Social fields and the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu

“Fields present themselves synchronically as structured spaces of positions (or posts) whose properties depend on their position within these spaces and which

can be analysed independently of the characteristics of their occupants (which are partly determined by them)” (Bourdieu 1993: 72) – this is one of the broad-ly quoted definitions of fields made by Bourdieu� Yet, when discussing his ap-proach to social fields, which influenced very much the way of thinking about meso-level social structures, it is important to keep in mind that Bourdieu was abstaining from formulating intentional definitions, as he believed that doing so was a characteristic of positivisms in social sciences� According to Bourdieu’s way of sociological reasoning, notions should be understood in the empirical context, rather than clearly defined�

For Bourdieu, the field is an indispensable level of analysis to mediate be-tween the larger social structures and individuals� He explained this issue in the following passage: “the sociology of art or literature that directly relates works of art to the producers’ or clients’ position in social space (their social class) without considering their position in the field of production (a ‘reduction’ which is, strictly, only valid for ‘naïve’ artists) sweeps aside everything that the work owes to the field and its history – that is to say, precisely that which makes it a work of art, or science, or philosophy” (Bourdieu 1993: 75)� The quote shows that sociology which attempts to build explanations on the basis of correlations of variables positioning individuals in the society (like social class, or level of education) is, according to Bourdieu, mistaken� In his view, specific social roles (i�e� artist, scientist) and objects with their symbolic meaning (i�e� a piece of art, or a scientific discovery) are produced by social fields� Without this mediating (meso-level) structure and its stakes, games, logics, and power relations, analysts and interpreters of social reality are lost�

In order to function, a field requires stakes and people who are willing to play the game of a given field and have a formed habitus of perceiving the achievement of stakes of a field to be in their interest� These people (and sometimes broader collectives) are unequal in power� Some of them are challengers to the field’s sta-tus quo, and some of them hold dominant positions, and it is in their interest to maintain their hegemony� Thus, the structure of a field is actually a structure of power relations of players engaged in field struggles� The power is manifested in a form of symbolic capital, specific to a given field� The so-called “triad” or “trio”

(Emirbayer, Johnson 2008; Thomson 2012) of concepts, which enables Bourdieu to analyze social processes, is actually allowing to connect phenomena of a dif-ferent analytical level: habitus is a characteristic of an individual; capital is a char-acteristic of an individual but it is visible, useful, and salient only when there are relations between at least two individuals� Finally, the field is a context, but also an overall structure, of relations between individuals� Society for Bourdieu is in fact

a constellation of relatively autonomous fields (Bourdieu, Wacquant 1992: 17), which allows to say that in his theory they are on a meso-level: below the level of society, but above the level of an individual or the level of a relation� Yet, the field is not just a level of analysis, but it is the only proper level of analysis� Society is for him an empty notion, and an individual is meaningless without the field which provides meaning to the roles played by an individual� Thus, for Bourdieu the field is a true object of social sciences (Bourdieu, Wacquant 1992: 107)�

The metaphor of the game is one way to understand the social field, but an-other inspiration comes from natural sciences: it is the magnetic field in which forces influence positions and trajectories of particles� The use of the metaphor of a field of force, reveals that explaining the behavior of an individual (a particle) is impossible without the broader context of field forces� The interactions between individuals – clashes of particles – are not a sufficiently broad context to under-stand them� Martin (2011) explains this advancement in theory also using the analogy to natural sciences and showing that field theory allows to understand ac-tions of individuals in other way than mechanist approaches allow� In mechanist approaches, actors need to interact with each other (particles need to collide) in order to act, while in field approaches the field force (relating to other actors, but not necessarily interacting with them) triggers movement� According to Bourdieu, the forces active in the field are the ones which define the capital specific for that field (Bourdieu, Wacquant 1992: 101)� Knowing what form of capital gives what kind of advantage over other members of a given field is an impulse towards ac-tions, which – in consequence – affect other participants of the field� This is the reason why the magnetic field metaphor illustrates so well the relational character of field processes� There is no need for interaction because relating (sometimes imagined) constituted by comparisons of capitals impacts individuals�

The consequence of introducing the notion of social field to the theory is that it brings the attention to that which is “invisible�” Thanks to the notion of the field, the analysis does not have to be limited to entities visible at first sight, such as in-dividuals, groups, or interactions� The forces of the field cannot be always simply perceived but, according to Bourdieu, they are present there (Bourdieu, Wacquant 1992: 96–97)� These are the imagined relations and motivations constructed by the field structure that drive actions� Apparently, such line of theorizing creates the risk of bringing in metaphysics, yet the intention of Bourdieu was to analyze the forces obliging actors to act in a given way reflecting their position in the field�

The interplay of visibility and invisibility, or the mechanistic and electromag-netic metaphors, bring to the issue of the objectivism – subjectivism debate in sociological theory� According to one of the reconstructions of the concept of

social field, it is “the objective network or configuration of relations (again struc-turing and structured) to be found in any social space or particular context”

(Grenfell 2012: 47)� Bourdieu was attempting to break with the objective – subjective dualism� He was mostly influenced by structuralism (the objectivist inspiration) and existentialism (the subjectivist inspiration)� The concept of field is said to be the objective (structuralist inspiration) side of Bourdieu’s theory, while habitus is said to be the subjective side� Commentators stress that these two concepts cannot be separated� Yet, for many scholars inspired by Bourdieu, only the concept of field remained salient� This is especially the case of research-ers studying collective actors, of whose habitus it is difficult to talk about�¹⁵

Bourdieu’s concept of field has several shortcomings, some of which it shares with his general works: murkiness and lack of clarity covered with sophisticated, ornate, and sometimes even bizarre language� He was purposively using open concepts and claiming that the proper understanding of his concepts is possible only in the context of the whole theoretical system they constitute (Bourdieu, Wacquant 1992: 96)� Some of the problems regarding the conception of a field come from the fact that Bourdieu did not build a grand theory of a field, but he was rather using it to solve practical problems and pursue empirical operations (Thomson 2012: 79)� Yet, it is important to remember that Bourdieu (1993: 72) claimed that there is a need for such general theory and that “general laws of fields” do exist� Most often, the critique of Bourdieu’s understanding of the con-cept of field regards the following aspects: blurriness of borders; relations between fields; too many fields or focus on just one field; change in fields; architecture of fields; actors’ focus on their own position; individuals as actors in fields�

The borders of a given field are rarely clearly visible� Although Bourdieu was convinced that fields are objective reality, he was pointing that one of the games which is played in all fields concerns defining the field’s borders� At least for this reason it is never certain who is to be included in the field as its participant� Some of the more powerful actors might be claiming that other less powerful actors are outside of a given field� This exactly might the point of a boundary game in a given field: that outsiders are challenging to be recognized as members of a field� The problem is of a theoretical nature as Bourdieu stressed the contention of fields and their antagonistic character (Bourdieu, Wacquant 1992: 103)� It is also a very im-portant practical problem for researchers, who need to decide which objects and 15 Even Mustafa Emirbayer and Victoria Johnson (2008), who called for bringing the habitus concept into the organizational analysis, did not offer the idea of habitus on the collective level� They highlighted that the study of organizations will benefit from the study of their individual members’ habitus�

subjects select for observation� Bourdieu’s answer would be that proper research ought to be long-lasting, preferably with an ethnographic component, so eventu-ally the researcher will “know for sure” what the exact borders of the field are�

Bourdieu underthorized relations between fields (Fligstein, McAdam 2012:

26)� He often mentioned them by pointing that the field of education is crucial for other fields because it distributes symbolic capital, or that the field of power is the field of fields, and that all other fields are subordinated to it� Yet, Bourdieu did not provide too many hints on how relations between fields should be studied, and he did not theorize about these relations, confining himself to confirming that the question of inter-field relations is a difficult one (Bourdieu, Wacquant 1992: 109)� This seems to be a crucial omission in his conception� One of the hints he gave about relations between fields is to study the transfer of symbolic capital between fields (Bourdieu 1993: 73)� In other approaches to the field theo-ry (discussed below) the interdependence of fields is a vetheo-ry important and often addressed issue�

The problem of undertheorized relations between fields is, in my opinion, connected to the issue labeled by Patricia Thomson (2012: 77) as “the problem of too many fields�” Bourdieu often treated any context of social interaction or power games as a field, which made it possible to have at some point together the broad field of power, specific field under study, and a collective actor in that field also analyzed as a field (i�e� a given university as a field in the field of sci-ence related to the field of power)� This problem is connected to the tension between understanding a field as a real entity which objectively exists (Bourdieu supported this view), and understanding a field as a heuristic which helps in studying the context of action� The solution usually applied by Bourdieu was to focus on one field at a time� Yet, the decision on how to frame an object of study always has its consequences� I claim that the focus on one field, although useful for explaining some important aspects of its internal dynamics, in consequence diminishes the importance of inter-field effects� If the field is considered as a key meso-level of analysis mediating between level of an actor and a level of society, then it is necessary to keep in mind that society (whatever it means) is filled with many overlapping or related fields� By “overlapping,” I mean a situation in which one actor partakes in two fields, and by “relating,” I mean a situation in which occurrences in one field have consequences for the occurrences in the other�

Although Bourdieu focused his attention on struggles in fields as arenas of conflict (his omission of cooperation in fields will be discussed below), his ap-proach is often criticized for an undertheorization of change in the fields� The problem seems to be paradoxical as fields studied by Bourdieu are usually boiling

with contention and some of the fields he studied were the emerging ones – for example, the field of literature (Bourdieu 1996)� Yet, this contention and never-ending antagonism within a given field often leads to the reproduction of a field structure of positions� Changes in language and symbols are usually covering the lack of changes in relations of dominance� Therefore, the accusation of determin-ism is quite accurate� At the same time, the undertheorization of change in fields stems from the focus on intra-field processes, while – as I will demonstrate in the latter parts of the chapter on other approaches to field theory – many structural changes within fields are caused by their relations with other fields� This brings back to the problem discussed in the previous paragraph, and allows to say that the problems with grasping change in fields are, to a large extent, caused by the undertheorization of field relations in Bourdieu’s conception�

As Fligstein and McAdam (2012: 24) noticed, Bourdieu “has little to say about the architecture of fields beyond the general view that they contain positions that are structured by the relative power of actors�” Quite often the narration on fields in Bourdieu’s conceptualization is limited to the story about the conflict between orthodoxies and heterodoxies, and the bi-polar oppositions in field structures (certainly the inspiration of structural theory)� Yet, there are certainly more types of positions in the field than the dominating and dominated ones� Fields contain specific niches and actors of special status, who may not be equipped with much power but, for example, their uniqueness is indispensable for the field, or their structural position allows them to bridge different kind of actors�

Finally, in many fields there are special actors to whom other actors mandate coordinative prerogatives� This idea is going to be developed in the latter section on the strategic action fields theory�

Therefore, Bourdieu is mostly interested in conflict within fields (the issue of conflict and cooperation is going to be developed in Section 2�5) and the inces-santly struggling actors “are generally only responsible to themselves and moti-vated by a desire to advance their interests” (Fligstein, McAdam 2012: 25)� Thus, there is no place for coordinated action in fields� Actors fight for making their position better and even if Bourdieu talks about orthodoxies fighting against heterodoxies, it is rather an invisible hand mechanism which creates the impres-sion that these two groups of position holders coordinate their actions against each other� Fields are fields of individual, self-oriented particles�

Another shortcoming of Bourdieu’s conception of social field is that it is tai-lored to study individual – and not collective – actors� Although Bourdieu was mentioning that collective actors are also members of fields (he referred to them as institutions), it is easy to see that his approach was not including collective

actors� In fact, any collective actor (an organization or social group, and espe-cially a social movement) was nearly automatically treated by him as another social field� There is nothing wrong in this perspective, however, in Bourdieu’s approach the notion of habitus is tangled with the notion of field, and habitus is strictly a disposition of a human individual� I cannot imagine a serious transpo-sition of habitus from individual actors to collective actors� Bourdieu’s fields are spaces connecting people and shaping their biographies, but they are not very helpful in explaining organizational processes�

2.3 Sociology of organizations in the search for the level of analysis