Sacred Capital: Pierre Bourdieu and the Study of Religion

Abstract

This article offers a critical analysis of Pierre Bourdieu's work and its importance for the study of religion. Analysis and criticim of Bourdieu's theories with reference to the example of the Bˆuls, a loose, eclectic tradition of wandering minstrels and self-proclaimed spiritual "madmen", which has flourished throughout Bengal (northeast India and Bangladesh) since at least the late nineteenth century, was chosen for two reasons: first, because much like Bourdieu, the Bˆuls make frequent use of a "marketplace" metaphor to describe the larger realms of social interaction and religious discourse; second, because the Bˆuls offer a powerful challenge to Bourdieu's work, demonstrating that there is perhaps far more room for subversion and critique of the dominant "social marketplace" than his model of society and culture seems to allow.

Re-conceptualising the religious habitus: Reflexivity and embodied subjectivity in global modernity

“…Bourdieu 1991;Berlinerblau 1999;Collins, 2002;Verter 2003;Rey 2007, Mellor andShilling 2010b; see also Lee, 2010). Despite this, it is common to engage with his writings selectively, sidestepping, for example, his socio-economic reductionist view that religion involves misrecognizing the structure of the social world as the natural-supernatural structure of the cosmos (Bourdieu 1991, 14, 16, 19-22;1977, 129;1987, 124;1991, 16 Csordas 1994), or by questioning his assumptions about the passivity associated with the inculcation of a religious habitus, as well as his broader class-based analysis Martin 2000;Jenkins 2002;Engler 2003;Urban 2003;Lau 2004).…”

Response - Ritual Re-Description as Passport Control: A Rejoinder to Fitzgerald after Bourdieu[1]

“…In the recent debate between Hugh Urban and Bradford Verter about Bourdieu in the pages of MTSR (Urban 2003, 2005, Verter 2004), Urban raises the question of what an analysis of the field of religious studies modeled after Bourdieu's analysis of fields would look like (2005: 166). Despite the fact that the question is posed for somewhat unfair purposes, it is an important question.…”

“…Both Urban (2003) and Verter (2003 and2004) have criticized Bourdieu's relative inattention to the interconnection between various fields, and Verter suggests that Bourdieu treats fields as an archipelago of islands (2003: 162). Bourdieu always suggested that the relation between fields was an "extremely complex" question that he was reticent to try to answer, in part because of his distaste for the rigid schemas of the grand theorists and models that provide answers rather than relevant questions for empirical research.…”

“…2 Instead, I will limit myself to the major points, and attempt to respond in such a way that might contribute to the ongoing efforts to understand the field of religious studies. Given the recent contributions to MTSR in the form of a debate between Hugh Urban (2003Urban ( , 2005 and Bradford Verter (2004) on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it seems appropriate to frame my response in the terms Bourdieu uses to analyse social fields.…”

Outline of a Relational Approach to ‘Nonreligion’

“…While the latter may be the case in some circum stances (for example constituted by similar relationships towards different religious fields) not all "modes" of nonreligiosity may necessarily represent a relations that can be observed with quite different tools (for a discussion of "spiritual" and "sacred" capital see Verter 2003;Urban 2003 ). distinct kind.14 The suggestion to focus on different modes of nonreligiosity is inspired by attempts to differentiate between modes of religiosity (see Berner 2004and Quack 2012aand 2012c.…”