Religion, classification struggles, and the state’s exercise of symbolic power

Saeed, Sadia

doi:10.1007/s11186-020-09415-z

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…This is not to say that the state is singularly powerful through discourse. Groups are known to advocate on their own behalf (Emigh et al, 2016b;Mora, 2014), and to resist efforts from the outside to impose ways of thinking (Saeed, 2021). Even in situations where there is no outright conflict between groups, professional groups or experts can sometimes contribute to discourse in ways that rival the state's influence (Desrosières, 2008b;Didier, 2009;Porter, 1995).…”

Section: Discourse and Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently a spate of work has tried to better specify our understanding of discursive power. It has explored what happens when people resist the state's attempts to exert power through discourse (Saeed, 2021), how the categories that are used within the state can be far more ambiguous than the 1 The author owes some big thank yous to Yotala Oszkay, Gabriel Suchodolski, and Sandy Xu, for their incisive comments on versions of this work, as well as to Rebecca Jean Emigh and everyone else involved categories that appear on paper (Brown, 2020;King, 2022), and even the extent to which states draw on non-state discourse, rather than the other way around (Emigh et al, 2016b). The problem is that in sociological theory, the state's use of discursive power appears too frequently to be too strong, while in empirical reality it is often ineffective and fragile.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Holding discursive power to a counterfactual standard: The state and road navigation in the technology transition to automobiles

Herman

2023

Preprint

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States are known to hold power not only through coercion, but through social discourse. Nonetheless, the author here argues that this claim is built on shaky ground. Using a counter-factual case study with an implicit comparative design, this paper asks what happens when a state chooses not to engage with social discourse, when it otherwise would be expected to do so. Are there noticeable differences in social discourse when the state does not get involved? Considering the technology transition to the automobile in the early 20th C, historical analysis shows that the outcomes of social discourse around road navigation were extremely similar in Europe, where states were heavily involved in shaping the discourse, and in the United States, where the state was absent. This strongly suggests that neither the states in Europe, nor the state in the United States, were powerful through discourse, as what could “power” possibly mean if it has no consequences under the counter-factual? It also indicates that researchers may overstate their ability to distinguish between situations where actors are powerful through social discourse, what the author calls attributable power, and situations where actors are merely involved in social discourse, but without causing discernible changes to the outcomes with their involvement, what the author calls unattributable power.

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Section: Discourse and Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holding discursive power to a counterfactual standard: The state and road navigation in the technology transition to automobiles

Herman

2023

Preprint

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“… 2 Saeed ( 2021 ) similarly argues that the ways in which symbolic power is exercised by the state has been undertheorized. See also Loveman ( 2005 ), who tries to shed more light on the ways in which the state accumulates symbolic power in the first place.…”

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confidence: 99%

The culture of official statistics. Symbolic domination and “bourgeois” assimilation in quantitative measurements of immigrant integration in Germany

Petzke

2022

Theor Soc

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While cultural sociology has recently made a comeback in research on social inequality both in the context of poverty studies and studies of immigrant integration, it has rarely investigated how particular constructions of the problem of socioeconomic mobility are themselves culturally situated. The article addresses this neglect by investigating the problematization of disadvantaged lives within the relational framework of Bourdieu’s cultural theory of the state. Here, the state exercises symbolic violence by transforming one arbitrary cultural standpoint in social space into a universal standard, or a taken-for-granted “doxa,” against which other cultural positions can only come off as deficient. The article extends this perspective by addressing the role of official statistics in this process. Taking Germany’s official monitoring of the socioeconomic integration of immigrants as its case and drawing from document analysis, interviews, ethnographic observation, and data from the German General Social Survey, the article shows how such statistical instruments of the welfare state in fact tacitly universalize a model of the good life particular to civil servants, the very constructors of the monitors, as a benchmark for immigrant integration.

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Categorical astigmatism: on ethnicity, religion, nationality, and class in the study of migrants in Europe

Türkmen

2024

Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Religion, classification struggles, and the state’s exercise of symbolic power

Cited by 5 publications

References 57 publications

Holding discursive power to a counterfactual standard: The state and road navigation in the technology transition to automobiles

Holding discursive power to a counterfactual standard: The state and road navigation in the technology transition to automobiles

The culture of official statistics. Symbolic domination and “bourgeois” assimilation in quantitative measurements of immigrant integration in Germany

Categorical astigmatism: on ethnicity, religion, nationality, and class in the study of migrants in Europe

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