Bourdieu, Smith and disinterested judgement

Bourdieu, Smith and disinterested judgement

Andrew Sayer

Abstract

The paper presents a sympathetic critique of Bourdieu’s work in termsof the tension between its critical intentions and its leanings towardssociological reductionism. Although Bourdieu argues against suchreductionism in his methodological pronouncements, his empirical stud-ies tend to reduce actors’ putative disinterested judgements to functionsof their habitus in relation to the social field and to unconscious strate-gies of distinction. Further, his concept of (non-monetary) forms ofcapital occludes the difference between use-value and exchange-valueand the corresponding distinction between the pursuit of goods and thepursuit of distinction, which are vital for both explanation and critique.Moreover his suspicion of normative judgement on the part of socialscience and his concealment of his own normative standpoint subverthis critiques. Thus in relation to Bourdieu’s analysis of the role of mis-recognition in social life I argue that this requires a delineation of theextent of justified recognition. In developing the argument I draw uponAdam Smith’s analysis of moral sentiments and his critique of unde-served recognition and the pursuit of distinction. Where Bourdieu is dis-missive about moral issues, Smith treats moral sentiments as irreducibleto interest or instrumental action and as a significant element in thereproduction of social order. The paper concludes with some implica-tions for the nature of critique in social theory.

Introduction

As an admirer of the work of Pierre Bourdieu I sometimes wonderwhy I appreciate it. Is it because of my habitus – those deeplyengrained dispositions towards other people, objects and practicesin the social field, which orient what I think and do? Am I justswayed by Bourdieu’s educational capital? Is my appreciation

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

actually an unconscious strategy of distinction, a way of ingratiat-ing myself with academic colleagues? I can’t rule these out alto-gether and of course distinction can be achieved unintentionally.However, despite these possibilities, I would claim that I like hiswork mainly because it is so good, and I would be prepared toargue the case, citing its extraordinary perception, the brilliance ofits descriptions of actions and dispositions, its sophisticatedmethodology, and so on. But Bourdieu is of course highly suspi-cious of such putative ‘disinterested’ judgements, and repeatedlyshows them to conceal (unknowingly) interests deriving from thehabitus and the struggles of the social field. Despite my admirationfor his work, it is this paradox which animates this critique.

In a major critical essay, Jeffrey Alexander has accused Bourdieuof sociological reductionism, reducing ideas to their social origins,coordinates and uses, as if their adequacy was of no consequence(Alexander, 1995). However, at least in his orientating, methodolog-ical remarks, Bourdieu is highly critical of such reductionism; forexample, in the introduction to his critique of Heidegger, he insiststhat any adequate analysis must avoid both sociological reduction-ism and the treatment of texts or practices as independent of socialinfluences (Bourdieu, 1986: 2). Further, while sociological reduc-tionism implies a relativist stance towards judgement, the criticalthrust of much of Bourdieu’s work is not relativist; for example, hefrequently claims that forms of ‘misrecognition’ are present in socialpractice. Nevertheless, I would argue that his empirical analyses areindeed characterised by a strong sociological reductionism, evidentparticularly in his reluctance to acknowledge that actors’ judge-ments and actions can at least in part be disinterested.

In response to this tension between reductionist tendencies and acritical stance which implies the possibility of disinterested judge-ment, I want to focus on one of the aspects which gets squeezed outby sociological reductionism – the role of normative judgement, onthe part of both actors and researchers. I wish to argue that evenallowing for the bodily, habitual character of much social behaviour,Bourdieu’s deflation of the role of actors’ normative, often reasoned,judgements undermines his explanations. Moreover, this, togetherwith his suspicion of normative judgement on the part of social scien-tists and his concealment of his own normative standpoint, subvertshis critiques. We need to accept that actors make distinctions betweendeserved and undeserved distinction, that these are not necessarilywholly reducible to misrecognized social distinctions, and that asresearchers we cannot escape such judgements ourselves. Without the

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latter, there is bound to be some confusion over what are the targetsof our critiques. Arguments about what is good or bad, what is mer-ited or undeserved, cannot be sociologised out of existence by reduc-ing them to arbitrary custom, unconscious emanations of thehabitus, or the pursuit of power for its own sake. Most importantly, Iwant to concentrate on the reduction of moral sentiments, judge-ments and actions to functions of the habitus or strategies of distinc-tion. In opposing this reduction I shall draw upon Adam Smith’sanalysis of moral sentiments. Where Bourdieu is reductive and dis-missive about moral influences, Smith treats moral sentiments as asignificant element in the reproduction of the social order.

I shall begin by outlining three key features of Bourdieu’s work –habitus, ‘strategized action’, and his economic view of culture, indi-cating some of the insights and problems which they generate. Ithen take up the question of whether social action can be explainedwithout reference to actors’ normative judgements regarding func-tional quality or use-value, aesthetic qualities, and moral-politicalissues. This leads on to the role of judgement in critical social science, and arguments about the inescapability of disinterestedjudgements regarding whether recognition is deserved or unde-served. It will be argued that Bourdieu’s use of the concept ofcapital requires but fails to provide a distinction between the use-value and exchange-value of practices. The concept of ‘interest’ anddisinterestedness also needs to be disambiguated if we are to under-stand the social influences on judgements and whether they com-promise their legitimacy. I conclude by indicating some widerimplications for critique in social theory.

Habitus

‘Habitus’ refers to deeply imprinted dispositions subconsciouslyacquired mainly from early social experience. These dispositions areattuned to the structure and divisions of the social field as experi-enced by the individual, and internalise and tacitly classify ideas,practices and objects within that field. The habitus disposes actorsto choose what is in any case available in their position relative toothers in the social field, and conversely to refuse what they arerefused.

For Bourdieu, most action lies between the extremes of externaldetermination and rational choice, having an unexamined, bodily,practical character, scarcely mediated let alone directed by reason.


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Given our habitus, we can’t help liking certain things and dislikingothers, and being oriented to objects and others in different parts ofthe social field in ways which reflect these subconsciously inter-nalised classifications. Thus, those whose lives have been dominatedby making ends meet and evaluating everything in terms of itsimmediate utility, tend to have a taste for what is necessary, for whatcan be seen to have a direct function. While realist art is acceptableto them, abstract art and abstraction in general, and the pursuit ofthings ‘for their own sake’, are impatiently rejected. By contrast,those who have led more leisured and economically secure lives, inwhich work is not directly related to satisfying immediate needs, aremore open to abstraction, and to doing things for their own sake.

The concept of habitus provides an important counter to over-rationalised views of behaviour and to academics’ unwitting projec-tion of their own contemplative viewpoint onto those they study. Italso offers a counter to symbolic interactionism and to more recentidealist views of dispositions as mere constructions of discourse(‘subjectivism without a subject’), having only an arbitrary relationto the material world. Hence, Bourdieu’s approach has beendescribed as ‘perspectivally-enhanced realism’ (Fowler, 1996).

Strategized action

A major problem of the concept of habitus is how it can be recon-ciled with Bourdieu’s overwhelmingly instrumental characterisationof action and taste, according to which actions, including thosewhich appear to be disinterested, are argued to be related to strate-gies, albeit unconscious ones, which affect actors’ ‘capital’. AsAlexander (1995) points out, ‘strategy’ implies intentionality andhence the concept of ‘unconscious strategy’ is an oxymoron.Bourdieu does not deny that people choose, but asserts that theirhabitus heavily circumscribes their choices. Apparently ‘disinter-ested’ tastes and judgements are argued to derive from a particularkind of habitus, especially that of the educated branch of the domi-nant classes, whose habituation to a life removed from material pro-duction resonates with a taste for the formal, abstract orsuperfluous. Indeed, as he repeatedly shows, so strong is this associ-ation that expressions of disinterested taste have the effect of affirm-ing the subject’s dominant position in the social field.

Despite the emphasis on the practical, unconscious, embodiednature of action, including strategies, it is tempting to ignore these

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qualifications, for Bourdieu regularly uses terms implying intention-ality and rational consideration, particularly ‘calculation’. As weshall see, in consequence, having rejected rational choice explana-tions and emphasized habitus, the repeated references to strategyand calculation ironically lead to accounts not unlike those of ratio-nal choice theorists (Calhoun, 1995).1

My concern is not whether Bourdieu can square the circle andreconcile habitus and strategy – on this see Alexander – but with thefact that the nearest he comes to acknowledging intentionality, rea-son and reflexivity is in the form of instrumental action. It is hardnot be struck by the zeal with which Bourdieu denies that certainactions are disinterested, that things can be valued for their ownsake rather than as means which (unconsciously?) bring the actorsome kind of advantage or at least defend their position in thesocial field. Altruism is therefore disguised egoism. In this respect,Bourdieu’s radicalism, often assumed to be Marxist-influenced,joins up round the back with public choice theory – commonlyassociated with the Right – and which is similarly resistant to ideasof altruism and disinterested action (Downs, 1957; Udehn, 1996).There is a double irony here – in terms of both the politics associ-ated with these positions and Bourdieu’s opposition to rationalchoice explanations.2 They further resemble each other in implyinga Hobbesian, Mandevillian social order.

An economic view of culture

One of the striking features of Bourdieu’s work is that in the midstof the cultural turn and the associated decline of interest in politicaleconomy, it presents an economic view of culture, one which appliesconcepts of exchange, circulation, price, capital, profit and the liketo areas of life beyond the domain of conventional economics – inparticular to the circulation and valuation of symbolic phenomena.3

A consequence of Bourdieu’s rejection of claims that certain actionscan be disinterested rather than (subconsciously) instrumental isthat the dynamics of the social field are therefore characterised asan amoral economy. I shall argue that this weakens his work both asan explanation of social action and as critique.

Apparently disinterested actions such as socializing, learning,expressing tastes, acting honourably, are treated as ways in whichsocial, educational, cultural and symbolic capital are accumulated.Like funds of goodwill, albeit not necessarily deriving from services



provided to others, these forms of capital bring their possessors vari-ous forms of advantage. They have exchange-value, though the ratesof exchange between the various forms of capital are always con-tested through the struggles of the social field. They can yield profits,and generate ‘soft forms of domination’. Thus cultural capital can besignalled not only by formal representations such as an arts degree,but by subtle indications of social location – a certain bearing andsocial ease, an assured, unpressured command of appropriate cul-tural goods – which bring the holder advantages, whether intendedor not. Actors can enhance their social capital by developing net-works of contacts which are useful both practically and in terms ofreputation. They may be able to transform these forms of capitalinto others, including standard monetary capital. The soft forms ofdomination are always context-dependent, according to the positionof the holders relative to others in the social field. Likewise what hasvalue in one social circuit need not in another. The pursuit of vari-ous forms of capital and the struggles over their value are held topervade not only the culture of modern societies but everyday life inpre-capitalist societies too, as indicated in Bourdieu’s studies of theKabyle (Bourdieu, 1977; Calhoun, 1995).

Bourdieu’s economic view of culture obviously complements hisstrategization or instrumentalisation of action. Economic action inthe normal sense is instrumental; though not necessarily done tobring actors advantage over others, it is essentially a means to theend of living well. However, culture – at least in part – is different.Culture concerns meanings and representations, and hence musthave, at the moment of understanding, a dialogical character (Lashand Urry, 1994), involving, in Habermas’s terms, practical ratherthan instrumental reason. Given Bourdieu’s emphasis on the bodily,practical and subconscious character of much of social action, hemight have doubts about the level of understanding which a ‘dialog-ical’ relation might suggest, but to resist it entirely is to suggest acrude behaviourism.4 Culture is widely instrumentalised but invirtue of its dialogical character, it always also includes a non-instrumental dimension too. The danger of an economic analysis ofculture is that it exaggerates its instrumental aspects.

Bourdieu’s sophisticated materialism and his critiques of domina-tion may appeal to the Left, but his view of economy is closer tothat of neoclassical economics, commonly associated with theRight. While he describes his project as dealing with the productionand circulation of cultural goods, it is overwhelmingly concernedwith exchange and exchange-value. Like neoclassical economics, it

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assumes an egotistical (albeit subconsciously egotistical) model ofindividuals and emphatically resists acknowledging non-instrumen-tal action. Furthermore, Bourdieu’s version of the concept ofcapital elides the distinction between use-value and exchange-value.Objects or practices have use-value insofar as they are judged tohave particular useful qualities in themselves, such as the nutritiousand tasty quality of food or the insights of Bourdieu’s books. Theirexchange-value, by contrast is a quantitative matter of how muchthey can be exchanged for money or for other use-values, or – interms of Bourdieu’s concepts of non-monetary capital – how muchstatus or prestige they bring their holders. As we shall see, this is acrucial distinction not only for understanding any economy, but forunderstanding the struggles of the social field.

Bourdieu strenuously resists the many accusations of economismwhich his work has attracted, insisting that his reduction of behaviourto instrumental action is ‘deliberate and provisional’ (Bourdieu andWacquant, 1992: 116, see also Thompson, 1991: 15–17), and he spe-cifically criticises the neoclassical economists, ‘whose homo economi-cus is simply a universalization of homo capitalisticus’ (1993a: 18).Nevertheless, he invites the criticism since his empirical analyses donot tell us what aspects of behaviour are not so reducible, that is, what,in everyday practice, lies beyond interest and instrumental action.This, of course, is in keeping with his reluctance to concede that layactors’ behaviour may be even partly based on disinterested judge-ments. As Alexander notes, for Bourdieu, ‘even the most traditionalpeasant plays the game of life like the stock market’ (Alexander, 1995:150).5 Ironically, economic imperialism is not restricted to publicchoice theory and the like but is to be found in Bourdieu’s sociology.

These features of Bourdieu’s work – habitus, strategized action,and the economic view of culture – combine to produce a view ofaction as instrumental, egotistical, and amoral, in which actorseither don’t make judgements or only make them in a way which isself-interested, at least in the sense of complying with their habitus.I shall now argue that this creates problems firstly with regard to theadequacy of his explanations and secondly in terms of the implica-tions of his critique of social practice.

Judgement and explanation

The fallacy of sociological reductionism lies in the belief that once one has situated ideas and beliefs in their social context,



demonstrated their social coordinates and uses, this exhausts theircontent. Although Bourdieu is aware of the fallacy, as is evident inhis criticism of those who dismiss feminism by describing it as ‘mid-dle class’ (1993a: 2), and in his rejection of a reductionist view of hisown work (1990a: 23–4), his sociological method is overwhelminglyreductionist. This weakens his analyses, for the content and ade-quacy of the ideas, etc., make a difference to social action. In partic-ular Bourdieu tends to discount actors’ own normative judgementsin explaining what they do. I shall now attempt to demonstrate theuntenability of this position by reference to judgements of use-value, aesthetics, and moral-political issues.

Judgements of use-value

How is it that certain objects can function as signifiers of distinc-tion, bringing their holders envy, admiration, symbolic profit? ForBourdieu, we prefer objects which fit with our habitus. AlthoughBourdieu demonstrates how particular characteristics of an objector practice resonate with a particular kind of habitus so that thosepeople tend to want and feel comfortable with it, he excludes evalu-ations of quality or use-value from his explanation of preferencesand actions. This abstraction from the question of whether particu-lar objects and practices are good or bad is problematic. I may buya BMW to show I have arrived (or because it fits my habitus), but itwon’t function as an object of envy unless others can be convincedthat it is worthy of envy. If BMWs were unreliable and awful todrive they would not bring their owners any distinction. In otherwords, BMWs wouldn’t have the exchange-value they have – ineither the sense of price or distinction – if they didn’t also have ahigh use-value. The rich are not fools for preferring big, well-heatedhouses to damp shacks, and the poor are not fools for envyingthem. Of course it is possible that the status of poor quality goodsand practices may be ‘talked up’ or gain added exchange-value bytheir association with a dominant group; and sometimes, asBourdieu emphasizes, it is possible for a lack of apparent utility tobecome stakes in these struggles and indeed for this to be a markerof distinction – superfluity signifying superiority, the absence of thepressure of necessity. In such cases, rival and subordinate groupsmay attempt to deflate others’ capital by exposing the spuriousnature of their investments’ assumed quality, showing that theirexchange-value bears no relation to their use-value. Therefore wecannot explain how struggles for distinction work out without

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acknowledging the role of judgements of intrinsic quality or use-value. Struggles over distinction are also contestations of the intrin-sic worth of objects and practices, and the fact that that worth iscontested does not make it simply arbitrary.

Researchers who wish to remain neutral may be tempted to sup-press such interpretations and to ignore valuation of use-values ortreat it as arbitrary, while making judgements in their own lives andproviding justifications for them which they can hardly pretend notto believe. In other words, attempting to relativise or derationalisesuch judgements inevitably involves a theory-practice contradiction.

A rare instance where Bourdieu does distinguish something likeuse-value from distinction or exchange-value is to be found in hisanalyses of the comments of tutors on students’ work in The StateNobility (1996). This is primarily concerned with how tutors’ sup-posedly disinterested judgements are actually biased by class, inother words with how students’ competence is unequally recognisedaccording to class. However, the competence itself is also likely to beunequally distributed across the student population, irrespective ofits recognition by tutors.6 If we are to assess the extent of theunequal recognition of competence we need to assess the unequaldistribution of competence itself. Although, as Bourdieu points out,competence is itself socially defined in ways that are influenced byclass, he does not take a sociologically reductionist position on this:it takes more than an act of labelling to make individuals able orunable to do specific tasks. Consequently, if we are to understandthe inequalities at the level of symbolic power in terms of unequalrecognition or misrecognition, we need to assess what is beingrecognised or misrecognised.

Aesthetic judgements

As Bourdieu demonstrates, aesthetic tastes vary according to habitus,so that, for example, art dealers tend to like opera whereas car dealersgenerally do not. But habitus only partly determines their tastes, forwithin any genre attuned to a particular habitus, judgements are madeof quality which are not reducible to sociological influences. Thus acertain kind of people may favour opera, but they would prefer tohear it sung by Pavarotti rather than me, not because of any differencein our social positions, but because my voice is inferior to his7 (seealso Frith, 1989). Such judgements may worry sociologists when onduty, but as with judgements of utility and moral behaviour, when offduty they make them no less keenly than anyone else.



Moral judgements

References to moral sentiments, values and judgements are conspic-uous by their rarity in Bourdieu’s work. What little he does say sug-gests that moral sentiments and judgements depend only on thehabitus of the actor and its relation to the social field, or are merelya front for strategizing. Apparently, people do not abstract fromand go beyond these limits. Bourdieu’s reluctance to acknowledgemorally-guided behaviour is evident in a recent article on families inwhich he describes them as ‘a site where people refuse to calculateand the pursuit of equivalence in exchanges is suspended’ (1996:22). In a similar fashion to neoclassical economics and publicchoice theory, calculation, instrumental action and exchange areseen as the norm, and are used to explain what is present even whenthey are absent. While he refers to the numerous acts of kindnessthat occur in families their relation to moral sentiments is left with-out comment.

Of course, this evasion of morality is common enough in contem-porary sociology. Sometimes it appears to result from a slippagebetween the descriptive and evaluative uses of the term ‘moral’. Toacknowledge the moral character of beliefs and practices is not nec-essarily to give them our approval, indeed we may judge them asimmoral. Nor need morality be associated with conservativism andthe Right; there is plenty of radical moral reasoning around, even ifit doesn’t describe itself as moral (Sevenhuijsen, 1998). Anothercommon fear is that acknowledging moral action might involveignoring instrumental action, domination, and in some cases,including that of families, violence. However it is possible for all ofthese to co-exist, indeed they can be interdependent. Some forms ofdomination depend on moral commitments by taking advantage ofthem. To be ‘left holding the baby’ is an expression of disempower-ment resulting from someone else refusing their moral obligations.If we had no moral commitment to the baby’s welfare then we couldnot be dominated by such means. This shows that we cannotexplain certain kinds of behaviour without acknowledging the nor-mative force of moral norms and sentiments.

A sociologically-reductionist view of moral actions reduces themmerely to ‘what we do round here’, to arbitrary norms backed up bysanctions, thereby rejecting the possibility that they might have anyinternal normative force grounded in what is good or bad for us andothers. On this view, racism and anti-racism would just be arbitraryconventions, which some might feel committed to but neither of

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which had any justification beyond custom. Such a view can only besustained through theory-practice contradictions; sociologists whoprofess it cannot apply it to their own lives and are as upset as any-one else when unjustly treated, and they do not treat such behaviouras beyond the scope of justifiable criticism.

There is also a common cynical response to invocations ofmorally-guided action, according to which they are merely camou-flaged self-interested acts intended to bring the actor some advan-tage, perhaps we could say ‘moral capital’. But it is important tobeware a kind of adolescent iconoclasm here, according to whichthe more audaciously cynical an account of social life is, the betteror more true it must be. Of course scepticism is required in socialresearch, but this is not the same as cynicism and we can and shouldbe sceptical about cynicism itself.8

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1757), Adam Smith attacksMandeville and others who treat moral conduct as nothing morethan egotistical action in disguise, so that moral acts are alwaysdone only in order to win praise and prestige. Smith argues that thediagnostic feature of moral commitments is that at the limit they areheld regardless of whether the actor receives praise, indeed even inthe face of disapprobation. Of course, it is possible for people to gothrough the motions of acting morally merely to win recognition,but what distinguishes moral action is that it is done even if it bringsus disadvantage. Therefore moral deliberation and action cannot bereduced to instrumental action.

Bourdieu is undoubtedly right to warn against an over-rationalised view of action, and to emphasize how much of whatpeople do is not subject to conscious deliberation, but moral evalu-ation is nevertheless a common feature of everyday life. People fre-quently evaluate each other and themselves on moral grounds in amanner similar to the mutual and self-monitoring described bySmith (Smith, 1759). They also often have to confront moral dilem-mas; for example, school teachers regularly face the dilemma ofdeciding how to respond to disruptive pupils who are known to behaving an intolerable home life and thus might be excused theirbehaviour, when the interests of the other pupils whose work isinterrupted have to be taken into account too.

Morality cannot be sociologized out of existence by treating it asa mere effect of the habitus. As Alexander puts it:

Values possess relative independence vis-à-vis social structuresbecause ideals are immanently universalistic. This is so . . .



because they have an inherent tendency to become matters ofprinciple that demand to be generalized. (1995: 137)

Alexander proceeds to cite research in developmental psychology,which with ‘the signal and revealing exception of behaviourism’supports the acquisition of this process of generalization. Therecognition of a different form of morality involving concrete othersis not incompatible with this – moral action concerns both concreteand generalized others (see Benhabib, 1992, chapters 5 and 6;Sevenhuijsen, 1998).

Affecting agnosticism regarding moral issues leads to theory-practice contradictions, for it involves denying what most of ouractions presuppose.

Moral judgment is what we ‘always already’ exercise in virtue ofbeing immersed in a network of human relationships that constituteour life together. . . . The domain of the moral is so deeplyenmeshed with those interactions that constitute our lifeworldthat to withdraw from moral judgment is tantamount to ceasingto interact, to talk and act in the human community. (Benhabib,1992: 125–6, emphasis in original)

In describing the actions of others, then, it is important to remem-ber that ‘From the perspective of first persons, what we consider jus-tified is not a function of custom but a question of justification orgrounding’ [even if it turns out to be a mistaken justification](Habermas, 1990: 19).9

So far I have argued that we can’t explain social action if, likeBourdieu, we sociologize out of existence normative judgementsand their warrants, be they about use-value, aesthetics or morality. Inow turn to the second problematic dimension of Bourdieu’s sup-pression of normativity, which concerns not just explanation butcritique.

Judgement and critique

The critical character of Bourdieu’s work is evident in his use ofterms like ‘domination’, in prefatory remarks to his critiques ofpractice (eg Bourdieu, Passeron and de Saint Martin, 1994: 3), inthe tone of his analyses of social practice, and in responses to inter-views (Bourdieu, 1993; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). It is unusu-

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ally explicit in a recent political article in New Left Review in whichhe attacks economic fatalism and advocates ‘rational utopianism’ –a view which clearly implies the possibility of disinterested action(Bourdieu, 1998). As Wacquant argues, Bourdieu does not believereason is ‘an illusionist trick fuelled by the will to power’(Wacquant, 1996: xix). While he sees the development of reason ashaving specific historical social preconditions, he clearly wants topromote it by extending those currently restricted preconditions tothose presently denied them (Bourdieu, 1990c). The force of muchof his work derives from his exposures of what most readers wouldtake to be normally hidden, ‘soft’ kinds of injustice, such as classbiases in tutors’ evaluations of students’ work (Bourdieu, 1996).

Any critique presupposes a critical standpoint which embodies anormative position from which practices are judged; for example todescribe a practice as a form of ‘domination’ is to imply a negativejudgement which requires justification (Sayer, 1997). Yet with theglaring exception of scientific methodology, on which he is highlyjudgemental, Bourdieu is suspicious of normative argument insocial science, explicitly warning against its dangers:

When, as their education and their specific interests incline them,researchers try to set themselves up as judges of all judgementsand as critics of all criteria, they prevent themselves from grasp-ing the specific logic of a struggle in which the social force ofrepresentations is not necessarily proportional to their truth-value . . . (1991: 226)

Note that strictly speaking this doesn’t rule out the researcher mak-ing some judgements of judgements, and the qualification ‘not nec-essarily’ of course implies that the force of social representationscan, on occasion, indeed be proportional to their truth value. Toassert that actors’ judgements and representations do not have truthvalue is itself a judgement of judgements, and it is characteristic ofBourdieu to reserve his judgements of actors’ judgements for denialsof their assumed disinterested status and truth value. But there is noreason to suppose that actors’ judgements are always forms of mis-recognition. Thus the cynicism of many academics about whetherhigh status positions in academia, such as Dean or pro-viceChancellor, are worth having, might indeed be just a rationalisationof their failure to achieve them, but they might also be reasonable injudging the rewards to be not worth the extra work and responsibil-ities. If this is so, then an adequate explanation would need to avoid



denying this. Again, cynicism itself should not be spared from scep-tical scrutiny.

Actors’ accounts face researchers’ accounts as both object ofstudy and rivals. In order to decide on what is an adequate accountof a situation researchers need both to note the constitutive role ofactors’ beliefs in their practice and to decide whether they ade-quately describe and explain what is going on. This is why so muchsocial science is necessarily at least implicitly critical of the beliefsand practices it studies. But it is as important to know where wethink actors’ judgements (such as tutors’ judgements on students)seem to be correct as it is to know where they involve ‘misrecogni-tion’. Again, if we are to identify misrecognition we need to saywhat correct recognition would involve.

Since Bourdieu does not elaborate his critical standpoint, heevades the normative questions which his analyses beg; for example,what is unfair about evaluating students’ essays according to theirclass, gender or race, etc., and what would be a fair way of doing it?(Bourdieu, 1996). Not surprisingly, it’s not at all clear what thenature of his critique is.10 To be sure, Distinction is subtitled ‘a socialcritique of the judgement of taste’ – one which shows that what arewidely assumed to be ‘disinterested’ judgements of taste are actuallyrelated to habitus and the struggles of the social field. Much of hiswork therefore involves ‘unmasking’ – showing that what appears tobe one thing is actually something else. As such, it stands as a cri-tique of an illusion, a mistaken way of thinking. Insofar as this illu-sion is operative in society, his work is critical not merely of certainacademic accounts but of lay thought and practice itself. But whatexactly is the illusion here? Is it (1) that there can be no such thingas disinterested judgement, that all judgements are actually forms ofsocial distinction? Or is it (2) that disinterested judgements are pos-sible (albeit difficult) but often get distorted by habitus and thestruggles of the social field, and that those struggles can be maskedbehind apparently disinterested judgements?

The first interpretation fits comfortably with the postmodern rela-tivist belief that all claims to universals merely mask a local self-interest, and that epistemological authority is wholly reducible tosocial authority. If this is the case, then the implications of unmask-ing are strictly limited, and the critique becomes ambiguous andself-subverting. How can Bourdieu or any other critic escape thecharge of interested judgement? If the way a tutor marks a student’sessay can only be a function of unconscious class, gender or otherdistinctions alone, and these influences could never be escaped, then

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why complain about the inescapable? Unmasking as critique canonly work where it exposes distortion or suppression of somethingwhich could be realized and which is better than what currentlyexists. If everything can only be camouflaged power and interestbeyond justification, then there is nothing to criticise.11 Moreover, ifwe are as reluctant as Bourdieu to acknowledge actors’ capacity toreason critically, then there is nothing in lay practice for any norma-tive argument to work on, no existing critical impulses to develop.12

A possible response to my argument here might be that it’s basedon the mistake of taking Bourdieu’s exaggerations at face value,instead of treating them as attempts to ‘bend the stick’, as he puts it(Bourdieu, 1990a: 106). When he says ‘x is nothing but y’, weshould read this as ‘x is partly y’. This may be right, but he oftenresponds to the charge of exaggeration by reinforcing the exaggera-tion. Thus, in response to the argument that it is possible for teach-ers to become aware of the social influences such as those of classon judgements of students’ performance and thereby counteractthem, Bourdieu tells us that it is precisely those who imagine them-selves to have escaped such influences who are most in their thrall.Yet if there is no escaping the field of social gravity, no possibility ofdisinterested judgement, what is the social critique of, say, educa-tional judgements, directed at? Showing that actors’ (and social sci-entists’) beliefs have particular social coordinates or associationsmay be critical in the sense of correcting a common misconception,but this neither ratifies nor condemns the beliefs and still leavesopen the question of whether any injustice is involved.

At best, there is only a limited acknowledgement in Bourdieu’swork of the possibility of the second kind of critique, when he arguesthat though difficult, it is possible, given appropriate kinds of reflex-ivity, for social scientists to identify and neutralise the effects of theirhabitus. Yet if few social scientists achieve this, how much more diffi-cult, one presumes, it must be for lay actors to do the same?Moreover it should be noted that this is a negative exercise in remov-ing sources of distortion, without any complementary normative dis-cussion of how critical judgements might be made in the absence ofthis distortion. Thus Bourdieu says in interview that he wants actorsto become aware of the soft forms of domination to which they aresubject, so that they can ‘speak with their own voice’ (Bourdieu,1993; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), but there is no indication ofwhat this might involve, whether it would amount to a suspension ofthe influence of habitus, a shift towards disinterested judgements, orwhat such judgements would be like. This of course also presupposes



that they have the potential to reflect critically on their situation,including their habitus – a possibility which Bourdieu is reluctant toconcede in explaining existing practice. If we want a critique thatdoes not merely subvert its own rationale through sociologicalreductionism, we need both to recognise that sociological determina-tion is limited and contingent rather than exhaustive and that thereare normative grounds for acting differently (Garnham, 1993).

An example of a critique which takes this second line and whichdoes acknowledge and defend its normative standpoint regarding asubject close to that of distinction – recognition and the judgementsinvolved in it – is again to be found in Smith’s Theory of MoralSentiments. In a widely cited passage, Smith discusses the ways inwhich moral sentiments can get distorted by inequalities:

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich andthe powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect, persons ofpoor and mean condition, . . . is . . . the great and most universalcause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. (Smith, 1759)13

The critical intent is clear in Smith because the normative stand-point is acknowledged and elaborated in his work, and he refers tosomething which he argues is good which is being distorted andrepressed.14 By contrast, in Bourdieu’s work it is hard to see whatthere is that could be distorted and repressed.

We now know that there are other important sources of distor-tions of moral sentiments and judgements besides those of inequal-ity and wealth. They concern gender, race, age, sexuality, culturaldifference, style, beauty and ugliness, all of which are associatedwith double standards and undeserved kinds of recognition; what isacceptable in a man is unacceptable in a woman, what the beautifulcan get away with the plain cannot, and so on.15 To speak of ‘unde-served recognition’ may seem unacceptably judgemental for socialscience, but while the term is not generally used explicitly therein,identifying and critically explaining instances of such recognition iscommon enough in critical social science: the recognition given bytutors to students from the right background is not merely a socialinfluence but an illegitimate one.

Judgement always involves a choice between better and worse,and yet hierarchical judgements, such as that between high and lowor popular culture, are increasingly regarded with suspicion in soci-ology. A good reason for this is that they often are little more thanmasks for arbitrary social distinctions. However, we need to distin-

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guish criticism of particular hierarchies from criticism of hierarchyin general. The latter corresponds to our first interpretation ofunmasking in that it undermines all judgement. The former is com-patible with our second kind of interpretation of unmasking, asrevealing the way in which disinterested judgements are contin-gently overridden by habitus and social struggle, hence allowing thepossibility of resisting such influences. Opposing any and every hier-archy in principle implies that no practice (culture) is better orworse than any other, while criticising just particular hierarchiesallows that some things may indeed be better than others, but thatexisting hierarchies wrongly identify which are better and whichworse. Thus one could invert the high and low culture hierarchy orreorder it so that some but not all popular culture is ranked abovesome elite culture.

Which kind of critique of hierarchy does Bourdieu offer? HomoAcademicus (1990b) provides a social critique of academic hierar-chies of institutions, disciplines and qualifications. At one level it isdevastating in its exposure of social distinctions masquerading asdisinterested judgements – a ‘book for burning’, indeed. But whenthe unmasking is done, are we to conclude that all academic disci-plines and qualifications are on the same level, that none is in anysense better than any other? Or should we conclude that they areindeed unequal, though not in the ways which they are convention-ally understood to be so? Existing status hierarchies might be unjus-tifiable, but that does not mean that there might not be some otherhierarchy which would better reflect the relative merits of the insti-tutions, etc. Even if we take the view that disciplines as different asengineering and classics can’t be compared in terms of intrinsicmerit, it doesn’t rule out intra-disciplinary comparisons of, say, howone engineering degree rates against another.16 Again, whatevertheir methodological inhibitions, sociologists make such judgementsas willingly as anyone else.

If, on the other hand, the judgements are wholly reducible to dis-guises for struggles lacking any justification other than the partici-pants’ habitus and/or desire for power, then what is there to criticisebeyond the belief that things are otherwise? (Equally, if the differ-ences in prestige are all deserved, then obviously there is nothing tocriticise.) Again, it is only if there is a divergence from a situationwhich would be both possible and more justifiable, that there is any-thing to criticise. Some might like to affect a belief in the arbitraryand interested nature of all judgement, but in their own practice (egessay marking, arguing) they presuppose the possibility of making



justifiable distinctions between better and worse that are not merelyself-interested, and which do more than merely reflect their positionin the social field. Even in arguing for relativist positions they pre-suppose the possibility of distinguishing between more and less jus-tifiable beliefs.

We can further illuminate the unavoidability of normative judge-ment, including distinguishing between deserved and undeservedrecognition or distinction, by reference to Bourdieu’s concept ofcapital, and the goods and practices to which it corresponds. As heshows, the value of educational capital, like social, cultural, or anyother kind of capital, is contested, being valued differently accord-ing to the social position of the valuer. Bourdieu does, of course,acknowledge that distinction can be pursued consciously, throughbluff or pretension (1984: 253), but he is primarily concerned withthe unconscious production of distinction deriving from the habitus.Again, two kinds of critique might be implied, firstly one showingthat, though it is not generally noticed, cultural judgements andpractices can function as a form of capital, bringing their makersprofits, and secondly one questioning the legitimacy of such formsof distinction. His explicit critique is mainly concerned with thefirst, sociological dimension, but as readers we can hardly avoidconsidering the latter.

However, in order to go beyond mere unarticulated hints, the lat-ter kind of critique requires the concept of capital to be qualified.The use-value/exchange-value distinction as developed by Aristotle,and later Marx, is crucial here (Meikle, 1995). Marx insisted on dis-tinguishing capital from mere machines, materials or buildings. Thelatter have use-value, but only become capital when they areacquired in order to command the labour or tribute of others and toearn exchange-value.17 In equivalent fashion we should insist on thedifference between ‘investments’ – say in education – made for theirown sake (for example, learning German) and investments made inorder to enhance the holder’s social standing (educational capital).Of course, the use-value of education includes an instrumentaldimension – enabling one to communicate with people who speak adifferent language, or whatever – as well as a possible intrinsic inter-est, but this is different from instrumentalisation in order to gainsocial advantage vis-à-vis others. Further, the use-value/exchange-value distinction parallels Aristotle’s other distinction between‘economy’ (the production of goods for their immediate consump-tion, for their own sake) and ‘chrematistics’ (money-making); likechrematistics, the pursuit of distinction may contingently be depen-

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dent on the production and acquisition of goods and on specificactions and achievements, but these become mere means to theacquisition of an abstract, convertible form of social power.

In relation to all Bourdieu’s forms of capital – cultural, educa-tional, linguistic, social and symbolic – the distinction betweenthem and the practices or goods to which they relate is vital forboth explanation and critique. Getting an education, enjoyingmusic, making friends may contingently give one educational, cul-tural and social capital, but to treat the former as the same as thelatter – even where the latter arise unintentionally from the former –is a disastrous category mistake.

Another important difference between capital and the goods oractivities to which it relates is that capital is a positional good, thatis one whose value is depleted the greater the number of people whocome to have it (O’Neill, 1997), whereas the same is not necessarilytrue of the activities to which capital relates. Thus, educationalqualifications – as educational capital – are devalued as more peoplecome to get them, though the value of their education is not neces-sarily devalued too. A particular maths lesson has a certain qualityno matter how many other maths lessons of the same kind aregiven. A further important difference is that while the use-values ofdifferent kinds of activity – such as art history and engineering – areincommensurable, the exchange-values of the corresponding formsof capital – of art historians and engineers – are effectively treatedas commensurable.

Although Bourdieu is primarily interested in the unintended pro-duction of effects of distinction, the relations between motives andeffects, whether intended or unintended, are important from bothexplanatory and critical points of view. Consider the possible rela-tions between (A) activities and their use-values, (B) their exchange-value (if any) as capital, and (C) their effects. It is contingentwhether A brings B. A can be pursued without regard for B. B canbe sought after and indeed be the motive for A, or it can be anunintended consequence of A, or it may even be achieved indepen-dently of A through bluff or accident. Thus, one student might gaina first class degree because they may be deeply interested in theirsubject, though not in any advantages it may bring them, andanother might get a first through being motivated by the socialadvantages they hope it will bring. Of course, the first student maygain these advantages inadvertently too, and indeed may even gainextra status in certain circles for being uninterested in the exchange-value of their capital. Further, no matter how B arises, whether it is



deserved or undeserved, sought after or not, it can be used for goodor ill effects (C). For example, Diana Princess of Wales had threeundeserved sources of recognition or capital – beauty, wealth androyal connections – but she used these as a lever to do good works,where others with similar capital have failed to do so.

That the relation between the use-value of an activity and theexchange-value of the corresponding form of capital is contingent isof vital importance. In general we may tend to assume thatexchange-value is or should be a reasonable measure of differentuse-values, but (not surprisingly in view of the interests at stake)exchange-value can also vary independently of use-value. There is,for example, no necessary connection between the splendour andsuperfluity of the Oxbridge college and the quality of the educationthat goes on within it, though the inmates might like to believe thatthey deserve their privileges, that the high exchange-value of theireducational capital is a reflection of the quality of their educationand their own ability. The assumed or claimed qualities used todefend the value of the educational capital may even be a sham, asin the case of the Oxbridge MA. (Students who have an OxbridgeBA can get an MA just by waiting a certain number of years andpaying a fee! – that some people make excuses for this bogus degreeis a reflection of the cultural privilege enjoyed by Oxbridge.) Theexchange-value of an Oxbridge MA as educational capital is unde-served for it lacks any corresponding process of education. Its mar-ket value depends on the success of the illusion that Oxbridge MAstudents have done something more than a BA, and on the associ-ated exchange-value (prestige) of the symbolic and cultural capitalof Oxbridge, which serve as collateral, so to speak. If we failed tonote the illusory character of the recognition we would misdescribethe situation. In other words, in failing to be critical we would fail toexplain.

The contestation of use-value also differs in kind from that ofexchange-value: whereas the prime consideration in the latter con-test is instrumental – whatever will fetch the best ‘price’ – the con-test regarding the quality of the goods is by reference to the internalgoods of the relevant practice. Imagine we are evaluating a coursetaught by Pierre Bourdieu. Our judgements might be products ofour position in the social field relative to Bourdieu’s, we might beinfluenced by his gender, race, age, class, bearing and appearance,by the surroundings. All of these things might influence his educa-tional capital and that of the students who have been taught by him.Of course, one would hope that our judgements were based instead

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on the quality of the education itself, his insights, the rigour of hisarguments, his success in communicating his ideas, etc. These quali-ties might also influence the status and prestige of the course as edu-cational capital, but if it’s a good course, then it is so regardless ofwhether it brings him or his students any such exchange-valuerewards.

Similarly, arguments within practices about what is good or wor-thy of recognition are not reducible to bids for distinction, meremeans to the ends of inflating the value of one’s capital. Thus thepoint of arguments regarding the worth of various practices withinsocial science – for example, those made by Bourdieu aboutmethodology – is not to inflate the value of the contributor’s capital(though a motive for making the arguments might be), but toimprove the practice of social science.18

Thus, a critical analysis of educational capital cannot evadejudgements of the use-value or intrinsic quality of the educationwith which it is associated. In other words it cannot evade distin-guishing between deserved and undeserved recognition or misrecog-nition. Nevertheless, any attempt to make such a distinction is likelyto invite suspicion that one is trying to establish an authoritative,indeed authoritarian, basis for judgement, an absolute set of values.However, I fully accept that judgements of (use-) value are con-testable. But this does not mean either that all claims to recognitionare of equal merit, or that there must always be some ulteriormotive behind the judgements and contestations such that criticaldistinctions can never be rationally justified.

To treat exchange-value as a measure of or substitute for use-value is to imply that recognition is purely a subjective, emotivematter having no justification in what those who are recognised do(the ‘boo-hooray theory of value’); the famous can only be famousfor being famous, not for doing anything worthy of fame, and thegood is whatever happens to be praised. In Oscar Wilde’s words, itamounts to knowing the price of everything but the value of noth-ing. In terms of use-value we try to evaluate practices in terms ofwhat is done, whereas the exchange-value of capital can be influ-enced by irrelevant associations. Bourdieu’s reluctance to acknow-ledge disinterested judgement restricts him to exchange-value, buthis apparent critical intentions imply the need for references to useor intrinsic value. In refusing this, he weakens his own critique.Moreover, in view of Bourdieu’s enthusiasm for market economyconcepts, we might note how this is complicit with the tendencynoted by Rousseau, Smith and Marx, for identity in commercial



society to become a matter of appearance which is divorced fromthe qualities a person actually has, a complicity shared by postmod-ernism (O’Neill, 1998).

However, there is a possible way of reconciling or partly reconcil-ing Bourdieu’s sociological explanation of judgement via habituswith the position being advanced here. One criticism of my positionmight be that it implies a rather Kantian view of values, one whichignores their originating social contexts. Now although judgementsof what is good might indeed appeal to principles, such as Kant’scategorical imperative, they can also appeal19 to the way we are, toour being. In other words one can argue that certain things aregood or bad in terms of whether they are good or bad for beingslike us, beings having certain qualities. Such arguments usuallyinvoke a common human nature at some basic level, but they don’thave to do so exclusively. While we might appeal to some features ofthe human condition as indeed universal, such as our need for foodand sociality, the ways in which those needs can be met are stronglyculturally mediated, as Bourdieu’s discussion of the taste for foodand the manner in which it is eaten show (Bourdieu, 1984).Moreover, there are values which are largely the product of particu-lar habituses. If we find ourselves in situations which do not fit withour habitus, then we are likely to feel discomfort, out of place. Inother words, we could possibly argue that what was good was to bejustified in terms of our habitus – not just the particular kind ofbeings we are as humans, but as humans having a particular sociali-sation and hence set of dispositions and abilities.20 However, thisbegs the question of whether a particular habitus is desirable in thefirst place. For example, the habitus of the dominated, which givesrise to deferential, self-abnegating, compliant behaviour, is morelikely to be one that we would want to change than accommodateto. Hence critical social science, such as feminist theory, often findsitself at odds with the habitus of those it wishes to defend, wantingto change their dispositions. We don’t have to assume that all habi-tuses are of equal value.

One of the main problems in interpreting Bourdieu concernswhat is meant by ‘disinterested’ (and interested) judgement, andwhat to make of his suspicion of claims to disinterested judgement.The common definition of disinterested as ‘not influenced or biasedby self-interest’ could mean either ‘not influenced by habitus’, or‘not influenced by the pursuit of advantages, such as status, prestige,distinction’. My judgements of a work of art, or of Bourdieu’sbooks, might be influenced by my habitus, but that does not mean

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that those judgements are thereby (sub)consciously influenced bystrategies of distinction, though they might have the unintendedconsequence of affecting my prestige. If I like something because ofmy habitus, I can scarcely help liking it, regardless of whether itbrings me advantages relative to others. Insofar as Bourdieu defineshabitus in terms of an internalisation of the divisions of the socialfield, and insofar as he is concerned with the unconscious reproduc-tion of distinction, the concepts of habitus and unconscious strate-gies are presumably intended to tie the two senses of interesttogether; dispositions do not exist in a vacuum but are dispositionstowards others (people, practices and things) associated with differ-ent parts of the social field. Thus, the dispositions and demeanourof the bourgeois include condescension towards the petit-bourgeoisand working class, which has the effect of reinforcing the former’sdominance. Tying the two kinds of ‘interest’ together makes senseup to a point; for example, the lowly tend to choose what is chosenfor them and make a virtue out of necessity because they have sub-consciously learnt what works, given their position, and hence havedeveloped a ‘feel for the game’. Other things being equal, in com-parison to other possible courses of action, this behaviour bringsthem an advantage.

However, while it is important to note that a fusion of the twokinds of ‘interest’ is possible, they can also be distinct and should berecognised as such; to make a judgement in accordance with yourhabitus is not necessarily to seek some kind of advantage overothers, and the possibility that the latter may happen unintention-ally does not alter this. Moreover, the two kinds of interest are likelyto be judged very differently. A consciously instrumental interest islikely to be thought of less favourably, unless distinction is soughtthrough the pursuit of internal goods such as excellence in sport.21

Finally, to pre-empt one last objection to this critique of sociolo-gical reductionism, Bourdieu’s position regarding the issues I haveaddressed might simply be defended in disciplinary terms; viz., thatit is only appropriate for sociologists to restrict themselves toanalysing the social coordinates of judgements, taste, moral senti-ments, etc. Bourdieu is surprisingly attached to his discipline,defending sociology, arguing that like any other discipline it shouldpush its questions as far as possible so as to challenge others (1993:25). This of course is an argument for disciplinary imperialism,although in Bourdieu’s case he does it by appropriating an eco-nomic form of analysis. Fruitful though this undoubtedly is, it over-runs its limits. As we saw with the unavoidability of acknowledging



actors’ normative judgements for explanation of their actions, wehave to go beyond sociology as conventionally defined in order tounderstand its subjects. (Similarly we have to go beyond economicsto understand economies.) It is absurd to put the interests of a disci-pline before the need to follow processes and questions whereverthey lead.

Conclusion and further implications

I am aware that the wider implications of the arguments in thispaper regarding the role of normative judgement in social scienceare controversial. There is not space to pursue them here (but seeSayer, 1997), save to note that the principal source of resistance tothem is the highly questionable view that all matters of value liebeyond the scope of reason, a view which we contradict every timewe argue about moral-political values. ‘Bracketing out’ our valueswhen doing social science does not of course mean that we have novalues, but it creates a vacuum into which relativistic interpretationsare likely to rush. Bourdieu’s use of terms like ‘domination’ clearlyimplies criticism of injustice of some kind, but his avoidance of thequestion of whether and why distinction, recognition, or capital aredeserved or undeserved leaves us no ground for concluding thatanything is unjust. He is certainly not the only critical social scien-tist to leave the nature and basis of their critique largely at the levelof insinuation. The strategy offers an apparently safe coursebetween the twin pitfalls of making what appear to be absolutejudgements which are open to charges of authoritarianism or eth-nocentricism and related kinds of bias on the one hand, and uncriti-cal, conservative relativism on the other.22 However, critiques whichdo not make explicit their normative grounds generate explanatoryand critical lacunae, indeed reluctance to engage in normativejudgement and argument can inadvertently lead to uncritical socialscience. If we evade the question of whether distinction or recogni-tion is deserved, or hint that in certain cases that it is undeservedbut refuse to give any grounds for such judgements, then eitherthere is no ‘critique’ or its nature is unclear (Garnham, 1993).

Strictly speaking, Bourdieu’s brilliant analysis of the way inwhich lay and academic distinctions between reflection and sense,the transcendental and the empirical, the disinterested and theinstrumental, mask social distinctions is only critical in that itshows that those who don’t notice this are mistaken. To go beyond

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that to a critique of the judgements themselves we need an argu-ment regarding in what respects such valuations are wrong. YetBourdieu is at his most cryptic in discussing such normative judge-ments and his scattered remarks are overshadowed by his analyseswhich repeatedly demonstrate the strength and ubiquity of symbolicviolence and how easily emancipatory intentions are subverted byit. Others, however, have provided arguments for such normativejudgements: for example, feminists have re-valued the body, careand unpaid work, and socialists such as Raymond Williams have re-valued manual labour and working class culture. But Bourdieuavoids such normative reasoning. A reasonable response to his ‘cri-tique’, like that of Foucault, which also conceals any normativestandpoint, would therefore be ‘so what?, what’s the problem?’Insofar as we don’t respond to this, and find it, on the contrary, as Idid, critical, progressive and liberating, it is because we can scarcelyread his work without bringing the second kind of judgement to ourreadings. But then the critique is ours, not his, albeit one which hisanalysis of the hidden intricacies of soft forms of dominationgreatly enriches.

The conflation of social power and aesthetic, moral or epistemicauthority in everyday life is a major problem, but if we are to have acritical stance towards it we must both be aware of how commonthe conflation is, and use an approach which itself refuses to con-flate them. As, in their different ways, Tawney and Habermasargued, equality – ie the levelling of social power – may be neces-sary to counter soft forms of domination so that undistorted judge-ments of worth can be made (O’Neill, 1998).

These problems are reinforced by tendencies outside Bourdieu’swork. ‘Ethical disidentification’ in the double sense of reluctance toacknowledge actors’ reasoned normative judgements and to judgetheir behaviour – is common in postmodernism (Connor, 1993;Sayer, 1999). An uncritical stance towards recognition or distinctionis also evident in its deference towards difference, where groups’self-definitions and assessments are treated as authoritative.23

Associated with this is an increasing emphasis of aesthetic overmoral-political values. If cultural studies in particular are defined asthe study of the stylization of life (Bourdieu, 1984; Featherstone,1994), so that moral-political values are overlooked or reduced tomatters of style, then cultural studies are complicit in the aestheti-cization of moral-political values. Political values have a definitesociology, and may be associated with particular aesthetic tastes, tobe sure, but they are also evaluated – in lay as well as academic circles



– according to features which do not reduce wholly to those socialcontexts. Not all of these tendencies are shared by Bourdieu, butthey provide a tolerant reception for his sociological reductionism.

Given Bourdieu’s reliance on market economy concepts, it is notsurprising that he views social practice as arational and amoral, formarkets themselves are reason-blind and amoral (Sayer, 1995; Keat,1997; O’Neill, 1998). In their common relativism and subjectivism,postmodernist and neoliberal market rhetorics complement oneanother.24 On the first page of Sociology in Question, Bourdieu notesthat ‘Paradoxically, intellectuals have an interest in economism since,by reducing all social phenomena, and more especially the phenom-ena of exchange, to their economic dimension, it enables intellectualsto avoid putting themselves on the line’ (1993: 1). The bigger paradoxis that if one had read only Bourdieu’s empirical analyses and not histheoretical prescriptions or his rare political statements, one could beforgiven for thinking that this applies to Bourdieu himself.

University of Lancaster Received 2 March 1998Finally accepted 12 February 1999

Notes

1 ‘ . . . the motive force of social life is the pursuit of distinction, profit, power,wealth, etc. . . . despite his disclaimers, Bourdieu does share a good deal withGary Becker and other rational choice theorists’ (Calhoun, 1995: 141).

2 Insofar as some actions are based on something like rational choice, and involvethe kinds of motivation assumed in public choice theory, this is not necessarily aproblem. What is problematic is the assumption that all behaviour is of this kind.

3 Bourdieu indicates that he does not regard this formulation as merely metaphori-cal – for him, culture is economic (1993: 36).

4 As Alexander points out, one of the paradoxes of Bourdieu’s work is that whilethe concept of habitus and accounts of social research do not clearly acknow-ledge their hermeneutic dimension, his accounts of particular social phenomenashow him to be an outstandingly perceptive interpreter of meaning in practice.

5 However, in one respect, his work differs emphatically from neoclassical econom-ics, since instead of taking preferences as given, he explains them.

6 Strangely, Bourdieu does not discuss technical competence itself and its unequaldistribution until after a hundred pages of analysis of the inequalities in recogni-tion of competence (1996: 116).

7 It might still be possible to relate such aesthetic judgements to habitus, for what isgood and bad might be a function of resonances and dissonances between themusic and the body. In other words, this would be a modified naturalistic expla-nation of aesthetic taste.

8 Surprisingly for someone whose work involves a hermeneutics of suspicion,Bourdieu attacks such an approach as ‘politically obnoxious’ (1993: 32).

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9 For both Habermas and Aristotelians our basic moral intuitions stem from some-thing deeper and more universal than contingent features of our local tradition –in the case of Habermas from the normative presuppositions of social interactionin any society, for Aristotelians from our nature as social beings.

10 Foucault’s work involves a similar but more extreme form of ‘ethical disidentifica-tion’. The resulting normative confusion is particularly clearly exposed by Fraser(1989, chapter 1). See also Walzer in Hoy (1994).

11 Again, parallel, though more glaring contradictions subvert Foucault’s work(Fraser, 1989).

12 To be sure there is a danger of projecting the intellectual’s orientation onto otherswithout realising its specialised conditions of existence, but it is equally mislead-ing to assume that others never engage in something similar. There is a notableirony in Bourdieu’s article on ‘The scholastic point of view’ (1990c) in which he –the scourge of academic elitism – pins his hopes for an extension of reason on theexpansion of suitably restructured educational practices, ignoring the capacity forreason of lay people in other less privileged ‘publics’ (Fraser, 1997; Emirbayerand Sheller, 1998).

13 Those familiar with Smith will know that the omitted parts of this quotation areimportant for understanding Smith. However, delving into this would require asubstantial digression which does not affect my argument.

14 The influence of Smith’s social position and habitus are only too clear in TheTheory of Moral Sentiments, but this does not necessarily undermine all of hisobservations and judgements. How far it does is a matter of argument and evi-dence, not a priori dismissal through sociological reductionism.

15 Deciding what would be fair and justified judgements in the context of theseforms of difference is often not a matter of disregarding difference and attemptingto impose a single standard; thus the differences between the young and theelderly may not all be false ascriptions but may require judgements which takethem into account. In other words, the issue of deserved and undeserved recogni-tion takes us into the debate over equality and difference, explored particularly infeminism (eg Phillips, 1987).

16 This point is analogous to my earlier argument about judgements internal to gen-res such as those made of opera singers. Note also that even to argue that themerits of different disciplines are incommensurable is to imply criticism of thosewho compare and rank them in everyday life.

17 Ironically, Bourdieu does offer an explicitly Marxist definition of his forms ofcapital as ‘accumulated labour (in its materialized, or its “incorporated”, embod-ied form), which when appropriated on a private, ie exclusive, basis by agents orgroups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reifiedor living labour’ (1986: 241). However, he fails to take note of Marx’s connectionto the use-value/exchange-value distinction.

18 Adopting a sociological reductionist position and treating all methodologicalarguments as nothing more than attempts of academics to inflate the value oftheir capital involves a massive performative contradiction, for it would meanreasoning that reason is impossible and no more than disguised power play. To beconsistent, such a position could not be defended by argument, only by force oroffering bribes of some kind.

19 ‘Appeal’ is deliberately ambiguous here – ie the ‘appeal’ may be tacit and affectiveor explicit and rational.

20 Such a position is not relativist in the idealist sense of relative to just any system



of thought, regardless of its practical adequacy in referring to and guiding prac-tice in the material world. To say that ways of thinking are to some degree relativeto habitus, which is partly an internalisation or embodiment of material externalconditions, is quite unlike the idealist claim that they are relative to any discourse,cut off from material practice in the material world.

21 See O’Neill, 1998, chapter 8 for an excellent discussion of recognition.22 Relativism is conservative rather than radical because if anything goes, everything

stays (Krige, 1980).23 Those who fear that any other course of action would be ethnocentric might con-

sider applying it to, say, the Northern Ireland Orange Order and its claimed rightto intimidate catholic communities. As Marx said, we would not judge individu-als by reference to their opinion of themselves, and neither should we do so forgroups.

24 eg in Herrnstein Smith’s work, which Bourdieu endorses on the back cover, theconnection is explicit (Herrnstein Smith, 1988). For further examples of thealliance of postmodernism and market advocacy, see Latour and Woolgar, 1979and Wade Hands, 1994.

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Bourdieu, Smith and disinterested judgement