The Return of the Subject the Methodology of Pierre Bourdieu

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1996 22: 3Crit SociolRobin Griller

The Return of the Subject? The Methodology of Pierre Bourdieu

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The Return of the Subject?The Methodology of Pierre Bourdieu

Robin Griller

Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 203 College Street, Toronto,Ontario, M5T 1P9. I wish to thank Y. M. Bodemann and Don Forgay for their feedbackon an earlier version of this paper and for leaving me no option but to think clearly.

ABSTRACT: While Pierre Bourdieu is clearly one of the mostimportant living sociologists, there are problems with his theoryof practice, his methodology, and his conception of science. In anattempt to overcome the subjectivist/objectivist divide, Bour-dieu has developed his theory of human practice. This theory,while seen as an advance by many, interacts with Bourdieu’smethodology to produce a sociology plagued by tautologies,contradictions, and a positivistic view of social science.

In what has become a massive body of work, Pierre Bourdieu haspursued the project of overcoming what he sees as the false opposi-tion between the subjective and objective through the developmentand application of a theory of practice.1 Having identified the failureof objectivist anthropology, and rejecting the subjectivist alternative,Bourdieu has attempted to unite both the objective and subjective inan explanation of the generation of human behavior. In so doing, hehas developed a theory of practice, based on the concept of habitus,which, through the interaction of habitus with the field of study, can beused to explain the generative principles of human behavior. In theprocess, however, his methodology was shaped as well. This shapingproduced a methodology with a number of problems, as we shall see.It is necessary, then, to look at the origin and purpose of Bourdieu’stheory of practice and the methodology that developed from thisguiding theory to be better able to understand the origins of some ofthe limitations and confusions contained within his work.

A Theory of Human Practice

Bourdieu (1990a:1-2) describes his intellectual development as

being shaped by the opposition between the objectivism of Levi-



4

Strauss and the subjectivism of Sartre.2 In his early ethnographicresearch among the Kabyle in Algeria, Bourdieu was clearly workingin the structuralist tradition.3 It was that research, particularly thediscovery that &dquo;the type of marriage considered to be typical inArabo-Berber societies, namely marriage with the parallel girl cousin&dquo;(Bourdieu, 1990b:8) was statistically a tiny minority of all marriagesthat led Bourdieu to question structuralism. As he puts it, struc-

turalism, of all types, reduces the agent’s actions to &dquo;mere epiphe-nomenal manifestations of the structure’s own power to develop itselfand to determine and overdetermine other structures&dquo; (Bourdieu,1990a:41). Furthermore, the explanation of human behavior as merelythe product of social structure means that objectivist social science notonly confuses &dquo;the objective meaning of practice ... [with] the subjec-tive purpose of&dquo; the actor, but:

Short of constructing practice other than negatively, that is, asexecution, objectivism is condemned either only to record regu-larities, ignoring the whole question of the principle of theirproduction, or to reify abstractions, by treating objectsconstructed by science-be they &dquo;culture,&dquo; &dquo;structures,&dquo; &dquo;social

classes,&dquo; &dquo;modes of production,&dquo; etc.-as autonomous realitiesendowed with social efficacity, capable of acting as subjectsresponsible for historical actions or as a power capable of

constraining practices (Bourdieu, 1973a:59-60, 63).Structuralists attempt to account for this by using &dquo;rules&dquo; to govern

human practice, but these apparent rules turn out to be mere justifica-tions of behavior: &dquo;Only in the context of elicitation from an informantdoes one get a description of social practices as if carried out in obedi-ence to rules that can be talked about&dquo; (Acciaioli, 1981:32). Objectivistsocial science, then, is a failure as it eliminates the subjective agentfrom the explanation of practice, turning him or her into a machine,and is unable to explain the principles of, the motivations for, humanbehavior, because it gets caught up in an imaginary subject of theobject of social structure.

Bourdieu’s rejection of structuralism, of an objectivist social science,did not, however, lead him to embrace subjectivism. While objectivistscannot identify the real generative principles of human behavior, thesubjectivists, by not accounting for social structure, miss it as well.4The subjectivists, in denying the impact of objective reality in condi-tioning human practice, must treat every human practice as the prod-uct of a rational choice. Therefore, they must explain even religiousbelief-faith-as the product of a rational decision (Bourdieu,1990a:50). However, Bourdieu points out that even if we were toaccept, for argument’s sake, that such a process is involved in the&dquo;decision&dquo; to believe in God, the persistence of faith cannot be



5

explained by conscious will alone. In this case, we must conclude thatconscious rationality alone cannot explain human behavior. Bourdieuconcludes, then, that neither objectivism nor subjectivism can providea basis for the explanation of the generation of human behavior.5 Eachis faulty without the other and it is on that basis that he concludes thatthe antinomy is a false one.

Habitus and the Generation of Practice

As Bourdieu cannot accept either the rules of structuralism or therational choice of subjectivism as the basis of human behavior, he usesthe concept of the habitus, the central concept of both his theory ofpractice and his sociology as a whole, to escape from the false choicebetween a &dquo;structuralism without subject and the philosophy of thesubject&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:10). He defines the habitus as:

a system of acquired dispositions functioning on a practical levelas categories of perception and assessment or as classificatoryprinciples as well as being the organizing principles of action(Bourdieu, 1990b:13).

What is important about the habitus is where it comes from, what itrepresents in Bourdieu’s formulation of an explanation of both theobjective and subjective elements of human practice, and how thegenerative principles of human behavior it contains interact with theworld to produce practice.

Though the habitus is located within the subject, it is neither

produced by the subject him or herself, nor is it a set of motivationsand neuroses produced purely by individual experience as might bepostulated by psychological theory. Rather, it is a product of socialstructure, of the experience of conditions and conditionings that areparticular to a given position in the social space. As habitus is, in itsformation, the &dquo;internalization of externality&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1973a:63), thedispositions that make up habitus are &dquo; ’embodied’ social structures&dquo;

(Bourdieu, 1984:468). Furthermore, while each person contains this setof dispositions in his or her head and while we do not have perfectlyidentical habitus, each position in the social space has a specific habitusassociated with it: &dquo;A social class (in-itself)-a class of identical orsimilar conditions of existence and conditionings-is at the same timea class of biological individuals having the same habitus, understoodas a system of dispositions common to all products of the same condi-tionings&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:59).6 The dispositions that make up thehabitus are determined by social structure, by the conditions and condi-tionings experienced as a result of one’s position in the social space.

In this way, the habitus contains within it both the objective andsubjective side of the production of human practice. It is the subjective



6

embodiment of the determining influence of social structure. Or, inother words, habitus is the subjective accretion, within the agent, of thedetermining influence of objective factors on the principles that moti-vate human behavior . It is crucial, before moving on to discuss theinteraction of these dispositions with the objective world, to explorethe relationship, of the individual with his or her habitus. Put simply,the individual does not create or control the content of habitus and isnot likely even aware of its existence, let alone able to either alter itscontent or control its influence on behavior. That is, the habitus is partof the unconscious, as are the dispositions that make it up (Bourdieu,1990a:56). Further, habitus is active within our minds, producing thepractical logic that determines our behavior, for it is these sets of

dispositions, locked away in our unconscious minds, that contain the&dquo;generative principles&dquo; of human behavior.

Field and Strategy

In practice, however, the habitus does not produce our behavior onits own; rather, it interacts with fields to produce strategies of behav-ior aimed at gaining the forms of capital available in given fields. InBourdieu’s theory of practice, human behavior is always conductedwithin the relationships of one field or another. Therefore, fields canrange from the field of classes, the economic field (which is not identi-cal to the field of classes for Bourdieu), the academic field, etc. Thefield is defined as:

a network, or a configuration, of objective relations betweenpositions objectively defined, in their existence and in the deter-minations upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by theirpresent and potential situation (situs) in the structure of thedistribution of species of power (or capital) whose possessioncommands access to the specific profits that are at stake in thefield as well as their objective relation to other positions(domination, subordination, homology, etc.) (Wacquant, 1989:39).

Put another way, a field is a set of objectively defined relations withinwhich exist positions (defined by their possession, or lack, of thecapital or power, both those available and those necessary for domi-nation, in the field), occupied by individuals with related habitus. Inaddition, the very functioning of the field assures that the agentslocated in the field believe in the value of the capital and power atstake in that field (Wacquant, 1989:39), so the agents’ habitus interactwith the field to produce strategies, based on which the agents act inpursuit of the &dquo;specific profits&dquo; that are available through competitionin the field.



7

It is important to note, however, that the interaction of habitus andfield to produce strategies, as well as the strategies themselves, are nomore conscious for the individual than the generative dispositions. Assuch, strategies are neither the conscious choices of subjectivistphilosophy nor the rules or norms of structuralist objectivism. That is,we do not choose our strategies (they are a product of the interactionof our unconscious habitus and the field) and our strategies do not actas rules ordering a particular action in a particular circumstance(Jenkins, 1992:83). Given that habitus and the field combine to produceunconscious strategies followed by agents in pursuit of social gain,&dquo;the objective future may not be a goal consciously pursued by thesubjects and yet can still be the objective principle of all their conduct&dquo;(quoted in Jenkins, 1982:279ff). So, we have seen that Bourdieu’stheory of practice posits a set of unconscious dispositions, called habi-tus, which are determined by social structure (through the condition-ing effect of position in the social space) and which, in interaction withfields, in turn produce unconscious strategies in pursuit of the capitaland power to be gained in the field.

The Practice of a Methodology

This discussion of Bourdieu’s practical methodology will focusprimarily on Distinction7 and Homo Academicus, though mention willbe made of procedures used in the research reported in The Logic ofPractice as well.8 As will become clear, the theory of practice outlinedabove has a strong impact on the methodology used by Bourdieu.First of all, as is clear in both Distinction (a study of the relationshipbetween, and contents of, the field of classes and the cultural field, asa way to approach a &dquo;Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste&dquo;) andHomo Academicus (a study of the academic field in France), Bourdieudoes not begin with a population of people; instead he is concernedwith the study of fields of social action. The three steps that Bourdieuidentifies as necessary to study a field guide his whole researchprocess (Wacquant, 1989:40; Bourdieu, 1988a:32). First, &dquo;one must

analyze the position of the field vis-a-vis the field of power&dquo;(Wacquant, 1989:40). For example, in Homo Academicus he studies theacademic field, a field occupying a dominated position in the field ofpower as intellectuals are a dominated fraction of the dominant class

(Bourdieu, 1988a:36). Second, the objective structure of relations,occupied by agents or institutions in competition for capital andauthority within the field, must be mapped out. This Bourdieu does inDistinction with his diagrams of the class space/space of life-styles,the food space, and the political space (Bourdieu, 1984:128-9,186, 452),and in Homo Academicus through various &dquo;maps&dquo; of the positions offaculties and intellectuals in the academic space. Finally, the



8

researcher of fields must analyze the habitus associated with each ofthe positions in the social space. It is in this step, discussed below, thatthe research moves from an analysis of the constructed structure andthe directly observable practices of agents to the motivations, orgenerative principles of practice, underlying those actions.

The Use of Statistics

Bourdieu uses a number of techniques in his research which, if wedivide them into quantitative techniques and qualitative techniques,each have specific roles to play. As we will see, Bourdieu uses statisti-cal analyses to study what is directly observable and constructiblefrom direct observation: what people do (practice) and, from this, thestructure of the field (social structure), the characteristics of those inthe various positions, etc. It is through statistical data that theresearcher determines the &dquo;configuration of preferences&dquo; (Bourdieu,1984:506), &dquo;regularity ... i.e., a certain statistical measurable frequencyand ... the formula which describes it&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:39). In

Distinction, Bourdieu does this both with his own survey (printed inits entirety in Bourdieu [1984:512-518]) and through the secondarydata analysis of 51 other sets of survey data (Bourdieu, 1984:519-524).9

Using this statistical data, Bourdieu constructs the positions in thefield of classes as well as determines the content of the homologousdispositions manifested in the space of life-styles (Bourdieu, 1984 :128-129). Although he points out that &dquo;a survey by closed questionnaire isnever more than second best, imposed by the need to obtain a largeamount of comparable data on a sample large enough to be treatedstatistically&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:506), he goes on to argue that the bestway to check the accuracy of the statistical data produced by one’sown survey is to use all the statistical data available, rather than test-ing it against other methodologies (Bourdieu, 1984:507). Furthermore,he argues that, having done preliminary research of a qualitative type(Bourdieu, 1984:602ff), statistical data may be successfully used as asubstitute for direct observation:

[T]he loss of precision and detail in the analysis of particularareas, each of which would require a whole set of surveys,observations and tests, is offset by a gain in systematicity. Just asin a single field, painting for example, the particular configura-tion of preferences ... is a substitute for the indications ofmanner which would be yielded by direct observation andquestioning; so too, the meaning of each particular application ofthe single system of dispositions emerges in its relationship withall the others (Bourdieu, 1984:506-507).



9

While qualitative techniques of research play a major role in Bour-dieu’s research, it appears that he is comfortable substituting statisti-cal methods of research whenever qualitative research would be diffi-cult or time consuming In the research for Homo Academicus,Bourdieu and his research team depended almost entirely onpublished sources of data (biographical dictionaries, citation indexes,etc.) to produce their map of the field and its homologous set ofdispositions. This had not been their original intention, but they foundthat the qualitative methods they were using either were too difficultand time consuming or would not provide the information they wereinterested in. For example, they had originally intended to researchthe determinants of power and status within the academic field

through extended interviews with professors, but they found thatthese professors would not discuss their positions of power or theirpolitical stances for fear of being branded mandarins (Bourdieu,1988a:39). Rather than continuing these detailed, qualitative, discus-sions, &dquo;we decided to restrict ourselves exclusively to informationdeliberately and consciously publicized&dquo; to &dquo;avoid distortions as

completely as possible. as well as dissimulations and misrepresenta-tions&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1988a:39). As described in an appendix to HomoAcademicus (Bourdieu, 1988a: 227-242), all of the data then used forconstruction of the positions in the academic field as well as the fieldof dispositions was the product of statistical analyses of publishedinformation. Even the &dquo;Indicators of Political Dispositions&dquo; ended upbeing a &dquo;cumulative index of political membership by using overtpublic declarations, that is, signatures of support given and publishedon different political occasions&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1988a:240).

While it is clear, then, that Bourdieu uses statistical data often andthat he sees it as having a broad applicability, he does not use statisticsin the traditional sociological fashion. First of all, he sneers at the useof statistical tests to determine causality.ll Rather, his use of statisticsis primarily descriptive (Jenkins, 1992:60). The most intricate use ofstatistics he makes is to measure relative strengths of association as hedoes in Homo Academicus,12 though even here he does not give anyindication of actual statistical strengths of the relationships. Also,while he uses random sampling, he often samples respondents withparticular characteristics to ensure sufficient numbers of respondentsfor each position in the field under study. For Distinction he oversam-ples among the bourgeoisie (Bourdieu, 1984:505) and in the researchthat produced Homo Academicus he both random sampled andsampled specific academics to &dquo;produce a small-scale but correctlyproportioned model of the university field as a space of positions&dquo;(Bourdieu, 1988a:76). Second, as a result of his epistemological ideas,embodied in his theory of practice, he cannot use survey questions toanswer questions of why respondents behave in the way they do. As



10

the generative principle of practice, habitus, is unconscious, even themost knowledgeable, capable agent is not aware of his or her reasonsfor acting in a particular way:An agent who possesses a practical mastery, an art, whatever itmay be, is capable of applying in his action the disposition whichappears to him only in action, in the relationship with a situation(he can repeat the feint which strikes him as the only thing to do,as often as the situation requires). But he is no better placed toperceive what really governs his practice and to bring it to theorder of discourse, than the observer (Bourdieu, 1990a:90-91).

Therefore, there is no point in asking, or even discussing with agents,why they do what they do.13 Rather, having brought out the patternsof practice, the field, and the field of dispositions, Bourdieu can moveon to the exploration of the generative principles of practice, the logi-cal coherence of habitus that underlies the overall pattern of an agent’sdispositions.

Ethnography and Other Qualitative Techniques

Before moving on to the main research technique used in thepursuit of this logical coherence, ethnographic observation, we shouldlook at what I believe to be one of the main sources of Bourdieu’s

importance for sociology as well as the most successful area of hismethodology. That is, his use of an immense variety of qualitativesources. He describes unlearning the &dquo;unwritten rule that only datacollected in socially defined scientific conditions, i.e., by preparedquestioning and observation, may enter into the scientific construc-tion&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:509). As we noted earlier, in Homo Academicus heused names on public political declarations, for example. This use ofvarious sources is most profound in Distinction, where he uses cata-logs, theater reviews, photographs, advertisements (Bourdieu,1984:221-222; 236-239; 377; 385; 308), and other forms of &dquo;non-scien-tific&dquo; evidence. Despite his argument in favor of using this data, Ithink Bourdieu would not be entirely pleased by the fact that thesetypes of evidence are not only far more interesting than the statisticalanalyses in the same book, but are also often far more convincing andcompelling as evidence in support of his argument.

Even more crucial in providing compelling evidence in support ofhis hypotheses is Bourdieu’s use of data collected from ethnographicobservation. Despite Bourdieu’s apparent belief that statistical

patterns can be interpreted back to disposition to discern the logic ofhabitus, it is clear from reading Distinction, in particular, that thesource of the interpretations leading to the discerning of the logic ofparticular habitus is Bourdieu’s ethnographic observation. First he



11

argues that the only way to &dquo;give an account of the practical coher-ence of practices and works is to construct generative models whichreproduce in their own terms the logic from which that coherence isgenerated&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:92). Then, and this relates to the discus-sion of reflexivity below, he sees the successful objectification of&dquo;incorporated structures&dquo; as allowing the researcher to position one’s&dquo;self at the point of generation of practice to grasp it, as Marx says, ’asconcrete human activity, as practice, in a subjective way’

&dquo;

(Bourdieu,1990a:145). As we will see below, in the context of Bourdieu’s defini-tion of reflexivity this can only be done in observational methods.

The only way to really demonstrate this in &dquo;practice&dquo; is to comparethe interpretations of an element of a habitus produced by, on the onehand, statistical data and, on the other, ethnographic data. In

discussing the logic of the working-class habitus, the &dquo;choice of the

necessary&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:372-396), Bourdieu gives us ampleevidence that, while statistical data may point to questions requiringan answer, they cannot tell us the logic of practice. For example, henotes that, the &dquo;mode of purchasing furniture&dquo; (i.e., what type ofshop/market it is purchased in) is largely determined by class back-ground (Bourdieu, 1984:77-79). However, it is a long way from statis-tical evidence that working-class people tend to do their shopping indepartment stores, etc., rather than antique shops to the argument that&dquo;nothing is more alien to working-class women than the typicallybourgeois idea of making each object in the home the occasion for anaesthetic choice, of extending the intention of harmony or beauty eveninto the bathroom or kitchen, places strictly defined by their function,or of involving specifically aesthetic criteria in the choice of a

saucepan or cupboard&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:379). To be able to developthe idea that working-class practice is a product of a habitus, whoselogic can be described by the concept of &dquo;the choice of the necessary,&dquo;it is clear that observation must have been done; in this example, therewould be no way of knowing the truth or falsity of the above state-ment without having observed working-class homes and the

processes of selection of furniture, through observation of people intheir everyday lives.

Another example that demonstrates the strength of this argumentwell is Bourdieu’s discussion of food and the working-class style ofeating (Bourdieu, 1984:177-197). Here again Bourdieu finds evidencethat might push one toward the idea of a working-class taste fornecessity in his analysis of statistical data that show slight variationsin the types of food purchased by different classes.14 While he findsthat working-class people, even those who have sufficient funds topurchase more expensive foods, retain their taste for &dquo;the heavy, thefat and the coarse&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:185), this is hardly the basis forconcluding that working-class people are motivated by an uncon-



12

scious &dquo;taste for the necessary.&dquo; Even if they have sufficient funds tobe able to purchase more &dquo;bourgeois&dquo; foods, the statistical datademonstrate that they already are spending far more of their totalincomes on food (34.2-38.3 percent) than most members of the domi-nant class (24.4-25.4 percent, excluding the &dquo;industrial and commer-cial employers&dquo;). To demonstrate that the real evidence for such aninterpretation is in the ethnographic data, there is the followingextended quote from Bourdieu’s description of the working-classmeal:

Plain speaking, plain eating: the working-class meal is charac-terized by plenty ... and above all by freedom. ’Elastic’ and’abundant’ dishes are brought to the table ... and served with aladle or spoon, to avoid too much measuring and counting, incontrast to everything that has to be cut and divided, such asroasts.... It is part of the men’s status to eat and to eat well ... itis particularly insisted that they should eat, on the grounds that’it won’t keep’ ... strict sequencing of meals tends to be ignored.Everything may be put on the table at the same time ... so thatthe women may have reached the dessert, and also the children,who will take their plates and watch television, while the menare still eating the main dish and the ’lad,’ who has arrived late,is swallowing his soup. This freedom, which may be perceivedas disorder or slovenliness, is adapted to its function. Firstly, it islabour-saving.... But these short cuts are only permissiblebecause one is and feels at home, among the family, whereceremony would be an affectation.... The common root of allthese ’liberties’ is no doubt the sense that at least there will notbe self-imposed controls, constraints and restrictions ... in theheart of domestic life, the one realm of freedom, when every-where else, and at all other times, necessity prevails (Bourdieu,1984:194-195).

While we will be looking at the serious problems with Bourdieu’sethnography soon enough, the above gives both a taste of the powerand elegance of his ethnographic descriptions of practice and ademonstration of the role of his ethnography in the interpretation ofhabitus.

A Reflexive Sociology

Before concluding this discussion of Bourdieu’s practical research,it is necessary, finally, to look at the third major component of hismethodology, his notion of reflexivity. The first thing to note is that byreflexivity, Bourdieu does not mean direct self-examination. In fact, heis quite disdainful of self-focused reflexivity: &dquo;objectivation of any



13

cultural producer involves more than pointing to-and bemoaning-his class background and location, his race or his gender&dquo; (Wacquant,1989:33). What he means by reflexivity is not awareness of personalbias; since it is given that habitus both determines all practice and isunconscious, we cannot become aware of these biases throughintrospection.15 Instead, the reflexivity to be pursued is that which&dquo;objectifies the objectifier.&dquo; As he argues in Homo Academicus:

[A] social science armed with a scientific knowledge of its socialdeterminations constitutes the strongest weapon against ’normalscience’ and against positivist self-confidence which representsthe most formidable social obstacle to the progress of science

(Bourdieu, 1990b:31).In other words, the purpose of reflexivity is to objectify the scientist byplacing the researcher, as researcher rather than as an individual, in thesocial structure (and in so doing develop an awareness of the habitusof the academic in a specific position in the social space) and to objec-tify his or her relationship to the objectified subject of the study(Bourdieu, 1990b:34).

It is also important to note that this reflexivity manifests itself intwo different ways. First, for qualitative methodology, in ethno-

graphic research reflexivity manifests itself as an objectification of therelationship between the observer and the observed. Without such anobjectification, anthropologists proclaim themselves epistemologicallyprivileged observers (Bourdieu, 1990a:14). In opposition to this

epistemological privilege, Bourdieu advocates for a further distancing,&dquo;at the cost of a methodical break with primary experience&dquo;(Bourdieu, 1990a:14). In other words, Bourdieu advocates &dquo;distancing,through objectification, the native who is in every outside observer&dquo;(Bourdieu, 1990a:20) to bring the native, or subject of observation,closer to the observer.

For statistical research, reflexivity takes another form, one whichseems little different from what a quantitative research methods text-book might call basic competence. In the use of statistics, Bourdieuputs special emphasis on codification:

Indeed, for the researcher anxious to know what he is doing, thecode changes from an instrument of analysis to an object ofanalysis: the objectified product of the work of codificationbecomes, under his self-reflexive gaze, the immediately readabletrace of the operation of construction of the object....

In addition, our self-reflexive scrutiny of the very operation ofcoding reveals everything which separates the constructed code... from the practical and implicit schemata of ordinary percep-tion ; and, in so doing, reveals all the implications which an



14

awareness of that difference has for the adequate understandingof scientific study and its object (Bourdieu, 1988a:7-8).

That is, the process of developing categories within the data for statis-tical analysis no longer merely produces useful sets of statistical data,but is a technique for the reflexive distancing of the scientist from hisor her own socially constructed habitus. Thus, in a bizarre twist oflogic, the necessary act for quantitative research of ensuring that thecategories developed for coding data have real social meaning, ratherthan simple use value for the researcher, becomes an act intimatelytied to reflexivity. The objectification of the social world involved incodification is turned, by logic it seems, into the objectification of theobserver, &dquo;introducing the possibility of a logical control of coherence,of a formalization&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:79).

The Structure and Meaning of the Practice of Research

A Nest of Tautologies

Much of Bourdieu’s writing on his methodology and many of hisideas about method and the nature of sociology are either confused orunintentionally inconsistent with the products of his own method-ological practice. To begin with, he argues against conceptual closurein research:

Concepts can-and, to some extent, must-remain open andprovisional, which doesn’t mean vague, approximate or

confused: any real thinking about scientific practice attests thatthis openness of concepts, which gives them their ’suggestive’character, and thus their capacity to produce scientific effects ...is the essence of any scientific thought ... , in opposition to thatcompleted science that provides mental pabulum for methodol-ogists and all those who invent ... rules and methods that aremore harmful than good (Bourdieu, 1990b:40-41).

However, it seems obvious that if he begins with a theory of practicethat tells him that unconscious habitus interacts with field to produceunconscious strategies that determine behavior, then there is a fairlyserious amount of conceptual closure involved in Bourdieu’s research.Furthermore, as we’ve noted above, it is not just a question of anoutline that guides how we consider human behavior; the goal of allhuman behavior in all fields is the capture of capital and power withinfields. Therefore, the strategies of the dominant automatically aim toretain positions of dominance and the strategies of the dominated areaimed at gaining dominance, while their habitus legitimizes their



15

dominated status. Thus there is clearly a significant level of concep-tual closure in Bourdieu’s work.

This is not the biggest problem with Bourdieu’s methodology,however. What initially appears to be a deductive research process(see Appendix), is described in Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984:503-518)when Bourdieu states that the &dquo;theoretical hypotheses ... could neverhave been extracted from the material analyzed if they had not beenpresent, in the form of heuristic schemes, from the very beginning ofthe research&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:504). In fact, he describes his

&dquo;preliminary survey by extended interview and ethnographicalobservation&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:504) as having as a central purpose, thefinding of the &dquo;main features of each universe&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff)so a closed response category survey could be constructed and the&dquo;statistical regularities&dquo; established.

It is not, however, that his research is guided by &dquo;heuristic

schemes,&dquo; that is the major problem, but rather that his research isultimately tautological. Though he presents his theoretical ideas

relating to human practice as merely a guide to methodology (Harkeret al., 1990:195), they do much more than that. If we begin researchfrom the premise that within a field there will be: positions in thesocial space, an homologous set of dispositions, habitus, whichproduce, through an interaction with the field, strategies geared to thepursuit of capital, power, and dominance, what is left to study?

Well, first we would look at the statistics to determine the charac-teristics of the positions in the field and the characteristics of theagents who fill those positions. We then would look for the generativeprinciple of practice that underlies this practice. If we begin ourresearch with these premises, we cannot help but find that, yes, thefield does consist of dominant and dominated positions in the pursuitof particular capitals; that, indeed, these practices are determined bythe strategies produced by the interaction of unconscious habitus andthe field; and that, of course, we can explain the behavior of all agentsat all times as the product of determined unconscious dispositions.As Harker et al. (1990:215) point out, conceptual circles are a

constant in Bourdieu’s work: &dquo;Capital is something that is struggledfor-what is capital? Capital is that which people value and

(therefore) struggle for. What is strategy and struggle about? It is theactivity that people engage in, in order to gain the necessary volumesof capital to achieve their aims.&dquo; In fact, in writing that &dquo;so long asthere is a generative habitus somewhere at work, one will never ceaseto ’discover’ new data,&dquo; Bourdieu (1990a:9) makes the circular natureof his research structure overt.



16

Positivistic Tendencies

Sociological positivism has been characterized by deductive

hypothesis testing, a preference for directly observable entities, theprivileging of quantitative over qualitative data, and a naive view ofthe achievement of objectivity (Abercrombie, 1984:63-4; Williams,1983:239).16 Each of these characteristics is present in Bourdieu’swork, showing that there is a definite streak of positivism in histhought and, even more so, in his methodology. Despite the fact thatthere is a powerful and complex set of theoretical ideas underpinningBourdieu’s research, a metatheory if you will, he claims that thesetheoretical ideas are not a guiding, overarching theory, but simply amethodological guide.17 He describes his use of theory as &dquo;a programof perception and of action-a scientific habitus, if you wish-which isdisclosed only in the empirical work which actualizes it. It is a tempo-rary construct which takes shape for and by empirical work&dquo; (quoted inWacquant, 1989:50). What this means is that Bourdieu’s research is notabout testing this theory (which, as we have seen leads to a tautologi-cal research process at that level anyway), but rather is about deduc-tive testing of &dquo;lower&dquo; level theories through hypothesis testing-the&dquo;hypothesis that there is an almost perfect homology between thespace of the stances ... and the space of the positions held by theirauthors in the field of production&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1988a:xvii) in HomoAcademicus, for example, or that of the &dquo;unity of tastes&dquo; in Distinction.Furthermore, he elsewhere criticizes the data collectors he workedwith in Algeria for lacking &dquo;both methods of recording and hypothe-ses capable of orienting their research and their inquiries&dquo; (Bourdieu,1990a:5). The demand for research-orienting hypotheses and the test-ing of &dquo;general theories&dquo; such as &dquo;there is a homology between theacademic field and the space of the stances,&dquo; when combined with adenial that the theory of practice is used as a theory, has clear posi-tivistic tendencies.A second way in which Bourdieu inadvertently brings a &dquo;residual

positivism&dquo; (Jenkins, 1992:60) into his work is through his use ofstatistics, which is partly a product of his theory of practice. To beginwith, as was noted above, he is overly confident that statistics can beaccurately used to show the real patterns of human behavior in theworld. As Jenkins (1992:60) points out, he is convinced that his Arabmarriage statistics actually represent what they purport to represent,and this is despite the fact that elsewhere he notes that he &dquo;wasconfronted with a mass of collections of data that were generallyincomplete and technically deficient&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:5). That is,while he is clearly aware (see the discussion of codification in HomoAcademicus) that categories of data are social constructs, and therefore



17

to be treated with caution, he does just the opposite and treats themnaively as representing what they purport to represent.

This is particularly apparent in his use of &dquo;preferences&dquo; as repre-senting real behavior. Bourdieu’s theory of practice means, as hasbeen noted, that there is no point in asking agents why they do whatthey do-they don’t know, so their responses will be justifications oftheir behavior as the product of unreal rules. So, Bourdieu acciden-tally approximates the positivist reduction of science to dealing with&dquo;observable entities known directly to experience,&dquo; at least in terms ofwhat he sees as accessible to research. That is, we can only access whatit is that people do, therefore making statistical surveys very useful.

However, in practice Bourdieu violates this rule by equating statedpreferences with actions.18 In the survey used for Distinction, for

example, not only are there questions asking people what they do(&dquo;Where did you get your furniture?&dquo;), responses to which might welltell us where people think they buy their furniture, or worse, wherethey would like the researcher to believe they bought their furniture,but half of the 26 questions ask for the respondent’s preferences ratherthan actions. In fact, there are four more preference questions thanaction questions, since the remaining four ask for opinions (Bourdieu,1984:512-518). In the areas of popular music, food, and books, the onlyquestions asked are preference questions. The question on books,which asks what types of books the respondent prefers, is then

presented in a table, with the interpretation that &dquo;the position of thedifferent fractions [of the dominant class] ranked according to theirinterest in the different types of reading-matter tends to correspond totheir position when ranked according to volume of cultural capital&dquo;(Bourdieu, 1984:116-118). It never seems to cross Bourdieu’s mind thatstated preferences are two steps removed from actions: they are noteven stated beliefs about how one acts, but about how one would

prefer one acted, regardless of how one acts! The methodologicalnaivete necessary to assume the validity of such data is astounding inso determinedly &dquo;reflexive&dquo; a sociologist.

Finally, while Bourdieu’s work clearly depends on his ethnographyfor the heart of its interpretation, I would argue that he does in effectprivilege statistical data over ethnographic data. There are threedifferent types of evidence in favor of this argument: first, relating tohis analysis of his research method; second, in what he claims statisti-cal data can do; and third, the casual manner in which he will aban-don qualitative data in favor of statistical data. While the second andthird points have been argued earlier, the first one will have to bedealt with in detail.

The first argument is that in his discussions of his research

methodology there is an obsessive detailing of his statistical methodsalongside an almost complete absence of discussion of the sources and



18

processes of collecting his qualitative data; the implication of this isthat the statistical data must be presented in great detail as they are farmore important than his other data. That he does this is clear fromexamining either Distinction or Homo Academicus. In Distinction Bour-dieu presents three appendices on statistical data (Bourdieu, 1984 :519-560), outlining his &dquo;complementary sources&dquo; (statistical sets used insecondary data analyses), &dquo;statistical data&dquo; (the tables produced by hisown survey), and &dquo;associations&dquo; (further statistical data, from anothersurvey, on respondents’ associations of politicians with set categoriesof objects), but not a single word on the nature of the ethnographicresearch that began the research process.

Furthermore, the only discussion of the source and method ofcollection of the qualitative interviews presented in Part III of Distinc-tion is a paragraph, at the bottom of the first page of the first of theinterviews presented, which does not even tell us how many inter-views were conducted (Bourdieu, 1984:274). In addition, whatBourdieu tells us about the interviews is what makes them most like

quantitative interviews: that they were as systematic as possible, thatthe interviewees were led &dquo;towards the most central areas of his or her

life-style&dquo; on the basis of the previous statistical research, and byusing direct as well as semi-direct and indirect questioning. Clearly, inhis discussion of the research process he denigrates the importance ofhis qualitative data. Given that this downgrading of qualitative data iscombined with an exuberant belief in what statistical data can tell us

and, therefore, an excessive willingness to abandon qualitative workin favor of statistics, it is not overstretching to suggest that there is acertain positivistic style to Bourdieu’s use of statistics.A third way in which Bourdieu’s methodology reflects a positivistic

tendency is through his conception of and belief in the efficacy ofreflexivity. While he does not see sociology as exactly like the physicalsciences (which was the original positivist position), he does not referto it as either a non-science or as a science unlike the physical sciences,but as a science &dquo;whose peculiar feature is the peculiar difficulty it hasof becoming a science like the others&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990a:189). In otherwords, it is not that sociology is a science that is, in crucial ways,destined to remain forever very different from the physical sciences.Instead, sociology has to do something extra to become &dquo;like the othersciences.&dquo; In effect, Bourdieu is taking up a position that says that thepositivists are right, in that sociology can become like the physicalsciences, but that they are naive to think that this can be done withoutreflexivity.

Both this view of the purpose of reflexivity and how Bourdieu seesreflexivity as being enacted are, I would argue, confirmations that hehas a positivistic view of science. For, in defining self-reflexiveness ascaution about the relationship to the observed combined with an



19

understanding of the academic’s position in the social space (i.e.,knowing the interests, dispositions, and habitus that go along with thatposition), Bourdieu is arguing that we can successfully &dquo;objectify theobjectifier.&dquo; As he writes in The Logic of Practice:

[T]he reification of the object of science in the essential othernessof a ’mentality’ presupposes triumphant adherence to a non-objectified subject. Distance is not abolished by bringing theoutsider fictitiously closer to an imaginary native, as is generallyattempted; it is by distancing, through objectification, the native whois in every outside observer that the native is brought closer to theoutsider (Bourdieu, 1990a:20, emphasis added).19

If we accept his apparent view that the sociologist can become objec-tive through a neutralizing distancing (said phrasing reproducingpositivistic language), then there is no reason to disagree with thesubjectivists: through reflexivity the sociologist can become the ratio-nally acting, choosing agent who is free of structural constraint. Insuch a situation, the sociologist can become like the physicist, a natu-ral scientist, who maintains his ability to &dquo;do&dquo; science through aconstant reflexive vigilance.

Reproducing the View from Above

It is necessary to return to a discussion of Bourdieu’s ethnographicpractice at this point because it relates directly to these problems ofreflexivity and the positivistic tendencies in his scientific thought andpractice.20 Bourdieu is, of course, very critical of traditional anthro-pological research methods, arguing that they epistemologically priv-ilege the anthropologist (Bourdieu, 1990a:14). In research emergingout of such epistemological privilege the researcher will end up unre-flexively imposing his or her own &dquo;norms of construction&dquo; on theobject.

If ethnographers are to escape from this view from above-with theobserver, free of the social relations that structure the behavior of thenative, looking down clearly and unobstructedly on the object ofstudy-they must, according to Bourdieu, be reflexive in his sense ofthe term as no other scientific option is available. Intuitive method-ologies will not work; intuition just &dquo;fictitiously denies the distancebetween the observer and the observed&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:14). Neitherwill the &dquo;primitivist participation of the bewitched or mystic anthro-pologist&dquo; because:

participation ... still plays on the objective distance from theobject to play the game as a game while waiting to leave it inorder to tell it. This means that participant observation is, in a



20

sense, a contradiction in terms (as anyone who has tried to do itwill have confirmed in practice); and ... the critique of objec-tivism and its inability to comprehend practice as such in no wayimplies the rehabilitation of immersion in practice. The partici-pationist option is simply another way of avoiding the questionof the real relationship of the observer to the observed and itscritical consequences for scientific practice (Bourdieu, 1990a:34).

The only option left, then, is to reflexively objectify the objectifier so asto &dquo;distance the native within the observer,&dquo; and thereby bring theobject of study paradoxically closer to the observer. As Bourdieudiscusses the issue in relationship to his study of marriage strategiesin the Béarn, the necessary process is that &dquo;of objectifying the ethnolo-gist not only as a socially situated individual but also as a scientistwho professes to analyze and conceptualize the social world, and whofor that reason has to withdraw from the game&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1990b:59).

Unfortunately for Bourdieu, however, this &dquo;procedure&dquo; is a failureand his ethnography only succeeds in producing interesting anduseful interpretations as it has accidentally reproduced the view fromabove of traditional ethnography’s epistemologically privilegedobserver. As was argued earlier, in Bourdieu’s sociology ethnographyfills the space between structure and practice by &dquo;discovering&dquo; thegenerative principle of habitus, without which Bourdieu’s sociologywould have a gap in its causal path (de Certeau, 1984:52). However, asde Certeau (1984:55-6) points out, given that Bourdieu always linkspractices to both &dquo;a proper place (a patrimony) ... and a collectiveprinciple of administration (a family, the group)&dquo; and given that strat-egy is unconscious, he carries out a traditionalist ethnology in which&dquo;the elements of a people and its culture ... [are] coherent and uncon-scious.&dquo; Bourdieu’s attempt to bridge the gap between structure andpractice through unconscious dispositions, an interiorization ofstructure (de Certeau, 1984:57), puts the ethnographic observer above,epistemologically, that which he observes. In fact, his ethnography fitsperfectly de Certeau’s description of traditional ethnography:- In order for coherence to be the postulate of ethnological knowl-edge... it was necessary to put this knowledge at a distancefrom the objectified society, and thus to presuppose that it wasforeign and superior to the knowledge the society had of itself.The unconsciousness of the group studied was the price that hadto be paid ... for its coherence. A society could be a system onlywithout knowing it. Whence the corollary: an ethnologist wasrequired to know what the society was (de Certeau, 1984:56).

And so, we must conclude that Bourdieu unintentionally reproduces,even in his qualitative research, a positivistic relationship between the



21

ethnographer and his subject. He unintentionally reinvents all overagain the anthropologist’s gaze, looking at the practice of unconsciousnatives, knowing better than they the sources of their behaviorbecause he is a scientist, because he is reflexive, something theycannot be without his help.

Outcomes: The Twilight Agent in an Objective World

While it has become clear that, in the end, there are some seriousflaws in Bourdieu’s methodology-from its tautological nature, to itspositivistic elements, to the production of a traditionalist ethnography-and that many of those problems stem from the epistemologycentral to his theory of practice, there is one central question that hasnot been addressed here: whether or not Bourdieu has successfullyreinserted the subject into objectivist sociology. In one sense he hasbecause the habitus is part of the subject by definition. However, wemust ask ourselves what kind of subject it is, whether it is a meaning-ful subjectivity.21

The subject in Bourdieu’s sociology is ultimately a determinedsubject devoid of choice, and his theory of practice must be deemed afailed attempt to revive the subject in objective sociology. As we havealready discussed, position in the social space produces habitus: theexperience of conditions and the conditionings associated with aspecific set of conditions in a specific position in the social space willdetermine the set of dispositions in the individual agent. The agenthas neither control of his or her dispositions nor even awareness ofthem, given their location in the unconscious. Even the strategiesproduced by the interaction of habitus and field are located in_ theunconscious. In his attempt to bypass objectivism’s agent, &dquo;subjugatedby the dead laws of natural history&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1973a:72), Bourdieu’stheory posits agents who &dquo;do not, properly speaking, know what theyare doing&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1973a:71).

Their behavior, objectively adjusted to the structures that haveproduced it, is unconscious and uncontrollable, determined by theobjective structures within which they have been bom, grown up, andwithin which they will die. Bourdieu’s agent is, as de Certeau argues,really an it: &dquo;A passive and nocturnal actor is substituted for the slymultiplicity of strategies.... [An] immobile stone figure is supposedto be the agent that produces the phenomena observed in a society&dquo;(de Certeau, 1984:58). While, as noted above, the habitus, being locatedinside the agent, necessarily returns the subject to an otherwise objec-tivist sociology, what it does not return is agency itself. For while it isclear that, as social actors, we are not the purely rational actors ofthose fantasies in which economic man consciously and accuratelyweighs all the options before making a choice, it is also clear that a



22

subject without agency of some type, without some form of will andconsciousness, is a subject in name only as Bourdieu himself haspointed out (Bourdieu, 1990a:26).

Acknowledging that this exploration of Bourdieu’s ideas has beenunremittingly critical is hopefully also acknowledging that his body ofwork is sufficiently important and serious to be worth the effort ofcritique, particularly as we are talking about a writer who is incredi-bly difficult to read in the first place. While the attempt to explore andcritique a theory of practice and a methodology has left no room todiscuss the merits of Bourdieu’s work, I hope that the reader will notconclude that I think no merits exist. If the room were available I

might bring up issues relating to the crossing of disciplinary bound-aries, the pursuit of serious theory (even more, the pursuit of serioustheory in conjunction with empirical research), and other subjects. It isthe case, as Jenkins points out (Jenkins, 1992:180), that Bourdieu’swork is open to criticism because he makes a truly serious attempt todevelop a sociology worthy of the name and is so serious about

examining what it is he is doing in public. It is no criticism to

conclude, with Jenkins, that Bourdieu’s weaknesses are also his

strengths.

Notes

1. The overcoming of false oppositions that limit the success of the social sciences isa major theme of Bourdieu’s work. Other such "antinomies" would include

theory/research, micro-/macro-, anthropology/sociology, quantitative/qualitative, etc.(Bourdieu, 1988b:777-780). While each of the oppositions that Bourdieu attempts toovercome is significant, the objectivist-subjectivist opposition is, as he puts it, "the rockbottom antinomy on which all the divisions of the social scientific field are ultimatelyfounded" (Bourdieu, 1988b:780).

2. While it seems likely that this is at least partially an after the fact reconstruction,Rogers Brubaker (Brubaker, 1985:746) points out that Bourdieu entered adulthood justas Levi-Strauss’s research began to have impact. For a chronological treatment of Bour-dieu’s career, see Robbins (1991).

3. See, for example, his description of "The Berber House" (Bourdieu, 1973b), whichhe has described as the last of his "blissful structuralist" writings.

4. While Bourdieu refers specifically to Sartre in much of his writing on this subject(Bourdieu, 1990a:42-47), I will not be using his specific critiques of Sartre. As Bourdieupresents Sartre’s ideas as an example of a type of explanation of human practice and asit has been suggested that Bourdieu’s treatment of Sartre and some other authors is toset up simplistic misreadings of them as strawmen to knock down (Jenkins, 1992:166), itseems sensible to discuss subjectivism as a type, rather than discuss primarily his attackon an individual writer’s position.

5. Bidet (1979) makes the point that not all of the intellectual traditions that Bourdieucharacterizes as objectivist necessarily are. Bourdieu includes Marx as an objectivist, forexample; Bidet argues that structure, in Marx, is inseparable from practice. Therefore, ifpractice and structure are dialectically intertwined, neither existing separately orindependently of the other, the subjectivist-objectivist antinomy disappears.

6. As we shall see in greater detail later with regards to Bourdieu’s methodology,this sentence shows the circularity, or tautological nature, of much of Bourdieu’sthought and writing. If habitus is "understood as a system of dispositions common to all



23

products of the same conditionings" and social class is "a class of identical or similarconditions of existence and conditionings," then class and habitus, two supposedlyseparate, independent concepts cannot help but be identical. While he does acknowl-edge that no two people could have experienced identical conditioning, he uses the ideaof homology to get around this: "Each individual system of dispositions is a structuralvariant of the others, expressing the singularity of its position within the class....’Personal’ style, the particular stamp marking all the products of the same habitus ... isnever more than a deviation in relation to the style of a period or class, so that it relatesback to the common style not only by its conformity ... but also by the difference thatmakes the ’manner’" (Bourdieu, 1990a:60).

7. For a time ordered description of the procedures used in the research thatproduced Distinction, see Appendix. Also see Bourdieu (1984), especially pp. 503-524.

8. There are problems in deciding when Bourdieu’s methodological reports aretrustworthy. First, each of his studies is published years after the research is done; theresearch for Homo Academicus was begun in 1967, but it was not published until 1984.The research for Distinction was begun no later than 1963 (it is not entirely clear whetherthe "preliminary survey" was done in the same year as the "actual" survey, or earlier),but the study was not completed until 1979. Second, especially regarding his Algerianresearch, the studies have been reworked, rewritten, and republished so many times itwould be very difficult to reach a conclusion on what research techniques should bedescribed. Would it be only those used in the research in the late 1950s or should therebe some discussion of the intervening decades as part of the research?

9. There are major problems with his use of secondary data, stemming, oddlyenough, from his distrust of mainstream statistical methodology. He argues thataccounting for the "nature of the responses, the conditions of the survey and the struc-ture of the sample" (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff) is sufficient to eliminate any problems withusing data for purposes other than those for which they were collected. How naive thisposition is can be seen by what he means by the above: "For example, in one survey,hunting and fishing are grouped in a single question, in another separated into twoquestions; educational level is coded in five categories in one case, in seven categories inanother" (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff). See Appendix also.

10. An example of his abandonment of qualitative methods as too time consumingand difficult, when compared to quantitative methods, can be seen in the abandonmentof analysis of intellectuals’ positions on May 1968 through their writings. He describesthis as a necessary step: "the raw recordings are only the unrefined information ... wewould have had to give details each time of the contents of their contributions ... andthat was more a question of content analysis, with all its nuances, than of a necessarilysimplified codification" (Bourdieu, 1988a:241).

11. "One has explained nothing and understood nothing by establishing a correla-tion between an ’independent’ variable and a ’dependent’ variable" (Bourdieu, 1984:18).

12. See Bourdieu (1988a:69-72) for an explanation of his "factor analysis of corre-spondences." Note that his use of statistics not only avoids significance tests and

strength of relationship tests, but is often very sloppy as well. In Homo Academicus, forexample, there is a table (Bourdieu, 1988a:43) in which some of the percentages given(see the percentages for number of children of members of the Science faculty) areimpossible, unless fractional academics can have specific numbers of children.

13. Bourdieu ends up fudging this in practice as he asks questions relating to"preferences" rather than "why" and then imputes backwards to habitus the disposi-tions (i.e., preferences) thus revealed. If agents are not aware of the motivations forbehavior, are they really aware of their preferences or are their stated "preferences" justwhat their dispositions tell them should be said, rather than what they prefer? In fact,we must question whether preference really has any meaning in a world in which weact unconsciously.

14. See the tables on pages 181-2 and 188-9 (Bourdieu, 1984). That the variations areslight can be seen if we look, for example at spending on fats (butter, oil margarine, andlard). While the members of the subordinate classes spend a slightly higher percentageof their food budgets on fats (4.7-5.3 percent) than those in the dominant class (3.3-4.3percent), in actual cash expenditures the two groups overlap: working class (439-629francs), bourgeoisie (399-551). While the difference does exist, it is a weak quantitativebasis for founding differences in the generative principles of practice.



24

15. Despite the optimistic sounding position Bourdieu takes in In Other Words ("notonly can habitus be practically transformed ... by the effect of a social trajectory leadingto conditions of living different from initial ones, it can also be controlled throughawakening of consciousness and socioanalysis" [Bourdieu, 1990b:116]), reflexivity is inpractice as impersonal as habitus is. Furthermore, if it is the normal state of human

activity to be acting in the world under the determination of habitus, under what condi-tions can reflexivity even be pursued? As habitus determines our behavior, surely thepursuit of reflexivity would have to be a product of one’s habitus. In addition, as thestrategies produced by the interaction of habitus and field are entirely geared to thepursuit of capital and power, no "honest" reflexivity would appear to be possible. Theonly way such a reflexivity could exist would be if a group’s dispositions and the fieldwere such that truth was what was needed to gain capital (in which case it would haveto also be that the other agents in the field would recognize said truth automatically forit to be rewarded).

16. Here I am allowing Raymond Williams’ argument that charges of positivismshould be avoided (the real argument is about science, with "positivism" being used asan insult [Williams, 1983:239]) to induce caution in my use of the term positivism, with-out foregoing it as a useful concept. I will, then, respond to Williams’ position in twoways: first, by being careful to not accuse Bourdieu of being a positivist, which wouldbe unfair in the end as he is honestly opposed to "naive objectivity" in social research;and, second, by defining what I mean here by "positivistic." To do so I will use Botto-more et al. (1983), Abercrombie et al. (1984), and Williams (1983). The main characteris-tics of a sociological positivism (Abercrombie et al.,1984:163-4) would be: one, reducingscience to dealing with "observable entities known directly to experience"; two, deduc-tive research, as the scientist attempts to test general laws and theories; three, a"preference for measurement and quantification"; four, a "tendency toward socialstructural explanation" (Abercrombie et al., 1984:163-4); and five, a naive view of theachievement of objectivity (Williams, 1983:239). Looking at this list shows that ulti-

mately Bourdieu cannot be accused of being a simple (or simple minded!) positivist;rather, my argument here is that he, due partly to his position on certain research issuesand also due to his theory, ends up accidentally reproducing certain elements of posi-tivistic social sciences research process and thought.

17. Obviously he does not deny that his logic of practice is a set of theoretical ideas.Rather, the argument is that he does not use them as a pre-existent, foundational theory,but rather as "a way of thinking" guiding his research. (Wacquant, 1989:50)

18. Of course he must violate his own prescriptions in this area as the goal of hisresearch is the explication of the generative principles motivating human behavior;otherwise he is reduced to the simple structural determinism of the "increased educa-tional attainment leads to an increase in personal income" variety. Searching out thosemotivational principles takes Bourdieu beyond positivistic "looking only at what’s visi-ble," though, paradoxically, as we shall see, in a way that fails to accomplish the non-traditional ethnography he pursues.

19. Again see note 15 for a discussion of the impossibility of reflexivity in a world inwhich motivations are entirely unconscious. The problem, put simply, is that it wouldappear that to become reflexively conscious one must already be reflexively conscious.This is, of course, an impossibility, unless magic is involved, the magical creation ofBourdieu perhaps? It also brings up the problem of how one would spread reflexive-ness, which is particularly relevant as Bourdieu sees sociology as the science that canbring freedom (i.e., reflexive self-awareness), to the dominated. Clearly the habitus ofthe dominated would be such that they would refuse to recognize the truth in sociologi-cal production (after all their habitus work to legitimate their status as dominated intheir own minds). So would they, in a strange modern version of Rousseau, have to beforced to be free? You will sit and read and understand my book.

20. Much of this discussion is drawn from or developed from the argument made byde Certeau (1984:45-60).

21. One of the problems in analyzing Bourdieu’s theory of practice is that it is prettywell impossible to prove or disprove an epistemology; one can argue with logic, buthow can anybody demonstrate the nonexistence of unconscious dispositions guidingour behavior? So throughout this section we must remember that, regardless of what itmeans, Bourdieu could be right.



25

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Acciaiolo, Gregory L. 1981. "Knowing What You Are Doing: Pierre Bourdieu’s ’Outlineof a Theory of Practice’." Canberra Anthropology 4(1): 23-51.

Bidet, Jacques. 1979. "Questions to Pierre Bourdieu." Critique of Anthropology 13/14(Summer): 203-208.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1973a. "The Three Forms of Theoretical Knowledge." Social SciencesInformation 12(1): 53-80.. 1973b. [1970] "The Berber House." Pp. 98-110 in Mary Douglas, ed., Rules

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77-85.. 1981. "Men and Machines." Pp. 304-317 in Karen Knorr-Cetina and

Aaron V. Cicourel, eds., Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integra-tion of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

_______. 1984. [1979] Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

_______. 1988a. [1984] Homo Academicus. Stanford: Stanford University Press.________. 1988b. "Vive la Crise! For Heterodoxy in Social Science." Theory and Soci-

ety 17(5): 773-787._______. 1990a. [1980] The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press._______. 1990b. [1982, 1987] In Other Words. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Bottomore, Tom, Laurence Harris, V.G. Kiernan, and Ralph Miliband (eds.). 1983. A

Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Brubaker, Rogers. 1985. "Rethinking Classical Social Theory: The Sociological Vision of

Pierre Bourdieu." Theory and Society 14(6): 745-775.de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

DiMaggio, Paul. 1979. "Review Essay on Pierre Bourdieu." American Journal of Sociology84(6): 1460-1474.

Garnham, Nicholas. 1986. "Extended Review: Bourdieu’s ’Distinction’." SociologicalReview 34(2): 423-433.

Harker, Richard, Cheleen Mahar, and Chris Wilkes. 1990. An Introduction to the Work ofPierre Bourdieu. London: MacMillan Press.

Inglis, Roy. 1979. "Good and Bad Habitus: Bourdieu, Habermas and the Condition ofEngland." Sociological Review 27(2) : 353-369.

Jenkins, Richard. 1982. "Pierre Bourdieu and the Reproduction of Determinism." Sociol-ogy 16(2): 270-281.

_______. 1992. Pierre Bourdieu. London and New York: Routledge.Lemert, Charles C. 1986. "French Sociology: After the ’Patrons,’ What?" Contemporary

Sociology 15(5): 689-692.Lienard, Georges and Emile Servais. 1979. "Practical Sense: On Bourdieu." Critique of

Anthropology 13/14 (Summer): 209-219.Rasmussen, David. 1981. "Praxis and Social Theory." Human Studies 4(3): 273-278.Robbins, Derek. 1991. The Work of Pierre Bourdieu. Milton Keynes: Open University

Press.

Wacquant, Loic J.D. 1989. "Towards a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with PierreBourdieu." Sociological Theory 7: 26-63.

Williams, Raymond. 1983. [1976] Keywords. London: Flamingo (Fontana).Zolberg, Vera. 1986. "Taste as a Social Weapon." Contemporary Sociology 15(4): 511-515.



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Appendix: The Methodological Process in Distinction

1 ) METATHEORY

/ ~ z/ 2) HEURISTIC SCHEME z

( ~ BBB 3) PRELIMINARY SURVEY ) BB by extended interview and j< B~ ethnographic observation ~ z

4) HYPOTHESIS + ESIS OF ~ 9) WRITING

4) HYPOTHESIS OF ~~~ ~ 4’UNITY OF TASTE / z

~ ~ B5) PRODUCE SURVEY &dquo;~ zstructured interviews using ~ ~~ ~closed response categories

/ /

8) OBSERVATIONS AND8) OBSERVAT’ONS AND/ QUESTIONINGS IN REAL

LIFE SITUATIONS6) APPLY SURVEY / ztwice (1963, 1967-68)

~ z7) DATA ANALYSIS ANDSECONDARY DATA ANALYSIS

1. By which I mean epistemology, theory of practice, and related theories. Therefore,this includes habitus, disposition, field, capital, strategy, etc. Bourdieu, as discussedabove, clearly regards these theoretical constructs as guides to thinking rather than as aguiding (determining) theory.

2. Heuristic Scheme: &dquo;theoretical hypotheses could never have been extracted fromthe material analyzed if they had not been present, in the form of heuristic schemes,from the very beginning of the research&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:504). The reason for insertingthis &dquo;step&dquo; is that I did not want to give the impression that the following step wasdirectly determined by theory, in the sense of pure deductive research. Rather, early in



27

the research for this paper I wanted to give Bourdieu the benefit of the doubt andassume that he was working on the basis that previous research and developed macro-theory could not be ignored and that the neo-qualitative building up of theory from thedata in Distinction was the building up of a subset of theory within a metatheory. Whilethese two arguments still hold, they do so within the higher level conclusion that Bour-dieu’s methodology is ultimately tautological.

3. There is no description of the conducting of this research. The only mention of it isthat it happened and that it guided development of the statistical survey.

4.5. Bourdieu makes a number of arguments, some of them bizarre, in favor of

research through the structured, closed response category survey. A set of logical (?)steps is pursued: there is a loss of precision and detail in producing and using such asurvey; that loss is offset by the gain in systematicity; the configurations of preferencesproduced by the survey replace the indications of manner seen through direct observa-tion ; therefore, the survey can replace observations. This springs from the relationshipbetween the &dquo;preliminary survey&dquo; and the produced survey: the categories and ques-tions of the survey have been determined as representative of the questions andresponses to them through the initial nondirective interviews (Bourdieu, 1984:602ff),therefore they adequately represent what would be found in observation. There areseveral problems with this argument. First, if direct observation has produced resultsthat are easily turned into a limited set of response categories for specific questions thenwhy force people to respond in those ways? They will anyway, so you lose accuracywith no gain in systematicity. Second, there is the problem of negative responses. It isvery odd that, having acknowledged that this problem infected some of his data, Bour-dieu shrugs it off as unimportant (despite elsewhere quoting Karl Kraus, &dquo;If I have tochoose the lesser of two evils, I choose neither&dquo; [Bourdieu, 1984:466]). One mustconclude that Bourdieu sees it as sufficient to use observation techniques to guidestatistical data collection and for dealing with problems that cannot otherwise be dealtwith (see note 7 below).

6. If one is going to use statistical methods to this extent, how should one relate tothe rules of statistics? Bourdieu here treats them rather roughly. While acknowledgingthat the overall results are not comparable given his weighted sample, he alsoconducted the survey at two different points in time (separated by several years) andtreats the two samples as one for the purposes of analysis. There is no active compari-son of the two samples to ensure that they aren’t different, though Bourdieu does arguethat &dquo;because the survey measured relatively stable dispositions, this time lag does notseem to have affected the responses&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:504).

7. In his use of secondary data analysis, which is considerable, Bourdieu not onlydownplays potential difficulties, but seems to suggest that his use of other survey dataprovides a sort of armor for the validity of his conclusions. He argues that accountingfor the &dquo;nature of the indicators, the phrasing of the questions, the coding of theresponses, the conditions of the survey and the structure of the sample&dquo; (Bourdieu,1984:602ff) is sufficient to eliminate any problems with secondary analyses. In fact, heargues that &dquo;it is ... by mobilizing around a systematic survey all the statistical dataavailable ... that one is best able to check and fill out the data provided by the mainsurvey&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:50~. Again there are huge problems with these arguments.First, by &dquo;systematically accounting&dquo; for the nature of the secondary data, he is referringto such things as hunting and fishing being grouped together in one survey but not inanother or education being coded into differing numbers of categories (Bourdieu,1984:602ff). These adjustments are hardly sufficient to account for the potentially hugedifficulties in using this secondary data, especially to confirm other survey data: he isessentially using one method to confirm the conclusions of the same method, ratherthan using a variety of techniques to do so. Second, he is not just &dquo;mobilizing&dquo; this datato support what is already there in his own data; in his discussion of food preferences(Bourdieu, 1984:179-199), for example, not one of the tables presented is from his ownsurvey. In fact, there is only one question (#10) on food (Bourdieu, 1984:514) in thesurvey and it refers to preferred styles of meal served to guests (i.e., &dquo;simple but wellpresented&dquo; as if categories such as that in a survey really mean anything). Furthermore,much of his argument could not be produced from survey data. See, for example, pages194-6 where he discusses the manner of food consumption by different classes. These



28

observations could only have been produced by observation, which is downgraded inall discussions of methodology. Finally, compare the amount of data produced by 1217interviews to that of the 51 surveys used in the secondary data analysis.

8. When Bourdieu talks about using &dquo;observations and questionings in real life situ-ations,&dquo; what exactly is he talking about? He used these techniques &dquo;whenever a diffi-culty arose or a new hypothesis required it&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:509). In other words, heused these techniques when his statistics couldn’t provide an answer. If we were to gobased on his methodological description, we would conclude that qualitative methodswere actually used sparingly. The three areas of use that I have been able to clearlyidentify are as follows: one, extended interviews on political views conducted in 1970on a separate sample (Bourdieu, 1984:591ff); two, extended interviews on taste andlifestyle conducted in 1974, again on a separate group of people (see below); and three,various print sources (theater reviews, letters to the editor, etc.). While his use of printsources is often interesting and innovative and the political interviews are fine (but onlyused in one chapter), this leaves only the extended interviews with an unspecified, butapparently quite small, number of people as the identified &dquo;observations and question-ings in real situations.&dquo; Furthermore, some of the uses of his statistical data as the basisto &dquo;lead the interviewee ... towards the most central areas of his or her lifestyle&dquo;(Bourdieu, 1984:274) are disturbing. Actually Bourdieu appears to have guided theinterviewee to the central areas of the lifestyle of his or her class position according tothe survey (in fact, the interviews were conducted to &dquo;collect ... the most significantfeatures of each of the lifestyles that had emerged from analysis of the survey&dquo;[Bourdieu, 1984:274]). Surely if the dispositions he appeared to have found were actu-ally there, he could have found evidence in the extended interviews without guidinghis respondents views quite so stringently, instead guiding to broad subject areas andseeing what was there. The basis of selection of interviewees was a little suspect as well,as they &dquo;[w]ere often a friend or acquaintance of the interviewer&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:274).

9. Bourdieu argues that the difficulty of his writing style is necessary as &dquo;the

language must be used to signal a break with ordinary experience ... [to] bring homethe corresponding social experience to those who do not, or do not want, to know aboutit&dquo; (Bourdieu, 1984:509-10). Well, regardless of the fact that the difficulty of thelanguage makes it that much easier for misunderstanding to arise, it is not so difficult toargue that the writing style also just makes it easier for those who wish to ignore theideas. How many people will bother with near-incomprehensible passages in books thatare not part of the mainstream discourse to begin with?



Documents

The Return of the Subject the Methodology of Pierre Bourdieu