norman and
Cartwright, 1965). It also stimulated the use of these models in research on a variety of
social phenomena including Bavelas’ (1950) work on patterns of communication in task-
oriented groups, Cartwright’s (1959b) use of graph theory in organizational analysis, and
French's (1956) formalization of the concept of balance in cognitive or social structures.
From these early developments the field of network analysis exploded into a far-
flung and innovative set of methodological and theoretical tools for the analysis of social
relationships. Much of what happens in network analysis is, however, from Bourdieu's
perspective quite limited. Indeed, Bourdieu has criticized the project quite forcefully
(e.g., Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 114). But in his rejection of network analysis,
Bourdieu has missed the important possibilities that the topological approach to formal
analysis might be able to afford him.
Topological Space and the Concept of Field in the New Institutionalism
One way to consider the possibility of how network ideas might be combined
with a more updated approach to field theory is to examine the alternative model of field
space that has grown up in the institutional study of organizations. In this literature the
term “organizational field” is widely used. It has emerged as the principal spatial
metaphor for the new institutional school of organizational analysts, a group of scholars
who seek to explain the character of markets and industries by identifying the impact of
taken for granted institutional systems of ideas, rules, practices, and conventions. Most
contemporary usage of the term can be traced back to the agenda setting article by
DiMaggio and Powell (1983). In this essay, concepts from the networks literature and
from Bourdieu were added to Roland Warren’s original adaptation of Lewin's ideas to
describe an organizational field.viii The resulting construct provides a tool for analyzing
markets and industries that carries forward many of Lewin’s original ideas about how to
study social environments.
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According to DiMaggio and Powell, an organizational field consists of “those
organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life: key
suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations
that produce similar services or products” (1983, p. 148). An important feature of this
definition is its concreteness. Much as Lewin considered the life space to include
“everything that affects behavior at a given time,” so too do DiMaggio and Powell define
an organizational field so as to include every relevant organization. As they note in an
early draft of their essay, this is notably different than the ecologists’ approach to
organizational space because:
“(u)nlike the organizational-population approach, which usually connotesa set of organizations with the same formal purposes and treatsorganizations that supply resources, purchase outputs, and regulateactivities as the selecting environment, the field perspective rejects theoften artificial distinction between organization and environment andviews these organizations as part of the system to be analyzed” (1982, p.11).
Thus, just as Lewin insisted upon treating all objects within a defined life space as being
visible, concrete, and relationally located vis-à-vis one another, so too do DiMaggio and
Powell consider the field space of a specific market or industry to consist of “the totality
of relevant actors” (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983, p. 148).
Like Lewin, DiMaggio and Powell see this space as being relationally defined.
Their use of concepts from the networks literature is especially apparent here. DiMaggio
and Powell invoke two network ideas, the “connectivity” between organizations and the
notion of organizations standing in “structurally equivalent” positions, as part of their
discussion of why the concept of the field is the appropriate way to understand
organizational environments. Moreover, their most important theoretical contributions,
such as their arguments about isomorphism, are grounded in network imagery.
Isomorphism refers to processes that promote sameness in organizations within a
field. DiMaggio and Powell identify three field-level processes that generate such
changes, each evidence of a different type of network interaction. Coercive isomorphism
derives from “both formal and informal pressures exerted on organizations by other
organizations upon which they are dependent.” Normative isomorphism focuses on field
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level channels through which personnel (especially professional staff) flow between
organizations. Mimetic isomorphism concerns the process by which agents within
organizations regard one another, with successful organizations serving as models for
others.
Thus, DiMaggio and Powell’s model of organizational fields is strongly rooted in
a topological metaphor of space. There are no coordinates, no dimensional orientations,
no regions defined by qualities separate from the organizations contained within them.
Instead they describe organizational space as a communicative medium, a place through
which ideas, symbolic gestures, and collective norms flow along three different types of
structural pathways. A field with high structuration is one in which these communicative
conduits are extensive and effective and, as a consequence, the organizations within the
field demonstrate a high degree of similarity to one another.
Topological Space and the Duality of Culture and Practice
Contrast the kinds of social processes that are suggested by Bourdieu's
field model and that of the new institutionalists. For Bourdieu, field space is describable
in terms of specific (but abstract) dimensions and, thus, one’s position in space is
determined by the levels of those abstract qualities that one possesses. All locations
within Bourdieu’s field space are thus defined in accordance with these abstract qualities.
In practice, this means that all forms of interaction, identification, contestation, and social
conflict must be represented in terms that reflect the hegemony of those who possess and
define cultural capital. Many of the criticisms that have been leveled against Bourdieu
(see, for example, Calhoun, et. al. 1993) can be traced back to the limitations imposed by
this spatial orientation.
The field space of the new institutionalist, on the other hand, focuses attention on
how ideas about organizational success, critique, and evaluation are developed, diffused,
and determined as normative. Many localized sites of conflict are imaginable and even
measurable within this space. The field as a whole is describable in general terms (as
possessing higher or lower levels of structuration) but particular locations are defined not
in terms of general linear dimensions but rather in terms of localized patterns of contact,
exchange, and competition.
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This is not to say, however, that Bourdieu is wrong and the new institutionalist are
right. While their approach to the measurement of field space strikes me as being more
consistent with the theory of relational analysis that Bourdieu has advocated, there are
some very significant limitations to how institutional approaches to field space have been
constructed. Specifically, the new institutionalists have lost the important thread of
analyzing the duality of meaning and social structure that is such a defining characteristic
of Bourdieu's own work. But notice that this type of duality was actually present in the
original work by Lewin.
Recall that Lewin was trying to understand the social psychology of human
motivation. To properly represent these types of problems, Lewin was convinced that
both subjective and objective factors had to be brought to bear. In other words, to explain
social behavior Lewin believed that it was necessary to understand how objective features
of the social world and individuals’ meaningful representations of those phenomena were
combined together within the same relational field space. Indeed, Lewin believed that
there was an inherent duality between the two domains.ix In Lewin’s terms,
… one can say that behavior and development depend upon the state ofthe person and his environment, B = F (P, E). In this equation the person(P) and his environment (E) have to be viewed as variables which aremutually dependent on each other. In other words, to understand or topredict behavior, the person and his environment have to be considered asone constellation of interdependent factors (Lewin, 1951, p. 239-40).
The question of how to analyze this interdependency within the framework of an
empirically rigorous and mathematically grounded social science was the central question
which Lewin pursued throughout his career and a significant catalyst in his turn to a
topologically defined measurement space.
This component of Lewin’s work was abandoned by the early network theorists
who sought to focus exclusively on the relational properties of social structure.
Subjectivity and agentic behavior were viewed as derivative of network processes. In a
sense, the return to a one dimensional model of social action was the cost that was paid
for substituting the elegant framework of graph theory for the relatively clumsy
mathematics of hodological space.
16
More interesting perhaps, in spite of their theoretical emphasis on institutionally
shared meanings, the new institutionalists have been equally shy about grounding the
analysis of meaning inside their model of field space. Similarities and differences in the
structure of organizations, their goal statements, their ideologies, and the practices that
they employ are measured and compared but the ideas themselves, the meanings which
are embodied in these institutional rules and are expressed by all these homogeneous
organizational structures are absent from analysis.
Consider DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) description of the structuration of an
organizational field. The concept of structuration is borrowed from Bourdieu by way of
Giddens (1979) who uses the term to describes the process by which social actions and
social structures are mutually constituted. In brief, Giddens argues that social action, as
derived from repertoires of practice, is constituted through meaning. Meanings and
practices are embedded within social structures which are in turn continually reproduced
through action. It is thus the connection between meaning and practice that transforms the
fluidity of actions into the stability of structures.
DiMaggio and Powell’s use of the concept of structuration reflects their
recognition that meanings and practices are co-constitutive. Informational conduits don’t
exist without the information that flows through them nor does the informational flow
exist without those conduits. Yet, in their essay, DiMaggio and Powell define
structuration in a way that emphasizes structures and minimizes meaning. They identify
four components of structuration: (1) “an increase in the extent of interaction among
organizations in the field,” (2) “the emergence of sharply defined interorganizational
structures of domination and patterns of coalition,” (3) “an increase in the information
load with which organizations in a field must contend,” and (4) “the development of a
mutual awareness among participants in a set of organizations that they are involved in a
common enterprise” (1983, p. 148). These definitions imply and have generally been
interpreted to mean that the structuration of an organizational field refers to an increasing
level of communicative connectivity. This shifts the focus of research toward a concrete
mapping out of the communicative pathways through which meanings flow. Thus
DiMaggio and Powell’s appropriation of the concept of structuration quickly drifts away
from meaning toward structure.
17
I see this as emblematic of the way in which the metaphor of field space has
developed in institutionalist practice. While the project as a whole is conditioned on the
assumption that it is the meaningfulness of space that matters, in its implementation, it is
the space itself (seen now as system of communicative structures) which is actually
revealed through empirical analysis. Demonstrations of the homogenization of
organizational structure is used again and again as a way to prove the existence and
efficacy of these communicative pathways. The meanings embedded inside these
institutional objects are left unexamined. The institutionalists have thus created a spatial
metaphor which privileges the structures of communication, over the actual meanings
that flow through these structures. As a result, the communicative channels in an
organizational field are not analyzed in a way that enables these meanings to be treated as
constitutive of the field itself.
An Alternative Approach to Measuring Fields
Neither Bourdieu nor the new institutionalists have gotten it right. Bourdieu is
right insofar as he insists on the construction of models of field space which include at
their very core, both meaning and practice, subject and object, social structure and forms
of interpretation. But he is wrong in his attempt to locate these phenomena in a linear,
dimensional space. The new institutionalists have a much more pliable model of field
space which is able to incorporate the kinds of relational analysis that Bourdieu has called
for. Locations within the space are defined relationally one unto the other as a system of
differences . These patterns of difference are far more reminiscent of the sort of
structuralist analyses that characterize traditional approaches to structural interpretation.
This is really not surprising once one considers the historical parallels between European
structuralism and American style network analysis (Mohr, 2000). However, the
institutionalist model of the field lacks the integral combination of meanings and social
structures that is such an important part of Bourdieu's rethinking of traditional
structuralism.
As a way to offer something other than mere critique I will close by showing one
final example of a model of field space. This last example comes from my own research
(Mohr and Guerra-Pearson, forthcoming) concerning the social organization of
18
organizational fields within the social welfare sector at the turn of the century (see figure
3). In this analysis we have located organizations (represented as small circles) in a
relational space as defined by pairwise similarities and differences according to how
these organizations go about naming and defining the character of their institutional
niche. In other words, like Bourdieu, we see field space as being meaningfully
constituted. Organizations are located in the space according to how they talk about the
character of the institutional domain. But unlike Bourdieu we have not sought to impose
a uni-dimensional metric according to which these systems of meanings need to be
represented. Rather, like network scholars and the new institutionalists we see the space
as being topologically defined, as a series of localized interactions between organizations
that share and contest the character of meanings appropriate for a given set of
institutional tasks.
Conclusion
In this paper I have sought to argue that Bourdieu's relational approach to
sociological investigation is an important largely accurate theorization of how to study
social institutions. But I have argued that Bourdieu's theory is better than his practice.
While he has made important advances in terms of thinking about how to improve upon
traditional structuralist measures of meaning (through the duality of culture and practice)
his use of linear metaphors for measuring this field space is a problem. It is a problem
because it limits the ways in which a genuinely relational analysis can be carried out. By
imposing the methodological hegemony of linear dimensions on a complexly
differentiated social space, important social processes are lost. Specifically, the use of a
linear space as a way of representing fields tends to subject all social interactions to the
tyranny of a particular interactional system, a logic of the dominated class fractions over
all the rest.
I have sought to suggest that there are alternatives to this way of measuring fields.
Drawing on the original conception of a field by Kurt Lewin and showing how his
approach to hodological space was transformed into network analysis and, eventually,
into the concept of a field as represented by contemporary institutional scholars, I have
argued that a more topological approach to the measurement of field space would be
19
more properly suited to the kinds of institutional phenomena that Bourdieu has set out to
describe.
However, I have argued that doing so will require the development of new
understandings about how to measure fields empirically. This is because the application
of topological measurement strategies to the study of organizational fields has left behind
Bourdieu's ever so important corrective to structuralist methods of interpretation, the
assertion that culture and practice, the social space and the interpretative space, are
mutually constitutive and dually structured.
20
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Figure 3. Organizational Forms in Field Space (1888)
-2.5
-2.0
-1.5
-1.0
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
-2.5 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Dispensary
Dietkitchen
DayNursery
Lodging
IndSchool
Shelter
Mission H.
Youthclub
MR Assoc.
Benevolent
SWrkBurcy
Missionary
Church
Other
26
i See Mustafa Emirbayer (1997) for an insightful discussion of Cassirer’s influence
on American social science.
ii Mansfield describes the essential features of topological mathematics with the
following example, "if a rubber doughnut is stretched and bent without tearing, the
resulting object always has a hole in it. The hole of a doughnut is thus an intrinsic
qualitative property of the doughnut. In fact a rubber doughnut can be stretched and bent
without tearing into the shape of a coffee cup (the hole in the doughnut forms the handle
of the coffee cup). One would expect, therefore, that the intrinsic qualitative properties of
a doughnut are identical to those of a coffee cup. Indeed, a topologist has been described
as a man who doesn't know the difference between a doughnut and a coffee cup" (1963,
p.1).
iii Although Bourdieu did cite Lewin as an inspiration, especially in his earlier work
(Swartz, 1997, p. 123), Bourdieu himself says that it was Ernst Cassirer who served as
the most important influence on the development of his commitment to a relational
thinking (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 97; Swartz, 1997, p. 61).
iv Juan Linz (personal communication) reports that Lewin's ideas had a profound
impact on his cohort of graduate students in sociology at Columbia during the 1950's.
27
v Many other examples can be pointed to; Harald Mey (1972) provides an extensive
catalogue. See also Cartwright (1959a).
vi Commentators on the origins of social network analysis cite many different
influences. In the 1930’s, Jacob Moreno, a psychiatrist by training, developed
“sociograms” for representing the interpersonal structure of groups and, along with his
co-author Jennings began developing quantitative measures of network structure. British
urban anthropologists such as J.A. Barnes and Elizabeth Bott published influential work
in the 1950s. In his early work, Harrison White (1963) drew heavily upon the work of the
French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Other psychologists, including the Gestalt
theorist, Fritz Heider, made important contributions in the 1940’s and 50’s. See
Wasserman and Faust (1994) for a useful summary of these issues.
vii My discussion of Lewin’s relationship to early network theory in this paragraph
draws extensively upon suggestions generously offerred by Dorwin Cartwright.
viii Although DiMaggio and Powell invoke the concept of field without any explicit
citations in the 1983 version of their article, an earlier version of the paper (1982) lists
both Bourdieu (1971) and Warren (1967; Warren et. al. 1974) as inspirations. Also cited
are Howard Aldrich and Albert Reiss’s (1976) article on community ecology as well as
Herman Turk’s (1970) work on organizational networks.
ix Lewin’s focus on relational dualities is not accidental. In Gestalt psychology, a
key issue had always been how to understand the dualistic relationship between the
conscious and the physiological components of perception. As Lewin shifted his attention
to problems in social psychology, he turned this interest into a concern with the dualistic
relationship between self and society.