Bourdieu's Theory of Social Fields

Hilgers, Mathieu; Mangez, Éric

doi:10.4324/9781315772493

Cited by 143 publications

(66 citation statements)

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“…But it was Bourdieu (1993) (pp. 72-77) who popularized the notion of field amongst social sciences scholars (Hilgers and Mangez, 2015). He saw the concept of "field" as a social space structured along three dimensions: power relations, objects of struggle, and the rules taken for granted (Pouliot and Mérand, 2013, p. 30).…”

Section: Moral Orders As Strategic Fieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Varieties of Moral Orders and the Dual Structure of Society: A Perspective from Positioning Theory

Langenhove

2017

Front. Sociol.

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This paper argues that morality is what links structure to agency and that this perspective supports Giddens' point of view that the agency-structure linkage entails not dualism but duality. These claims will be supported by bringing together four mediating concepts to address both how structures come to being and what the substance of structure is. First, John Searle's concept of deontic power and Rom Harré's concept of moral order will be discussed. This will allow to develop a typology of moral orders that distinguishes between cultural, legal, institutional, conversational, and personal moral orders. Second, the notion of field will be presented as a third mediating concept and it will be argued that the different types of moral orders form a latent background that operates as a normative field in which people act. The totality of those nested orders can be pictured as the structure of a society. The final part of the paper will introduce the concept of position, as used in Positioning Theory, as a fourth mediating concept to advance the analysis of moral orders as structures and relate it to the differences in power amongst actors. Here, it will be argued that declarative speech acts are the activators of moral orders, that moral orders enable for certain positions of agency, and that conversational story lines allow to reproduce or change structures.

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Section: Moral Orders As Strategic Fieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Varieties of Moral Orders and the Dual Structure of Society: A Perspective from Positioning Theory

Langenhove

2017

Front. Sociol.

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“…Thus, there are different orders which co-exist with each other and there are also commonalities and overlaps which join these areas together, and as a whole they produce a wider form of order in given territorial spaces. Bourdieu calls these separate spheres fields 42 and it is a concept which is designed to bridge the agency-structure dichotomy and has some clear complementarity to Giddens' theory. By focusing on the more specific dynamics of order within smaller spheres it is possible to track actors interactions and the impacts of agency on these interactions, thus we can then begin to judge the impact of rebel governance upon the orders present in different fields and to judge by their impacts both the relative power distributions but also the level of importance rebels attach to each separate field -this in turn then might enable a greater understanding of the impact of rebel governance upon the broader form of order which emerges from the interactions of the different fields (large and small) within the wider societal order.…”

Section: Structure and Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re-)emergent orders: understanding the negotiation(s) of rebel governance

Worrall

2017

Small Wars & Insurgencies

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“…Field theory does not start with Bourdieu. Field theory first arises from physics and philosophers who then extended the concept ‘field’ for various purposes (Martin, ; Hilgers and Mangez, ). Kurt Lewin () is generally cited as the first social scientist to have used the term.…”

Section: Bourdieu's Field Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%