Bourdieu, Habitus and Field: A Critical Realist Approach 3031418468, 9783031418464

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN RELATIONAL SOCIOLOGY

Bourdieu, Habitus and Field A Critical Realist Approach Sadiya Akram

Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology Series Editors

Nick Crossley Department of Sociology University of Manchester Manchester, UK Peeter Selg School of Governance, Law and Society Tallinn University Tallinn, Estonia

In various disciplines such as archeology, psychology, psychoanalysis, international relations, and philosophy, we have seen the emergence of relational approaches or theories. This series, founded by François Dépelteau, seeks to further develop relational sociology through the publication of diverse theoretical and empirical research—including that which is critical of the relational approach. In this respect, the goal of the series is to explore the advantages and limits of relational sociology. The series welcomes contributions related to various thinkers, theories, and methods clearly associated with relational sociology (such as Bourdieu, critical realism, Deleuze, Dewey, Elias, Latour, Luhmann, Mead, network analysis, symbolic interactionism, Tarde, and Tilly). Multidisciplinary studies which are relevant to relational sociology are also welcome, as well as research on various empirical topics (such as education, family, music, health, social inequalities, international relations, feminism, ethnicity, environmental issues, politics, culture, violence, social movements, and terrorism). Relational sociology—and more specifically, this series—will contribute to change and support contemporary sociology by discussing fundamental principles and issues within a relational framework.

Sadiya Akram

Bourdieu, Habitus and Field A Critical Realist Approach

Sadiya Akram History, Politics and Philosophy Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, UK

Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology ISBN 978-3-031-41845-7    ISBN 978-3-031-41846-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41846-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

In memory of Bava Gi

Acknowledgements

Perhaps a common experience to those of us who end up taking the academic path, but when I was an undergraduate, it was such a nourishing and enriching experience that I dreaded the day it would end and be forced to leave my studies behind. That such a proposition never materialised was made possible by a scholarship to study for a PhD from the Economic and Social Research Council, to whom I will be forever grateful for allowing me to remain at the university and to continue my education, particularly with regard to the topic of this book: the social and political theory of Pierre Bourdieu. My introduction to Bourdieu came during my undergraduate years at the University of Birmingham, and although this is now some time ago, I consider myself to still be a student of Bourdieu’s work, and this book represents the culmination of this journey. It feels both a privilege and an act of trepidation to be contributing to the vast number of shelves already populated by books on Bourdieu, and I offer this book as my own interpretation of a highly relevant body of work which continues to inspire and provoke. One’s research is often the result of the various twists and turns of an academic career, the people one meets and the institutions that one passes through. This has been particularly true in my case, and I am fortunate to have encountered colleagues, friends and students at the University of Birmingham, Australia National University, the University of Canberra, Queen Mary University of London, and my current institution, Manchester Metropolitan University. In no particular order, thank you to Selen Ercan, Brendan Mccaffrey, Karen Tindall, Helen Taylor, Matt Laing, Henrik Bang (i.e. the Australian gang), Kim Hutchings, Sophie Harman, Michael vii

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Kenny, Robbie Shilliam and Engin Isin. I would particularly like to mention Dave Marsh, who has been a constant source of support from my undergraduate days to the present. In different ways you have all contributed to my academic journey but also to the ideas in this book. Others who deserve a notable mention include Ian Burkitt, John Boswell, Jack Corbett, Zoe Pflaeger-Young, John Narayan, Shirin Hirsch, Mercedes Peñalba-Sotorrío, Beate Peter and Ben Bowman, who have provided friendship, mentoring and intellectual support. Rob Jackson, Davide Schmid, Paul Giladi and I founded the Critical Theory in Hard Times Network at Manchester Metropolitan University in February 2019. This has been an intellectually stimulating network and has helped to facilitate a series of fruitful dialogues and events. I thank Rob, Davide and Paul for being good colleagues and friends and look forward to continuing to think together about the role of critical theory in our ever-present hard times. I would also like to acknowledge the PACE writing group, the roots of whose acronym we may have long forgotten, but which remains a constant source of support and good humour, and the important reminder that although academic writing can be tough, it need not be a solitary process and that supporting each other matters. Chapter 5 was presented at the Bourdieu and Work Conference at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris on 16–18 November 2022, and I am grateful for the constructive comments that I received, which informed the development of the chapter. Particular thanks to Maxime Quijoux and Benjamin Brundu-Gonzalez for organising such a brilliant event. Last but not least, I am lucky to be surrounded by the endless love and good humour of my family, Ben, Freya and Audrey; you keep me smiling. A special mention too to the Sydney Road Crew, my other family. This book is dedicated to the memory of my Bava Gi, Mahmood Hashmi, and a life well lived.

Praise for Bourdieu, Habitus and Field “In this innovative and rigorously researched rethinking of Bourdieu’s conceptual tool-kit, Sadiya Akram develops a rich, nuanced analysis that develops and expands on Bourdieu’s thinking in exciting new ways. Starting with Bhaskar’s critical realism, and weaving a compelling empirical case study of institutional racism into her account, Akram generatively fleshes out a Bourdieusian conception of social reality for the 21stcentury.” —Professor Diane Reay, Professor of Education, University of Cambridge “This book takes Bourdieu’s thought in new directions. Deftly deploying the lens of critical realism, Akram allows us to reinterpret Bourdieu’s insights into institutions, habitus, and fields. This is a must read for anyone interested in Pierre Bourdieu’s lasting legacy in social theory.” —Professor Julian Go, Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago “This is an important book, as it delves deeply into the epistemological and ontological foundations of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, throwing new light on his key concepts and suggesting ways in which they can be applied to the understanding of ordinary, everyday life. As such, this is vital reading for students and scholars of Bourdieu’s work, as well as for those working in critical realism.” —Professor Ian Burkitt, Emeritus Professor, University of Bradford

Contents

1 Bourdieu: From Epistemology to Ontology  1 2 Critical  Realism: Ontology in an Era of Ontological Scepticism 25 3 Habitus: A Critical Realist Interpretation 59 4 Field: Bourdieu and Beyond107 5 A Bourdieusian Approach to Institutions139 6 Habitus: From Theory to Method? A Six-­Point Heuristic187 7 Taking Bourdieu into the World211 Index223

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About the Author

Sadiya Akram  is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Manchester Metropolitan University. Sadiya’s research is concerned with race and racism, concepts of agency and political mobilisation. The socio-political thought of Pierre Bourdieu is a focal point of her work.

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 6.1

Critical realism’s stratified conception of ontology. (Adapted from Bhaskar, 1975, p. 56) Habitus as method: internal components and field

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CHAPTER 1

Bourdieu: From Epistemology to Ontology

But, above all, I had always been grateful to Pascal, as I understood him, for his concern, devoid of all populist naivety, for ‘ordinary people’ and the ‘sound opinions of the people’; and also for his determination, inseparable from that concern, always to seek ‘the reason of effects’, the raison d’etre of the seemingly most illogical and derisory human behaviours  – such as ‘spending a whole day chasing a hare’ – rather than condemning or mocking them (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 2) Indeed, everything takes place as if the ideal that radical empiricism offers to the sociologist were that of his own disappearance as such. (Bourdieu et al., 1991, p. 37)

As the opening quote above illustrates, it is a concern with capturing ‘ordinary people’ and their ‘ordinary experience of the social’ (Bourdieu, 1990a, p.  5) that defines Pierre Bourdieu’s project and is central to his theory of ‘practice’. The same concern, viewed through an alternate lens, alerts us to the fact that Bourdieu is also acutely aware that the social world, or ordinary experience, is not reducible to the ‘theoreticians view of knowledge’, leading to the view that: ‘practice has a logic which is not that of the logician’ (1990b, p. 89). There is then a vast aperture between what one might experience at an individual level and the claims that the social scientist can make at the level of research and epistemology about © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Akram, Bourdieu, Habitus and Field, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41846-4_1

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said world because, and as indicated in the second quote above, the social scientist cannot manufacture her own disappearing act. How one reconciles these two positions is one of the defining questions which guides Bourdieu’s extensive body of work developed over the twentieth and into the twenty-first century which makes him an invaluable critic of, but also guide to, thinking about socio-political life. Intrinsic to this concern with capturing the ordinary experience of the social are Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus defined as ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions’ which orientate our approach to the world (1977, p. 72); and field, Bourdieu’s concept of spatially oriented relational structures pertaining to distinct areas of social life. These twin concepts have spurned much research; however they have also been subject to a series of ongoing criticisms from a range of directions that go to the heart of Bourdieu’s oeuvre. Foremost among these is the criticism that habitus, Bourdieu’s account of how the individual interacts with the social, is deterministic because it allows too little room for conscious thought or reflexivity, for the individual to engage in social mobility and enact change. Related, is the concern that the concept of field, Bourdieu’s notion of site-­ specific structures imbued with competition for capital and power is too rigid, top-down and limited in its malleability with regard to the agents who inhabit the field. In this book, I argue that these criticisms about the balance between the ordinary and epistemology, and about the apparent determinism and circularity of habitus and the restrictiveness of the field concept, stem from a neglect on the part of Bourdieu but also his interlocutors to engage in discussion of the ontological underpinnings of Bourdieu’s work. The key contribution that I wish to make in the present book is to show that ontological questions are implicit to Bourdieu’s project, they are sometimes implicitly invoked, but rarely made explicit, and that elaborating on these adds a layer of depth and complexity which addresses some of the long-­ standing criticisms of Bourdieu’s core concepts. Establishing the ontological principles which underpin Bourdieu’s ideas will ensure a deeper level of connection and comprehension to the concepts of habitus, field and the theory of practice, but will also strengthen Bourdieu’s account of epistemology. The other key contribution of this book is to elucidate the synergies between Bourdieu’s work and that of Roy Bhaskar’s, the founder of critical realism, showing that the critical realist ontological approach enriches Bourdieu’s oeuvre, and that these two thinkers are profitably put into conversation with each other.

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1   Introducing Bourdieu Bourdieu’s (1930–2002) body of work, developed over several decades, spanning the twentieth and into the twenty-first century has been enormously fecund. The line between acclaim and critical acclaim can be thin, and Lamont (2012) reminds us that orthodoxy, but also heterodoxy characterise the reception of Bourdieu’s ideas. Despite largely focusing on the French context, a point which has sometimes led to the criticism that Bourdieu’s work applied singularly to France and that the same principles of class hierarchy were not applicable beyond France or indeed Europe, Bourdieu’s concepts have nonetheless travelled beyond France. They have been widely discussed and had different trajectories in national fields as diverse as America (Lamont, 2012), India (Lardinois & Meenaskshi, 2018) and China (Mu et al., 2019). As is clear, Bourdieu is the most ‘multivocal’ of contemporary theorists, and his body of work has provided an ‘unbelievably generative set of questions’ that Bourdieu has been able to put to many disciplinary agendas (Lamont, 2012, p. 229). Much of the secondary literature on Bourdieu has developed around the idea of ‘forms of capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986) and this, alongside a panoply of other concepts, has led to vibrant research in the field of education (Reay, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2004; DiMaggio, 1982), race and education (Wallace, 2016, 2018, 2019), organisational sociology (DiMaggio, 1979; DiMaggio & Powell, 1991) and economics (Swedberg, 2011; Vincent & Pagan, 2019). Thus, we might surmise as indeed others have that Bourdieu has been a seminal figure in the ‘cultural turn’ in sociology (Lamont, 2012; Lizardo, 2012). Notably, and in the spirit of developing these ideas rather than solely attempting application, the concept of forms of capital has not remained static, and there have been attempts to refine and elaborate on the concept showing how it might be adapted to a context where there is recognition that the way in which we engage with culture has evolved. As Prieur and Savage write: ‘given the scale of technological and social change, it would be remarkable if Bourdieu’s account of cultural capital continued to exist in unchanged form’ (2013, p. 249). The extant research has been particularly concerned with refining the high-low-brow cultural capital distinction that was elaborated in Bourdieu’s original development of the concept of cultural capital. Scholarship suggests that we are now ‘cultural omnivores’ rather than ‘univores’ and that the divide between ‘high’ and ‘mass’

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culture no longer mirrors the relationship between social position and aesthetic dispositions as discussed by Bourdieu (Peterson, 1992, 1997, 2005; Peterson & Kern, 1996; Prieur & Savage, 2013). Speaking about the United States, Lamont and Lareau (1988) find that whereas Bourdieu presumed that a legitimate culture existed, there is important cross-national variability in the permeability of class boundaries and the degree of consensus and stability of the legitimate culture, leading them to argue for a notion of ‘bounded culture’ (also, see Lamont, 1992). Although a worthy topic of much Bourdieu-inspired scholarship, cultural capital is not my concern here. Instead, I am interested to explore the theoretical, but also ontological architecture that sustains concepts such as cultural capital, and specifically the foundational work that habitus and field do in Bourdieu’s oeuvre. There Are Many Bourdieus Bourdieu’s key concepts allow for thinking about Bourdieu’s intellectual debts and how they have shaped his concerns. Scanning the literature on Bourdieu, one would be correct to assert as Lizardo (2012) does that there are in fact many Bourdieu’s in the literature as different aspects of his work have been mined for different purposes and led to a variety of assessments, which has also led to him being associated with a range of intellectual traditions. There is the Bourdieu who is the ‘trojan horse for determinism’ (Alexander, 1995, p.  136), but also the Bourdieu who neglects conscious thought in his theory of agency and habitus leading Jenkins (2002) to argue that habitus, in dismissing conscious thought, exists in ‘a sub-mind of embodied habituation and thoughtless practice which could easily have its theoretical origins in behaviouralist psychology’ (2002, p. 93). From a more sympathetic corner, but one with a view to refinement, it is the phenomenological roots of Bourdieu’s habitus that has preoccupied some of Bourdieu’s interlocutors (Atkinson, 2016, Robbins, 2019, McNay, 2008). Whereas Atkinson is stronger in his recommendation of Merleau Ponty and phenomenology as a lens through which to read the apparent evasions in Bourdieu’s project, Robbins does not seek to align the two, instead arguing that: ‘Bourdieu embodied the tensions that are apparent in the thinking of Merleau Ponty, Shutz and Gurschz’ (2019, p.  195), whilst concluding that Bourdieu’s method is ‘fundamentally phenomenological’.

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Atkinson (2016), following McNay (2008), argues for a relational phenomenological approach to Bourdieu but finds that Bourdieu’s original concepts require re-thinking because they do not reflect everyday life. For Atkinson there is much of value in Bourdieu’s work, but the core concepts of habitus, field and practice are unable to capture the reality of the quotidian; something that phenomenology can help with. Correcting for the neglect of the everyday offers: ‘potential insight into the detail of how we each individually experience the world and come to be who we are’ (2016, p. 10). For instance, he points to the inability of Bourdieu’s concept of field to recognise the overlap of fields in everyday life as in the case of the family and gender—two areas that Atkinson considers are good examples of a ‘multitude of fields vying for attention’ (2016, p.  7). Ultimately, Bourdieu’s theoretical tools are, in Atkinson’s view, inadequate for ‘making sense of the fullness of mundane, everyday, lived experience (Erlebnis)’ or for ‘making sense of how we each come to be who we are as a whole (Erfahrung)’ (2016, p. 6). In his review of Robbins’ (2019) account of the influence of phenomenology on Bourdieu, Swartz (2020) notes that Merleau Ponty’s influence on Bourdieu is evident in the concept of habitus, which like Merleau Ponty’s philosophy of action seeks to transcend the subject/object and mind/body dualism, while emphasising the embodied nature of action. Beyond this, a phenomenological account of Bourdieu adds a possibly valuable layer of analysis to concepts such as habitus and field because it shows how ‘habitus comprises the horizons of perception’ (Atkinson, 2016, p. 5), but as Swartz reminds us, and as will be explored below, it is important to acknowledge that it is a grounding in the epistemological critique of Bachelard (1938/2002) that forms the foundations for Bourdieu’s approach, and not strictly phenomenology as Robbins (2019) argues is the case.

2   Bourdieu and Bhaskar The idea behind this book stems from a desire to better understand, explain and, ultimately, to address the reproduction of inequality and domination in everyday life. It starts with the conviction that there is much of value in Bourdieu’s work, but that the core concepts of habitus and field, as well as Bourdieu’s theory of practice more broadly would benefit from a stronger ontological footing which would underpin and extend his extensive critique of epistemology and ordinary life.

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I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the work of Bourdieu many years ago as an undergraduate and remain a student of this rich and extensive body of work. I find it uniquely capable of providing an account of the everyday and the ‘ordinary experience of the social’ through the notion of habitus, a concept which captures the subjective experience of what it is to be an individual in a socially structured society. Bourdieu’s work also spoke to the political sociologist in me who wanted to understand and explain why enduring inequality reproduces across generations, and so I was also drawn to concepts related to habitus such as field, Bourdieu’s conception of structure, but also doxa, meaning how the social world in the field appears as ‘self evident’ and ‘taken for granted’ thereby placing limits on ‘the sense of limits’ or the thinkable (1977, p. 164). Doxa works as misrecognition, or the process through which doxic narratives deliberately obfuscate the reproduction of social inequality. My introduction to Bourdieu happily coincided with finding the work of Roy Bhaskar, the founder of critical realism and led to a growing sentiment that Bourdieu and Bhaskar complement and enrich each other. Perhaps the timing was not incidental as although they take distinct routes, both are concerned with understanding and explaining society and its malaise. Bourdieu, of course, started his academic life as a student of philosophy, but by way of anthropology and ethnography was eventually to find a home in sociology although he was critical of disciplinary boundaries. Bhaskar famously starts with philosophical questions to develop critical realism. The intervening years have led to a conviction that there is enduring value in both thinkers and their perspectives, and that there is a need for points of clarification in Bourdieu’s work, which could be addressed through engagement with critical realism’s depth and layered understanding of reality. In earlier work, I have sought to develop and refine Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, highlighting the unconscious dimension, which was implicit in Bourdieu’s work but, in my view, in being made explicit, extended the reach of the concept to show the complexity of agency, a concept which must be understood to operate beyond the traditional confines of rational, strategic, conscious actions and motivations (Akram, 2012, 2019; Akram & Hogan, 2015). Harm, trauma and our personal histories run deep at both conscious and unconscious levels, affecting our everyday lives and our politics. In the present work, I want to extend in another direction, and discuss how and why Bourdieu’s body of work is enhanced through an engagement with Bhaskar’s ideas on ontology.

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‘All Realists Are Misers’ ‘(A)ll Realists are misers’ proclaims Bachelard (1938/2002, p.  136). Avoiding this destiny himself, and instead advocating a psychoanalytic approach to science, Bachelard explains that in their search for inner substance—‘of what lies hidden, or what is deep and inward’ (1938/2002, p. 104) realists are motivated by an unconscious desire for ‘personal possession’, which functions as ‘an immediate advantage over adversaries because, they [realists] believe, they have a hold on reality and possess the riches of reality while their adversaries, the mind’s prodigal sons, chase empty dreams’ (1938/2002, p. 136). This ‘feeling of having’ (1938/2002, p. 137) is, according to Bachelard, an obstacle to scientific culture. As this discussion of Bachelard illustrates, realism gets a bad press and given the critiques of knowledge and the resultant ontological scepticism that ensue, this is to a certain extent understandable (Lyotard, 1984; Kuhn, 1962). Nobody wants to be a realist or publicly state as much, yet still many invoke realist explanations. As Sayer (1992) argues, our explanations are often implicitly realist if not explicitly so when we invoke structures, institutions or causation in our explanations in the social sciences. An exercise in realism then is instructive from the perspective of being clearer about the implications of the concepts we use in social science, and for using them more responsibly. Moreover, realism does not necessarily invoke privileged access to reality; indeed this is not the claim that Bhaskar makes, nor the case that I defend here. Rather, my aim in outlining a series of ontological principles for Bourdieu is in line with the twin critical realist principles that, first, all knowledge including that of ontology is fallible because it is human. And, second, that questions of ontology cannot always be reduced to epistemology—the epistemic fallacy (Bhaskar, 1979). Given these points, knowledge claims are eminently fallible because they are human constructs and must proceed in an epistemologically cautious way if we are to understand and document the world as we must do given that we live in the world and seek to address its ills.

3   Bourdieu: (En)countering Critical Realism This book interprets Bourdieu in a critical realist light, and it is important to recognise that doing so might raise objections from several corners and not least from Bourdieu himself. Bourdieu is undoubtedly a realist, but never claimed to be a critical realist and rejects pigeon-holing of any

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description. Contrary to this position, however, he has described his approach as ‘genetic structuralism’ (1989, p. 19); ‘constructivist structuralism’ (1989, p. 14) and in other places, he has referred to himself as a ‘Pascalian’—which is important for us in the present discussion because it signals his ‘refusal of the ambition of foundation’ (2000, p. 2). Further, following Bachelard, it is important to acknowledge that Bourdieu rejects substantialism, meaning the positing of social reality in terms of substances or processes stating that: ‘social realities are social fictions with no other basis than social construction’ (Bourdieu, 1996a, p.  20). Despite Bourdieu’s reservations about realism, others have noted his realist tendencies. Alexander (1995) suggests that, although Bourdieu is a ‘middle-­ range’ theorist, he is implicitly realist in his meta-theoretical assumptions. Potter (2000) goes further, suggesting that, unless one considers Bourdieu a critical realist, one may be prone to see Bourdieu as a structural determinist, as Alexander (1995) does. I, like Potter (2000) and Elder-­Vass (2007), argue that Bourdieu’s seminal concept of habitus is compatible with, and complements, critical realism’s method of abstraction, which proposes a stratified conception of social reality. As will be shown in later chapters, the approach developed in this book is an ontological account, but one which proceeds cautiously and reflexively, thus I would suggest that it is naïve realism that Bourdieu is against, meaning a belief in direct access to the real, but that the realism promoted here is one that firmly aligns with his critique of knowledge and epistemology, rather than one that claims privileged access to truth or reality. A further reason for caution in the current project is when we consider existing encounters between critical realists and Bourdieu, and particularly with Margaret Archer. It was to the concept of agency and how it has been understood over time, but crucially in relation to structure, that first brought me to Bourdieu’s work and in particular to his notion of habitus. At the same time, I was drawn to and exploring Margaret Archer’s extensive work on the concept of agency—and structure (1995, 2000, 2003, 2010a). While I understood Bourdieu as a realist, I was struck by how vehemently critical Archer, a strong proponent of critical realism following Bhaskar, was of Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the notion of habitus. Take the following illustrations taken from a series of texts by Archer: However, in discussing “hexis”, or bodily skills as permanent dispositions, Bourdieu goes too far in arguing that “The principles embodied in this way are beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by

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voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit”, for I maintain that the tacit lends itself to the public, and thus explicit, codification of practice. (Archer, 2000, pp. 166–167) The implication is that the relevance of Bourdieu’s “semi-unconscious” and “quasi-automatic” “habitus” peters out towards the end of the twentieth century. (Archer, 2007, p. 38.) given that for Bourdieu habitus underlined the preadaptation of people to circumstances and the semi-conscious, quasi-automatic nature of its operations … it is difficult to think of any concept less apposite for characterizing conscious deliberations about novel choices. (Archer, 2010b, pp. 288–289)

Archer’s criticisms of Bourdieu pertain to a series of interrelated key points. First, while Archer also accepts a role for practice in agency, the initial quote above attests to Archer’s view that Bourdieu pays limited attention to conscious action in his theory of practice. This position, the inability to recognise the unique characteristics of agency, stems from the fact that Bourdieu, in Archer’s view, is a ‘central conflationist’. This means that Bourdieu (like Giddens, for Archer) conflates the principles of structure and agency, rather that recognising the principle of analytical dualism as Archer does—whereby agency and structure are interpreted as being both ontologically and analytically distinct if an element of time is incorporated into understanding how they interact (Archer, 1995, pp. 67–69). Conflationism of agency and structure and a less than conscious account of agency in the form of habitus ultimately work against Archer’s commitment to the concept of reflexivity, which for her is ‘one of our most distinctive human properties and powers’ (Archer, 2000, p. 2) Consequently, for Archer, Bourdieu lives in the past because he does not recognise reflexivity as a core characteristic of the morphogenetic (re-shaping) rather than static society (Archer, 1995). As such, it can be argued that: ‘the young of the new millennium are no longer Bourdieu’s people because they no longer live in Bourdieu’s world’ (Archer, 2010a, p.  125). This position from Archer is developed against a literature which has sought not only to establish the concessions Bourdieu makes to reflexivity, but crucially a conception of reflexivity which exists within, not outside of habitus (Adkins, 2003; Akram & Hogan, 2015). We should also note a ‘hybridisation’ literature attempting to reconcile Archer and Bourdieu to create a reflexive habitus as seen in the work of Adams (2006), Sweetman (2003), Fleetwood (2008) and Sayer (2010).

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While they may take different approaches to reality, Archer and Bourdieu are both realists in that they accept an independent reality that exists outside of our knowledge of it, which makes Archer’s long-standing criticisms of Bourdieu all the more curious. There is now a long and established literature on critical realism and specifically the critical realism that I seek to explicate here (Bhaskar, 1979; Vandenberghe, 1999; Collier, 1996), and there are some notable examples of attempts to reconcile Bourdieu and Archer within a critical realist approach (Elder-Vass, 2007; Decoteau, 2016; Sayer, 2010, This literature is important in different ways, but one of the reasons for my writing this book is that much of this literature is by critical realists who seek to bring Bourdieu into the critical realist camp, and largely start with Archerian principles, which privilege Archer’s account of agency and, ergo, reflexivity, rather than recognise the delicate balance between conscious and unconscious thought and action that habitus relies on, and which is intrinsic to Bourdieu’s theory of practice. As such, what is missing to date in the extant literature on Bourdieu, but also encounters between Bourdieu and Archer is a discussion of synergies between Bourdieu and critical realism from someone who starts with Bourdieu, and who has spent almost two decades trying to understand his rich body of work and can bring this to bear on developing an account of habitus and field which are situated within a critical realist framework. Bourdieu and his relationship to Bhaskar and critical realism has also not to date received sustained book-length treatment, and so it is my intention that the present text proves of value to both students and scholars alike in exploring these questions in the attention and breadth that they warrant.

4  Sketching Bourdieu’s Ontology: Epistemological Preliminaries If Bhaskar (1979) starts with a critique of epistemology as foundational to his transcendental realist critique, then it is also true to say that Bourdieu does the same as a preliminary stage to developing his theory of practice. Chapter 2 provides an extended critique of the epistemological and philosophical principles that underpin Bhaskar’s development of critical realism, but here my immediate aim is to outline and critique Bourdieu’s intellectual legacies and show how they inform his ideas in order to make the argument that, according to Bourdieu, it is primarily epistemological and not ontological concerns that guide his project. However, and despite

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Bourdieu’s commitment to epistemology, I will argue that it is hard to deny that Bourdieu’s core concepts of habitus and field consistently make references to the nature of social reality—they make realist claims and are thus inherently ontological concepts too. As such, I suggest that the ontological basis of Bourdieu’s concepts must be acknowledged and confronted and, moreover, I show that it is only when drawing out the ontological underpinnings of Bourdieu’s work, and mapping these to understand their relations and dynamics, that we can address some of the apparent concerns and tensions in Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field. This critique forms the central argument of the book and forms its backbone as we progress through subsequent chapters. In The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries (1991) by Bourdieu, Chamboredon and Passeron, the authors set out their position on the relationship between social scientific knowledge and epistemology. To be clear, Bourdieu sees his work as sociological, but also ‘scientific sociology’, and is concerned in this text with establishing the epistemological basis of his approach, but also with distinguishing how his work differs from the knowledge claims and basis of a natural science premised on positivism. Bourdieu’s overall aim in this book is to defend a non-­ positivistic interpretation of the epistemology of the natural sciences and extend it so that a naturalistic social science becomes possible.1 Described by Bourdieu as a ‘didactic, almost scholastic’ book (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 95), The Craft of Sociology, first published in English in 1991, is a unique text within Bourdieu’s oeuvre because of its detailed concerns with questions of epistemology, but also because of the composition of the text as is adopted in the abridged second edition. As the preface to the second edition (1991) states, and as is confirmed in Bourdieu’s interview with Beate Krais, which can be found at the end of the book, Bourdieu’s original plan was to write three books: one on ‘epistemological preliminaries’, the second on the ‘construction of the sociological object’ and a third volume providing a ‘critical review of the conceptual and technical tools of research’ (1991, p. X). This plan did not materialise, and we are left with an abridged second edition which, cognisant of these original aims, includes a selection of excerpts from illustrative texts which inform the authors’ thinking on epistemology. These excerpts range from Durkheim, Marx, Levi Strauss to Bachelard and Canguilhem and are 1  Naturalism is the idea that there can be unity of method between the natural and the social sciences (Bourdieu et al., 1991).

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included with the aim of illustrating how the different theoretical schools approach questions of epistemology, but also to show how Bourdieu and colleagues draw on these texts to formulate their own ideas. The texts also function as a useful guide for students to cross-check the original sources which inspired Bourdieu and his collaborators in the text. As Bourdieu elucidates in the interview at the end of the text, the book started to take shape in 1966, it was published in France in 1968 and spoke to a desire to reflect on a decade of fieldwork, first in ethnology and then in sociology. By the point the book was published, Bourdieu had done a lot of work in Algeria with the Algiers Institute of Statistics and wanted to make explicit the methodology implicit in this extant work. The book, he argues, is not against empirical sociology, but is designed to give a theoretical basis to another way of doing empirical research, but also ‘to make people understand that many of the gaps or shortcomings for which I am sometimes reproached are in fact conscious refusals and deliberate choices’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 95). Bachelard’s Influence Deeply immersed in debates about the history of science and critiques of epistemology, it is from Bachelard, Canguilhem and Koyre that Bourdieu develops his critique of the science of knowledge and which informs his approach in The Craft of Sociology (1991). I will focus my critique on the work of Bachelard, who was one of Bourdieu’s teachers at the École Normale Supérieure because Bachelard represents one of the formative influences on Bourdieu’s work and is often cited by Bourdieu. Indeed, Vandenberghe goes so far as to describe Bourdieu as a ‘Bachelardien’ (1999, p. 32). In The Formation of the Scientific Mind (1938/2002), Bachelard sets out to explore the philosophy of knowledge and the epistemology of breakthroughs in knowledge exploring advances primarily in physics (relativity theory and quantum physics), but also in biology and chemistry. He finds that the epistemology of the natural sciences is neither underpinned by the existing dominant philosophical traditions of idealism nor naïve empiricism. Following Kant, neither a priori categories of reason, nor pace Hegel, a transcendental subject, offers the foundation for science’s epistemology. Instead, Bachelard argues that scientific reason is historical, meaning it is based on the rational and reason-based structures and standards of science. All of which leads Bachelard to defend a conception of science and

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an epistemology which proceeds through synthesis and is ‘dialectic’. Science is based on synthesis because scientific thought is seen as an open, reflexive and never-ending movement forward, where past errors inform progress in knowledge claims. This approach to science is dialectical because it combines abstract theory (rationalism) with concrete research (empiricism), leading Bachelard to describe his approach as ‘applied rationalism’ (Bachelard, 1938/2002). On this view, scientists do not simply gather facts but, instructed by abstract theory, the scientist technically creates or ‘realizes’ phenomena. Bachelard is concerned to explore the neglected perspective of the scientific mind, or cognition and thinks about how this shapes how scientists engage in science and the production of scientific knowledge. Questioning established notions of objectivity and empirical science, Bachelard states that: ‘the problem of scientific knowledge must be posed in terms of obstacles’ (1938/2002, p. 24). These obstacles are cognitive and must be acknowledged, leading him to argue that: ‘even when it first approaches scientific knowledge, the mind is never young. It is very old, in fact, as old as its prejudices’ (1938/2002, p. 25). In terms of obstacles to the progress of science Bachelard identifies the following: the role of common sense; generalised opinion; familiar images (he documents the role of the sponge); unitary and pragmatic knowledge; and substantialism—all of which have a role in pre-constructing knowledge. Critical to Bachelard’s conception of science is the need to disrupt the notion that science is the representation of the real; instead he argues that science has no direct relationship to the real, but that it proceeds through breaks deriving from recognition of errors. Consequently, ‘the scientific mind overcomes the different epistemological obstacles and constitutes itself as rectified errors’ (1938/2002, p. 237). Given the various obstacles that can impact on scientific knowledge, the way forward for Bachelard is for scientists to start from the position of ‘an intellectual and emotional catharsis’ (1938/2002, p.  29), which is fundamentally psychological. The idea here is that the recognition of epistemological obstacles such as the tendency to rely on familiar images or common sense in science will improve knowledge claims and epistemology. While Bourdieu does not adopt the language of psychoanalysis as Bachelard proposes, it is this critical attitude to epistemology and reflexivity that underpins his approach to epistemology. Bourdieu et al. (1991) transpose Bachelard’s insights about natural science to the social world and consider its implications for social science. Following Bachelard, Bourdieu starts from the position that the history of

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scientific reason is one of discontinuity and continuous ‘breaks’. He thereby denies science the privilege of certainty—a ‘true science’—instead highlighting the social basis to knowledge and the gaps between observation and reality thus challenging positivism’s status as ‘the philosophy of science as a mirror’ (1991, p. 250). Science and social science on this view must be viewed as something which is eternally ‘in progress’ (1991, p. 8), rather than knowledge that can be possessed in some final and absolute form. Moving to the social world, the other implication of not having direct access to reality is the recognition that: ‘(E)verything is constructed’ (Bachelard, 1938/2002, p. 25). Given that a tabula rasa is not possible and that ‘(o)ur heads are full of preconstructions’ (1991, p. 248), Bourdieu is committed to Bachelard’s insight that: ‘problems do not pose themselves’ and: ‘(N)othing is self-evident’ (Bachelard, 1938/2002, p.  25). The fundamental scientific act is then the act of construction for Bachelard, but this rarely gets acknowledged. Bachelard and Bourdieu seek to remind us that one does not move to the real without a hypothesis and without instruments of construction. This may be done implicitly, rather than explicitly, but pre-constructions inevitably inform science and, in turn, social science. Reinstating the pivotal role of the social scientist in constructing knowledge, Bourdieu, as stated in the opening quote to this chapter, challenges the principle in the social sciences whereby: ‘(E)verything takes place as if the ideal that radical empiricism offers to the sociologist were his own disappearance as such’ (1991, p.  37). Against this approach, Bourdieu argues that we must conceive of the social sciences with full acknowledgement that social scientists do not merely reflect the world, but also construct it. Once this fact is acknowledged, constructing objects ‘requires one to make explicit, in a methodical way, the problematics and the principles of object construction that are implied both in material and in the new treatment applied to it’ (1991, p. 36). For instance, we might note here Bourdieu’s work ‘constructing’ the elite system of privilege and power invested in the grande écoles in France as shown in The State Nobility (1996b). For Bourdieu, there is a logical order of ‘epistemological acts’ that one engages in in the social sciences that comprise ‘break, construction, and testing against the facts’ (1991, p.  57). Accordingly, ‘the social fact is won, constructed and confirmed’, rather than ‘found’, thus establishing a hierarchy of epistemological acts in the research process (1991, p. 57).

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Ultimately, Bourdieu takes from Bachelard the notion of ‘applied rationalism’ a combination of realism and rationalism which recognises ‘the values of coherence’ and ‘fidelity to the real’ (Bachelard quoted in Bourdieu et al., 1991, p. 66). Such a position for Bourdieu and Bachelard challenges the polarising philosophies of the natural sciences that distribute themselves on a spectrum in which idealism and realism constitute the two extremes. Applied rationalism starts from rationalism because science proceeds through the evaluation of prior scientific thought and theories: which is judged from the standpoint of reason … and it is always rational interpretation that fixes facts in their correct place. Success and danger both lie along the axis that joins experiment and reason in in the direction of rationalisation. (Bachelard, 1938/2002, p. 27)

For Bachelard and Bourdieu science proceeds from the rational (reasons and theory) to the real (experiments) rather than from the real to science and generalisation. Accordingly, science does not reflect the world, rather science constructs models and theories to understand the world, which is then ‘realised’ through empirical research. Quoting Bachelard, Bourdieu et al. (1991) argue: the epistemologist must indeed stand at the crossroads, between realism and rationalism. That is where he can grasp the new dynamism of these opposing philosophies, the twofold movement through which science complicates the real and simplifies reason. (Bourdieu et al., 1991, p. 66)

As the influence of Bachelard on Bourdieu discussed here shows, questions of epistemology are clearly at the forefront in Bourdieu’s work, but such concerns are also evident in his long-standing concern with reflexivity (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Bourdieu conceived of reflexivity as a critical component of scholarly activity in terms of object construction, but also as an individual-level characteristic. Chapter 3 provides a detailed consideration of Bourdieu’s concept of agency as habitus, and considers this against Archer’s conception of agency, with a particular focus on their distinct approaches to the individual’s capacity for reflexivity. Archer vehemently argues that Bourdieu rejects reflexivity in his concept of habitus, but I find that Archer’s conception of agency, developed within a critical realist position, is over-reliant on reflexivity, and neglects the less than conscious aspects of agency. Chapter 3, in its assessment of Bourdieu’s

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habitus, finds that Bourdieu does indeed have a conception of reflexivity, but that this is developed in line with the unconscious habitus rather than outside of it. From Epistemology to Ontology Deeply concerned with epistemology, an ‘epistemological vigilance’ (1991, p. 73) characterises Bourdieu’s approach to the social sciences, but this also translates as an ontological scepticism. The word ontology rarely features in Bourdieu’s work, yet there are frequent references to the real, an (anti) substantialism and realism. It is my argument that epistemological questions presuppose ontological ones, and while the real often features in Bourdieu’s work, there is a cautiousness and a vagueness about the level of ontology which impedes a greater understanding of Bourdieu’s core concepts of habitus and field. As this chapter shows, Bourdieu has spent much time elaborating on the epistemological principles that underpin his approach, and while he uses epistemological arguments to resist speculating about the ontological domain, it is my contention that he rejects the ontological domain without sufficiently thinking through the terms on which such an exercise in ontology might be possible and profitable—as critical realism does. While Bourdieu acknowledges the real, he is against a naïve realism (empiricism) and substantialist ‘content’ (1986, p. 705) or a non-­relational philosophy of science. He seeks to avoid the ‘realism of the structure’ (1986, p. 705), and in its place suggests that the ‘real is relational’ thus emphasising: ‘that single elements only hold their properties by virtue of the function that they fulfill within the system of relations’ (1968). Thus, it is clear that relationism is a further and core guiding principle in Bourdieu’s project as is the Bachelard-inspired applied rationalism outlined above. These two sets of commitments however do not negate the possibility of ontological reflection and depth, and I will argue that epistemic and ontological commitments are evident in Bourdieu’s work and are closely intertwined, but the latter has been neglected in Bourdieu’s project. Ontology informs epistemology, and in Bourdieu’s case needs to be made explicit to avoid arguments of determinism, circularity and non-­ voluntarism that have overshadowed Bourdieu’s work. Epistemological vigilance as advocated by Bourdieu and Bachelard is a worthy goal and ensures that knowledge claims remain distinct from a ‘real world out there’, and caution against claims for direct access to

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reality. However, an ontological boldness (Bhaskar, 1979) as per Bhaskar’s critical realism strengthens Bourdieu’s work, but also complements it in terms of its own commitment to epistemological cautiousness as can be seen in Bhaskar’s central distinction between the transitive and intransitive realms, which means that knowledge about the world should not be conflated with the world.2 This book builds on the important work of those who have argued that Bourdieu’s work would benefit from greater engagement with critical realism (Vandenberghe, 1999; Elder-Vass, 2007; Sayer, 2000). The current project however is a distinct contribution to encounters between Bourdieu and critical realism for the breadth of critique it offers, offering a discussion of Bourdieu, which pays attention to myriad and interconnected aspects of social reality. Questions of Bourdieu’s ontology are central to the book, but a series of sub-questions also guide the analysis and constitute additional foci in my discussion of Bourdieu’s ideas. The book explores Bourdieu’s core concepts of habitus, field and, separately, institutions showing how each benefits from the insights of Bourdieu and critical realism, showing how critical realism extends the depth and ontological complexity of Bourdieu’s concepts. The book also illustrates the value of an institutional approach, in exploring the contemporary problem of institutional racism, highlighting the paucity of theorisation of institutions in this concept, and showing how Bourdieu helps us to move forward in both conceptualising and potentially tackling institutional-level inequality. In specifying Bourdieu’s ontology, the book also takes on the related question of—what is Bourdieu’s methodology? I highlight interconnections between the ontology-epistemology-methodology triad and show how they inform social critique. It is posited that advocating ontological boldness, rather than shying away from it, strengthens the reach, scope and application of Bourdieu’s ideas.

5  Structure of the Book Following this introduction, Chap. 2 explores what a more in-depth ontological account looks like, specifying the philosophy behind critical realism as developed by Roy Bhaskar for the natural and social sciences, but also developed beyond him to explore it as an applied approach. The chapter elaborates on the precise interactions and relationship between ontology 2

 Vandenberghe (1999, p. 40) notably also encourages Bourdieu to be ‘ontologically bold’.

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and epistemology and how they necessarily inform practical research questions. My aim in this chapter is to present critical realism as an ontological and epistemological framework and a palimpsest which potentially strengthens Bourdieu’s ideas. Chapters 3 (habitus), 4 (field) and 5 (institutions) move the discussion on to exploring Bourdieu’s core concepts of habitus, field and institutions respectively, while acknowledging that the latter received less attention from Bourdieu, and I remedy this neglect. These chapters can be read as stand-alone chapters for those who seek detailed expositions of the concepts of habitus, field and institution, but also build on each other, to present the core foundations which sustain Bourdieu’s approach to social reality. I show how the three concepts underpin Bourdieu’s theory of practice, each focusing on a different aspect of social reality, but also how they benefit from greater thought at an ontological level with insights from critical realism. Ontological and related epistemological reflection, I argue, will help to address perennial criticisms of these concepts relating to charges of determinism, circularity and limited opportunity for conscious reflexivity in Bourdieu’s theory. In the fifth chapter on institutions, I turn to an aspect of social-political reality, which has received limited attention from either Bourdieu, or the secondary literature on Bourdieu. Bourdieu himself but also proponents of his work tend to focus on themes of structure and agency while bypassing the notion of the institutional, a concept which draws implicitly on conceptualisations of structure and agency. In this chapter, I draw out the brief references to institutions in Bourdieu work, while also exploring insights on this topic from debates in new institutionalism to develop a Bourdieusian approach to institutions and institutional analysis. Chapter 5 also provides an illustrative example which highlights the value of a more in-depth account of institutions. I explore the concept of institutional racism as applied to the Metropolitan Police Service (United Kingdom), showing how insights from Bourdieu and new institutionalism help to develop a more critical and ontologically informed account of what institutions are, but also how they reproduce racism. Chapter 6 moves us on from questions of ontology and epistemology to methodology—another theme which has received less attention in the now extensive secondary literature on Bourdieu. The chapter explores the limited discussion of methodology in Bourdieu’s work, focusing on his final large empirical study, The Weight of the World (1999), before exploring the often vague ways in which habitus is operationalised in the secondary literature. To explore methodological discussions around habitus in the secondary

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literature, the chapter also engages in a systematic analysis of how Bourdieu’s concept of habitus has been discussed over the course of nearly two decades in a journal devoted to issues of methodology, Qualitative Research. My overall finding is that habitus is often employed as a theoretical concept, with little attention paid to questions of how to methodologically access something which is often taken for granted and unconscious. To address this gap in understanding, the chapter sets out a six-point heuristic for accessing and documenting habitus, which incorporates the interrelated dimensions of habitus, namely deep reflection, biography, embodiment, temporality, multi-modality and the taken-for-granted. In the final and concluding chapter of the book, I return to the question of the ordinary and everyday life, outlining future directions for further research on Bourdieu, which would build on the current text.

6  Conclusion Moving from the ordinary to the world, Bourdieu is concerned with the dual focus both on everyday life and in the broader structures that shape and structure the world. He offers us a valuable and rich toolkit, but one which has potential to be extended further. Echoing Levi Strauss’ comments about to what extent Bourdieu has been ‘good to think with’ (1963, p. 89), I engage here in not only thinking about Bourdieu, but with him to extend his ideas in new directions with a view to elaborating on their reach and potential. It would seem that Bourdieu would be in favour of this exercise as it is in line with his own long-standing commitment to reflexivity. And thus, we are returned to the question often posed by those acquainted with Bourdieu’s work: why do we need to return to explicating the concepts of habitus and field? Surely this task was addressed by Bourdieu in his various texts, but also by a not insubstantial secondary literature. The answer is that, like Bourdieu, we should be concerned with an eternal movement towards greater clarification, and constantly striving to understand these concepts. With this aim in mind, Bourdieu was engaged in a search for continual refinement as is expressed in the following comment: I am often surprised at the time it has taken me - and this is probably not over - really to understand some of the things I had been saying for a long time with the sense of knowing exactly what I was saying. And If I rework the same themes and return several times to the same objects and the same

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analysis, it is always, I think in a spiralling movement which makes it possible to attain each time a higher level of explicitness and comprehension, and to discover unnoticed relationships and hidden properties. (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 8)

Thus, the present book is also occupied with this same task and does so through elaborating an ontological framework for habitus and field, but also through a related series of inquiries which help to flesh out a Bourdieusian conception of social reality. To engage in this task, we must first explore what an ontological account of reality might look like, and it is to this task that we turn in Chap. 2.

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CHAPTER 2

Critical Realism: Ontology in an Era of Ontological Scepticism

Critical realism’s central premise that the world exists independently of our knowledge of it has led to the criticism that it claims privileged access to, and knowledge of, the world thereby committing the cardinal sin of foundationalism, meaning that it claims access to secure and certain knowledge. Yet, when viewed from another perspective, critical realism’s claim of the independence of the world from knowledge of the world can be interpreted as recognition that knowledge-making is a human and thus entirely fallible exercise, which stands in relation to an objective world, but is distinct from said world. In this chapter, I counter the oft-made, but little engaged with, criticisms which describe realism as a naive objectivism that claims unmediated access to truth. I highlight and explore the role of ontology in critical realism, the branch of realism that I defend here, as well as its fallibilist approach to epistemology, showing that an epistemologically cautious, but ontologically bold approach defines the position. Critical realism, I argue, stems from a recognition of the situated, perspectival and often exclusionary nature of knowledge claims, but does not shy away from providing robust critical analysis of the nature of inequality, domination and particularly that which emerges at a structural, enduring and systemic level. The motivation for this book stems from a desire to provide more complex, layered and differentiated accounts of social and political

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Akram, Bourdieu, Habitus and Field, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41846-4_2

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phenomena. Coupled with this is a recognition that there is much confusion about what a critical realist account of the world entails, and so when not rejected outright critical realism may be invoked in analysis but in a partial way. Recognition of the role of causality is central to this exercise, to think about why things happen, how change occurs, what a more socially just world might look like and the steps needed to get there. Often, we engage in causal analysis in social science without really acknowledging it as such. For example, we might try to explain change in the behaviour or policies of an institution such as the UK-Home Office, or in the personnel in the Home Office and its policy effects. Or, and taking as an example Gaventa’s now classic study of power and acquiescence in the Appalachian mining communities, we might note the many counterfactual claims Gaventa makes to explain why individuals do not challenge their domination, and while the work is implicitly realist, Gaventa’s discussion of causality does not engage with questions of causality in any sustained way.1 Explanations in social science often rely on generalisations and can be ambiguous about the status of the concepts or relations to which they refer. While we may never be completely sure of causes, critical realists argue that we can try to make better claims and conceptualisation is a core part of this. In other cases, explanations talk past one another, because without realising it they are preoccupied with different stages of the research process. As Sayer (2000) argues, often there is a tendency to be ‘very casual about causality’, and there is a propensity to slip into a language of causality which plays homage to classical empiricism, so it seeks to identify general laws, empirical tendencies, generalisability, law-like models and prediction in the social sciences. Similarities, differences and a search for commonality are also typical proclivities in social science research. All of which lead to a causal law paradigm which betrays a residual positivism. Overall, we see that approaches to causal analysis can be incomplete or partial, and it would seem that it is time to engage in a more explicit analysis, which engages directly with debates on causality. Causal analysis is usually closely aligned with abstraction in realist analysis, but it may provide only indirect references to processes and change 1  Gaventa makes the case that the miners’ acquiescence stems from power relations as relate to Steven Lukes’ second and third face of power. To support his argument, Gaventa demonstrates that when elites held less power as was the case in similar situations during the 1890s, early 1900s and 1920–1930s, miners in various parts of the region did rebel. Overall, we see that there is limited discussion of causality in this now classic text about power and inequality. I am grateful to Topping (2005) for reminding me of the relevance of Gaventa to this debate.

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while failing to recognise differentiation, and that events or objects are constituted by diverse elements or forces. The adjective ‘abstract’ often means vague or removed from reality but, for critical realism, abstraction means isolating in thought ‘a one-sided or partial aspect of an object’ in order to understand it in precise terms and in relation to other concepts (Sayer, 1992, p. 87). For example, we might abstract the concept of gender as a social structure in order to understand how it functions within the workplace or the domestic sphere. The idea behind abstraction is to improve our understanding of stages in processes, but we might also note here a tendency for slippage between the abstract and the concrete, between explanations which analyse objects in terms of their constitutive structures as part of the wider structure and in terms of their causal powers (abstract theory) and concrete research, which looks at what happens when these combine, exploring phenomena at the level of the event, or what happens on the ground and in the world. While abstraction may be part of the research process, thinking about how we abstract and what we abstract from seems like an important starting point as well as a more explicit questioning of: ‘what does the existence of this object (in this form) presuppose?’ (Sayer, 1992, p.  91) As Sayer elaborates, many errors of abstraction and conceptualisation stem from evasions at the abstract level and paying more attention at the earlier stages of the research process would be beneficial. To this end, Sayer identifies four types of abstraction,2 which I return to below, but for now we might note that the type of abstraction we invoke will affect the type of explanations we give. For instance, abstraction is particularly important for the identification of structures, but any account of structures such as gender or class must also take into account the origins of structures; how agents interact with structures; and the possibility of change which is highly possible given the role of agency to structure As such, we need to think carefully about what we mean by structure, but also what we mean by agency—doing so will strengthen our accounts of society and how it evolves. Another feature of social analysis is the tendency to generalise from phenomena to identify patterns. Generalisation might be termed as ‘tendencies’, or things in common, or rough summaries identified through 2  Sayer identifies four types of relation constitutive of abstraction, which each specify different forms of relation: substantial and formal; external; internal and necessary; and necessary and contingent (see Sayer, 1992, pp. 85–96).

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repetition. What these terms reveal is further evidence of a positivisminspired, but latent influence of empiricism whereby repetition of an event suggests a commitment to law-like regularity albeit not as fixed as those in the natural world. The tendency to generalisation may seem a common and acceptable feature of the social sciences, but as Sayer (1992) reminds us, generalisations need to be met with caution as they hide all manner of ills. First, generalisation dehistorices,  which  means that it fails to take account of the series of events which have led to any particular point in time; second, it does not recognise distinctions between the necessary (internal to the object in question) and contingent (affected by external factors); third, it is ambiguous as it is indifferent to the role of structure and agents; fourth, there is the ecological fallacy (inference of individual characteristics from group level characteristics); and finally fifth, little attention is paid to abstraction because a pattern has been identified and one can therefore proceed to diagnosing a generalisation. The preceding analysis has isolated some of the core features of social science research, highlighting key moments in the research conceptualisation process. Together, they provide an answer to the question of: what is the world (ontology), and how can we know it (epistemology)? Keeping these considerations at the forefront of our research means that we do not lose sight of ontological questions in light of epistemological concerns. Of course, not all questions of ontology can be reduced to epistemology because this would entail committing the ‘epistemic fallacy’.3 For the critical realist a concomitant set of key principles foreground this position. First and foremost, this includes the recognition that societies are open and complex systems, they are not pre-determined or structured in a pre-­ ordained way, hence they cannot be modelled, or subject to prediction as might be the case in the natural sciences. One of the reasons for the commitment to open systems is the fact that societies are composed of humans or agents, who are unpredictable, change their minds and actions, and enact change. A further key feature of society is that it is subject to contingency rather than necessity as relates to the fact that society is open rather than closed and that it comprises free-thinking and acting people. Finally, I would add that societies are complex structures, and changes will happen or be experienced differently in different contexts. 3  The epistemic fallacy is defined by Bhaskar as the view that statements about being (ontology) cannot be reduced to, or analysed in terms of, statements of knowledge (epistemology) (Bhaskar, 1975).

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These principles, in turn, entail a series of practical considerations for the social researcher. In any given research context, a researcher would look at causation, at the role of conceptualisation and abstraction of key concepts. They would also be cautious of tendencies to generalisation and to conflate generalisation with regularity or a search for empirical regularity. Research would also require a focus on agents and their role in reproducing structures and enacting change. It is a concern with isolating these distinct but relational concepts and processes that has meant that critical realism has been influential in advancing thought in a range of fields, including the postcolonial (Tinsley, 2022), psychology (Pilgrim, 2020) and entrepreneurship (Hu, 2018).

1   Structure of the Chapter In this chapter, I lay the foundations for bringing together the largely disparate projects of critical realism and Bourdieu by exploring the ideas that inform critical realism. Critical realism comprises a complex set of interconnected concepts and philosophical debates, and so a certain level of back and forth may be necessary as concepts are engaged with from various angles. Concepts such as causality, the abstract and concrete, and generalisation have already been introduced, and will be returned to further into the chapter. In outlining the theoretical basis and philosophy of critical realism as an approach to the social sciences, I chart the development and construction of critical realism as detailed by Roy Bhaskar in his two seminal books: A Realist Theory of Science (1975) and The Possibility of Naturalism (1979). In doing this, my aim is to show that critical realism represents a consistent ontological and epistemological approach to the social sciences and, because it is developed through a process of immanent critique, it is able to overcome the problems which characterise alternative approaches, such as classical empiricism, hermeneutics and a turn in social theory which can broadly be termed as post-structural. This chapter forms the philosophical backdrop to the book or the palimpsest upon which the critique of Bourdieu’s work developed over subsequent chapters will be placed. It is my argument that the various inconsistencies and apparent points of determinism in Bourdieu’s approach are addressed if the concepts of habitus, field and institution argued for in this book are located within a critical realist ontological and epistemological framework and the reasons for this should become clear as we proceed through the chapter.

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This chapter sets out the core principles of critical realism, exploring its concern with questions of ontology and epistemology as a way of understanding the nature of the world and the status of knowledge claims. The analysis is developed in four stages. In the first section, I provide a chronological analysis of the central tenets of the critical realist philosophy, as they were developed first as an approach to natural science and second when Bhaskar considered The Possibility of Naturalism, and extended his approach to the social sciences. The second section of the chapter focuses specifically on the development of critical realism in the social sciences and considers some of its central concepts: its distinction between the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality; the stratified conception of ontology; the role of generative mechanisms; and the notion of the epistemic fallacy. Bhaskar’s thesis about the nature of the world and the status of knowledge is not uncontested, and in the third section of the chapter I want to show challenges to this approach, particularly from a Marxist position from which there is both overlap and departure. Moving from the ontological and epistemological to questions of methodology, with a view to specifying how one links causal claims with empirical ones, the chapter next turns to exploring how critical realism might be used in applied work, and attempts to draw together key insights which might help the empirically minded researcher. Before proceeding into my discussion of critical realism, I begin with a note of clarification about distinctions within realism as a precursor to addressing the broader context within which Bhaskar was writing to situate him within the history of science debates.

2  The Forms of Realism One of the key aims of this book is to clarify what critical realism is, and to distinguish it from other realist positions in order that we can be confident about what we mean by realism because there would appear to be some misunderstanding about what realism is and is not. Broadly speaking, realism refers to the idea that phenomena exist in the world—a position we might call ‘common sense realism’, and a position so obvious that it might not be worth repeating, but as Collier (1994) reminds us, this can also lead to the opposite view where accounts of the world are replaced by non-realist accounts, which are supposedly less-naïve, but still engage in speculation about the world.

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The word ‘real’ in realism, in many contexts, draws its content from its contrast with ‘apparent’, and realists attempt to grasp or understand phenomena through knowledge (Collier, 1994). An empirical realist is someone who, while asserting the reality of things, denies the existence of underlying structures and so locates causality at the level of events. As such, A happens which causes B to happen—all of which can be observed and documented according to a Humean approach to causality.4 Transcendental realism, as advocated by Bhaskar, stands in direct opposition to empirical realism. To Bhaskar, classical empiricism and transcendental idealism subscribe to empirical realism. Realism is normally associated by philosophers with positions in the theory of perception or the theory of universals. In the case of classical empiricism, the real entity concerned is some particular object of perception; in the case of transcendental realism it is some general feature or property of the world. In contrast, the real objects that the transcendental realist is concerned with are the objects of scientific discovery, such as causal laws, social structures or mechanisms. Realism about such entities will entail particular realist positions on perception and universals, but cannot be reduced to them. Collier (1994, pp.  6–7) is useful in arguing that some realisms are stronger than others, and points to the following core features of a strong version of realism: A theory is realist in a stronger sense if it makes the following claims for knowledge: 1. Objectivity—what is real continues to be real whether it is known or not, so something may be real without appearing at all. 2. Fallibility—insofar as claims are being made about what exists which is beyond appearance, these claims are always open to refutation. 3. Transphenomenality—going beyond appearances, knowledge may not be just of what appears, but of underlying structures which make phenomena visible.

4  A Humean theory of causal laws suggests that constant conjunctions of events represent natural necessity in the world and, therefore, causal laws. Bhaskar is highly critical of this approach and argues that a constant conjunction of events is not only not sufficient, it is not even a necessary condition for scientific law. This approach is also flawed as it relies on criteria of observability for knowledge claims or considers epistemology to be equivalent to human operations, leading Bhaskar to suggest that it contains a ‘concealed anthropocentricity’ (1975, p. 34).

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4. Counter-phenomenality—knowledge of the deep structures of something may not just go beyond or explain something, but may also ­contradict appearances, thus we might say that an appearancereality dichotomy exists. While critical realism would subscribe to a strong version of realism, it is also useful to think about critical realism as a ‘depth’ realism, which is to be contrasted with an ‘actualist’ approach to realism, which characterises empiricist approaches to realism. Actualism, while asserting the value of things or events, denies the existence of underlying structures and instead locates cause and effect to the level of events. A depth realism, as advocated by Bhaskar, in contrast, refers to the idea that phenomena have powers by virtue of their inner structures. Hence, these powers can be ascribed on the basis of knowledge of these structures but irrespective of whether they are exercised.

3   Bhaskar and the History of Science Debates Before I turn to Bhaskar’s account of science, it may be useful to consider the broader context in which Bhaskar was writing and how situating him within this might help us to understand how he distinguishes his approach from others. A Realist Theory of Science (1975) was written in a period when the status of science was subject to much discussion and contestation. Specifically, we can note the emergence of key texts which, in different ways sought to question the deductive basis (applying existing theoretical categories) upon which science is founded and operates to demystify its implicit basis and status. These debates which can broadly be categorised as philosophy of science debates looked at the historical development of science and involved writers such as Popper (1959/2002), Kuhn (1962/1970) and Feyeraband (1975), whose ideas shaped the broader intellectual context in which Bhaskar was writing. Popper (1959/2002) is concerned with the question of what it is about science that distinguishes it from other models of thought. Popper queries the notion of verification through experiment, which although plausible does not mean that scientific facts can be challenged. The crucial factor for him is that scientific propositions can be shaped in such a way that they can be refuted, thus science proceeds by conjecture and refutation, hence the need for falsification in science, rather than commitment to proving objective truth.

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Kuhn (1962/1970) challenges Popper’s identification of falsification as a key principle for science. For Kuhn, it is the practice of scientists that should be our focus, and he emphasises the social conditions of the production of knowledge as critical to the propositions of science and their development over time. Adopting a historically oriented view of the nature of scientific advance, Kuhn argues that the concept of science is not premised on Popper’s account, but relies on the: ‘continual competition between a number of distinct views of nature, each partially derived from, and all roughly compatible with, the dictates of scientific observation and method’ (1972, p. 4). These views constitute ‘normal science’ and persist until analogies arise which subvert the existing traditions of scientific practice and lead to ‘scientific revolutions’ (1972, p. 6), which are ‘tradition-­ shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science’ (1972, p. 6). From another direction, poststructuralism and postmodernism were also undermining the idea that scientific knowledge had particular sovereign status, with Feyeraband (1975) arguing that science had to be understood in a historical context. While cognisant of these debates and sympathetic to the questioning of science’s privileged status as the bar for knowledge claims, for Bhaskar, this critique of science does not go far enough: it was not realist enough. By this, he means that it did not provide a convincing account of the unobservable factors such as deep structures, nor did it provide a satisfactory account of causation. For Bhaskar, we need to be able to make better and more detailed metaphysical or ontological claims about first, the nature of what exists and, second, the limits upon, and the status of our knowledge claims. It also leads to him questioning whether it is possible to study society using the same tools as science. The aim of Bhaskar’s approach is to put new life into the materialist approach to social theory and to counter the idealist leanings of 1960s radicalism as predicated by Kuhn and Feyeraband.

4  Roy Bhaskar and the Development of Critical Realism Roy Bhaskar is widely credited as the founder of the school of thought referred to as critical realism. It is important to be clear about the nomenclature used in this discussion as it is implicated in how the debate has emerged over time. Roy Bhaskar’s original research in this area began as a critique of how natural science is conducted and the knowledge claims it

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produces, and, on the basis of this, he establishes an approach called transcendental realism, as discussed in A Realist Theory of Science (1975) (henceforth RTS). Bhaskar develops this approach further in The Possibility of Naturalism (1979) (henceforth PON) to argue for naturalism, or the idea that there can be unity of method between the natural and the social sciences, and proceeds to develop an approach for the social sciences called critical naturalism. Clearly showing support for his argument for the possibility of a combined (naturalist) approach in the natural and social sciences, and through an amalgamation of the terms transcendental realism and critical naturalism, over time, Bhaskar’s approach has come to be known as critical realism. I will continue to use the term critical realism as the broader description of Bhaskar’s approach. However, in the next two sections I will also consider the approach as sequentially developed under the names transcendental realism and critical naturalism. Transcendental Realism In RTS (1975), Bhaskar engages in a philosophical critique of the mode of enquiry and the nature and status of the knowledge claims produced by natural scientists. Bhaskar’s aim here is to emphasise the importance of ontological and epistemological assumptions to natural science and to problematise the unacknowledged and often implicit ontological and epistemological premises upon which natural science operates. Raising questions about ontology and epistemology itself presupposes a perspective and approach that needs to be problematised. Indeed, what makes Bhaskar’s critique any more valid, or better, than the practice of natural science that he is critiquing? Bhaskar recognises this problem and, as such, his critique emerges in a very particular way, where the method of questioning and providing answers is also problematised. Bhaskar develops a philosophical method of theory construction which aims to recognise the limits of human knowledge claims, but also attempts to produce knowledge claims about the nature of the world. On an ontological level, he dismisses metaphysics and metaphysical approaches, arguing that they can lead to abstract theorising about the nature of phenomena. Instead, he engages in a series of philosophical steps to reach some basic propositions about what natural science is and how we can study it. Bhaskar begins with the transcendental question: ‘what must the world be like for science to be possible?’ (1975, p. 23). This question, therefore, begins from the premise that science is an intelligent enterprise, or rather contains some useful

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principles, which we must engage in. The judgement that science is a successful enterprise is itself an issue which may be contestable, but, nevertheless, provides a springboard from which questions of ontology and epistemology can be devised. Second, it is important to consider the status of philosophy within Bhaskar’s position: philosophy is not used as providing a set of ‘necessary truths’ about an underlying physical realm, but as providing a set of ‘conditionally necessary truths’ about our ordinary world as investigated by science (Bhaskar, 1975, pp. 19–20, Cruickshank, 2004). In addition, this approach maintains that philosophy cannot establish what exists as this is the task of science, whilst the task of philosophy is to analyse the underlying structures and concepts upon which natural science is based. As is clear from the development of his approach, Bhaskar conceives a superior role for philosophy in developing the transcendental realist approach (Cruickshank, 2004, p. 573). Bhaskar ascribes a propaeduetic and prescriptive function to his transcendental realism (1975). The propaedeutic function has two aspects. First, the role of philosophy is conceived as an ‘underlabourer’ and ‘occasional mid-wife’, thus enabling future scientists to avoid conceptual confusion about reality which will lead to progress in science (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 10; Cruickshank, 2007, p. 746). Second, he argues that the propaedeutic function will help to clarify the objective of science, rather than just the language of science, as the objective of science should be to grasp the reality beyond our knowledge. The prescriptive function of Bhaskar’s approach suggests that it provides a demarcation criteria, thus enabling scientific claims to be separated from those that are non-scientific (1975, pp. 43–44). Ontology and Epistemology: A Necessary Distinction Between the Transitive and Intransitive Domains Transcendental realism and critical realism, in turn, are based on a foundational distinction between the ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’ dimensions of social reality (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 21). Bhaskar begins his analysis by problematising what he sees as the central paradox of science, namely, that men (sic) are involved in the production of knowledge, which is a social product, yet, they are independent of its production much like men (sic) who produce ‘motor cars, armchairs or books’ (1975, p. 21). Bhaskar goes on to identify ‘two sides of knowledge’: first, the social production of knowledge; and, second, ‘knowledge is ‘of’ things which are independent of

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men’ (1975, p. 21). This initial observation leads Bhaskar to make a distinction between the ‘transitive’ and the ‘intransitive’ dimensions of knowledge and he defines the transitive dimension as the: ‘artificial objects fashioned into items of knowledge by the science of the day. They include the antecedently established facts and theories, paradigms and models, methods and techniques of inquiry’ (1975, p. 21). The intransitive dimension of knowledge refers to phenomena which are categorically unrelated to human knowledge of their existence, as such they comprise: ‘real things, and structures, mechanisms and processes, events and possibilities of the world’ (1975, p. 22). The distinction between the transitive and intransitive dimensions of knowledge is a fundamental concept for the social sciences as it establishes the independent reality of the material and ideational (intransitive world), the status of agents in relation to this intransitive world and, in turn, the limits on our (transitive) knowledge claims. Bhaskar argues that objects in the intransitive dimension can be identified through knowledge, but it is important to acknowledge that these objects are not dependent upon our knowledge of them, let alone our perception of them. This position, therefore, is clearly developed in opposition to the classical empiricist argument that closed systems of experimental conditions are required in order to produce knowledge claims. Bhaskar also contends that it is important to realise that knowledge or the transitive dimension is always dependent upon antecedent knowledge: ‘(K)nowledge of B is produced by means of knowledge of A’, which, in turn, establishes the critical realist principle of immanent critique (1975, p. 23). The immanent critique is the method by which critical realism seeks to develop its ontological and epistemological claims through constant critique and development of theory (Bhaskar, 1975, 1979). Here, Bhaskar is again defending the argument that the critical realist ontology that he develops is not a metaphysical conception, reached through abstract philosophising, but rather is achieved through consideration of existing approaches, such as empiricism and hermeneutics. Further, Bhaskar also argues that the ontology should be subject to constant improvement, through the same process of immanent critique. What Is the Status of Transcendental Realist Knowledge Claims? Bhaskar’s identification of a distinction between the transitive and intransitive domains of reality forms the basic principle upon which his philosophical critique for his realist theory of science emerges. He proposes

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that, if one accepts that agents and their knowledge claims are distinct from the intransitive world, we must also accept that our knowledge of the intransitive dimension is dependent upon the transitive dimension, so science is dependent upon acknowledgement of the intransitive dimension. Bhaskar suggests that this, in turn, leads to the possibility of the philosophical study of the intransitive objects of science. He argues: ‘(T)he answer to the transcendental question ‘what must the world be like for science to be possible?’ deserves the name of ontology’ (1975, p.  23). Bhaskar proceeds to identify two crucial philosophical principles for the development of scientific thought: 1. Ontological commitments should only be interpreted hypothetically—as entailing what must be the case for science to be possible, on which interpretation it is a contingent fact that the world is such that science can occur. It is only in this relative, or conditional, sense that an account of science presupposes an ontology. 2. The status of propositions in ontology may thus be described by the following formula: it is not necessary that science occurs. But, given that it does, it is necessary that the world must be a certain way. Thus, the transcendental realist claim that the world is structured and differentiated can be established by philosophical argument, though the particular structures it contains and the ways in which it is differentiated are matters for substantive scientific investigation (1975, pp. 19–20). The Transcendental Realist Stratified Conception of Reality The transcendental realist ontology is based on a non-anthropocentric ontology of ‘structures, generative mechanisms and active things’ and is best described as being premised on the concept of ‘ontological depth’ (1979, p. 16). Bhaskar describes the ontology in the following way: its essence lies in the movement at any one level from knowledge of manifest phenomena to knowledge of the structures that generate them. (1975, p. 17)

Transcendental realism has a stratified conception of reality, based on three overlapping domains, the real, the actual and the empirical, as is

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Domain of Real Domain of Actual Domain of Empirical

Generative Mechanisms/Structures

----

Events

----

----

Experiences

----

----

----

Fig. 2.1  Critical realism’s stratified conception of ontology. (Adapted from Bhaskar, 1975, p. 56)

shown in Fig. 2.1. The real realm of the critical realist ontology can be thought of in terms of: ‘whatever exists, be it natural or social regardless of whether it is an empirical object for us, and whether we happen to have an adequate understanding of its nature’ (Sayer, 2000, p. 11). The real also refers to the realm of objects—their structures or powers and generative mechanisms.5 The actual refers to: ‘what happens if and when those structures and powers are activated, to what they do and what eventuates when they do’ (Sayer, 2000, p. 12). The empirical realm of the ontology describes the ‘domain of experience’, and can refer to both the real or the actual realms of the ontology (Sayer, 2000, p. 12). The three levels are not naturally, or normally, in phase and it is the social activity of science which makes them so. In contrast to this depth ontology, empiricism can be interpreted as collapsing this depth ontology into one level, which is established by the domain of experience and empirical investigation. Transcendental realism regards the objects of knowledge as the mechanisms and structures (domain of real) that generate phenomena in the intransitive domain. Knowledge of such objects, then, is something that is produced in the social activity of science (transitive domain). These objects are neither phenomena, as in the case of empiricism, nor human constructs imposed upon phenomena, as in the case of idealism, but real structures which endure and operate independently of our knowledge, our experience and the conditions which allow us access to them. Against empiricism, the objects of knowledge are structures and mechanisms, not events and, against idealism, they are intransitive (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 25). On this conception, and contra Hume, a constant conjunction of events is 5  I return to the concept of generative mechanisms below, but to develop the argument at this stage, a generative mechanism may be described as a ‘trans-empirical but real existing entity, explaining why observable events occur’ (Blom & Morén, 2011, p. 60).

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neither necessary, nor sufficient, criteria for the assumption of the operation of causal laws. Laws, then, are neither empirical statements nor statements about events. Rather, they are statements about the ways of acting of independently existing and transfactually active things. According to this view, both knowledge and the world are structured; both are differentiated and changing (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 25). According to Bhaskar: ‘(T)he world consists of things, not events’ (1975, p. 51). Most things are complex objects and, as such, they possess an: ‘ensemble of tendencies, liabilities and powers’ through which the phenomena of the world are explained (1975, p. 51). It is by reference to the exercise of their tendencies, liabilities and powers that the phenomena of the world are explained and this leads back to our understanding of the depth ontology. Bhaskar explains that, given their commitment to a depth ontology, transcendental realists should be concerned with what things are and not prediction. He suggests that it is rare, and usually under closed conditions, for scientists to be able to do the latter and predict phenomena. It is important to be clear about the centrality of generative mechanisms to the transcendental realist ontology and, further, how they differ from structures as well as the identification of events, the main concern of empiricism. Generative mechanisms refer to a configuration of structures, which lead to events and may have empirical effects; thus they help us to explain why observable events occur. They are said to be real, and we can establish their independence from patterns of events. The real basis of this independence lies in the fact that such mechanisms endure even when not acting or unrealised. One can use closed experimental conditions to trigger some of these events and, if separated from events, one can speak of natural necessity in the world. On this view, laws are not empirical statements, but statements about the forms of activity characteristic of the things of the world, and their necessity is that of a natural connection, not that of a human rule. Further, there is an important distinction to be made between the real structures and the mechanisms of the world and the actual patterns of events they generate. In turn, this distinction justifies the more familiar one between necessary and accidental sequences. A necessary sequence is simply one which corresponds to, or is in phase with, a real connection; that is, it is a real connection actually manifest in the sequence of events that occurs (Bhaskar, 1975, pp. 51–53).

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Bhaskar’s Critique of Classical Empiricism and Transcendental Idealism Bhaskar develops his transcendental realist approach on the basis of a critique of classical empiricism and transcendental idealism. Classical empiricism, as represented by Hume and his heirs, is singled out for much criticism as it has largely dominated both the natural and social sciences, and, according to Bhaskar, is premised on a flawed ontological and epistemological framework. Classical empiricism is said to be problematic in the first instance, as it cannot sustain a distinction between the transitive and intransitive domains of reality. This approach is characterised by a focus on events, which are deemed to be valid objects of knowledge in the world. Central to the empiricist vision of science is the Humean theory of causal laws, which suggests that constant conjunctions of events represent natural necessity in the world and, therefore, causal laws. Bhaskar is highly critical of this approach and attempts to show that a constant conjunction of events is not only not sufficient; it is not even a necessary condition for scientific law. This approach is also flawed as it relies on criteria of observability for knowledge claims or considers epistemology to be equivalent to human operations, leading Bhaskar to suggest that it contains a ‘concealed anthropocentricity’ (1975, p. 34). Bhaskar argues that events should be conceived as being categorically independent of experiences, as there could be events without experiences. Such events would constitute ‘actualities’, which are not perceived and, in the absence of men, are not perceivable (1975, p. 32). Another problem with classical empiricism is that this approach relies upon the closed conditions of an experiment environment in order to study phenomena. The construction of artificial experiment conditions is necessary for this approach, and the patterns of events would not be forthcoming without them. Thus, in an experiment, individuals are the causal agents of the sequence of events, but not the actual causal law. Classical empiricism does not engage with questions of ontology and epistemology in an explicit or critical way. However, this position does not mean that one can avoid these questions, and Bhaskar argues that to deny ontology merely results in an implicit ontology and an implicit realism in classical empiricism (1975, p. 40). Bhaskar suggests that classical empiricism, in fact, subscribes to the broader principles of empirical realism and has an ontology based on the category of experience. Whilst Hume rejects ontology and ontological questions, Bhaskar finds this approach

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untenable arguing that the ‘philosophy of science abhors an ontological vacuum’ (1975, p.  40) and Hume, therefore, implicitly, fills it with the category of experience. Despite its claims to the contrary, or as is evidenced by its lack of engagement in questions of ontology and epistemology, natural science is not, and cannot be, an ontologically neutral account of natural science. Indeed, as Bhaskar argues: The sense in which every account of science presupposes an ontology is the sense to which it presupposes a schematic answer to the question of what the world must be like for science to be possible. (1975, pp. 28–29)

The second position that Bhaskar critiques, transcendental idealism, is said to have received its classical formulation by Kant, but has had many revisions in its varied history. According to this approach, the objects of scientific knowledge are models and ideals of the natural order. Such objects are artificial constructs and, though they may be independent of particular men, they are not independent of men or human activity in general. Bhaskar contends that both classical empiricism and transcendental idealism rely on a criterion of empiricism and presuppose intransitivity of the object perceived. The Epistemic Fallacy The concept of the epistemic fallacy is central to the critical realist ontology and refers to the view that statements about being cannot be reduced to, or analysed in terms of, statements of knowledge (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 36). The epistemic fallacy is most evident in a notion of the empirical world and in empirical realism, ideas which are central to both classical empiricism and idealism. Bhaskar asserts that the use of empiricism as a category of experience to define the world involves giving what is in effect a particular epistemological concept an ontological function. Further, the concept entails that an object being experienced or which can be experienced is an essential property of the world, whereas it is more correctly conceived as an accidental property of some things, but one which can be of great significance for natural science. Another problem with a notion of empiricism is the neglect of the (socially produced) circumstances under which experience is, in fact, epistemically significant in natural science. Bhaskar argues that the Logical Positivists are guilty of the epistemic fallacy, because, in following Hume, they argued that, if a proposition was

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not empirically verifiable (or falsifiable), or a tautology, it was meaningless. Similarly, verificationalism can be regarded as a particular form of the epistemic fallacy, in which the meaning of a proposition about reality (which cannot be designated ‘empirical’) is confused with our grounds, which may or not may not be empirical, for holding it. Bhaskar claims that, whilst experience may make critical realists more confident about what they think exists, it does not make it ontologically ultimate—in the sense that their existence depends upon nothing else: ‘Knowledge follows existence, in logic and in time; and any philosophical position which implicitly denies this has got things upside down’ (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 39). Epistemic Relativism It is important to note that Bhaskar’s philosophical account of transcendental realism is established within the transitive dimension of the ontology. Bhaskar accepts that philosophy, as an activity and conceptualisation, may be historically transient and that this activity may depend upon the powers that people possess as material things, rather than just as thinkers or perceivers. Further, he acknowledges that its analysis may establish epistemically relativist, rather than absolutist, conclusions. As such, on this conception, both the premises and conclusions of philosophical argument remain contingent facts; the former, not the latter, being necessarily social, and so historically transient. This is a crucial point in terms of acknowledging the important distinction between the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality and locating human knowledge within these categories. Bhaskar maintains that it is only in this relational or conditional sense that philosophy can establish a priori truths—truths about the world investigated by science. As Bhaskar contends: ‘philosophy, then, operates by the use of pure reason. But not by the use of pure reason alone. For it exercises that reason always on the basis of prior conceptualisations of historical practice of some more or less determinate form’ (1979, p. 6).

5  Extending Realism to the Social Sciences: Critical Naturalism Bhaskar’s transcendental realist project, as a critique of the natural sciences, is developed further in The Possibility of Naturalism (1979), where he presents an argument for its extension to the social sciences, an approach he calls critical naturalism. Again, the defence of such a proposition is a

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series of philosophical steps as a mode of argumentation and theory construction. Bhaskar begins his analysis by posing the question: ‘To what extent can society be studied in the same way as nature?’ (1979, p. 1). He maintains that this issue remains one of the primary problems in the philosophy of the social sciences. He notes that the history of this problem is polarised by two traditions: first, the naturalist tradition, which has claimed that the natural and social sciences are (actually or ideally) unified in their concordance with positivist principles, based in the last instance on a Humean notion of causal law. Second, and in opposition to the positivist position, is the anti-naturalist method, which argues for distinct separation in the methods of the natural and social sciences grounded in the differentiation of their subject matters. This position states that, given that the subject matter of the social sciences contains meaningful and concept-­ dependent objects, this establishes their difference from the inert object matter of the natural sciences. The anti-naturalist approach includes the hermeneutical approach and is commonly associated with philosophers such as Weber and Dilthey and with the transcendental idealism of Kant (Bhaskar, 1979). In his evaluation of existing literature on naturalism, Bhaskar concludes that this literature is inherently flawed as it relies on a problematic conception of natural science; one which is based on positivist empiricism. Bhaskar defines naturalism as the thesis that there is (or can be) an essential unity of method between the natural and social sciences and argues that, if it is to be possible, it must be distinguished from two forms of it in existing literature. The first form, reductionism, asserts that there is an identity of subject matter in both natural and social sciences. The second is scientism, which denies that there should be differences in methods for studying social and natural sciences, whether or not they are identical. Bhaskar contends that naturalism is possible and presents the case for a ‘qualified anti-­ positivist naturalism’ (1979, p. 3), based on an understanding of natural science as transcendental realist, and not the classical empiricism model. Such a naturalism holds that it is possible to give an account of science under which the, often distinct and specific, methods of both the natural and social sciences can fall. This approach does not deny that there are significant and important differences in these methods, grounded in their subject matters and in the relationships in which their sciences stand to them. Bhaskar argues that ontological and epistemological considerations all place limits on the possibility of naturalism (or rather qualify the form it will take) and that these considerations all carry methodological

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importance. Bhaskar claims that for both natural and social science, it is the nature of the object that will determine the possible method of investigation. To investigate the limits of naturalism is ipso facto to investigate the conditions which make social science, in practice, possible. Bhaskar’s suggestions for the possibility of naturalism are further qualified by his philosophical stance of argumentation, and he suggests that his aim is not to claim that naturalism should, on his terms, be possible, but to establish the terms by which, through philosophy, naturalism might be possible. He argues philosophy can neither anticipate the results, nor guarantee the success, of a naturalistic science of society, but what it can do is to specify the ontological and epistemological conditions that must be satisfied for such a project to be possible. Indeed, it is the task of social science and natural science separately, to establish whether this is, in practice, possible. The Social Sciences Central to Bhaskar’s project of presenting naturalism in the natural and social sciences is his acknowledgement that there are important differences in the subject matter of these two disciplines, which must inform the approach. Bhaskar reformulates this acknowledgement according to his philosophical mode of theory construction to posit the question: ‘what properties do societies and people possess that might make them possible objects of knowledge for us?’ (1975, p. 17). Some historical context about how the social sciences have traditionally been perceived is necessary to answer this question. Bhaskar explains that the history of the social sciences suggests a discipline which has traditionally oscillated between positivist, empiricist approaches and those that can be termed as hermeneutic and, as such, are concerned with the meaning and concept dependency of social science. For advocates of the hermeneutical approach, the subject matter of social science and natural science is categorically different, and it is this principle which forms the basis of their rejection of positivism and their criticism of Bhaskar’s critical naturalism. Hermeneutics relies on Weber’s concept of verstehen, or understanding, which stands in direct opposition to empiricism’s mode of analysis, which is dependent upon causal explanation in the form of the identification of empirical regularity, observation and a search for causal laws. Bhaskar suggests that hermeneutics is correct to point out that the social sciences deal with a pre-interpreted reality, a reality already bought under concepts by social actors:

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the human sciences stand, at least in part, to their subject matter in a subject-­ subject (or concept-concept) relationship, rather than simply a subject (or concept-thing) one. It is also correct to insist upon the methodological significance of this difference. (1979, p. 27)

However, Bhaskar argues that the hermeneutic and anti-naturalist approach to social science depends upon: ‘the inversion or displacement, transformation and/or condensation of characteristically positivistic themes’ (1979, p. 25). Bhaskar goes on to claim that, in this sense, positivism, or rather the approach that underpins it, has had a hegemonic effect on the philosophy of the social sciences (1979, p. 25). In order to illustrate this, he points to the anti-naturalist focus on individuals and behaviour, which he argues are defined in opposition to the empiricists focus on events. Bhaskar maintains that this encourages total voluntarism in the anti-naturalist approach, which is defined against the positivists search for observation-based empirical regularity. Bhaskar refutes this oppositional method of theory construction, arguing that social structures can be just as coercive as natural structures and laws and, conversely, that, just as rules can be broken, natural tendencies can also fail to be realised. Bhaskar’s key argument here is that, because social objects are irreducible to (and really emergent from) natural objects, and so possess qualitatively different features, they cannot be studied in the same way as them, but can still be studied scientifically: ‘there can be identity of essence here, only because there is difference in substantial form’ (1979, pp. 26–27). Further, he contends that the social science ontology is actually quite similar to the natural science one, in terms of the broader categories of the limits of a focus on empirical regularity, the centrality of generative mechanisms and the fact that closed systems are artificially constructed and are not necessary features of analysis. An important principle related to this position is that social science cannot be predictive and must restrict itself to being exclusively explanatory. Bhaskar proposes that social scientists must concern themselves with social structures that operate in the field of social life and that we must recognise that social individuals are, in general, both complex and changing and, further, that we must provide at the outset a way of avoiding false oppositions such as those between history and theory and the universal and unique on which the hermeneutical distinction lies.

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6  Criticism of the Critical Realist Ontology Cruickshank’s Critique Critical realism proposes an ambitious project in its ontology, its method for arriving at this ontology and its broader aims for naturalism, and has earned itself some critics in the process. Cruickshank raises the question of the ‘status’ (2004, p.  568) of the critical realist ontology, arguing that there is inconsistency in the approach with regards to whether ontology is located within the intransitive or transitive domains. Cruickshank claims that critical realism has ‘two mutually exclusive definitions of ontology’, where ontology is defined: ‘both as a fallible interpretation of reality and as a definitive definition of a reality beyond our knowledge claims’ (2004, p. 568). Cruickshank suggests that this tension has consequences for critical realism’s commitment to the notion of the ‘epistemic fallacy’. Further, Cruickshank is concerned with what he describes as critical realism’s ‘hegemonic project’ (2004, p. 567) and its goal to ‘conceptually re-tool the natural and social sciences’, a goal which he believes stands in opposition to, first, their principle of establishing an ontological base through a process of ‘immanent critique’ and, second, locating the ontology at the transitive level (2004, p. 567). Examining the premises upon which Bhaskar’s position is formulated, Cruickshank argues that, according to their own conception, critical realists recognise that they do not have an: ‘Archimedean point or God’s eye view, from which one could know the essential features of reality beyond our knowledge’ (2004, p. 568). Thus, the ontology is derived from current scientific knowledge and then imported into the social sciences in RTS (1975) and PON (1979). From this, it would seem that knowledge is taken to be transitive, as, first, it is derived from current scientific claims, which are defined as constituting the transitive domain, and, second, it is imported from the natural to the social sciences, via a process of immanent critique of existing social ontologies. So, according to Cruickshank, ontology is not about mirroring reality, but about using the natural sciences as fallible knowledge in an ongoing critical debate. Despite this method of theory construction, Cruickshank maintains that Bhaskar is, in fact, guilty of the ‘epistemic fallacy’, as he presents critical realism as a universal ontology for use in both the natural and social sciences, as opposed to his self-­ proclaimed aim of continuing a critical dialogue on ontological and epistemological issues related to the approach, indeed the very terms on

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which the original approach was constructed. Cruickshank’s broader point here is that ontology should not be fixed in the intransitive domain, but should be located at the level of the transitive, so as to continually subject such knowledge claims to critique, and thus improvement. Cruickshank contends that, on Bhaskar’s own definition of the epistemic fallacy, any definitions about what we know of reality are prone to this criticism. Cruickshank adds that Bhaskar’s defence of his position would perhaps be that he avoids the epistemic fallacy by producing a ‘philosophical ontology’ and that it is only by conflating scientific and philosophical ontologies that one might commit the epistemic fallacy (2004, p. 573). Bhaskar’s point here is to suggest that philosophy is superior to science and that philosophy is used to guide science by virtue of having better access to the essential features of reality (2004, p. 573). Cruickshank rejects this argument and argues that locating the ontology at a philosophical level does not in itself mean that critical realists have been able to transcend the transitive and thus fallible realm of knowledge. Cruickshank doesn’t reject, or argue in favour of, one or the other particular ontology, but rather argues that one’s conception of ontology should not be fixed and static, as one should regard ontology as being fallible and open to critique and development (2004, p.  569). Rather than defend an alternative ontology, Cruickshank proposes that ontology needs to be defined in terms of fallible interpretations of social reality, which necessitates the revision and replacement of ontological theories in the course of an ongoing critical dialogue about reality and precludes the use of one, fixed, ontology to supply the terms of references for the sciences. He suggests that this approach would be in line with critical realism’s notion of immanent critique. Interestingly, Cruickshank argues that, if such a position were taken by advocates of critical realism, this would also require them to reject their notion of the epistemic fallacy (2004, p. 582). King’s Defence of Hermeneutics As an advocate of the hermeneutic position, King (1999) is troubled by Bhaskar’s appeal to the existence of intransitive structures in society, which he interprets as an example of reification, and therefore unjustifiable. King identifies two ‘antinomies’ relating to Bhaskar’s critical realism and provides hermeneutical explanations of why some of Bhaskar’s seemingly intuitive observations are flawed (King, 1999).

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The first antimony refers to the claim that: ‘society is dependant upon individuals: society is also independent of individuals’ (1999, p.  269). Whilst King concedes that Bhaskar provides a ‘intuitively sensible’ defence of this position, based on a concept of emergence, King finds the concept of emergence problematic (1999, p.  270). King acknowledges that: ‘(E)mergence seems to capture the fact that social reality, which precedes and is definitively more than the individual, is simultaneously only the result of individual action’ (1999, p. 270). However, he rejects social reification in all forms and suggests that Bhaskar’s claim that there is an ontological separation or ontological hiatus between society and people is flawed. In defence of his own approach, King argues that hermeneutics avoids sociological reification by accounting for apparently emergent structural properties by reference to individuals and their meaningful interaction with other individuals. The second antinomy that King identifies refers to the argument that: ‘social action is always intentional: social action is non-intentional and material’ (1999, p. 279). The issue here for King is that, whilst Bhaskar accepts that social action is always meaningful (it involves individual’s interpretations), he also accepts that there are objective material factors which cannot be reduced to individual interpretation. King argues that the hermeneutic position is not a form of idealism (which denies materiality), but maintains that those social phenomena which involve material reality are inevitably meaningful (1999, p. 284). Here, the issue of contention for King is whether he can accept a material reality separate from individuals and their interpretations, and clearly he cannot. Bhaskar, in my view, advocates a dialectical relationship between the material and ideational realms, so that, while the meanings that individuals possess about material reality may influence their actions, we must also accept that there is an autonomous material reality which confronts individuals. As King himself acknowledges, Bhaskar does not reject the hermeneutical position outright, and indeed accepts that the hermeneutic emphasis on the intentionality of human action is central to social theory. Bhaskar (1979) clearly values hermeneutics, but has argued that it is not by itself a sufficient social theory, but Topping (2005), however, is critical of what he considers to be Bhaskar’s partial reading of hermeneutics, arguing that Bhaskar sets up a binary opposition between critical realism and hermeneutics which does not withstand scrutiny.

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Critical Realism and Marxism Bhaskar has a deep sympathy with Marxism as a school of thought, but it is his view that Marxism would benefit from a more explicit engagement with questions of ontology. What, in Bhaskar’s view, is the relationship between Marxism and critical realism? For Bhaskar, ‘Marx’s analysis in Capital illustrates the substantive use of a transcendental procedure’ (1979, p.  65), but where critical realism expands Marx’s project and Marxism is by developing a firmer grounding for the sort of ontology that Marx’s Capital and that Marx in other works actually presupposes implicitly if not explicitly. Bhaskar thus sees himself as specifying the underlying philosophical questions and ontology which inform Marxism: He (Marx) asks what must be the case for the world of wealth to manifest itself as an accumulation of commodities. He does a transcendental deduction. And interestingly enough there are two central distinctions at work in Capital Volume I: the distinction between labour and labour-power and the distinction between exchange-value and use-value. Using those two distinctions in rather the same way as I used the distinctions between the real and the actual and open and closed systems, he generates the basic anatomy or deep structure of the capitalist mode of production, and I still think that deduction is valid. (Bhaskar, 1979, p. 100)

While Bhaskar is supportive of Marx’s claim to realist structures in explaining the manifestation of capital, it is Marx’s historical materialism which he cannot accept because it posits a form of ultimate determinism, which Bhaskar’s distinction between open and closed systems is designed to reject. For Bhaskar, society has no pre-determined shape or social structural configuration, and its precise character at any particular time must be subject to empirical research. Thus, for Bhaskar, theory exists in a continual process of advance and refinement and: ‘like any other fundamental conceptual blueprint or paradigm in social science, historical materialism can only be justified by its fruitfulness in generating projects encapsulating research programmes capable of generating sequences of theories progressively richer in explanatory power’ (Bhaskar, 1979, p. 53). For Callinicos (Bhaskar & Callinicos, 2003), the relationship between Marxism and critical realism is an ‘established fact’, and there is convergence between Bhaskar and Marx’s critique of science insofar as Bhaskars’s distinction between the transitive and the intransitive echoes Marx’s recognition of the difference between inner essences and surface appearance.

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Callinicos, in fact, agrees that a conception of science consistent with Bhaskar’s scientific realism of the 1970s implicitly informs Marx’s Capital and captures important features of the Marxist conception of science. Despite this overlap, for Callinicos, critical realism remains a philosophical theory and, in formulating it as such, he seeks to emphasise that it is not new, but articulates best practice in critical social theory; it highlights principles of absence and presence; it highlights the role of the dialectic; and it raises questions and offers answers about the transcendental status of phenomena. Others, however, would disagree. Gunn (1989) refutes the point that Bhaskar sharpens or makes explicit Marxism’s underlying philosophy, arguing that Bhaskar misunderstands that Marxism is both theory and philosophy, both of which contribute to Marx’s theory of practice. Roberts (1999) also has reservations about Bhaskar’s claims to reinvigorate Marxism, arguing that critical realism does not nourish a critical theory of ideology in an objective sense. While Callinicos (Bhaskar & Callinicos, 2003) concedes some convergence between Bhaskar and Marxism, he is clear that this relationship extends to the early Bhaskar rather than the late work. Callinicos departs from Bhaskar on the question of Bhaskar’s later books which, as other have also argued (Sayer, 2000), take critical realism in a direction which many find inconsistent with Bhaskar’s earlier works setting out the critical realist philosophy, namely Transcendental Realism (1972) and Critical Naturalism (1979). Books such as From East to West: Odyssey of a Soul (2000) expand Bhaskar’s philosophy of critical realism with a re-synthesis of many aspects of Western and Eastern thought, making reference to ideas of reincarnation, karma and moksha or liberation. A turn to spiritualism or mysticism defines these later works which seek to prove the existence of God and locate critical realist concepts such as causality as constitutive features of the world, defining its most basic properties. It is important to be clear about the difference between philosophical propositions and theoretical ones. Critical realism is not a social theory but has the potential to inform social theory, whether that be Marxism, feminism or anti-racism, or indeed a critical realist-inspired postcolonialism (Tinsley, 2022) and the framing of Islamic praxis in multi-faith contexts (Wilkinson, 2015, 2019). We can also note, following Brown (2007), that critical realism is not a negative theory which tells us what is wrong with other theories, but provides the basis for improving existing theories and thus offers tools to strengthen Marxism, rather than challenge it in any fundamental way. Critical realism is thus in favour of theories which

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help us to understand the world, but is opposed to theory-determined approaches to the world. As Fletcher (2017) suggests, theories can help us to get closer to reality; they aid us to identify causal mechanisms driving social events and build on empirical descriptions of the world. As such, there is room for critical realism to align with, and support, distinct theoretical approaches in order to tackle contemporary social problems. It is in this latter regard that I wish to close this chapter, by moving from the abstract and theoretical to the applied. In the next section, I provide illustrations of the range of the ways that critical realism can be used in research, and the types of questions that arise and how it helps to bridge the gap between the ontological and the empirical.

7  Applied Critical Realism Critical realism takes questions of ontology and epistemology seriously, and so much of the discussion thus far has been philosophical and abstract, laying out the contours of the ontology and epistemology and how they relate to each other. In what remains of the chapter, I want to think about how we might use critical realism to tackle research questions in the social sciences and its implications for applied research. This will help researchers to explain social events and may inform practical policy recommendations to address social problems and social change. Notably, and in a sign of the widening reach of critical realism, there is increasing recognition that more attention needs to be paid to the question of how to use critical realism to address practical research questions. As Hu (2018) reminds us, critical realism draws on, but critiques both positivism and constructivism, and while it functions as a general methodological framework for research, it is not associated with any particular set of methods. It has been argued that there is little empirical work that directly employs critical realism-inspired methodologies, especially its distinct mode of analysis, namely, retroduction (Hu, 2018). Similarly, Fletcher (2017) notes that despite critical realism’s explanatory strength there has been a ‘lack of methodological development’ on the application of critical realism in empirical research. Yeung (1997), Oliver (2012) and Mukumbang (2021) make similar points. The situation does however seem to be changing. In response to these observations, we can note attempts to rectify this neglect in the form of a special issue on applied critical realism in the social sciences (Price & Martin, 2018), but also work which sets out to address questions of

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methodology from a critical realist perspective (Carter & New, 2004; Maisuria & Banfield, 2023). The aim of Price and Martin’s special issue is to encourage elaboration on the use of critical realism at an applied level, but also reflections on the use of critical realism and metatheoretical developments. It is a sign of the reach of critical realism, that the articles in the special issue span a variety of disciplines from business studies to marketing, psychology, law and education. Applied critical realism does not necessarily mean a departure from ontological and epistemological questions, and indeed, the strength of much recent research in this area is its attempt to move from the ontological, through the epistemological and methodological (Hu, 2018; Fletcher, 2017). Fletcher, for example, provides an example of applied qualitative research which uses critical realism as a philosophical and methodological framework. Fletcher’s (2017) research is concerned with a study of Canadian farm women’s experiences with agricultural policy (the Saskatchewan Farm Women Study, SFWS). Taking a critical feminist approach, the study involved 3 background interviews with agricultural leaders and 30 in-person semi-structured interviews with Saskatchewan farm women. The interviews also included several quantitative rating-scale questions. Following the interviews, qualitative data analysis and coding required looking for ‘demi-regularities’ rather than identification of any underlying causal laws or patterns. The aim here is not to locate causal laws, but tendencies, which means looking for: ‘rough trends or broken patterns in empirical data’ (Fletcher, 2017, p. 185). Following this, further data analysis involves identifying topic-based and theoretical codes, and Fletcher engages in retroduction. Retroduction involves identifying the contextual conditions for a particular causal mechanism to take effect and to result in the empirical trends observed. Moving from the empirical to the real and engaging in inference, and going beyond questions of agency or structure, Fletcher shows how causal mechanisms go beyond individual choice and shape agency in particular ways. She posits the existence of gender ideology as a key causal mechanism shaping farm women’s work patterns and points to the relevance of feminist political economy in examining the gendered effects of neoliberal capitalism. While we might credit New (2005) with providing a good overview of critical realism and gender, Flatchart poses the question: ‘Why then, have feminist critiques of oppression not drawn heavily on CR metatheory?’ (Flatschart, 2017, p.  285). The important point being made here by Flatschart (2017) is that we need more detailed studies which connect

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accounts of sex, gender and difference to the empirical. New (2005) makes the case that sexual difference is real in the critical realist sense and ontologically more basic than gender, which is necessarily linked to sexual difference without being reducible to it. New (2005) also points out that gender ideology exists in the transitive realm of ideas and meanings and that in critical realism ideas and knowledge in the transitive world can be real and causal. On this view, people’s knowledge, reasons or motivations for doing things can have a very real effect on the intransitive world. Building on these insights, but linking the ontological to the empirical and vice versa, Flatschart (2017) highlights the need for feminists to move beyond empirical phenomena and posit the causes, or the specific mechanisms that inform empirical phenomena, but also to adjudicate between causes to specify better and worse explanations. Flatschart (2017) also observes that an intersectional approach remains embedded in an actualist ontology, but does not specify the relationship between class, race and gender. Retroduction Let us consider the concept of retroduction, which has been mentioned above, but not elaborated upon, but deserves more attention because it seems a critical concept for elaborating on causality within applied research. The posing of transcendental arguments, which are central to critical realism, is a mode of retroduction, meaning: ‘the inference from present effects to prior (perhaps hidden, perhaps just unrecorded) causes’ (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 135). Retroduction has been identified by Bhaskar as overcoming the deficiencies of the logics of induction and deduction to offer causal explanation. It entails moving beyond the world of the empirical and the actual, to reflect on that which occurs at the domain of the real. Thus, it is concerned with the causes—or causal powers behind empirical phenomena, or the underlying structures which are not subject to direct observation. It involves explaining how things are, but also as Hu (2018) reminds us, how things could have been different. Such an approach is then very different to inductive and deductive approaches both of which rely on repeated observation of events to suggest causality. Inductive approaches require moving from observation to empirical generalisation and theories, while deduction adopts a top-down approach, moving from general theories to conclusions about those theories in repeated empirical observations. Retroduction, in contrast, conjectures what is the case (Bhaskar,

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1975). Retroduction is critical in open societies, where contingency features and thus outcomes are variable, but it is also a valuable concept for selecting between myriad causal mechanisms in explaining phenomena. We might start with various descriptions of the causal and through a process of elimination work backwards to identify which is most plausible. Hu (2018), for example, explores entrepreneurship using a critical realist research design, which involves three research steps: explication of events, retroduction and empirical corroboration, while Mukumbang (2021) reminds us that retroductive theorising can be combined with qualitative and quantitative methods. Glynos and Howarth (2007), although coming from a different approach to critical realism—a logic-based approach, agree with the principle of retroduction, and acknowledge Bhaskar’s defence of it as a central pillar of critical realism. Glynos and Howarth favour a notion of a ‘retroductive circle’, which captures the necessary ‘to-and-fro’ movement between the empirical, actual and real (2007, p. 40). They find that retroduction is inherently appealing from a social science perspective because it designates a backward-looking form of inference with which many social scientists may be familiar. The lesson here is that we often tend to extract from the empirical to the causal, but we do not do it in an explicit way, but critical realism through its depth ontology provides us with the tools and conceptual vocabulary to do this. Glynos and Howarth go further and suggest an overarching logic of investigation comprising three ‘inter-­ locking moments’: the problematisation of empirical phenomena; the retroductive explanation of these phenomena; and the persuasion of—and intervention into—the relevant community and practices of scholars and lay actors (2007, p. 19). Laminate Systems In line with the recognition that societies are open and complex, and while his work often targets the social sciences more generally, Bhaskar is attuned to the fact that academic disciplines bring their own discreet disciplinary gaze and that this impacts on our understanding of social phenomena. Furthermore, while Bhaskar has spent most time addressing questions of ontology and epistemology, we might also usefully note his work on laminated systems, which derives from an awareness that causes in open systems are multifaceted and differing disciplines and fields will offer distinct vantage points. Using the example of disability, Bhaskar and Danermark (2006) present laminated systems as adding insights from various

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disciplines, scales and temporalities in the same way as adding various materials in layers produces a material laminate. The concept of laminate systems is deployed as a metaphor for explanatory power and to highlight the irreducibility of the layers while recognising that material laminate produces strength synergistically. Bhaskar and Danermark (2006) use the example of disability to recognise the physical, biological, psychological, psycho-social, socio-economic, cultural and normative mechanisms and range of contexts that are essential to the understanding of social phenomena in fields such as disability research. Similarly, we might note that Quraishi et al. (2022) find value in laminate systems to comprehend the lives of Muslim prisoners from multiple dimensions, thereby incorporating their ‘worldviews, religious practices and experiences of prison life’ (2022, p. 2). Explanatory Critique and Judgemental Rationality If … one is in possession of a theory which explains why false consciousness is necessary, then one can pass immediately, without the addition of any extraneous value judgements, to a negative evaluation of the object (generative structure, system of social relations or whatever) that makes that consciousness necessary (and, ceteris paribus, to a positive evaluation of action rationally directed at the removal of the courses of false consciousness). (Bhaskar, 1979: p. 81)

In this quote above, Bhaskar reminds us of the critical importance of engaging in critical and emancipatory social science by moving from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, or from facts to values via a notion of explanatory critique (Bhaskar, 2009). Explanatory critiques help to address false knowledge, such as, for example, why false consciousness is necessary, before moving to a normative or value-based critique about why this is wrong and bad. Critical realism thus equips the social scientist with the conceptual tools for providing better explanations of social phenomena, which then support value judgements based on these accounts. Central to position, of course, is the recognition that there are limits on knowledge. Beyond this, we might also usefully note that critical realism seeks to empower the researcher to adjudicate between competing accounts of social reality. This is where the concept of judgemental rationality comes to the fore. While all knowledge claims may be fallible, this does not imply that all knowledge is equally fallible and so some knowledge claims may be

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better than others. Judgemental rationality reminds us of the necessity of making judgements and decisions about competing or contested epistemic accounts of reality in order that we might arrive at more plausible and accurate accounts of phenomena (Bhaskar, 2009; also see Quraishi et al., 2022). This is the task and challenge that critical realism poses.

8  Conclusion Outlining the philosophical premises which provide the foundations of critical realism, but also its core concepts such as the transitive and intransitive distinction; and the critical realist stratified conception of reality based on the real, actual and empirical, the aim of this chapter has been to discuss the formation and development of the critical realist ontology, which originated with Bhaskar as an approach to the natural and social sciences. An additional aim of the chapter has been to discern the process of immanent critique which Bhaskar engages in, through dialogue with empiricism and idealism, and which foregrounds the critical realist position. I have shown that critical realism’s depth ontology provides a well-­ developed, cautious but comprehensive account of how ontological and related, epistemological claims can be made and defended in an era of ontological scepticism. This discussion of critical realism can now be drawn upon to sketch an ontological account of Bourdieu’s core concepts. To this end, the present chapter provided an opportunity to expand on a number of arguments developed in the Introduction, and anticipates my discussion of Bourdieu in forthcoming chapters. Subsequent chapters of the book turn to the task of drawing on critical realism’s ontological framework to support and extend Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and institutions showing the value that critical realism brings to Bourdieu and vice versa. It is with habitus that the next chapter concerns itself.

Bibliography Bhaskar, R. (1975). A Realist Theory of Science. Leeds Books. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The Possibility of Naturalism. A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. Harvester. Bhaskar, R. (1989). Reclaiming Reality. Verso. Bhaskar, R. (2000). From East to West. Odyssey of a Soul. Routledge. Bhaskar, R. (2009). Scientific Realism & Human Emancipation. Routledge.

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Bhaskar, R., & Callinicos, A. (2003). Marxism and Critical Realism. A Debate. Journal of Critical Realism, 1(2), 89–114. Bhaskar, R., & Danermark, B. (2006). Metatheory, Interdisciplinarity and Disability Research: A Critical Realist Perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 8(4), 278–297. Blaikie, N. (1993). Approaches to Social Enquiry. Polity. Blaikie, N. (2000). Designing Social Research: The Logic of Anticipation. Polity. Blom, B., & Morén, S. (2011). Analysis of Generative Mechanisms. Journal of Critical Realism, 10(1), 60–79. Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian Meditations. Polity. Brown, C. (2007). Situating Critical Realism. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 35(2), 409–416. Carter, B., & New, C. (Eds.). (2004). Making Realism Work: Realist Social Theory and Empirical Research. Routledge. Collier, A. (1994). Critical Realism. An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy. Verso. Cruickshank, J. (2002). Realism and Sociology: Anti-Foundationalism, Ontology and Social Research. Routledge. Cruickshank, J. (2004). A Tale of Two Ontologies: An Immanent Critique of Critical Realism. The Sociological Review, 52(4), 567–585. Cruickshank, J. (2007). Seeking The Tower Of Babel. Sociology, 41(4), 741–748. Feyeraband, P.  K. (1975). Against Method. Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge. Verso. Flatschart, E. (2017). Feminist Standpoints and Critical Realism. The Contested Materiality of Difference in Intersectionality and New Materialism. Journal of Critical Realism, 16(3), 284–302. Fletcher, A.  J. (2017). Applying Critical Realism in Qualitative Research: Methodology Meets Method. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 20(2), 181–194. Glynos, J., & Howarth, D. (2007). Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory. Routledge. Gunn, R. (1989). Marxism and Philosophy: A Critique of Critical Realism. Capital & Class, 13(1), 87–116. Hu, X. (2018). Methodological Implications of Critical Realism for Entrepreneurship Research. Journal of Critical Realism, 17(2), 118–139. Isaksen, R. K. (2016). Reclaiming Rational Theory Choice as Central: A Critique of Methodological Applications of Critical Realism. Journal of Critical Realism, 15(3), 245–262. King, A. (1999). The Impossibility of Naturalism: The Antinomies of Bhaskar’s Realism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 29(3), 267–288. Kuhn, T. (1962/1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.

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Maisuria, A., & Banfield, G. (2023). Working with Critical Realism. Stories of Methodological Encounters. Routledge. Mukumbang, F. C. (2021). Retroductive Theorizing: A Contribution of Critical Realism to Mixed Methods Research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 17(1), 93–114. New, C. (2005). Sex and Gender: A Critical Realist Approach. New Formations, 56, 54–70. Oliver, C. (2012). Critical Realist Grounded Theory: A New Approach for Social Work Research. British Journal of Social Work, 42, 371–387. Pilgrim, D. (2020). Critical Realism for Psychologists. Routledge. Popper, K. R. (1959/2002). The Logic of Scientific Discovery (2nd ed.). Routledge. Price, L., & Martin, L. (2018). Introduction to the Special Issue: Applied Critical Realism in the Social Sciences. Journal of Critical Realism, 17(2), 89–96. Quraishi, M., Irfan, L., Schneuwly, P. M., & Wilkinson, M. L. N. (2022). Doing ‘judgemental rationality’ in Empirical Research: The Importance of Depth-­ Reflexivity When Researching in Prison. Journal of Critical Realism, 21(1), 25–45. Roberts, J. M. (1999). Marxism and Critical Realism: The Same, Similar, or Just Plain Different? Capital & Class, 23(2), 21–49. Sayer, A. (1992). Method in Social Science (2nd ed.). Routledge. Sayer, A. (2012/2000). Realism and Social Science. Sage. Tinsley, M. (2022). Towards a Postcolonial Critical Realism. Critical Sociology, 48(2), 235–250. Topping, K. (2005). The Disorder of Political Inquiry. Harvard University Press. Wilkinson, M.  L. N. (2015). A Fresh Look at Islam in a Multi-Faith World: A Philosophy for Success Through Education. Routledge. Wilkinson, M. L. N. (2019). The Genealogy of Terror: How to Distinguish Between Islam, Islamism and Islamist Extremism. Routledge. Yeung, H. W. (1997). Critical Realism and Realist Research in Human Geography: A Method or a Philosophy in Search of a Method? Progress in Human Geography, 21, 51–74.

CHAPTER 3

Habitus: A Critical Realist Interpretation

If there is one concept which constitutes the lynchpin for Bourdieu’s approach to capturing the ‘ordinary experience of the social’, it is habitus (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 5). Developed within his theory of practice, habitus is Bourdieu’s solution to counter overly subjectivist or objectivist approaches to the structure and agency problem, providing a lens on the ‘dialectic of the internalization of externality and the externalization of internality’ (1977, p. 72). A tool for making sense of the disparate experiences that make up a biography, habitus encapsulates how people move through the world, but are also affected by the world. Bourdieu defines habitus as: ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions’ and ‘structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures’ (1977, p. 72). An individual’s habitus develops in response to the social sphere in which they live and act: a space that Bourdieu terms a ‘field’.1 Habitus is both a ‘structured structure’, as it is affected by external structures, and a 1  Chapter 4 provides an extended discussion of the concept of field, but I provide a definition here to progress the argument. Bourdieu defines the field as: ‘a system of objective relations that is constituted by various species of capital’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 201). Thus, we might speak of the ‘education field’ or the ‘art field’. Individuals can occupy a range of positions in a particular field. These positions may be related to one another, not directly through interactions or connections, but in terms of exterior relations of difference, especially in regard to forms of power [capital] (Bourdieu, 1977).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Akram, Bourdieu, Habitus and Field, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41846-4_3

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‘structuring structure’ in that it impacts directly on the individual. The ‘durable dispositions’2 (1977, p. 72) that make up the habitus are cognitive ‘schemes of perception, conception, and action’ (1977, p. 86), but also align with the corporeal body through a notion of bodily hexis which Bourdieu defines as: ‘political mythology realized, em-bodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable manner of standing, speaking, and thereby of feeling and thinking’ (1977, pp. 93–94). Bodily hexis reminds us that the physical body is also affected by habitus and structural conditioning; therefore habitus affects how we walk, talk or sit, as well as one’s facial expressions, tone of voice or style of speech (1977, p.  87).3 Temporality is central to habitus as one’s habitus develops over the life course; it is rooted in one’s upbringing and family socialisation, but also in relation to class position, and develops from there to be informed by the school system and so on, from ‘restructuring to restructuring’ (1977, p. 86). Bourdieu was not the first to use the term habitus, and its roots can be traced back to Aristotle’s notion of hexis, and in contemporary usage to Marcel Mauss, and later to Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Norbert Elias (Bourdieu, 1990a, pp. 11–12; Sapiro, 2015).4 However, it was Bourdieu who turned it into a cornerstone of his sociology. Pivotal to his theory of practice, and featuring in his various texts, the concept was first introduced in an afterword to a book in which Bourdieu translated two texts by Erwin Panoksky (Bourdieu, 2007, p. 104).5 It is the unique way of conceptualising the delicate balance between everyday mundane practice and the effects of the social on practice that is the signature of this concept, but we 2  Bourdieu defines dispositions as: ‘a predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination’ (Note. 1. Bourdieu, 1977, p. 214). 3  Shilling is highly critical of Bourdieu and the concept of habitus, arguing that it is deterministic and leaves little room for human creativity or the opportunity for social change (1997). Despite Shilling’s rejection of Bourdieu’s approach, I would argue that he and Bourdieu share a common concern with the socialised and material body and how it is implicated within broader processes of social-agential interaction. Like Bourdieu’s concept of bodily hexis, Shilling, in his own work seeks to draw attention to the neglect of the ‘socialised and embodied agent’, an agent that possesses: ‘senses, sensualities and physical habits that have been partially socialised, but that continue to shape as well as be shaped by social structures’ (Shilling, 1997, p. 738). 4  See Sapiro (2015) for a good overview of the use of the term habitus in works other than by Bourdieu. 5  The book in question is: Panofsky, E. (translated by Bourdieu), Architecture Gothique et pensée scolastique. Précédé de l’Abbé Suger de Saint-Denis (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967).

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should also note that the concept bears the imprint of Bourdieu’s recognition of the limits of epistemology, which underpins his overall approach to agency (habitus) and structure (field). As such, through the concept of habitus, Bourdieu is keen to caution against the gap between ‘theoretical understanding’ and the ‘practical and directly concerned aims of practical understanding’ (1990a, p.  60), which leads him to reject a notion of action as ‘a sort of unprecedented confrontation between the subject and the world’ (1977, p. 73). In his critique of Sartre’s conception of agency, Bourdieu rejects the claim that agents operate in terms of ‘mechanical obedience to explicit codified rules’ (1990a, p.  63). Seeking to move beyond a language which describes action as rule following, strategic, conscious and reflexive as is common to dominant approaches in the social sciences, Bourdieu instead argues that: ‘like a train bringing along its own rails’ (1977, p.  79), action is: the ‘intentional invention of regulated improvisation’ (1977, p.  79). Hence, ‘habitus is generative’ rather than pre-determined and set on a particular path (1977, p. 73). For Bourdieu, the process of interaction between structures and agents is akin to a game, and he uses an analogy which sees the social world as ‘the game’ and the agent as the ‘game player’. He presents habitus as the ‘feel for the game’, suggesting that, as a result of this sense of awareness or ‘feel’, ‘the social game (is) embodied and turned into second nature’ (1990a, p.  63). Bourdieu goes on to explain that the: ‘good player does at every moment what the game requires … That presupposes a permanent capacity for invention, indispensable if one is able to adapt to indefinitely varied and never completely identical situations’ (1990a, p. 63). Through the analogy of the game and the game player, we see that Bourdieu is able to remove (theoretical) concepts, such as rules and intentionality, thus avoiding making action ‘the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor’ (1977, p. 72). Consequently, action in a socially structured world becomes in many ways seamless, mundane and ordinary. Given we know that Bourdieu was not concerned with exploring the ontological foundations of his concepts, preferring to work at the level of theory, but acutely concerned with the epistemological status of his concepts, this chapter addresses the following question: what difference does explicating an ontological framework make to habitus? The short answer is that it makes a substantial difference and, furthermore, that doing so addresses the charge of determinism, tautology and circularity that have long accompanied habitus. First, however, it is important to address the not-insignificant secondary literature that has arisen in response to

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perceived limitations of habitus. There have been some important lines of criticism of habitus which, in some cases, have led to points of refinement and are worthy of our attention. I restrict myself to three issues here: first, the neglect of explicit engagement with the unconscious aspects of habitus; second, a concern that Bourdieu neglects the individual’s capacity to enact change and reflexivity in habitus; and, third, the perceived limitations of Bourdieu’s account of strategy in habitus. As will be shown, the three issues are intimately related. Having addressed these, the fourth part of the chapter moves this account of habitus onto a firmer ontological footing and outlines the difference that critical realism makes to habitus.

1   The Unconscious Habitus To elucidate the principles upon which habitus operates, I have in previous work argued that habitus is premised on a partially unconscious basis and that this is intrinsic to the functionality of habitus (Akram, 2012; Akram & Hogan, 2015). Despite his texts being peppered with terms such as the ‘unconscious’ and ‘non-conscious’ habitus, I argue that Bourdieu never explicitly addresses his understanding of the unconscious, but that he was concerned to distance his approach from psychoanalysis, although he leaned towards a socio-analysis or self-analysis in his later works.6 Consider the following statements about habitus made by Bourdieu: The ‘unconscious’ is never anything other than the forgetting of history which history itself produces by incorporating the objective structures it produces in the second nature of habitus. (1977, pp. 78–79) Each agent, wittingly or unwittingly, willy nilly, is a producer and reproducer of objective meaning. Because his actions and works are the product of a modus operandi of which he is not the producer and has no conscious mastery, they contain an “objective intention”, as the Scholastics put it, which always outruns his conscious intentions. (1977, p. 79)

As is clear, the existence of the unconscious in habitus should not be disputed, but the interesting question for us is whether this constitutes sufficient reason to consider Bourdieu a determinist on the basis that he 6  See Bourdieu’s Sketch for a Self-Analysis (2007), which famously opens with the statement: ‘This is not an autobiography’. Of all of Bourdieu’s texts, this book comes closest to a form of self-analysis or autobiographical account of his life.

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does not allow agents sufficient capacity to engage in conscious action. First, let us accept that Bourdieu is easily read as a determinist. Take the following passage as to why someone might read Bourdieu as a determinist: The principles embodied in this way (in habitus) are placed beyond the grasp of consciousness and, hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 94)

While Bourdieu is easily read as a determinist, I argue this to be misguided. This issue is not just semantic, although much has been written about his obscure and often frustrating writing style (Jenkins, 2002). The list of those who choose to read Bourdieu as a determinist is long, including Alexander (1995), Jenkins (2002), King (2000) and Shilling (1997). In addition, there are those who, whilst more positive about Bourdieu’s theoretical project, accept that the accusation of determinism is partly justified because of the limited opportunity Bourdieu affords individuals for conscious action, for example, Elder-Vass (2007c), Crossley (2001, 2003) and Adkins (2003). I suggest that the charge of determinism is easily sustained only if one highlights certain aspects of Bourdieu’s theory and, therefore, it is crucial to understand Bourdieu’s theoretical project as a whole and in context. Further, and as will be shown, the unconscious aspect of habitus is pivotal for understanding the practical logic which underpins habitus and everyday practice, and that if habitus is to operate in a seamless and ‘hand in glove’ manner, it must be premised on an unconscious platform, which does not exclude opportunities for conscious thought. As such, the unconscious features of habitus are not in itself a justification for arguing that habitus is determinist. The issue, I suggest, stems from how we understand the relationship between unconscious and conscious thought and action. There is a need to move beyond a binary notion where agency is defined as exclusively conscious thought and action, with attendant positive associations, whilst the unconscious is viewed negatively as lacking in autonomy. To explore this issue further, let us consider Bourdieu’s conception of dispositions or, more specifically, whether they are conceptualised as conscious or unconscious phenomena. Dispositions The concept of ‘dispositions’ is central to understanding how habitus operates; after all Bourdieu defines habitus as: ‘systems of durable,

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transposable dispositions’ (1977, p. 72). However, what are dispositions? In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu provides the following definition: Disposition, expresses first the result of an organizing action, with a meaning close to that of words such as structure; it also designates a way of being, a habitual state (especially of the body) and, in particular, a predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination. (Note. 1. Bourdieu, 1977, p. 214)

Jenkins poses an important question about the status of dispositions and asks whether they are to be understood as conscious or unconscious phenomena (2002, pp. 76–77). He argues that Bourdieu refers: ‘over and over again to the unconscious character of practical logic and the existence of dispositions as beyond consciousness’ (2002, p. 77). However, Jenkins claims that, whilst dispositions may be unconscious, it is equally clear that consciousness must be involved. He cites the example of speech, suggesting that speech is a complicated process which involves a full range of mental and intellectual functions, both conscious and unconscious. This leads Jenkins back to his broader criticism of Bourdieu, namely that Bourdieu does not allow agents sufficient capacity to engage in conscious deliberation, leading him to suggest that: ‘(I)t is difficult to know where to place conscious deliberation and awareness in Bourdieu’s scheme of things’ (2002, p.  77). So, Jenkins argues that in his theory Bourdieu: ‘simply dismisses thinking - understood as a conscious process of deliberation - by denying its significance’ (2002, p. 93). Both Elder-Vass and Jenkins question the relationship between dispositions and practices and what they see as Bourdieu’s easy transition from disposition as a ‘tendency or inclination’ to its role in shaping practice or action. Jenkins argues that: ‘it is not clear how dispositions produce practices’ (2002, p. 79). Similarly, Elder-Vass asks: ‘(i)n the absence of a clear explanation of how dispositions produce practices and hence of how consciousness might sometimes be involved in the process, it is understandable that there is confusion about the apparent conflict between Bourdieu’s stress on the subconscious operation and his heavily qualified acceptance of some role for conscious thought’ (2007c, p. 329). Jenkins is clearly left disappointed by Bourdieu’s project and, in his overall assessment of Bourdieu’s work, concludes: ‘At best the formulation is vague, at worst it is an act of faith. Such a model is either another vision of determinism in the last instance, or a sophisticated form of

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functionalism’ (2002, p. 82). He suggests that the yardstick by which to judge Bourdieu is whether he succeeds in transcending the objectivist/ subjectivist divide. Jenkins argues that, by this criteria, Bourdieu’s project is a failure as ultimately he: ‘remains trapped within the objectivist point of view’ (and further) ‘(I)n his sociological heart of hearts he is as committed to an objectivist view of the world as the majority of those whose work he so sternly dismisses’ (2002, p. 91). Unlike Jenkins, Elder-Vass recognises the complexity of Bourdieu’s position in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness while accepting that Bourdieu frequently neglects the role of conscious thought in both the development and the operation of habitus (2007c, p. 327). However, he suggests that the omission of conscious thought from the development of dispositions is, to a certain extent, understandable as many of our dispositions are actually learnt quite consciously via explicit verbal instruction, rather than being absorbed and embodied subconsciously. Elder-Vass cites Sayer’s example of learning to stop at red traffic lights: this may become a habit that we consciously develop because we understand the consequences of not doing so (2007c, p. 328). Thus, on this basis, unconscious and embodied dispositions emerge from, and are founded upon, behaviour that was once consciously learnt. Elder-Vass argues that Bourdieu overstates the case against conscious deliberation and suggests that this may be because he aligns voluntary and conscious action with rational choice theory and, so, resolutely opposes both in favour of his theory of practice (2007c, p. 328). Another interpretation of habitus and dispositions comes from Brubaker (1993, p.  214) and Bouveresse (1999). Separately, they argue that Bourdieu positions habitus as the explanation for a certain class of actions, rather than the single principle of all actions and, thus, as operating alongside other principles, such as rational calculation or conscious norm-­ observance, which explain other classes of action. This position is problematic as it seems to suggest that other principles of action, more conscious principles (reflexivity, rationality), operate alongside the unconscious habitus, thus neglecting to understand how the unconscious aspect of habitus is the basic platform from which all principles operate. In this position, there is a reluctance to understand the scope of the concept of habitus in Bourdieu’s approach, as well as perhaps an attempt to curtail the effects of the unconscious habitus. Engaging with the unconscious aspects of habitus is critical insofar as it helps us to recognise that habitus is premised on a subtle blend between

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the conscious and unconscious, and this is fundamental to facilitating the ‘practical logic’ that guides habitus. Building on Bourdieu’s conception of habitus, but extending his insights with regard to the unconscious basis of habitus, I suggest that the unconscious is best comprehended as an analytical concept and not a normative category linked to positive, negative or descriptive categories related to aspects of the personal or social life of the agent. I use the concept of the unconscious habitus in a more analytical sense to recognise that agents’ thoughts are often implicit, automatic and not necessarily filtered through conscious, intentional, reflexive or strategic thought processes. As such, there are cognitive processes that do not involve cognitive awareness. Freud’s notion of the unconscious, for example, is linked to his core concepts of desire, drives and sexuality, and whilst this provides an interesting account, it has little to do with the account of the unconscious developed here with regards to habitus. This clarification is a good point from which to initiate a more in-depth discussion of the unconscious habitus, and to address the question of how we might discern the underlying contours of any particular habitus. Bourdieu and Psychoanalysis Bourdieu had an ambivalent, but ‘profound and productive’ (Steinmetz, 2006) relationship to psychoanalysis, often rejecting it outright, but at other times drawing from it, while always careful to distinguish it from sociology (Fourny & Emery, 2000; Steinmetz, 2006, 2013; Darmon, 2016). Despite obvious reservations, Bourdieu ‘does not seem able to refrain from borrowing certain of its concepts while repudiating the discipline as a whole’ (Fourny & Emery, 2000, p.  104). For Steinmetz, Bourdieu’s relationship with psychoanalysis reveals a tendency for verneinung, a Freudian term, which means the lifting of repression, but not its acceptance. Steinmetz describes Bourdieu as an example of the ‘futur antérieur’ (future perfect), meaning ‘Bourdieu will (always) have been a psychoanalytic thinker. But this will have happened very much against his own resistance’ (Steinmetz, 2006, p. 448). There are affinities with Freud, but also Lacan in Bourdieu’s various texts. Steinmetz (2006) provides a compelling case for closer engagement between Bourdieu and psychoanalysis, highlighting the role of the imaginary, phantasy/fantasy and social libido as potential areas for development, which would draw on, but extend references to these concepts in Bourdieu’s work.

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Steinmetz (2006) follows in the footsteps of a broader trend amongst social theorists to argue for the salience of intersections between psychoanalysis and (critical) social theory (Bocock, 1978, Craib, 1989, Elliott, 1992, Laledakis, 1995, Billig, 1997, 1998; Clarke, 2002, 2006; Chancer & Andrews, 2014), leading to suggestions that a ‘psychoanalytic sociology’ and ‘psycho-social method’ are possible and desirable (Clarke, 2002, 2006). Whilst it might be tempting to accept this challenge and apply it to the concept of habitus, I would argue that, from a social science perspective, this call must be treated with caution. This caution stems from the belief that there are important differences in the way psychoanalysis and the social sciences theorise the unconscious and agency. Whilst Elliott (1992), Clarke (2002, 2006) and Craib (1989), for example, extol the virtues of reconciliation between these two disciplines, based on a psychoanalytical and Freudian theorisation of the unconscious, my conception of the unconscious and how it relates to habitus differs considerably from their understanding and, therefore, I reject their calls for a reconciliation. It is important to point out here that I am not rejecting a psycho-social approach outright, but suggesting that, on the issue of the unconscious and agency, there is more than one way to conceptualise it. Despite this note of caution, there is, I suggest, much scope for expanding the unconscious elements of habitus, and some of this work is underway. As an illustration of the potential affinities between Bourdieu and psychoanalysis, and noting that emotional, unconscious and irrational aspects of behaviour are missing from Bourdieu’s work, Beckler and Forbes (2021) explore frontline workers’ occupational choices while paying specific attention to the unconscious aspects of habitus.7 Their empirical research shows how the role of silence, ‘holding back’, and unfinished sentences is revealing of the unconscious. For Beckler and Forbes, combining theories derived from Bourdieu and psychoanalysis has the capacity to give us a deeper understanding of behaviour. Specifically, this can help to recognise the ways in which the  internal world has its origins in the dispositions associated with the familial and socio-cultural environment in

7  Beckler and Forbes (2021) acknowledge Kurt Lewin’s thinking about fields, a psychologist whose ideas predated Bourdieu’s concept of field. Lewin’s work, they suggest, had a significant influence on the development of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations as well as on understanding group relations and the psychodynamic functioning of organisations.

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which we are raised, and, in turn, means that we can examine beneath-the-­ surface motives, anxieties, defences and its reparative benefits. In her analysis of The Weight of the World (Bourdieu, 1999),8 a book which provides an impressive array of interviews with individuals documenting ‘social suffering’ in contemporary France, Fowler distinguishes between psychoanalysis and Bourdieu’s approach, but also sees similarities between them. Fowler contends that Bourdieu has developed ‘a new view of the sociological project’ which contains a distinctive methodology ‘concerned with a kind of socio-analysis (as opposed to the prestigious psychoanalysis) which will provide the setting for richer memories and accounts of the actors’ and, specifically, will ‘permit the return of the social repressed’ (1996, p. 14). Fowler claims that the sociologist’s role is to provide: ‘the felicific conditions which will facilitate such an open and frank communication, and which are not reserved as psychoanalysis have been, to the comfortably off’ (1996, p.  14). In my view, Fowler is overly optimistic about what Bourdieu’s methodology in The Weight of the World can achieve. However, her description of Bourdieu’s approach as identifying the social repressed is interesting and demands further exploration. Fowler is correct to argue that social theory does not need to borrow its concepts from psychoanalysis, as the answer to habitus may lie in a form of socio-­ analysis, which is distinct from psychoanalysis, but firmly rooted in an analysis of social structures and individual’s dispositions. Linking the Unconscious and Repression in Habitus As I have argued, habitus operates from a partially unconscious basis. Consequently, any understanding of, or attempt at documenting habitus must attend to what is said in, for example an interview, but also attempt to understand what is not said, but is perhaps hinted at, or subtly implied. Clearly, this is a difficult issue. However, I would argue that a better understanding of the notion of repression and how this relates to the unconscious aspects of habitus would be extremely beneficial for understanding habitus and how it functions. Further, and as will be explained below, I suggest that repression can be theorised and documented through language.

8  I return to Bourdieu’s The Weight of the World (1999) in Chap. 6, where I explore methodological approaches to habitus.

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Couldry has argued that Bourdieu’s approach requires: ‘something to understand what is unsaid, an implicit theory of repression’ (Couldry, 2005, p. 367). Similarly, Fowler suggests that Bourdieu has, in fact, succeeded in documenting the return of the ‘social repressed’, as she terms it (1996, p. 14). Repression is an important concept for understanding and documenting the unconscious aspects of habitus, as it refers to the idea that unconscious thoughts or motivations are present in the agent’s thinking which they either do not wish to, or cannot, express. Both Couldry and Fowler are correct to suggest that habitus contains a repressive feature; nevertheless, neither author is able to offer any help at the level of theory and methodology for accessing the repressive aspects of habitus. In my view, these repressive features of habitus are linked to the unconscious platform from which it operates and any approach to habitus must explore the tools required to access the unconscious at a broad level and unconscious repression, more specifically. On the issue of how to access the unconscious, Bourdieu’s theory of habitus would, in my opinion, benefit from insight from Billig’s (1997) understanding of the dialogic unconscious, to which I turn next. Billig and the ‘Dialogic Unconscious’ Michael Billig, in my view, has much to offer Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. Billig is an advocate of discursive psychology and, as such, makes an argument for bringing together discursive psychology and psychoanalysis in order to better understand and methodologically investigate repression and how it relates to the unconscious (Billig, 1997, 1998). Before proceeding to link Billig’s work on the dialogic unconscious with habitus, it is necessary first to say something about discursive psychology and psychoanalysis as distinct disciplines and why the idea of bringing these two approaches together is, in some ways, quite a controversial move. Discursive psychology has been developed in reaction to orthodox psychology and, as such, discourages speculation about ‘inner processes’ in the mind (Billig, 1997, p. 139). This approach stems from the philosophical tradition of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and from the development

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of ethnomethodology9 and conversation analysis.10 Ethnomethodology and conversational analysis are concerned with the: ‘outward accomplishment of social life, or in showing how social order is reproduced through discursive interaction’ (Billig, 1997, p. 141). Discursive psychology applies insights from ethnomethodology and conversational analysis to psychological phenomena. As such, it focuses on a micro-level of analysis at the level of conversations and is concerned with studying ‘utterances’ in their particular contexts (1997, p.  141).11 Discursive psychology argues that phenomena, which traditional psychological approaches have regarded as inner phenomena, are, in fact, constituted through social discourse. So, for example, it is concerned with how people use psychological language in everyday conversation. Another area of research that discursive psychology is concerned with is peoples’ claims to have particular emotions or psychological states, which are investigated as being discursively accomplished (1997, p. 142). On a methodological level, discursive psychology is also appealing, because it is concerned with observable phenomena (discourses) and not unobservable, inner conceptualisations of the mind. In contrast to discursive psychology, but in a different way to orthodox psychology, psychoanalytic theory is concerned with inner processes and, in particular, with how unconscious motives lie behind the surface of why people behave the way they do. For advocates of psychoanalytic theory, outwards social activity is seen as a kind of mirror for inner motivational processes. Billig’s notion of the dialogic unconscious is based on his observation that the traditional distinction between discursive psychology and psychoanalysis is problematic, if one accepts that discursive psychology, in its 9  See Sharrock and Anderson’s The Ethnomethodologists for a concise and well-written introductory text on ethnomethodology. Sharrock, W. and Anderson, B. (1986). The Ethnomethodologists. Sussex and London: Ellis Horwood Ltd. and Tavistock Publications Limited. 10  See Potter and Wetherell (1987) for a good account of conversation analysis and how it can be used in empirical research. Also see Augoustinos et al. (2005) who also provide an interesting account of conversational analysis in empirical research. 11  Billig provides the example of ‘remembering’ to illustrate the difference between discursive psychology and more orthodox psychological approaches. He suggests that whilst traditional psychologists interpret remembering as something which takes place within the cognitive system of the isolated individual, in contrast, discursive psychologists treat remembering as a social and collective activity. Billig explains that discursive psychologists examine in detail the speech acts involved in making claims about remembering and forgetting, and they ask what such claims are accomplishing socially (Billig, 1997, p. 142).

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concern with conversational analysis, has neglected conversation as a form of repression, and not only expression (1997, 1998, 1999). By combining insights from psychoanalysis and discursive psychology, with modifications at both ends, Billig introduces the idea of the dialogic unconscious to show how repression can be studied discursively. As an advocate of discursive psychology, he argues that: ‘conversational interaction can have repressive functions as well as expressive ones’ (1997, p. 139). He contends that conversation analysts in discursive psychology have tended to overlook this repressive dimension, concentrating instead upon: ‘the presences rather than the absences in discourse’ (1997, p. 139). Billig explains that discursive psychology and conversation analysis have traditionally focused on, and developed, great insights into how everyday morality is routinely accomplished in conversational interaction. For example, discursive psychology has been concerned with researching politeness and turn-taking in conversations. Billig, however, makes the interesting observation that if everyday interaction is producing moral norms, ‘it is also capable of reproducing immoral temptations, which are routinely resisted and repressed’ (1997, p.  140). To investigate these issues, he argues for the importance of examining the absences, rather than presences, in dialogue (1997, p.  140). Billig, however, relies on a Freudian understanding of the unconscious and repression and, in particular, is interested in how repression is linked to desire. My understanding of the unconscious and repression are different to Billig’s and to the Freudian approach that he takes. However, I would argue that it is possible to take Billig’s broader argument about the unconscious and repression as reflected in the absences in discourse without taking a Freudian approach to the unconscious and repression. Billig’s approach is important for the study of habitus as it problematises a focus solely on what is said in interviews, arguing that the interviewer must also pay attention to what is not said, but perhaps nearly said, and the reasons for this omission. Billig claims that discursive psychology assumes that analysts should try to construct their analyses from the participant’s perspective, which is largely revealed in what they say (Billig, 1997). However, Billig suggests that this assumption is dangerous as this presumes that actors are always knowledgeable about their actions (1997, p. 145). Further, he argues that this assumption is restrictive, as actors are sometimes unaware of the reasons for their actions, so that their accounts, far from indicating knowledgeability, express a lack of knowledge and, indeed, repress self-knowledge. He contends that, by assuming

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knowledgeability, the analyst cannot easily investigate how the repression of knowledgeability might be accomplished. In my view, Billig’s observations about realising the importance of what is not said in the interview situation and problematising the knowledgeability of actors are highly relevant to understanding how habitus operates. So, what does Billig’s notion of the dialogic unconscious mean for studying habitus on a practical level? In Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious (1999), Billig outlines some practical steps that one might consider if attempting to document repression and the unconscious. In this book, Billig applies his approach to some of Freud’s own case studies and reconsiders these in light of his dialogic unconscious approach. He also applies his analysis to Freud himself. Billig’s approach is located within his broader discursive psychology framework and is premised on an analysis of language or discourse. One aspect of Billig’s dialogic unconscious framework which may be particularly relevant to researching the unconscious and repressive aspects of habitus is to examine how issues are closed down discursively as topics of discussion by the interviewee, who might be attempting to push conversation away from troubling or embarrassing issues. As part of his broader approach to discursive psychology, Billig has argued that discourse can often have rhetorical features (1996, 1999). By this he means that speakers often use the rhetorical skills of argumentation in everyday discourse, and particularly when they are engaged in providing justifications and criticisms (1999, p. 47). Billig also uses the same argument to explain how repression occurs, suggesting that repression can also be seen as rhetorical. He argues: ‘(T)he said’ and ‘the unsaid’ are intimately linked: to say one thing implies that others are not being said’ (1999, p. 52). Billig claims that, through language analysis, one can examine speaker’s patterns for opening up and closing down particular topics, or changing the subject. This leads him to argue that: ‘dialogic creativity and avoidance, far from being polar opposites, might be closely linked in practice’ (1999, p. 52). Billig’s framework, when applied to researching habitus, requires careful analysis of the strategies and devices that the interviewee uses during the interview. Billig highlights the importance of research conducted by conversational analysts who examine how interviewees use particular linguistic devices for opening up topics of conversation, thus steering the conversation away from others. If, for example, an interviewee disagrees with a comment made by another, but wishes to keep the conversation

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going and move it in another direction, she may resolve the dilemma by prefacing the disagreement with markers of agreement. As Billig states: If one speaker feels the other has missed the point, they can use the rhetorical device of starting their critical reply with ‘Yes, but…’ … This rhetorical device simultaneously moves the conversation towards a particular topic, while redirecting the conversation away from another. This is not accidental, for a conversational move towards is simultaneously a conversational move away from. (1999, pp. 52–53)

Repression, then, can be seen in an interviewee’s attempts to avoid certain topics of discussion. Billig concedes that, whilst the changing of a topic by an interviewee is not necessarily a sign of repression, if the interviewer finds that the interviewee is continually changing the subject when a particular topic is mentioned, this may point to repression. The interviewer might also find that an interviewee is unaware of what they are doing, so that avoidance appears automatic, rather than deliberate (Billig, 1999, p. 53). This aspect of repression is particularly relevant for the study of habitus, given that Bourdieu has argued that habitus often operates as if on an automatic level and without conscious, and intentional, orchestration by the interviewee.12 Another feature of an interview which points to repression occurs if the speaker shows outward signs of resisting invitations to talk on an avoided topic. Silence on the part of the interviewee can also be important, and Billig argues that repression can also be identified in the long silences between spoken words, where an interviewee may avoid difficult issues and conversations by using silence as a tool before attempting to change the topic of conversation (Billig, 1999). Why do more complex accounts of agency which include the unconscious matter? In her book Unseen City. The Psychic Lives of the Urban Poor (2022), Mukherjee makes the case that the ‘inner lives’ of the urban poor have long been neglected. She states that the ‘psychological toll of extreme disenfranchisement tends to be neglected by governments and NGOs alike’ (2022, p. 8) and that ‘to be poor is to have an impoverished inner life’ because material needs are often prioritised over psychic needs (2022, p. 7). The cost of accessing services is an obvious problem for the urban 12  For example, when discussing the practical yet strategic nature of everyday practice in the habitus, Bourdieu refers to the ‘automatic strategies of the practical sense’ (1977, p. 62).

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poor that Mukherjee catalogues in London, India and New York, and she documents the small number of ‘free clinics’ where psychoanalysis or psychoanalytically oriented services have arisen to address this issue. Echoing Mukherjee’s efforts with regard to the urban poor, Bourdieu’s concept of the unconscious habitus provides us with an account of agency which takes the unconscious seriously. However, as my discussion here shows, there is much work to be done in bringing this unconscious to the fore because although Bourdieu repeatedly signals the unconscious habitus, he retreats from detailed discussion of it. As stated earlier, access to the unconscious aspect of the habitus is difficult, but if we are to understand how a particular agent’s habitus operates, we must attempt to gain access to these unconscious aspects. My aim here is to show how Billig’s understanding of the dialogic unconscious is beneficial to the study of habitus, as it allows one to document how the unconscious aspects of the habitus may be expressed through repression. Further, through language, one might be able to obtain glimpses into such events. In her critique of The Weight of the World, Fowler (1996) claims that Bourdieu has succeeded in documenting the social repressed; I would disagree with this statement, because despite often describing habitus as unconscious, Bourdieu routinely neglects to elaborate on the implications of documenting the unconscious aspects of habitus and, related, the notion of repression. In my view, as Fowler suggests, documenting the social repressed is important. However, it is Billig and his notion of the dialogic unconscious and not Bourdieu, who has been able to shed light on this issue. For example, if one were to use Billig’s approach in an empirical case study of habitus, one would be able to document the effects of unconscious and repressed gender and race structures as they feature in the agent’s explanations of events. Whilst Billig’s notion of the dialogic unconscious is certainly appealing, it is important to clarify that I do not share his broader ontological approach, or, rather, his reluctance to engage with questions of ontology. Billig operates from an anti-foundationalist and discursive approach to social reality, and so would reject the claim that we can make knowledge claims about social reality, or that the world is materially constituted. Discursive psychology, as an anti-foundationalist position, would sit uncomfortably within a critical realist notion of habitus, given critical realism’s commitment to making claims about the nature of social reality. An argument in favour of the unconscious habitus is not an argument against reflexivity in habitus, and it is to this issue that I turn next.

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2  A Reflexive Habitus? What is the relationship between the unconscious habitus and reflexivity? The criticism of determinism in habitus also refers to the agent’s powers of reflexivity. Some critics have argued that Bourdieu denies agents reflexivity and that he must address this issue by allowing agents sufficient decision-­ making powers and the ability to attempt to change their habitus, if the need (and opportunity) arises. There is also a separate and growing body of literature that recognises reflexivity to already be present in habitus and offers attempts to ‘hybridize reflexivity and habitus’ by augmenting nascent reflexivity or addressing the balance between reflexivity and the unconscious.13 It is my argument that, according to Bourdieu’s own writings, reflexivity is clearly present in habitus, but that it is a particular conception of reflexivity, specific to Bourdieu’s understanding of habitus. As such, it is imperative that we understand Bourdieu’s conception of reflexivity to avoid unwarranted accusations of determinism in habitus. In this section of the chapter, I examine both strands of the literature on habitus and reflexivity and highlight a crucial difference between the two. The difference, as I see it, is that reflexivity cannot simply be added to habitus in an external way in order to counter the alleged determinism of habitus. The crucial point, which separates the two strands of literature and highlights the reason behind the confusion amongst those who argue that Bourdieu rejects reflexivity, is that if habitus is premised on an unconscious platform, then reflexivity must also function in relation to this unconscious aspect of agency. McNay (1999), Adkins (2003), Sweetman (2003) and Adams (2006) all acknowledge this fact, although to differing degrees, and, again, offer different, models for conceptualising the relationship between reflexivity and habitus. Conversely, we can see that those who argue for simply adding more reflexivity to habitus also tend to reject its unconscious aspects and interpret the unconscious as further evidence of Bourdieu’s determinism. Certainly, what emerges from the critique offered is that the relationship between reflexivity and habitus is complex. Another issue to be taken into consideration here is how reflexivity has been used and defined in the literature. Authors such as Archer conceptualise reflexivity as an individual capacity which individuals possess enabling them to exercise (more) control over their lives (Archer, 2000). Giddens and Beck, on the other hand, are proponents of what might be termed the  Adams (2006) provides a helpful survey of some of this literature.

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de-traditionalisation thesis, or the extended reflexivity thesis, and they argue that, in pre-modern social contexts, identity was taken as given, or was relatively stable, whilst in late-modernity, high-modernity or reflexive-­ modernity, individual identities can no longer be assumed, but have to be constructed from a wide range of available options, and so agents are said to be more reflexive. Thus, Archer (2000) emphasises reflexivity at the level of the agent, whilst Giddens (1991, 1992) and Beck (1992) focus more on the societal or external conditions which encourage reflexivity. My analysis will incorporate both of these understandings of reflexivity, as they are both implicated in understanding how habitus functions in relation to reflexivity. First, I turn to Bourdieu’s understanding of habitus and reflexivity. Bourdieu’s Conception of Reflexivity Unlike some of his critics who suggest otherwise, I would argue that Bourdieu allows for the possibility of reflexivity in his conception of agency. However, his conception is in line with his construction of habitus, and so reflexivity is conceptualised as an ability to rethink the ‘unthought’. Bourdieu defines reflexivity as: the systematic exploration of the unthought categories of thought that delimit the thinkable and predetermine the thought. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 40)

Reflexivity, according to Bourdieu, is not a general capacity available to all agents, but: ‘paradoxically, is itself a form of habitus, a required constituent of a particular field’ (Adams, 2006, p.  515).14 As Adams comments, ‘(t)hus reflexivity is as much the habitual outcome of field requirements as any other disposition’ (2006, p. 515). Jenkins is dismissive of Bourdieu’s account of reflexivity, arguing that what appears to be reflexivity is in fact ‘part of the repertoire of the habitus, not in any sense, an autonomous or chosen process or … an illusion, in so far as the principles of its operation are constrained by and derive from the habitus’ (Jenkins, 2002, p. 77). Similarly, Adams argues that Bourdieu’s account of 14  In line with Bourdieu’s conception of the field, field-specific reflexivity refers to forms of thinking particular to the world of art, education or business—that is, modes of reflexivity specific to particular domains of experience.

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reflexivity: ‘stretches the meaningfulness of the term to its limit, and this is one reason why accusations of determinism may still stick’ (Adams, 2006, p. 516).  eflexivity During Periods of Crisis R Aside from reflexivity generated in the field, Bourdieu also claims that agents experience reflexivity during periods of crisis, or when there are ‘blips’ or ‘critical moments’ (2000, p. 162) in the relations between the habitus and the field. Bourdieu suggests that such a situation results in ‘belief in the game’ (illusio)15 being temporarily suspended and when ‘doxic’16 assumptions are raised to the level of discourse where they can be contested: Times of crisis, in which the routine adjustment of subjective and objective structures is brutally disrupted, constitute a class of circumstances when indeed ‘rational choice’ may take over, at least among those agents who are in a position to be rational. (Bourdieu in Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 131)

He also contends: …—one cannot rule out that it (habitus) may be superseded in certain circumstances—certainly in situations of crisis which adjust the immediate adjustment of habitus to field—by other principles, such as rational and conscious computation. (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 108)

As these quotes illustrate, reflexivity may occur when there is a ‘lack of fit’ between habitus and field. Crisis can be defined as a mismatch, where 15  Bourdieu defines ‘illusio’ as: ‘(T)o be invested, taken in and by the game. To be interested is to accord a given social game that what happens in it matters, that its stakes are important (another word with the same root as interest) and worth pursuing’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 116). Dreyfus and Rabinow have argued that illusio is Bourdieu’s term for the ‘self-deception necessary to keep players involved in the game’. This self-deception, they suggest, cannot be altered unless agents are able to view their options and interests in a particular field in an objective manner (Shusterman (ed.), 1999, p. 90). 16  Bourdieu defines ‘doxa’ as what is taken for granted in any particular society (1977). Doxa, in his view, is the experience by which the ‘natural and social world appears as self evident’ (1977, p. 164). Doxa also refers to what falls within the limits of the thinkable and the sayable, or imposing limits on social practice, thus, doxa may lead agents to make comments such as: ‘that’s not for the likes of us’ (1977, p. 77).

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the individual’s habitus does not fit with the field in question. Such a position invokes Bourdieu’s notion of habitus clivé or the cleft habitus, where one’s life experiences result in contradictions between the dispositions comprising the habitus so that it becomes ‘inhabited by tensions and contradictions’ (Bourdieu, 2007, p. 100). This situation may arise when an individual is thrown into a radically new situation because of social mobility or willingly enters a new field, for example, as a result of starting a new job or unexpectedly losing one’s job.17 Such mismatches or gaps between expectation and experience, tend to generate a need not only for conscious deliberation, but also for modifications to the habitus itself (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 149). It should be noted that, for Bourdieu, ‘rational choice’ is not open to all as: the art of estimating and seizing chances… are dispositions that can only be acquired in certain social conditions, and which are defined by possession of sufficient economic and cultural capital required in order to seize potential opportunities. (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 64)

For Bourdieu then, ‘consciousness and reflexivity are both cause and symptom of the failure of immediate adaptation to the situation’ (1990a, p. 11) and are limited in most part to periods of crisis, where there is a break between habitus and field. In both of the above quotes, Bourdieu suggests that, in periods of crisis, ‘“rational choice” may take over’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant,  1992, p. 131), or principles such as ‘rational and conscious computation’ (1990a, p. 108) surface, and, thus, we can assume, may override the unconscious principles upon which habitus normally operates. This is an interesting position, considering Bourdieu’s absolute rejection of rational choice theory approaches to the study of human action and has also been highlighted as a contradiction between Bourdieu’s broader theory of practice

17  Notably, Bourdieu documents his own experience of habitus clivé in Sketch for a SelfAnalysis (2007), where he details his social mobility, from a rural working-class upbringing to the Chair of Sociology at the College de France. In this non-autobiography, he recounts his troubling experience of ‘high academic consecration and low social origin’, which ‘helped to institute, in a lasting way, an ambivalent, contradictory relationship to the academic institution, combining rebellion and submission, rupture and expectation…’ (2007, p. 100). For more on habitus clivé, see Friedman (2016).

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and his approach to reflexivity and social change.18 For example, Adkins argues: Why is it, for example, that Bourdieu, when thinking about the issue of social transformation, abandons the principles he develops in regard to action? That is, why, when it comes to social change, does Bourdieu tend to disembody actors and understand action as a matter of thinking consciousness? Why does social change end up being about consciousness when most of his social theory attempts to get away from this view of social action and the human subject? (Adkins, 2003, p. 35)

Adkins’ explanation of the inconsistency in Bourdieu’s approach to social change is that this issue relates not just to an inadequate conceptualisation of social change in Bourdieu’s theory, but also to a much more fundamental problem with his conception of how structural/agential interaction occurs (2003). Adkins sees this as a wider problem with Bourdieu’s conception of the social, arguing that Bourdieu conceives the field as an objective structure to which the habitus must submit: ‘Bourdieu assumes a mimetic relation between habitus and field, object and subject, a mimesis that produces congruence between habitus and field’ (2003, p. 36). Adkins points to research on subjectivity and subject formation to suggest that subjects never fully occupy or identify with norms: ‘indeed there is an ambivalence at the very heart of mimesis’ (2003, p.  36). Drawing on Butler’s19 observation that norms are not fully incorporated and there is much room for instability when norms are adopted, Adkins suggests that Bourdieu has far too simple an understanding of the relationship between habitus and field and that there is much room for instability within the incorporation of norms within habitus, thus enabling agents the space to see alternatives to their then status quo or create change. As such, Adkins is suggesting that, if Bourdieu underestimates the more regular opportunities for dissonance in habitus and field relations, thus enabling change in habitus, this would, in turn, mean that Bourdieu would not have to abandon his theory of practice in favour of agents 18  Bourdieu has highlighted John Elster for specific criticism as an advocate of rational choice theory. Bourdieu states that Elster is: ‘locked in a hyper-subjectivist vision’ which ‘excludes any principle of action other than consciousness, conscious intention’ (1990a, p. 108). 19  Butler, J. (1999). ‘Performativity’s Social Magic’, in R. Shusterman (ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

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acting in a conscious and disembodied manner during periods of social change. Crossley is also perplexed by Bourdieu’s account of reflexivity in habitus, arguing that: ‘the nature and possibility of reflexivity are something of a mystery in his work’ (2001, p. 117). Crossley’s critique is substantially different to Adkins (2003) and reflects a position which demands more reflexivity in habitus. Crossley argues that Bourdieu underestimates the extent to which ‘  ‘rational and conscious calculation’, indeed reflexivity enters into everyday life as a matter of course… Individuals have choices to make every day about their lives: eg. about jobs, money and leisure activities … We cannot therefore make choice an exception in the way he seems to want to do’ (2001, p. 97).20 Inspired by the work of Merleau-­ Ponty and phenomenology, Crossley supports the view of the routinely ‘reflexive habitus’, arguing: our very capacity for reflexivity is rooted in the habitus and thus, contrary to what Bourdieu sometimes suggests, reflective and reflexive projects do not presuppose a different principle of action to the habitus’. (2001, p. 113)

Crossley does not completely reject Bourdieu’s account of how habitus changes during periods of crisis. However, he does argue that change in habitus is not as rare, or as radical for habitus, as Bourdieu’s accounts imply. Crossley points out: It can seem to suggest the habitus is completely suspended in periods of crisis, giving way to another, unspecified principle of agency. In addition, it can be read as suggesting that habitus and assumption, on one hand, and discourse, reason and reflection, on the other, are mutually exclusive principles of action. (Crossley, 2003, p. 48)

Critical of Bourdieu’s tendency to view crisis as a temporary phenomenon and for neglecting its more enduring features, Crossley argues that certain individuals, for example, those who engage in social movements, have ‘durable dispositions’ which lead them regularly to question aspects of society, which makes change a more frequent feature of their habitus (2003). Crossley maintains that Bourdieu’s notion of durable dispositions and habitus helps to explain why some individuals repeatedly take part in  Elder-Vass (2007c) would also agree with Crossley’s position here.

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social movements, pointing out that some individuals have a disposition towards political activism and a ‘radical habitus’ (2003, p. 50). Alexander has argued that, in his theory of habitus, Bourdieu denies agents a ‘self’ or a cognitive and moral self (Alexander, 1995, p. 143) and a similar point is made by Sayer (2005).21 Crossley, then, in the same vein, is attempting to re-insert ‘the self’ or agency into Bourdieu’s habitus, especially during periods of crisis. He suggests that, whilst Bourdieu often explains situations of crisis by referring to changes in objective structure, it is also important to remember that changes in: ‘communicative engagements between agents can alter subjective dispositions and expectations to equal effect’ (2001, p. 92). Hybridising Reflexivity and Habitus: Incorporating the Unconscious The discussion on Bourdieu and reflexivity thus far has attempted to identify Bourdieu’s own position on reflexivity and examine interpretations of it. I now move onto discussing some further developments in the literature on habitus and reflexivity, which, in my view, depart from existing interpretations, as they incorporate an understanding of the unconscious platform of habitus to comprehend reflexivity and, therefore, provide a more complex and nuanced account of how reflexivity operates in habitus. Some of the feminist literature on habitus provides an interesting route into discussions on reflexivity and habitus. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus has been popular amongst some feminist writers because of its emphasis upon the embedded nature of social structure (McNay, 1999, Adkins, 2003, Chambers, 2005).22 McNay points out that the concept of embodiment is central to feminist thought, as the body is the: ‘threshold through which the subject’s lived experience of the world is incorporated and realized and, as such, is neither pure object nor pure subject’ (1999, p. 98). She goes on to suggest that as a: ‘constantly reiterated cultural norm, gender is deeply inscribed in our bodies’ (1999, p. 98). On the subject of reflexivity in modern society, one of the key issues of concern for feminists such as McNay (1999) and Adkins (2003) is the way 21  Sayer (2005) has argued that Bourdieu, in his construction and discussion of habitus, neglects the moral dimensions of everyday social judgement, particularly in relation to class. 22  See Masculine Domination for more on Bourdieu’s account of patriarchy in society. Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine Domination. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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that certain theorists of identity transformation neglect the embedded nature of structures generally, and in relation to gender in particular. McNay is highly critical of proponents of the de-traditionalisation thesis and highlights the following for criticism: Scott Lash (1990); Mike Featherstone (1992); and Michel Maffesoli (1988) (McNay, 1999, p. 109). She argues that, for these authors, the idea of identity transformation is conceived of primarily as an aesthetic process and is said to have become increasingly common in society.23 McNay views the reflexive self as a: ‘normative, masculinist creation, a disembedded and disembodied valorization of cognitive, rational autonomy’ (Adams, 2006, p. 517). She concludes: In sum, there is a tendency in certain theories of identity transformation, to construe identity as a process of symbolic identification without considering its mediation in embodied practice. From this shortcoming, a tendency to voluntarism can arise which manifests itself in an overemphasis on the emancipatory expressive potential in late capitalism. (1999, p. 98)

The crucial distinction here, and the principle of demarcation from the proponents of the de-traditionalisation thesis, is whether reflexivity is a process in which agents can consciously and reflexively orient their identity, and hence lives, or whether identity is seen to be more embedded and, crucially, operating on a pre-reflexive and unconscious platform. I would agree with McNay who argues that habitus suggests a layer of embodied experience that is not amenable to self-fashioning because the dispositions of the body operate in a pre-reflexive and unconscious manner outside of the control of the agent (McNay, 1999, p. 102). For McNay then, it is the recognition of the unconscious, pre-reflexive, non-cognitive and embodied understanding of practice in Bourdieu’s social theory that is central here.

23  Crossley (2001) has also entered into debates on de-traditionalisation in society and claims that his notion of the ‘reflexive habitus’ can make a potentially important contribution to these debates. Crossley argues that whilst the de-traditionalisation thesis argues that prereflective behaviour is in decline in favour of reflective and reflexive behaviour: ‘(T)he notion of reflexive habits allows us to moderate this claim, however, by rooting reflective behaviour in the pre-reflective habitus that subtend it that make it possible. Late modern societies, we might argue, tend to call for and generate more reflexive habitus among their members’ (2001, p. 114).

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A weakness of alternative theories of reflexive transformation is that the emphasis on the strategic and conscious processes of self-monitoring overlooks certain, more enduring, reactive aspects of identity (McNay, 1999, p. 103). For example, McNay points to the ways in which men and women have entrenched: ‘often unconscious investments in conventional images of masculinity and femininity which cannot easily be reshaped’ (1999, p.  103). In addition, she also highlights the fact that, despite women’s increased entry into the labour force, such moves have not freed women from the burden of emotional labour, thus placing the ideal of female individualisation, or ‘living one’s own life’ in sharp contrast to the conventional expectation of ‘being there for others’ (1999, p. 103). As McNay claims, the nature of change in gender relations illustrates Bourdieu’s claim that habitus continues to operate long after the objective conditions of its emergence have been dislodged (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 13 in McNay, 1999, p. 103).24 As such, McNay argues, Bourdieu’s work on reflexivity and habitus is of value as it demonstrates ‘the difficulty of change’ (Chambers, 2005, p. 333). Despite some reservations about Bourdieu’s account of social change mentioned earlier, McNay’s point is reiterated by Adkins, who, in fact, goes further to argue that, because of the unconscious platform of habitus, Bourdieu is able to develop a much more sophisticated understanding of reflexivity, one that is based not on an ‘objectivist reflexivity’, where agents can stand outside of their habitus to be reflexive, but reflexivity understood as ‘situated reflexivity’ (2003, p.  25). Adkins concludes: It is this Bourdesian understanding of practice—as unconscious and pre-reflexive— that has informed the development of a more hermeneutic understanding of reflexivity. For following Bourdieu’s understanding of practice, as well as his injunction that ‘communication of consciousnesses’ presupposes community of ‘unconsciouses’ (i.e. of linguistic and cultural competences) (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 80), reflexivity cannot be understood to concern an objective, cognitive reflection on structure. Indeed reflexivity cannot be understood to be cognitive at all, since knowledge of the world never concerns an external knowing consciousness (2003, p. 24). Based on this understanding, Adkins explains that, in Bourdieu’s theory, reflexivity means reflection on ‘unthought and unconscious categories of thought’, and so it is a reflexivity that is not separated from the everyday 24  Comment taken from Bourdieu, P. (1990). ‘La Domination Masculine’. Actes de la Recherche en Science Sociales: Vol. 84: pp. 2–31, as referenced in McNay, 1999, p. 103.

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thought and actions of the agent, but is intrinsically linked to the (unconscious) categories of everyday thought (2003, p. 25). Adkins’ call for an understanding of ‘situated reflexivity’ also marks a departure from the assumption found in the de-traditionalisation thesis that reflexivity goes hand in hand with individualisation. While Adkins is correct to critique objectivist accounts of reflexivity, how then might one conceptualise ‘situated reflexivity’? How does one learn to be reflexive on the ‘unthought and unconscious categories’ of action? The answer to these questions may, in fact, suggest a problem with the questions themselves: reflexivity cannot be achieved in the way the de-traditionalisation theorists have argued. Rather, although changes may be present in society, such as more gender awareness, these changes are not structural, but reflect the ways in which agents have attempted to work in small and subtle ways to combat inequality. Adkins (2003) provides one such example. According to Adkins, reflexivity is not the freedom to question and critically deconstruct the rules and norms which previously govern gender, rather, ‘reflexivity is linked to a reworking or refashioning of gender’ and is perhaps better conceived as ‘a habit of gender in late modernity’ (2003, p. 22). Adkins’ observation here is interesting and important as it moves the debate forward in thinking about how one might conceptualise reflexivity and habitus in late-modernity. Arguing against the notion that gender de-traditionalisation is occurring, she claims: ‘a critical reflective stance is increasingly characteristic of gender in late modernity’ (2003, p. 32). Adkins goes on to suggest that: ‘for both men and women, gender is increasingly taking the form of a self-conscious artifice which can be managed, strategically deployed and performed’ (2003, p. 33). This process does not lead to gender de-traditionalisation, nor to changes in gender structuring in society, but to an increasing understanding of the roles that men and women traditionally play and how these may lead to forms of capital that can be utilised for gain. For example, Adkins cites research conducted by Martin (1994), who argues that the ‘flexible body’ is a new workplace ideal, which attempts to encourage gender reflexivity and flexibility. Martin describes work training techniques which attempt to dislodge fixed characteristics of gender as a taken-for-granted idea, to create a critical awareness and recognition of gender at work by encouraging workers to: ‘scramble characteristics usually associated with males and females’ (Martin, 1994, p. 213 in Adkins, 2003, p. 33). Adkins argues that such exercises establish gender not only

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as a matter of reflexivity but also as a matter of ‘performativity’25 and she claims that studies of interactive service work have highlighted the increasing popularity of this performative stance towards gender. However, Adkins also cautions against the fact that reflexive gender performances, when used as workplace capital, can often back-fire, given such performances may be deemed as natural, not performative or reflexive. This latter point also suggests that de-traditionalisation theorists who argue that there has been a feminisation of the workplace are mistaken. McNay, however, does argue for the possibility of a form of reflexivity in habitus (1999). For McNay, reflexivity in habitus is possible, though it is fragmentary, contextual and discontinuous (1999, p.  109). Although critical of gender de-traditionalisation as argued by the de-­traditionalisation theorists, McNay accepts that there are ongoing changes in gender structuring in society. She maintains that this is occurring because of the movement of the feminine habitus into different fields of action, for example, the increased entry of women into the labour market or the increased rate of women returning to work after childbirth. McNay contends that such movements of women into ‘non-traditionally female spheres of action’ (1999, p. 107) in late-modernity may mean that there is lack of fit between gendered habitus and field. This lack of fit, which we might also term a cleft habitus (Bourdieu, 2007), is said to lead to more of a questioning of the rules, norms and values traditionally associated with gender. McNay seems to be suggesting that, in these situations, women may experience difficulties with regard to their expectations and pre-­ dispositions, thus leading them to greater critical awareness of the patriarchally defined system of employment. She utilises Bourdieu’s notion of the ‘awakening of consciousness’ to describe these situations, suggesting that ‘critical reflexivity’ occurs and may lead to a: ‘distanciation of the subject with constitutive structures’ (1999, p. 111). However, Adkins is critical of McNay’s position here, claiming that her position on reflexivity ironically ends up reproducing the very problem that she seeks to address in the reflexive modernisation thesis, in that she: ‘overstates the possibilities for detraditionalisation vis-a-vis gender in late modernity’ (Adkins, 2003, p.  35). Adkins argues that McNay assumes critical reflexivity is a  Butler questions the belief that certain gendered behaviours are natural and seeks to show that one’s learned ‘performance’ of gendered behaviour (what we commonly associate with femininity and masculinity) is a performance, one that is imposed upon us by normative heterosexuality. See Butler, J. (1999). ‘Performativity’s Social Magic’ (pp.  113–128), in Shusterman, R. (ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 25

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transforming practice that is separate from the world of habit and is differentiated from the norms and values of gender (2003, p. 35). McNay’s position here is linked to a criticism of Bourdieu, as she argues that there is a weakness in Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, in that he fails to fully integrate it with his concept of field. McNay states that, for Bourdieu, reflexivity is linked to social differentiation and, in particular, to the tensions and conflicts constitutive of a particular field. Therefore, rather than being a regularised capacity, reflexivity is an irregular manifestation, dependent on particular configurations of power relations. Given this understanding of reflexivity and its emergence, McNay argues that Bourdieu fails to understand that gender is a durable disposition which operates across fields (1999). McNay, thus, argues that there is an overemphasis on the alignment that the habitus establishes between subjective dispositions and the objective structure of the field with regard to gender identity. According to McNay, Bourdieu is right to suggest that gender is ingrained, but underestimates the ambiguities and dissonances in the way that men and women apply their gender identities (1999, p. 107). McNay suggests that Bourdieu does not seem to realise that masculine and feminine identities are not unified configurations, but, rather, a series of ‘uneasily sutured, potentially conflictual subject positions’—in short that Bourdieu has no concept of multiple subjectivity (1999, p. 108). Sweetman (2003) also recognises that habitus is a largely unconscious and pre-reflexive formation and provides an interesting account of how reflexivity may exist even in these circumstances. Sweetman finds Bourdieu’s account of reflexivity problematic, arguing that there is overstatement in Bourdieu’s account of reflexivity: ‘while we may not think about such things most of the time, it is possible to change the way we walk and talk’ (2003, p. 536). Further, in terms of society today, Sweetman claims that, for some contemporary individuals, reflexivity is itself deeply embedded in the habitus and that ‘a capacity for  - and predisposition towards - reflexive engagement is characteristic of certain forms of contemporary habitus’ (2003, p. 537). In addition, he suggests that, in line with how habitus operates, such a reflexive stance may be ‘unreflexively adopted’ which does not rule it out, but means that it is a more durable or stable characteristic of habitus (2003, p.  537). In line with the de-­ traditionalisation thesis, Sweetman proposes that the reflexive habitus is also increasingly common, due to various economic, social and cultural shifts in society. The social changes that Sweetman is referring to include, for example, changes in employment patterns, resulting from a decline in

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manufacturing industries and the rise of service industries. In such a situation, he argues there has been a demand for ‘emotional labour’, or the ongoing management of one’s emotions in the context of what Hochschild refers to as the commercialisation of feeling (2003, p. 537). For Sweetman, reflexivity in the habitus is possible because society today is characterised by increased movement between and across social fields. He also claims that reflexivity can also result from: ‘rapid, pervasive and ongoing changes to social fields themselves’ (2003, p.  541). Sweetman’s position here follows on from Bourdieu’s own when he argues that movement across, and into, new fields may lead to crisis and social change. However, Sweetman suggests that such changes in field-habitus relations are more pervasive in contemporary society, arguing that the disjunction between habitus and field has become a norm: ‘a more or less permanent disruption’ (2003, p. 541). He argues that the current social and economic climate leads to a: ‘more or less permanent disruption of social position, or a more or less constant disjunction between habitus and field’ (2003, p. 541). In this context, reflexivity ceases to reflect a temporary lack of fit between habitus and field, but itself becomes habitual and is thus incorporated into habitus. As such, reflexivity is a feature of our times, in line with the de-traditionalisation thesis. Historicising Bourdieu’s analysis, Sweetman suggests that the non-­ reflexive habitus depended upon relatively stable social conditions and, thus, may apply to a more simple or organised modernity where there is more fit between habitus and field. Unlike Crossley, who argues for reflexivity as a general capacity within the habitus (2001, 2003), Sweetman advocates a more historically and culturally specific form of reflexivity, arguing that: ‘contemporary conditions do not simply demand a heightened degree of reflexivity, but may contribute to the development of a particular type of habitus’ (2003, p. 542). This is characterised by a pervasive and habitual reflexivity that differs in degree to the generalised capacity for reflexivity that Crossley (2001, 2003) identifies. In his assessment of Sweetman, Adams concludes that Sweetman’s account of reflexivity in habitus does not consider how habitus maintains social distinction in an increasingly reflexive age, as is vital for Bourdieu, nor does he comment on the liberating potential of the more reflexive habitus (2006, p. 521). Adams is also critical of Sweetman’s conceptualisation of reflexivity and habitus, arguing that, what initially appears as a novel development of Bourdieu and the de-traditionalisation thesis: ‘ends up as something of a conceptual cul-de-sac’ (2006, p. 521).

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This section of the chapter has been concerned with elucidating the contours of habitus by reference to its unconscious aspects, but also its capacity for reflexivity. Both of which, I suggest, are critical for understanding how habitus functions, but also how individuals enact change in their lives, thus addressing the charge of determinism that is often directed at Bourdieu. I have argued that Bourdieu does indeed allow for reflexivity in habitus. However, crucially, in order for this notion of reflexivity to be consistent with Bourdieu’s broader theory of practice, reflexivity is not a transcendent category available to all agents, but operates from an unconscious platform in the habitus. Reflexivity and social change in habitus are possible, but, as the account above suggests, change in habitus is difficult. Further, change is not radical change, as, for example, would be involved in de facto removing structural forms of inequality, but refers to small and piecemeal change in one’s habitus. This position also implies that the de-­ traditionalisation thesis, as advocated by Giddens (1991, 1992) and Beck (1992), fails to accurately describe processes of reflexivity in society today. Authors such as McNay (1999), Adkins (2003) and Sweetman (2003) recognise this and have attempted to develop habitus in different ways whilst accepting its unconscious and pre-reflexive aspects.

3  Strategy in Habitus In order to understand how agents go about their everyday practice within the habitus, it is also important to understand Bourdieu’s notion of strategy. Bourdieu’s conception of this term offers much potential to confuse his readers, as his understanding is notably different to the conventional meanings of the term strategy. Bourdieu’s position on strategy reflects his wider concern to move away from: ‘the theoretical posture as an external, remote, distant or quite simply, non-practical, non-committed, non-involved position’ (1990a, p. 60). Bourdieu thus develops his understanding of strategy through examining matrimonial practices in the Bearn area of France and, separately, in the Kabylia region of Algeria. After having conducted both studies, he suggests that he was able to examine the role of the observer and this allowed him an opportunity to ‘objectify the act of objectification and the objectifying subject’, regardless of whether he observes a foreign world or his own (1990a, p.  59). Bourdieu suggests that, as a result of his analysis, he found:

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… there is an enormous difference between trying to understand the nature of matrimonial relations between two families so as to get your son or daughter married off, investing the same interest in this as people in their own world would invest in their choice of the best school for their son or daughter, and trying to understand these relations so as to construct a theoretical model of them. The same goes for trying to understand a ritual. (1990a, p. 60)

How then does Bourdieu theorise strategy? Building on his comments above, Bourdieu is keen to move away from a notion that action is structured according to external rules as these are often constructed by an external observer. Therefore, on the subject of marriage, Bourdieu refers to ‘matrimonial strategies’ in order to explain the process of marriage in the Bearn and Kabylia. For Bourdieu, the real principle behind marriages is the ‘practical sense’ (1990a, p. 61) which leads people to ‘choose’ the best match possible, given their situation and given the skills they have (1990a, p. 64). Bourdieu defines this as a ‘practical mastery of the logic or of the immanent necessity of the game’ and sees it as acquired through experience and working ‘outside of conscious control and discourse’ (1990a, p.  61). For Bourdieu, strategy is neither conscious nor unconscious, and he argues that one can: ‘refuse to see in strategy the product of unconscious programme without making it the product of a conscious, rational calculation’ (1990a, p. 62). Perhaps the best way to describe strategy in Bourdieu’s theory is to refer once again to his analogy of the game where the ‘good player … does at every moment what the game requires’ thus displaying ‘a permanent capacity for invention’ (1990a, p. 62). Bourdieu refers to the ‘automatic strategies of the practical sense’ (1990a, p. 62), thus implying that action is beyond conscious control and, further, he acknowledges that strategies can be fallible. He also allows for improvisation, although within the limits of a particular field (1990a, p.  62). Bourdieu’s conception of strategy is aligned with his broader theoretical approach, and so his theorisation of strategy incorporates the understanding that an agent’s behaviour should be viewed as practice, but also highlights the importance of recognising the agent’s behaviour as being structured, not by external rules, but by their own schemes, via the strategies they adopt. Crucially, the notion of strategy, like habitus, operates with a complex understanding of both consciousness and unconsciousness. Perhaps the most scathing critique of Bourdieu’s account of strategy comes from Alexander (1995). However, Alexander’s critique is

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problematic for two reasons. First, it totally misunderstands the unconscious basis of Bourdieu’s account of strategy and, second, it attempts to argue that the agent’s capacity for strategising is of a rational and economic nature. As has been commented on previously, Bourdieu is highly critical of rational choice theory, and it is this very irony which Alexander seems to emphasise, albeit mistakenly, in his piece. Alexander contends that Bourdieu, in his theory of practice, presents action as strategy and, consequently: ‘action slides from communication to exchange’ (1995, p. 150). Further, and somewhat exaggeratedly, Alexander argues that, in Bourdieu’s account: ‘even the most traditional peasant plays the game of life like the stock market’ (1995, p. 150). Alexander’s argument here is based on his claim that Bourdieu rejects all of the internal emotional and subjective capacities of the human agent, indeed that there is no ‘self’ in Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. In addition, he argues that, in Bourdieu’s theory, rational and strategic action is conceptualised as an external calculative process based on the success of the exchange, and is devoid of subjectivity. Alexander maintains that voluntarism, as a principle of agency, is superficially kept intact in Bourdieu’s position in the form of the unpredictability of the responses to the strategic act: Affect and schema, glutinized into habitus, are treated, in effect as objective environments into which actors’ calculations are exercised mechanistically. Despite their internal ontological location, they are external in an epistemological sense, for they do not mitigate, qualify or condition the nature of calculation itself. As a result motivation is conceptualised as rational in a merely strategic way. (Alexander, 1995, p. 152)

Alexander thus argues that there is a theoretical contradiction between two different versions of Bourdieu’s practical theory: one stresses the role of non-rational action and the objectively constructed habitus; and the other sees rational motivation as having an objective result. Alexander claims that, because Bourdieu cannot resolve this theoretical contradiction, he resorts to a form of action that is ‘theoretically oxymoronic’, namely ‘unconscious strategization’ (1995, p.  153). He suggests that, whereas rational choice theory requires material conditions for action, Bourdieu emphasises the material and symbolic (as is required by habitus) and the latter are situated within, not outside, the agent. Alexander explains ‘unconscious strategization’ by suggesting that, if an object is unconscious and non-material, it cannot be said to be rational, according to the conventional criteria of social theory, but Bourdieu’s problem is

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that: ‘he will not allow such action to be called non-rational either’ (1995, p.  154). He goes on to contend that what Bourdieu objects to about rational choice theory is not that behaviour is rational, but that it operates with an intention of consciousness, which makes it naively economistic. Alexander’s position here is based on Bourdieu’s description of strategic action, which, at first glance, does indeed give the impression that it involves an economic exchange process. For example, Alexander reproduces the following quote: Practice never ceases to conform to economic calculation even when it gives every appearance of disinterestedness by departing from the logic of interested calculation (in the narrow sense) and playing for stakes that are non-­ material and not easily quantified. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 177 in Alexander, 1995, p. 151)

Bourdieu’s choice of words here is not helpful and, certainly, one could find many other examples of Bourdieu’s references to the language of exchange and economics. However, what must be remembered is that Bourdieu’s description here refers to the nature of field—be it the art or educational field—and how agents operate in these specific fields. Bourdieu defines ‘interests’ in a non-economic sense and argues that we must consider specific interests related to specific fields. Further, Bourdieu claims that agents strive for particular stakes within these fields depending upon their habitus. As such, Bourdieu’s definition of strategy, in terms of its relationship to fields, differs from the more conventional definition, adopted by Alexander. Bourdieu focuses upon the everyday, mundane strategies that agents engage in throughout their everyday practice. He refers to the ‘automatic strategies’ within the habitus and not strategy as economic calculation as is argued by Alexander. In addition, in my view, unconscious strategisation, contrary to what Alexander has argued, is perfectly consistent with Bourdieu’s conception of the unconscious habitus. Much like the agential capacity for reflexivity, strategy operates from the unconscious platform of the habitus. Thus, rather than being ‘theoretically oxymoronic’, I would argue that the concept of unconscious strategisation is entirely suited to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. In the final section of the chapter, and again with the aim of challenging overly structuralist and determinist readings of habitus, I turn to the ontological basis of habitus as a way of delineating how engagement with critical realism’s conception of ontology further strengthens the concept.

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4  Locating Habitus Within Critical Realism Let us recall Bhaskar’s central question, which guides his approach to developing critical realism for the social sciences: What properties do societies and people possess that might make them possible objects of knowledge for us? (1975, p. 17)

As has been the concern of the chapter thus far, Bourdieu has expended considerable effort and time detailing his concept of habitus, but this discussion does not extend to the ontological realm. While frequently using terms such as structures, agency and the real, Bourdieu was reluctant to engage with questions of ontology, and he never explicitly states his ontological position, but habitus is clearly a realist concept, and it may be useful to explore the ontological roots of this concept in greater detail. Bourdieu describes habitus as ‘structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures’ (1977, p.  72), and he also offers us an account of the field (his conception of structures), but he resists ontological speculation, and is not concerned to flesh out the mechanisms, processes or interactions between structures, or indeed between structure and agency. In this section of the chapter, I address Bhaskar’s question as posed above by teasing out Bourdieu’s ontological position from his theory and will argue that engaging in such an exercise helps us to recognise the properties of societies and people as Bhaskar encourages. I start this exercise by forefronting Bourdieu’s habitus and its unique balance of practice as premised on the conscious and unconscious. I follow Potter (2000) and Elder-Vass (2007c) in suggesting that the concept of habitus is compatible with, and complements, critical realism’s method of abstraction, which proposes a stratified conception of social reality. My aim here is to highlight some of critical realism’s key ontological distinctions, showing how they apply to habitus, but crucially extend its reach and scope. I engage with the work of Archer (1995, 2000) and Elder-Vass (2007a, 2007b, 2007c) to build my argument, and am particularly concerned with exploring Elder-Vass’ development of agency in the form of a biological neural emergentist framework for habitus. On a vertical level, habitus would benefit from being located within critical realism’s depth ontology, which makes a distinction between the

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real, actual and empirical realms.26 Briefly, the real domain of the stratified ontology refers to all that exists, be it natural or social phenomena, and whether we have access to it or not. The actual refers to what happens if and when the powers of those phenomena are activated and, finally, the empirical refers to the domain of experience, or what can be documented, and this can be with respect to either the real or the actual (Bhaskar, 1975, Sayer, 2000). This ontology is stratified and, hence, contains depth, thus leading to ontological complexity. The critical realist ontology also states that structural stratification in society and habitus is based on a notion of contingent necessity and not a pre-determinate structural order, and, thus, on the premise that society is an open, and not a closed, arena (Sayer, 2000).27 Whilst the actual and the empirical domains of the stratified ontology are both contained in the dimension of experience and can, therefore, perhaps be documented in empirical research on habitus, the domain of the real also refers to a type of phenomena, which are particularly important to understanding how habitus may operate. So, the real refers to the structures of objects and the emergent properties to which their structures give rise. Since these powers of structures, where exercised, may bring about certain effects, critical realists describe these structures as generative mechanisms (Bhaskar, 1975). Generative mechanisms are complex and non-predictable phenomena, which operate at many different levels in the social world, and are variously related. These mechanisms may affect each other, triggering some mechanisms, or counteracting others. As such, critical realism’s understanding of generative mechanisms is particularly 26  See Chap. 2 for an extended discussion of critical realism as an ontological and epistemological approach. 27  As Sayer argues, causality in critical realism is based on necessity and not regularity. This helps us to distinguish between ‘what can be the case and what must be the case, given certain preconditions’ (Sayer, 2000, p. 16). As such, critical realism is concerned not with what merely happens to be associated with what, for that may be due to accidental causes, but with whether the associations could be otherwise. For example, Sayer cites the example of the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy, suggesting that although capitalism might regularly be found with patriarchy, it does not follow from this that they have to co-exist as mutual pre-conditions. Sayer goes on to explain that patriarchy pre-dates capitalism, and it could be argued that capitalism could exist in a non-patriarchal society. Sayer accepts that such judgements are, of course, fallible, as we can never be certain whether we know of contingency or necessity between social structures. However, the aim is to explore all possible associations and thus, to develop knowledge claims which are to the best of our (human) ability (Sayer, 2000, pp. 16–17).

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relevant for habitus, as it may help us to understand how structural influence is generated in habitus in such a way that recognises the variability and unpredictability of human behaviour and that the choices made and paths taken could have been different and which would lead to different outcomes. For example, the interactions between various forms of social structures and their emergent properties, such as in the case of gender, class and race, could be better understood through conceptualising interaction between various generative mechanisms at the level of the real in habitus, while also recognising that their appearance in any particular scenario can differ depending on the individuals involved, and their choices and actions. The task of the social scientist in such a situation is to identify the respective roles of particular social structures in social phenomena, such as, for example, the role of patriarchy and capitalism in accounting for the fact that women’s pay is significantly lower than men’s (Sayer, 2000, p. 16). The interactions between these social structures and their emergent properties could then be documented at the level of the actual and the empirical in research. Critical realism’s commitment to the notion of the epistemic fallacy is also relevant to habitus, as it is an argument for the acknowledgement that observation is not necessarily the criteria to use to establish the existence of social phenomena (Bhaskar, 1975). This position ensures the centrality of theory in critical realism. Elder-Vass’ Claim to Reconcile Archer and Bourdieu Whilst I have argued previously that Bourdieu’s concept of agency provides a much-improved conception of agency compared to Archer’s (Akram, 2012; Akram & Hogan, 2015), largely because of its understanding of the unconscious, Elder-Vass argues that although different, the two approaches can be reconciled in a: ‘single emergentist theory of human action’ (2007c, p. 325). Archer, in my view, privileges reflexivity and conscious intentionality in her concept of agency and, although Elder-Vass also recognises this problem, he argues that Bourdieu can be overly deterministic in his approach and that a reconciliation at the level of emergence between the two authors would tame the respective overly voluntaristic and structuralist flavours of the two approaches.28 28  The present chapter is concerned with emergence as relates to agency. The next chapter (4) continues the focus on emergence but does so in relation to fields.

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Elder-Vass’ development of the emergentist framework for habitus is a valuable contribution to the literature on habitus. However, as has been the argument of this chapter, habitus, in my view, is not deterministic as Elder-Vass suggests. Elder-Vass views his emergentist reconciliation of Archer and Bourdieu as contributing to the existing literature, which seeks to ‘hybridize reflexivity and habitus’ (2007c, p. 325). As I argued earlier in the chapter, reflexivity is present in habitus and I also reject the argument that reflexivity can simply be added to habitus, as this position assumes that reflexivity operates at a seemingly different level to the unconscious aspects of habitus. In my view, the unconscious (and conscious) platform of habitus underlies all other aspects of agency, and so, even reflexivity must be affected at some level by the unconscious platform of habitus. This position suggests that agents can be reflexive without undergoing a conscious decision-making process in order to do so. Elder-­ Vass’ emergentist framework for habitus also clearly incorporates an understanding of the unconscious. Thus, if reconciliation between Archer and Bourdieu is his aim, Archer must also accept the unconscious aspects of agency, which she has not thus far done in her work.  ocating Habitus Within a Critical Realist Emergentist Position L A central theme for critical realism, emergence rests upon a stratified or layered account of reality which contains different levels of organisation with each level associated with its own causal powers, but the resultant properties of emergence being irreducible to previous domains. On this account, the social realm is argued to be emergent from human (inter) action, though with properties irreducible to yet capable of acting back on the latter (Bhaskar, 1986; Pratten, 2013). As was discussed in Chap. 2, Elder-Vass has devoted much time to developing the concept of emergence within a critical realist ontological framework (2007a, 2007b, 2008). His theorisation of this concept offers a better understanding of how structures are created and, further, improves our understanding of how interaction occurs between structure and agency. Elder-Vass develops his concept of emergence through a critique of Archer’s (1995, 2000) defence of this concept in her debate with King (1999). Whilst Elder-Vass has some reservations about Archer’s understanding of emergence, he is broadly in favour of Archer’s morphogenetic approach,29 her account of the 29  The morphogenetic approach is Archer’s solution to conceptualising the relationship between structure and agency (Archer, 1995).

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relationship between structure and agency, and both Archer and ElderVass would describe themselves as critical realists. At an ontological level, then, Elder-­Vass’ argument is similar to Archer’s and he believes that Bourdieu’s theoretical approach is only loosely articulated with his own ontology and can be recast into an emergentist framework without losing its inherent structure or strengths. Elder-Vass accepts that there are important differences between Archer and Bourdieu’s approaches, but he suggests that, with some modifications to their arguments, reconciliation is possible. Reconciliation is not my aim in the present discussion, as Archer ignores the unconscious aspects of habitus. However, Elder-Vass’ construction of an emergentist biological framework is an important contribution to developing our understanding of habitus and emergence through an ontological prism and, so, the following section will consider his ontological and theoretical arguments for locating habitus within a critical realist emergentist framework. Ontological Reconciliation Elder-Vass contends that two layers of divergence must be distinguished in this discussion (though they interact): the ontological and the theoretical. On an ontological level, Elder-Vass proposes an emergentist ontology for his theoretical concept of agency. This ontology suggests that individual agency can be identified with the emergent causal powers of human individuals. Like all emergent entities, human individuals are part of a hierarchy of such entities, each with emergent causal powers of their own. Here, we see that Elder-Vass is, in part, reliant on Archer’s broader ontological and emergent framework and its focus on agential emergent powers (PEPs), structural emergent powers (SEPs) and cultural emergent powers (CEPs) (1995, p. 175). Establishing the emergent powers of agency facilitates consideration of the interplay between agents and structures in open systems based on contingency and not necessity. Before Elder-Vass can locate Bourdieu within an emergentist framework, he feels compelled to deal with what he, and Archer, both agree to be Bourdieu’s tendency for ‘ontological conflationism’ (Archer, 2003, pp. 11–12). Archer describes ontological conflationism as: ‘an approach based upon the putative mutual constitution of structure and agency’ (1995, p. 87). As an advocate of ontological duality, Archer argues that structure and agency are separate entities which combine in interaction, and so she cannot accept any form of conflationism. Like Bourdieu, Archer also highlights Giddens as someone who is also guilty of this position

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(Archer, 1995, pp. 87–89). Thus, Archer sees the difference between herself and Bourdieu as primarily ontological. Elder-Vass, though, is not as pessimistic about Bourdieu as Archer seems to be and attempts to resolve this issue of ontological conflationism for Bourdieu. According to Elder-­ Vass, Bourdieu sometimes provides conflicting statements about his ontological position. As such, he can appear to equate structure with internal human properties, such as in the following quote: To speak of habitus is to include in the object the knowledge which the agents, who are part of the object, have of the object, and the contribution this knowledge makes to the reality of the object. (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 467 in Elder-Vass, 2007c, p. 333)

On the other hand, Bourdieu has also argued that structures are constitutive of agents, as in his claim that habitus reflects the: ‘internalization of externality’ (1977, p. 72). Elder-Vass argues that, if both these claims are accepted, then it may be difficult to see how agents can be distinguished from structures, and vice versa. However, Elder-Vass suggests that, although Bourdieu’s claims are somewhat confusing, the emergentist framework can accept that agents are constitutive of structure (‘the object’), because emergentism is concerned with examining how: ‘parts interact to generate wholes with emergent properties’ (2007c, p.  333). Second, in terms of Bourdieu’s statement that habitus is the ‘internalization of externality’, Elder-Vass claims that it is important to distinguish between a metaphoric and a literal reading of this comment. Whilst Elder-­ Vass states that distinguishing between these readings in Bourdieu’s work is quite difficult, I would disagree. In my view, although Bourdieu’s writing on the subject of structure and agency and their precise relationship are sometimes confusing, and can appear ambiguous, he is committed to an ontological separation between structure and agency.30 Further, Elder-­ Vass is correct to argue for a metaphoric reading of Bourdieu on this issue, because Bourdieu has argued against what he interprets as social sciences’ preoccupation with ‘theoretical knowledge’, or passing off ‘the things of logic as the logic of things’ (1990a, p. 61). Bourdieu’s broader aim, in his theory of practice, has been to examine practice, which may sometimes necessitate the use of a metaphoric language, as it is often difficult to find 30  See Chap. 4 for a chapter-length discussion of Bourdieu’s conception of structure (as fields).

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an adequate theoretical language to translate one’s idea. Elder-Vass does, in the end, resolve the issue of Bourdieu’s apparent conflationism for himself, which Archer cannot forgive. However, in my view, Bourdieu, unlike Giddens (1979, 1984) for example, is not an ontological conflationist. Theoretical Reconciliation Despite dedicating much ink to the concept of agency, in my view, there are serious flaws in Archer’s conception of agency, which arise out of her neglect of a notion of the unconscious as an aspect of agency (Akram, 2012). For me, unless this issue is acknowledged and resolved, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is much better able to deal with the internal dynamics of a dialectical approach. This issue aside, Elder-Vass is correct to argue that both Archer and Bourdieu would benefit from thinking about agency in terms of its neural basis in human physiology and how this is affected by social factors. For Elder-Vass, this position is related to his goal of reconciling reflexivity and human dispositions, thus providing what he sees as a neutral meeting ground for an improved theorisation of agency. This would build on the contributions of both Archer and Bourdieu, whilst not over-emphasising particular capacities, in an altogether more rounded conception of agency. Through his concept of bodily hexis, Bourdieu was keen to remind us of the way the corporeal body is implicated in habitus, and is also subject to social structural influence, emphasising how the body bears the imprint of gender or class, for example. Extending the concept of habitus beyond the cognitive, Bourdieu’s account of habitus is richer for this insight, but could it go further? Specifically, can we incorporate scholarship on neuronal or biological processes to enhance our understanding of habitus? Elder-Vass, I suggest, is useful in developing this line of thought, and does it with reference to the critical realist notion of emergence. Elder-Vass makes a very important contribution to the literature on emergence, but also agency in his discussion of the ‘emergent roots of our power to act’ (2007c, p. 366) which incorporates roles for both ‘mental entities’ and the ‘hardware’ of our brains (2007c, p. 336).31 He seeks to describe the emergence relationship by which mental properties emerge from neural networks. He argues that a full account of human action must recognise, and seek to theorise, the biological basis of that action and its relationship to higher-level influences on that action, and to show how 31  Elder-Vass takes the concept of the ‘hardware’ of brains from Searle, 1992. (Elder-Vass, 2007c, p. 336).

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that relationship can potentially be theorised as an emergence relation of mental phenomena from our physical brains, and perhaps, bodies (2007c, p. 337). Elder-Vass begins his analysis with the question: what are mental phenomena? He adopts Searle’s answer that mental phenomena are: ‘thoughts of any type of which we can be conscious’ (Searle, 1992  in Elder-Vass, 2007c, p. 336). Whilst this implies that, for something to be mental, we must be able to think it, Elder-Vass claims that this does not mean that we must be thinking it all the time (Searle, 1992, p. 172 in Elder-Vass, 2007c, p. 336). Elder-Vass proceeds to consider the classical Descartian question of the mind’s relationship to the body, asking the question: How can mental phenomena exist? (2007c, p. 336). He turns to neuroscience to answer this question, suggesting that, although knowledge in this area is incomplete, neuroscience suggests that mental phenomena, both when we are conscious of them and when we are not, are somehow produced by the operation of networks of neurons that make up a large part of our brains (2007c, p. 336). Elder-Vass suggests that networks of neurons, and the synaptic connections between them that make up much of our brain, are conditioned or configured by our experience (2007c, p. 336), and so here we have an outline for a neuronally based habitus which is subject to social influence. According to Elder-Vass, our mental states, such as beliefs, are stored at the neuronal level in the form of networks of connections of varying strengths (frequencies) between neurons and groups of neurons. These connections seem to be strengthened, when we have experiences that confirm the mental state, and weakened, when we have experiences that undermine it. These neural experiences do not represent individual experiences, one at a time, but a kind of weighted summary. As such, the neuronal emergent framework appears to align very well with Bourdieu’s understanding of habitus and, in particular, Bourdieu’s idea that habitus represents a combination, or compound, of a range of different experiences, which he describes as its hysteresis effect (1977, p. 78). Our experiences, then, are a cause of the particular configurations of neurons and synapses that are the emergent base of our mental states. Elder-Vass argues that our mental states are, thus, emergent properties of neural networks and can therefore be causally effective (2007c, p. 337). Elder-Vass’ emergent neuronal framework clearly incorporates an understanding of the unconscious. He argues that experiences affect our

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neuronal networks which, in turn, ‘condition’ us to possess certain mental states. Such conditioning, he maintains, need not be conscious and, if we experience a particular event repeatedly, then our brain will learn it without any conscious intervention. He goes on to suggest that, on the other hand, our conscious thinking may itself provide inputs to the learning process. He also contends that this conditioning mechanism provides the route by which ‘socialisation’, or analogous processes, may play a significant role in establishing our beliefs and dispositions (2007c). Decisions and Dispositions An interesting role for the unconscious emerges in Elder-Vass’ writing when he attempts to explain how both Archer and Bourdieu, and what he considers to be their overemphasis on reflexivity and dispositions respectively, come together in his theory of emergence in neuronal networks, thus providing a much-improved concept of agency. Using Davidson’s claim that ‘mental entities, specifically reasons, can be causes, of our actions’ (2007c, p. 338), Elder-Vass proceeds to develop an understanding of how reflexivity and dispositions can both be located within a concept of agency which incorporates an understanding of emergence and neural networks. Elder-Vass begins by suggesting that there are three types of reasons: post-event reason; conscious reason; and unconscious reason (2007c, p. 338). Post-event reasons or rationalisations are described as being unrelated to the current discussion, as they may misrepresent our thinking at the time of action, and so, although useful in some forms of research, there is much scope for fallibility. Conscious reasons refer to actions which are based on a decision that is made. Unconscious reasons are described as a cause of action when: ‘there were beliefs, desires, and hence reasons implicit in our neural networks at the moment immediately preceding the action  - as mental entities that we are not conscious of at the time’ (2007c, p. 338). Elder-Vass claims that an understanding of conscious reasons and unconscious reasons, and not necessarily post-event reasons, will assist in the construction of a viable account with which to explain human action. Elder-Vass (2007c) uses Dennett’s (2003) example of the tennis player to show how the relationship between decision-making and behaviour occurs. I will not go into the details of Elder-Vass description of Dennett’s argument, which is quite a lengthy and detailed exposition, suffice to say that Elder-Vass is interested in the interplay between decision-making and

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reflexive actions. More specifically, he is concerned with the claim that: ‘experimenters have shown that to take a conscious decision and implement it takes a minimum of a quarter second; yet top tennis players, for example can react to a serve in a tenth of a second’ (2007c, p. 338). The tennis player’s reaction to the serve is thought to be a result of past learned experience and his ability to allow, like non-sports people in other arenas of life, reflexes, or previously learnt behaviour, to take over in action. As Elder-Vass argues: Thus, the conscious decision-making takes place at one time, and the execution of that decision is done non-consciously at a later moment. Furthermore, the conscious decision only partially describes the behaviour to be undertaken, leaving other details to be filled in non-consciously. (2007c, p. 338)

According to Elder-Vass, all decision-making occurs in this way. Indeed, as agents, we do make conscious decisions; however, these decisions are only the indirect and partial causes of our behaviour in that (a) they occur a variable amount of time before the action concerned and (b) they are always incomplete regarding the details of the action to be taken (2007c, p. 339). Conscious decision-making then, and non-conscious behaviour determination, appears as complementary and mutually necessary moments in the causation of events (2007c, p. 340). Elder-Vass uses this account to argue for a reconciliation between Archer and Bourdieu’s approaches. From Bourdieu he takes the argument that our actions are caused by dispositions stored in our neural networks as a result of past decisions, and from Archer, the principle that decision-making can amend this set of dispositions. Despite being intimately concerned with how agents negotiate the world, there is a vagueness to Bourdieu’s habitus because of its lack of consideration of the biological basis of humans and, more specifically, with the cognitive basis of action. Elder-Vass addresses this neglect by bringing the concept of agency within the purview of critical realism’s commitment to the notion of emergence. His account of the relationship between decision-­making, dispositions and emergence provides a much-needed clarification of how habitus operates, taking its steer from critical realism’s notion of the emergent power of humans, which are irreducible to humans but capable of acting on the former. Indeed, his insights on these concepts provide a more complex ontological framework within which to locate

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habitus and understand how it does the range of tasks ascribed to it by Bourdieu. In developing a biological and neuronal framework, this develops our understanding of the sometimes reinforcing but, at other times, challenging effects of social experience on causally effective mental states in habitus. Further, his claims on the inter-relations between decision-­ making, dispositions and emergence clearly incorporates an understanding of the importance of the unconscious as an aspect of agency. However, it is important to emphasise here that, whilst Elder-Vass uses his argument about the interaction between decision-making and dispositions to argue for a reconciliation between Archer and Bourdieu’s approaches, I reject this position because Archer fails to accept a notion of the unconscious in her account of agency.

5  In Conclusion This chapter has provided an introduction to, and critique of, Bourdieu’s seminal concept of habitus, exploring its unconscious base, but also its particular approach to reflexivity and strategy. I have shown how Bourdieu’s work represents a vast improvement on our understanding of agency, because he uniquely incorporates an understanding of the unconscious into his conceptualisation of agency providing a more nuanced account of how individuals engage with the social. This inclusion of the unconscious dimension has, however, often led to the charge that habitus is deterministic. Countering this charge, it has been my aim in this chapter to show how the unconscious is necessary to the operation of habitus and, further, that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus incorporates conceptions of reflexivity, but also strategy, which also operate from this partially unconscious platform. A further aim of this chapter has been to detail an ontological framework for habitus. Although Bourdieu has often been quite vague about his ontological commitments, in my view, he is clearly a realist and his concept of habitus would benefit from being located within a critical realist ontology. Drawing on Elder-Vass, it has been shown that the concept of emergence within a critical realist ontology has significant implications for Bourdieu’s concept of habitus through incorporating an understanding of neuronal networks as the basis for interaction between dispositions, decision-­making and the effects of the social on habitus. The next chapter consolidates our understanding of habitus further by exploring its twin concept of the field.

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CHAPTER 4

Field: Bourdieu and Beyond

Bourdieu describes habitus and field as ‘open concepts’ which defy straightforward definition. For him, habitus and field have ‘no definition other than systemic ones’, meaning that they only make sense within his broader theory of practice rather than in isolation. Further to this, he argues that they become most profitable when explored in the context of empirical research, stating that they are ‘designed to be put to work empirically in systematic fashion’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 96). As was shown in the previous chapter, habitus occupies a pivotal position in Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and the former chapter made visible the various interconnected aspects of habitus, including the role of the unconscious; how this relates to reflexivity and strategy; but also how the concept might benefit from being situated within a critical realist ontological framework. In the present chapter, I turn to the concept of field, and in the same way that we cannot conceptualise agency without reference to social structure, we cannot understand habitus without situating it in relation to the field. In the first part of the chapter, I am concerned with exploring Bourdieu’s own account of the field, highlighting the key issues which signal his approach to field theory, and how the concept has been used, adapted, and refined in the literature. In the second part of the

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chapter, my aim is to situate the field within a broader discussion of social structure as has been conducted by critical realists. It is my intention to explore synergies between the field and critical realism, and to show how critical realism’s method of abstraction potentially strengthens the concept of the field. The discussion of field, structure, and critical realism in the second half of the chapter will consider a range of conceptions of structure in the literature. Specifically, I consider the work of Lopez and Scott (2000), Giddens (1979, 1984, 1993) and Elder-Vass (2007a, b, c, 2008). Conceptions of structure in critical realism necessitate discussion of the concept of emergence, as this is implicated in how structures emerge within the critical realist stratified conception of reality ontology. There is much contestation about what emergence is, and how it occurs, and my discussion draws insights from Dave Elder-Vass (2007a, 2008), Margaret Archer (1995, 2000a, b), and Anthony King (1999a), amongst others.

1   Bourdieu’s Concept of the Field History of the Concept The concepts of habitus and field, although intimately connected, appear at different points in Bourdieu’s oeuvre, indicating that habitus predates field. Bourdieu’s account of the field is developed after habitus rather than concurrently, and so we can note a shift in Bourdieu work, because the field started appearing in the 1970s and 1980s, while the concept of habitus first emerged in the 1960s (Swartz, 1997). Swartz in fact notes that the concept of the field is hardly mentioned in Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977), but assumes a prominent role in the Logic of Practice (1990b)—two works that both relate to Bourdieu’s Algerian fieldwork (1997, p. 118, footnote 5.). Bourdieu was not the first to develop the concept of the field or to develop field theory into a core component of his broader theory of practice. As Martin (2003), in his extensive review of the concept tells us, the concept of the field can be traced back to the natural sciences, and more specifically, to classical mechanics and non-relativistic electromagnetism. Although the subject matters differ, field theory in the natural and social sciences share core features including: purporting to explain change in the

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status of some objects, but not all in the field; exploring interaction between the field and the existing status of the element; recognising that elements have some attributes that make them susceptible to change; and that the field itself might be organised and experienced differentially depending upon one’s position within the field. We see these principles in Bourdieu’s conception of the field, and more particularly in the overall sense that there is a field effect, which affects those who inhabit the field in different ways. Following Lieberson, the key point here is that: ‘(F)ield theory posits an enveloping gravitational field that we can neither see nor measure except via its effects’ (Martin, 2003, p.  5). Additionally, we should recognise the role of space in characterising the field and accommodating various positions in the field. Altogether, such an approach to social structural analysis in both the natural and social sciences involves observing action—or field effects—at a distance, and without direct touch, or without the capacity to measure a force, but to see it in its effects. To be clear, and as Martin (2003) points out, this approach to structure is ‘utterly at odds’ with conventional accounts of causality in the social sciences, and is particularly distinct from a Humean notion of causality based on the observation of regularity as is common to positivism. Bourdieu notes the influence of Cassirer’s (1910/1923) relationism on his approach to field theory, but also on Elias and Lewin. Cassirer’s influence pushed Bourdieu ‘to move beyond Aristotelian substantialism’, and to think of social life in relational terms, so ‘not interactions between individuals or intersubjective ties, but objective relations’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 97). Swartz finds that Bourdieu’s field perspective is similar to Lewin’s (1951), and indeed that Bourdieu references Lewin in his early work (Swartz, 1997, p. 123, note 15). Martin reminds us that Lewin studied philosophy with Cassirer (Martin, 2003; see also Burnes & Cooke, 2013). Despite this prior lineage to the concept of field theory, Martin (2003) finds that Bourdieu notes but does not make connections between his approach and earlier ones.1

1  It should however be noted that Bourdieu does use the language of ‘particles’ and ‘forces’ in his discussion of fields if only to distance himself from such approaches. For instance, he states: ‘social agents are not “particles” that are mechanically pushed and pulled about by external forces’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.  108). Elsewhere, he draws parallels between natural science and his construction of the field: ‘…following the formula of a famous German physicist, that the individual, like the electron, is an Ausgeburt des Fields: he or she is in a sense an emanation of the field’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992, p. 107).

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Bourdieu’s Conception of Social Structure as ‘Field’ Whilst some see a clear influence of Marx on Bourdieu’s writing, others remain sceptical (Alexander, 1995, p.  128, Jenkins, 2002, p.  68). Bourdieu’s own writing on this issue also seems to raise as many questions as answers (Bourdieu, 1990a, pp.  27–28). That said, Bourdieu has an interesting conception of social structure, which is notably different from the Marxist understanding that society is primarily structured by class. However, Bourdieu does accept that class is a form of structural inequality (1977, pp.  85–87). He also seems to accept Marx’s notion that society consists of a sum of social relations, which are not inter-subjective ties, but are: ‘objective relations which exist independently of consciousness or will’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 97). Whilst class is clearly an important feature of society for Bourdieu, he does not privilege class as a defining feature of his overall theory. Bourdieu seeks to distance himself from a notion that society is structured in a particular way and argues instead that society is structured in terms of ‘fields’ or ‘champs’. With this approach, Bourdieu intends to emphasise the independent, non-economic, character of differentiated social spheres and the necessity for a more pluralistic, non-synchronous, and anti-reductionistic theory to understand them (Alexander, 1995, p. 158, Brubaker, 1985). Bourdieu also acknowledges the influence of Weber’s ‘Vielseitigkeit’ on his concept of field, which he translates as ‘the manysidedness, of social reality’ (sic) (1990a, p. 21). Bourdieu defines the field as follows: In analytic terms, a field may be defined as a network, or configuration, of objective relations between positions. These positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc). (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 97)

Bourdieu argues that, in highly differentiated societies, social space is divided into multiple, relatively autonomous, fields, which are distinct spaces operating according to their own logic and necessity (1992, p. 97). As such, we might refer to the education field, the artistic field, or the political field. The field is a battlefield and is characterised by ‘social

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struggles’ or manoeuvres which take place over specific resources (capital), or stakes and access to them. Bourdieu refers to the goods or resources available within the fields as economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986a, b). Bourdieu invokes the analogy of the game to describe how the field operates (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 98–100). Agents, as game players, are said to have different ‘interests’ within particular fields and pursue strategies in order to achieve these interests. Further, he suggests that it is the state of the relations of force between players that defines the structure of the field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 99). Different forms of habitus have different values in different fields and individuals have strong attachments to—or interests in—particular positions within particular fields. The habitus is deeply implicated in how the field operates as it ‘realises itself’ (Sweetman, 2003, p. 533) in relation to the field, and Bourdieu suggests that between habitus and field there ‘is a sort of ontological complicity, a subconscious and pre-reflexive fit’ (1990a, p. 108). Alongside habitus, the concept of field constitutes the twin pillar in Bourdieu’s social theory as it reflects Bourdieu’s broader metatheoretical concerns to go beyond subjectivism and objectivism, and document the underlying relations between entities rather than to be preoccupied with the properties of entities, be they structures or agents. As Bourdieu argues: ‘(T)o think in terms of field is to think relationally’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 96), and by this he is concerned to move away from a notion that society is structured in any particular, hierarchical or pre-determined way, and rather that social scientists should: ‘seek out the underlying and invisible relations that shape action rather than properties given in commonsense categories’ (Swartz, 1997, p. 119). In addition to this commitment to relationism, is field theory’s intimate connection to practice and the link between those in the field and the construction of said field. As Martin (2003) explains, the field concept’s strength lies in its ability to capture that the way in which an actor receives information about the world and the field in question is relative to their position in said field, but also their understanding of the field. Accordingly, Bourdieu’s perspective on field-­ actor relations encourages us to move beyond units of analysis such as ‘populations, groups, organisation or institutions’ (Swartz, 1997, p. 119), and instead to recognise that different fields will display their own struggles, domination, interests, and competition over capital as well as power struggles.

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Bourdieu offers us his own analysis of fields on the matter of literature and art (Bourdieu, 1984, 1996a); higher education institutions (1988, 1996b),2 and housing policy (2005). The concept of field has travelled beyond these initial sites of analysis, and research extends to global fields (Buchholz, 2016), supply chain fields (Wu & Jia, 2018), empires (Go, 2008), and the colonial state (Steinmetz, 2008). In organisational sociology, the concept of the organisational field is now established (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), and we should also note Fligstein and Adams’ (2011) work on ‘strategic action fields’, which explores stability and change in emerging and established fields. Given the joint commitment to relationalism, field theory is also closely associated with social network analysis (Pachucki & Breiger, 2010; Mische, 2011). Like field theory, network analysis seeks to explore the social origins of interests in a more concrete and relational form. Broadly, we can identify three different approaches to field theory in the scholarly literature, which together reveal a strong core of ideas and might be understood as special cases of a more general field theory (Martin, 2003). First, we can note the development of field theory by Lewin in social psychology, where individual precepts are understood in relation to a wider perceptual field and so personality is a function of the environment and vice versa. Here, there is a tendency for field theorists to use the word ‘field’ in a topological sense, where the field is conceived as an analytic area of simplified dimensions in which we position persons or institutions. Lewin’s approach has been criticised for its rigidity, technicality, and simplicity (Martin, 2003). Second, and following DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) landmark work on the ‘organisational field’, there is the sense of a field as an organisation of forces wherein ‘organisational striving’ takes place as per one’s habitus.3 Third, we can note an approach to 2  Although Bourdieu’s State Nobility (1996b) and Homo Aacdemicus (1988) are concerned with the higher education field, we should note that there are different focuses in each book. Published in 1996, State Nobility explores the higher education field in France, paying specific attention to the sub field of elite education and its role in reproducing privilege, examining the grande écoles in France, the Ivy League Schools in the United States and Oxford and Cambridge University in England. Home Academicus (1988) is more concerned with academic culture in France, exploring the intellectual field as occupied by figures such as Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan. 3  Chapter 5 explores the work of DiMaggio and Powell (1983) and Bourdieu’s influence on their work as part of a more comprehensive discussion of the relationship between organisations and institutions.

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the field as a way of understanding stratification and domination. On this interpretation, the field is a site of contestation, a battlefield as is seen in the work of Bourdieu. While there may be differences, Martin argues that there is much overlap too between these perspectives and that they constitute a ‘family of approaches’ (2003, p. 3). Broadly, we see that the three approaches share consensus about what a field is; how analysis should be conducted; how causality should be interpreted; and, most importantly, how we understand the relation of fields to individuals and their cognition. There have been some notable extended reviews of field theory (see Mey, 1972; Rummel, 1975; Swartz, 1997, 2013; Martin, 2003; Hilliers & Mangez, 2014; Kluttz & Fligstein, 2016), and while field theory is widely used as a way of understanding relational effects that recognise variability amongst elements in the field, it has also been the subject of criticism. There is a concern that the field perspective is both tautological and the subject of an occult force (Martin, 2003). If fields are only known through their effects, is it not then tempting ‘to proliferate invisible fields that “explain” whatever it is that we otherwise cannot explain’, asks Martin (2003, p. 8). This criticism is further bolstered by Bourdieu’s comment that there are as many interests as there are fields, and: ‘(E)ach field calls forth and gives life to a specific form of interest, a specific illusio’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 117). If fields proliferate, what are the boundaries of the field, and is there overlap between fields? (DiMaggio, 1979). Equally, in any given scenario, how can we know that a force has been transmitted without seeing it? There is also the added problem of reporting how a force is being transmitted (Martin, 2003, p. 9), which leads to the problem of a relapse to the heuristic value of the field as a theoretical concept. Further, the absence of explanatory potential, or a criterion of observability means that field theory relies on ‘something of (an) uncertain ontological status’ (Martin, 2003, p. 10), particularly in the Western tradition where things that are real have to possess the properties of extensions and mass. The related sidestepping of an explanatory account in terms of mechanisms or of a criterion of empirical evidence both serve to reinforce scepticism about the concept. Despite these very real concerns with field theory, Martin (2003) remains impressed with the concept and notes that there is a specific type of plausibility argument associated with relationism and field theory. He asks us to be bolder in our approach to social science, to caution us against a narrow focus and the search for, and identification of, properties and causality. Field theory, on this view, is worth holding on to because it is ‘intuitively accessible’, pointing to the

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fact that ‘there was something “more” out there—some social whole that penetrated us’ (Martin, 2003, p. 14). For Martin (2003), there is a sufficiently distinct core to field theory, and the fact of its apparent tensions is more of an advantage than a defect, reflecting the intuitive appeal and value of the approach, which resists easy classification. He reminds us that the most promising way of recognising the balance between struggle, but also the pursuit of aims within the field is to return to Bourdieu’s analogy of the field as a game with rules. This permits us to see the field as a site of conflict, often irregular, capable of change, but also struggles and resistance to domination. On this view, field theory offers the social scientist a combination of analytical insight and the appeal to forces that affect action. Further to this, for Martin (2003), field theory should be linked to grounded approaches, which pay attention to the concrete and empirical, thus combining the abstract with the specific. Such an account must also take account of the role of motivations of individuals in the field, capturing not their abstract values or decision-­making procedures, but more complex accounts of ‘what is good to strive for’ in the field. It also requires that we revise our implicit definition of good ‘explanation’ in social science, to ensure that it brings us to a definition that, unlike conventional definitions, is internally consistent and in accord with everyday usage. Delineating the Field In this section, I want to address some of the key tensions that have been raised in the more critical literature on the field concept. These relate to its boundaries; the interactions between fields; and how one documents the field. To address these concerns, let us begin by considering the following quote from Bourdieu to describe the field. It spells out the inherent challenge involved in grasping the field, while accounting for the fact that the field is fluid, evolving, and dependent upon the individuals who inhabit it, but also the past struggles which shape it and the interests that form its logic: The concept of the field does not provide ‘ready-made answers to all possible queries’, in the manner of the grande concepts of ‘theoreticist theory’ which claims to explain everything and in the right order. Rather, its major value, at least in my eyes, is that it promotes a mode of construction that has

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to be rethought anew every time. It forces us to raise questions: about the limits of the universe under investigation, how it is ‘articulated’, to what and to what degree, etc. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 110)

As the quote above illuminates, using a notion of the field involves accepting the challenge of engaging in a ‘mode of construction that has to be rethought anew every time’, rather than simply applying some ready-­ made formula to the social world. But what are the implications of such a position for identifying the limits or boundaries of a field? Lacking conscious orchestration, every field has its own logic, rules, and regularities, which derive from its own history. Each field is the site of a series of relations of forces (and of meanings), and contains the possibility of reproduction but also change. Individuals may struggle against the regularities and rules constitutive of the field and so the field is a field of conflict aimed at either preserving or transforming the forces within it. Given this context, for Bourdieu, each field is fluid rather than fixed, because it is a potentially ‘open space of play’, whose boundaries are dynamic borders and which are the stake of struggle within the field itself (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 104). To discern the boundaries of the field, Bourdieu argues that we must go beyond an analysis of the individuals in the field, to explore ‘what is at stake in the field itself’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 101)—what are the struggles for legitimacy and capital within the particular field, or what is the logic or history of the field. Bourdieu believed that it is only by studying a specific field that one could ascertain ‘how concretely they are constituted, where they stop, who gets in and who does not, and whether at all they form a field’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 101). As such, there are no general rules or limits to the field, but ‘the boundaries of the field can only be determined by an empirical investigation’ and, further, that: ‘(T)he limits of the field are situated at the point where the effects of the field cease’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 100). Fields are the site of internal dynamics that we must pay acute attention to, but it is also worth considering the relationship between fields, and whether there is a disproportionate effect of some fields on others. On the question of how fields relate to each other, Bourdieu notes that the state or economic factors may have disproportionate effects on fields, but we must resist positing ‘transhistorical laws of the relations between fields’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 109). For instance, the economic field in advanced capitalism may pose a clear effect on fields, but this should not

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lead us to posit any kind of universal determination on fields. A similar argument can be made with regards to the effects of the state on the field. Indeed, for Bourdieu it is futile to engage in a discussion of the state as a monolithic or unified entity with clear boundaries which itself stands in relation to forces that are equally clearly defined and bounded. Instead, he argues that what we encounter instead in the state is: ‘an ensemble of administrative or bureaucratic fields… within which agents and categories of agents, governmental and nongovernmental, struggle over this peculiar form of authority consisting of the power to rule via legislation, regulations, administrative measures…’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 111).4 How does one analyse or document a field? Analysis of the field involves a synchronic approach involving ‘three connected moments’ which allow one to determine the ‘position-takings’—the prises de position—in the field as well as the values of capital and power relations at particular moments of the field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.  104). When engaging in field analysis first, one must analyse the position of the field in relation to the field of power. Second, one must map the objective structure of the relations between the positions occupied by the individuals or institutions who compete for the legitimate form of specific authority of which the field is the site. Finally, one should analyse the habitus of individuals within the field. Adopting this approach means that one can document continuity and change in the field over time, but also how individuals’ actions transform or challenge field positionality. In line with the logic of any particular field, position-taking in the field is not completely open and the ‘space of positions tends to command the space of position-takings’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.  104). Here, Bourdieu is reminding us that action within the field is inseparable from the historical struggles for power and capital in the field, thus there is a fit between positions and individuals’ actions within the field. As Bourdieu shows in Homo Academicus (1988), this was the case with the academic field in May 1968 and was evident in the stances taken by various protagonists during the time. Bourdieu’s discussion of literature in The Rules of Art (1996a) also provides a useful discussion of how the literary field might be analysed in relation to power. 4  It is worth noting here that Bourdieu notes affinity between his conception of the state and Weber’s. Following Weber, Bourdieu develops his account of the state as an ensemble of fields to suggest that this ensemble has a ‘monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence’. See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, pp.  110–115), for an extended discussion of Bourdieu’s reflections on the state.

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For a good example of field theory in action, see Decoteau (2017), who draws on Bourdieusian field theory to discuss the health-seeking behaviour of HIV-infected South Africans.

2   What Is Structure? A Critical Realist Interpretation of the Field In addition to his conception of structure as field, it is important to note, as Lopez and Scott (2000) do, that Bourdieu adopts an embodied approach to structure, and that this is reflected in his notion of bodily hexis, or the idea that the corporeal body is also impacted by social structure, hence, Bourdieu’s statement that habitus is the ‘internalisation of externality’ (1977, p. 72).5 Elder-Vass (2008) critiques Bourdieu in a similar way to his critique of Giddens. He sees both theorists as focusing on social structure only in its embodied form, which seems curious given the attention Bourdieu devotes to a relational form of social structure in the form of the field. However, it may be that Elder-Vass is concerned with the ontological underpinnings of fields—an issue that Bourdieu is largely mute on. Elder-Vass views Bourdieu as failing to sufficiently theorise, or indeed ontologise facets of structure other than its embodied form, such as its relational and institutional forms, and failing to understand structure as emergent and as comprising social wholes. Martin (2003) similarly argues that Bourdieu was reluctant to address the ontological basis of his field concept, but also notes that Bourdieu’s field theory adopts a highly distinct approach to causality, which needs to be understood in the context of a theory of practice to capture the nuance of the field-theoretic approach. In this section of the chapter, and with the aim of deepening our understanding of the ontological underpinnings of the field, I engage with a broader literature on social structure from those broadly defined as realists to draw out its insights for field theory. I begin by considering Lopez and Scott’s account of social structures as well as Giddens’ before I turn to Elder-Vass’ conception of emergence and social wholes. Overall, I argue that field theory benefits from, and complements critical realism’s conceptions of emergence, social wholes, and relationism as developed by Elder-Vass.

5  Shilling (1997) also argues for the importance of acknowledging how the human body is affected by wider social structures.

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Lopez and Scott’s Typology of Structure In their critique of the concept of social structure, Lopez and Scott argue that the history of the concept reflects two broad understandings represented by the terms institutional structure and relational structure (2000, p. 3). Institutional structure is seen as: ‘comprising those cultural or normative patterns that define the expectations which agents hold about each other’s behaviour and that organise their enduring relations with each other’ (2000, p. 3). On the other hand, relational structure refers to: ‘the social relations themselves, understood as patterns of causal interconnection and interdependence among agents and their actions, as well as the positions that they occupy’ (2000, p.  3). Lopez and Scott suggest that these two broad categories of understanding of social structure can be traced back to the work of Durkheim and structural functionalism (2000, pp. 13–18). Institutional structure is argued to reflect Durkheim’s notion of collective representations, which refers to the shared norms, values, and ideas that shape social behaviour, such as patriarchy, nationalism, and gender roles. The authors argue that relational structure refers to Durkheim’s notion of collective relationships. Lopez and Scott suggest that this approach was particularly influential in the work of Simmel and Radcliffe Brown, who both problematise notions of society as a category of analysis in its own right and identify social relationships between people as the correct unit of analysis (2000, pp. 44–46). Lopez and Scott also identify a third strand in the literature on social structure, which they term embodied structure. They argue that this approach is used in the work of authors such as Giddens, Foucault, and Bourdieu (2000, p. 4). The embodied conception of social structure re-­ positions the human agent at the centre of an understanding of how social structure operates. In this approach, patterns of institutions and relations result from the actions of individuals, who have the capacity to produce them by acting in organised ways. Lopez and Scott suggest that these capacities are: … behavioural dispositions, and so social structure has to be seen as an embodied structure. Embodied structures are found in the habits and skills that are inscribed in human bodies and minds that allow them to produce, reproduce and transform institutional structures and relational structures. (2000, p. 4)

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Although there are clearly important differences between various schools of thought on the different concepts of structure outlined above, Lopez and Scott argue that the various approaches should not be considered as in opposition to each other, but rather represent potentially complementary facets of social structure, which together provide a range of conceptions of social structure available for the analysis of society. For example, they suggest that, for both Bourdieu and Foucault: ‘bodies are seen as the carriers of relational and institutional structure’ (2000, p. 98). However, the authors remain cautious about claims that embodied structure represents a new and potentially discipline-transforming development in thinking about structure, just because it incorporates an institutional and relational understanding of structure within agents (2000, pp. 4–5). Giddens’ Conception of Structure as Duality of Structure Bryant and Jary (1991) refer to Giddens as a ‘naive realist’, which is a different position to the critical realist position advocated by Bhaskar, for example. They also point out that Giddens is reluctant to describe his ontological position in any more depth than referring to himself broadly as a ‘realist’. Giddens’ conception of social structure is worth considering as it differs significantly from that of critical realists such as Archer (1995, 2000a, b) and Elder-Vass (2007a, b, c, 2008). For Giddens, structures have a “‘virtual existence’, as instantiations or moments” (1979, p. 63). Giddens argues that structures ‘exist paradigmatically, as an absent set of differences’, temporally ‘present’ only in their instantiation, in the constituting moments of ‘social systems’ (1979, p. 64). According to Giddens’ conception, structures do not exist independently of agents, as he himself explains: ‘structures do not exist in time- space, except in the moments of the constitution of social systems’ (1979, pp. 64–65).6 When they are implicated in interaction, Giddens sees structures as ‘literally inhabiting people’, arguing that to regard structures as involving a virtual order of differences implies recognising the existence of ‘knowledge—as memory traces—of “how things are to be done” (said, written)’ on the part of social actors (1979, p. 64). The concept of social system is central to Giddens’ understanding of what is traditionally conceived of as structure. He argues: 6  Healy has commented that Giddens: ‘make(s) structures so vaporous that it is next to impossible to get a grip on them’ (1998, p. 510).

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‘(S)tructural analysis’ in the social sciences involves examining the structuration of social systems. The connotation of ‘visible pattern’ which the term ‘social structure’ ordinarily has, as employed in Anglo-American sociology, is carried in my terminology by the notion of system: with the crucial proviso that social system are patterned in time as well as in space, through continuities of social reproduction. (1979, p. 64)

Temporality and spatiality are key to Giddens’ conception of structuration theory and provide the conceptual basis for his distinction between social system and structures (1979). Giddens explains that ‘structures’ refer to ‘structural property’, or ‘structuring property’; structuring properties providing the ‘binding’ of time and space in ‘social systems’ (1979, p. 64). Giddens regards structures as referring to the ‘rules and resources’ which are organised as properties of social systems (1979, p. 64). In order to understand Giddens’ conception of structure, it might be useful to examine how structure is used in Giddens’ structuration theory, which is his approach to the structure and agency problem. Structuration theory is based on Giddens’ core notion of the ‘duality of structure’ (1979, 1984, 1993). Giddens’ argument is that structure and agency are a duality, not a dualism; they are interdependent and internally related. According to this conception, the same structural characteristics are present in the subject (the actor), as in the object, thus: ‘structure is both the medium and outcome of interactions’ (1979, p. 15). As a result of this ontological and analytical duality, Archer describes Giddens as a ‘central conflationist’, arguing that he merges the individual properties of structure and agency (Archer, 1995, p. 87).7 Giddens’ rejection of the ontological separation between structure and agency is in my view an important issue and I, following Archer (1995), would argue in favour of an ontological separation between structure and agency. However, Giddens’ model, by bypassing the ontological separation between structure and agency, does appear to provide a compelling account of structural influence, albeit at the cost of the ontological dualism between structure and agency. Therefore, we see that structures have the capacity to affect agents at both reflexive and pre-reflexive and at the conscious and unconscious levels. This is a strength of Giddens’ approach and represents an important principle in the development of a better conceptualisation of the relationship between structure and agency. 7  Archer (1995) conceptualises the dialectical relationship between structure and agency to be that of ‘ontological duality’, while Giddens (1979) prefers the term ‘duality of structure’.

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Elder-Vass’ Critique of Margaret Archer’s Concept of Social Structure and Emergence Critical realists have often argued that the ontological and epistemological basis of the approach should be subject to immanent critique and, hence, revision and improvement. Elder-Vass has accepted this challenge and his work on the concepts of emergence and social structure reflects an attempt to build upon the existing ontology and refine certain concepts. In particular, Elder-Vass can be credited with developing the concept of emergence, which he contends has been neglected in the literature. It is important to rectify this neglect as the concept is central to understanding how structures operate in relation to agency within dialectical accounts of structure and agency as argued for by critical realists. Elder-Vass’ starting point is Archer’s concept of structure as developed in the morphogenetic approach (1995), and he observes that some of Archer’s critics have questioned the coherence of her conception of emergence which have led to questions about the causal powers of structures within the critical realist ontology. Elder-Vass proceeds to examine Archer’s conception of social structure and emergence and bases his critique on the debate between Archer (1995, 2000b) and King (1999a) about the morphogenetic approach and methodological individualism. Elder-Vass argues that, whilst Archer is generally correct to defend her approach against methodological individualism, her defence of her understanding of social structure and emergence raises questions about her use of these concepts, which he argues require further development.  rcher’s Critique of Methodological Individualism A Archer develops a critique of methodological individualism in Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (1995).8 In this text, Archer describes methodological individualists as ‘upwards conflationists’ who choose to focus singularly on the actions of individuals in their social analysis and argue that a concept of social structure equates to reification of metaphysical phenomena (1995, p.  33). Archer critiques the work of J.W.N Watkins and argues that his methodological individualism position is untenable as it requires that the only aspects of social context that figure in his explanations refer to the behaviour of other people (1995, 8  For a more detailed discussion of Archer’s critique of methodological individualism, see pp. 34–46 in Archer’s Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (1995).

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pp. 21–22). Archer also explains that Watkins’ position implies that individuals have the power to change any aspect of social structure and she argues that this claim requires that all such social contexts can be reduced to: ‘the effect of contemporary individual behaviour’ (Archer, 1979, p.  15  in Elder-Vass, 2007a, p.  27). Archer is unconvinced by Watkins’ understanding of the social, arguing that, whilst social structures in the present reflect the actions of past human behaviour: ‘the moment the individual turns historian he also becomes a structuralist’ (Archer, 1979, p.  19  in Elder-Vass, 2007a, p.  27). Elder-Vass is troubled by Archer’s explanation and suggests that her position here implies: … any social context carried over from the past is structural - and emergent by virtue of its pre-existence alone, although as we have already seen, elsewhere Archer makes clear that emergence also depends on the existence of appropriate relations between a set of lower-order elements. (2007a, p. 27)

Anthony King, an advocate of the hermeneutic, interpretivist, or methodologically individualist approaches, is critical of Archer and examines some of the examples she uses in her critique of methodological individualism (1999a). Although Elder-Vass does not agree with King’s broader commitment to interpretivism, he does concede that some of the examples that Archer provides are problematic (2007a). Archer and King In an exchange between King (1999a) and Archer (2000b), King is critical of Archer’s conception of social structure and emergence and defends the interpretivist tradition against the critique developed in Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (1995). Here, I will focus on two of the three examples King provides in order to assess the dialogue between Archer and King. However, first, it is important to briefly establish the main features of Archer’s conception of structure and emergence. The morphogenetic approach is Archer’s account of the relationship between structure and agency and I have examined this in other work (Akram, 2012), so, for the purposes of the discussion here, I will restrict myself to analysis of her conception of structure and emergence. Archer’s (1995) account of social structure draws on two key influences: first, Buckley’s (1967) account of morphostasis and morphogenesis; and, second, Lockwood’s (1964) work on social and system integration. Archer describes  morphogenesis  as ‘those structures which tend to

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elaborate or change a system’s given form, state or structure’, whilst morphostasis refers to ‘those processes in complex system-environmental exchanges which tend to preserve or maintain a system’s given form, organisation or state’ (1995, p. 166). Archer develops Lockwood’s notions of social and system integration and takes them to mean agency and structure respectively, which she argues should be interpreted as being both ontologically and analytically distinct, if an element of time is incorporated into understanding how they act and interact (1995, pp. 67–69). According to Archer, the concept of emergence is central to the critical realist ontology and establishes the principle by which it can differentiate itself from individualist and collectivist ontologies. Archer takes the concept of emergence from Bhaskar,9 and develops it further to identify the emergent properties, particular of structures (SEPs), culture (CEPs), and agents (PEPs) (Archer, 1995, p.  175). Emergence is also central to Archer’s morphogenetic approach. The morphogenetic approach is premised on the ontological and analytical separability of structure and agency. This position relies on a temporal distinction to justify the view that structures and agents are ontologically distinct entities which interact over time. This ontological distinction is also extended to a methodological distinction, thus allowing social researchers to examine the interplay of structure and agency and their emergent properties over time. The morphogenetic approach is also based on two further principles: first, that structure necessarily pre-dates action(s); and, second, that structural and agential interaction will either lead to a situation of structural transformation (morphogenesis) or reproduction (morphostasis). The crucial point which should be taken from this brief description of the morphogenetic approach is Archer’s key argument that the causal effects of social structures can be explained by their possession of emergent properties. Archer describes emergent properties as follows: Emergent properties are relational, and they arise out of combination, where the latter is incapable of reacting back on the former, has its own causal powers, which are causally irreducible to the powers of its component parts. (1995, p. 9) 9  Bhaskar defines emergence as: ‘a property possessed by an entity at a certain level of organisation may be said to be emergent from some lower level insofar as it is not predictable from the properties found at that level’ (Bhaskar, 1986, p.  104, footnote 1a.). Also, see Bhaskar’s The Possibility of Naturalism (1979), pp. 124–137 for more on emergent powers and agency.

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She suggests that this conception of emergence signals the stratified nature of social reality where different strata possess different emergent properties and powers. Archer goes on to argue that the key point in this connection is that emergent strata constitute the crucial entities in need of linking by explaining how their causal powers originate and operate, but do not neatly map onto empirical units of any particular magnitude (1995, pp. 9–10). As mentioned above, in Archer’s writing there are three main types of emergent property, structural (SEPs), cultural (CEPs), and agential (PEPs). King argues that, for Archer, structural emergent properties can be further divided into numerical, relational, and bureaucratic social phenomena in which emergence is displayed, and he considers examples from each of these in his critique of Archer. For reasons of space, I will restrict my analysis to Archer’s conception of structural emergence (SEP) and her numerical and relational emergence examples, as explored by King.10 In her discussion of numerical emergence, Archer uses the example of the literacy rate in Castro’s Cuba. In this example, Archer hypothesises that the initial rate of literacy in Cuba may have been 5, 15, or 25 per cent, that it takes one year to become literate and that the final rate is 95 per cent (Archer, 1982, p.  468  in King, 1999a, p.  209). From these three hypothetical figures, Archer is able to plot a graph which shows the growth in literacy over time. Archer’s aim here is to demonstrate that the differing rates of growth in literacy show that prior structural conditions—literacy in this case—have persistence into the present.11 As King argues: ‘(F)or Archer, the literacy rate in Cuba is structural and emergent because it has persistence into the present, whatever living individuals think. It is therefore structural because it is not reducible to individual belief or activity’ (1999a, p. 210).

10  It is worth noting here that Archer rejects King’s categories in his critique of her account of emergence. Archer argues that it is not clear whether King understands that to realists: ‘all emergent properties are emergent’ and she rejects his categories of numerical, relational and bureaucratic emergence as different types of emergence (2000b, p. 465). Archer argues that to talk about emergent powers is: ‘simply to refer to a property which comes into being through social combination’ (2000b, p. 465). 11  We might also think of this process in terms of Archer’s morphogenetic cycle and so a literacy rate of five per cent, for example, exists at the T1 stage (where structural conditioning pre-dates agents), which will influence the T2 stage (structural and agential interaction), leading to a T3 stage (morphogenesis or morphostasis) (King, 1999a, pp. 209–210).

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King is unconvinced by Archer’s example and her argument for numerical emergence and social structure, arguing that Archer’s claims about autonomous and prior structural conditions are merely ‘other people’ acting in the past (King, 1999a, p. 201). He argues that Archer’s own model depends upon an interpretivist ontology, based on other people’s past actions, and that her argument for the presence of social structure is a sign of reification (1999a, p. 207). King recognises that Archer’s morphogenetic approach is dependent upon a notion of temporality in order to distinguish between structure and agency. However, he argues that this does not help Archer’s argument for the autonomy of social structures, leading him to conclude: ‘Archer converts the temporal priority of other people’s actions into the ontological priority and autonomy of structure’ (1999a, p. 211). Although Elder-Vass does not defend or endorse methodological individualism, he does recognise that there are problems with Archer’s account of structure and emergence, particularly in relation to the concept of temporality. Echoing King’s criticisms of Archer, Elder-Vass points out that critics of Archer’s approach have argued that the morphogenetic approach depends upon temporality to justify claims for the emergence of structure and that this does not work (2007a, p. 35). Elder-Vass goes on to argue: The common theme here is a rejection of the argument that the prior existence of something entails that it is emergent, and hence of the argument that historical social residues are automatically structural. (Elder-Vass, 2007a, p. 35)

Despite his reservations about Archer’s approach, Elder-Vass is not convinced that the approach depends upon temporality, but argues that her approach is vulnerable to criticisms, such as those by King. Elder-Vass explains that, as in the example of literacy rates in Cuba, the rates can be explained through the existence of other people, as argued by King. Elder-­ Vass argues that, in this particular example, Archer’s use of emergence is incorrect and the supposed higher-level structure is not emergent at all. He contends that, in this example, Archer: ‘mistakenly claims emergent structural power for an unstructured aggregate of human individuals and hence is assigning structural status to what is, in ontological terms, nothing more than a collection of individuals’ (2007a, p. 37). King also considers Archer’s discussion of relational emergence and critiques her example of Adam Smith’s pin factory. Archer uses this example

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to illustrate that there is increased production amongst pin workers when they work together, as opposed to separately. Archer argues that: ‘the increased productivity of Adam Smith’s pin makers was a power emergent from their division of labour (relations of production) and not reducible from personal qualities like increased dexterity’ (Archer, 1996, p. 686 in King, 1999a, p. 212). As the increased productivity cannot be explained in terms of individual activity, Archer argues that the division of labour is emergent; it is autonomous and prior to individuals working in it (King, 1999a, p. 212). In parallel with Bourdieu’s relationally-inspired field theory, relational emergence refers to social phenomena in which individuals, through interacting in new ways, produce a novel social context which now confronts them all and is independent of any one of them (Archer, 1995, p. 9). King argues that the notion of relational emergence is undoubtedly Archer’s strongest argument for emergence, because: ‘it is true that social situations confront everybody and they are not reducible to anybody alone and therefore it makes sense to say that they are emergent and irreducible to other people’ (1999a, p. 211). King though is troubled by Archer’s explanation of emergence to describe the situation in the pin factory and suggests that Archer has something important to say about social life here, but: ‘has mis-described it’ (1999a, p. 212). King concedes that Archer is correct to argue that the social situation cannot be reduced to individuals, as it is a collaborative mutual creation, and that since it is created by others, it confronts each individual as an autonomous entity. However, he goes on to claim that, instead: ‘it must be reducible to all the individuals in that context mutually interacting to create that situation’ (1999a, p. 212). Thus, we see that King again reduces emergent social structure to individuals, or to a group, who together create a mutual social situation. King contends that the mutual situation is more than any one of the pin makers, but: ‘it is not emergent from or irreducible to all of them’ (1999a, p. 213). King is critical of Archer’s tendency towards social reification and argues that the interpretive tradition recognises that new social relations cannot be reduced to individuals. On Archer’s position here, King suggests: She misses the fact that because reality is social and that its very defining feature is its collaborative and mutual nature where collaboration between people, although having special properties irreducible to any one individual is very precisely only the relations between individuals. Social conditions are

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thus independent of any individual, as an individual, but that they are not more than all the individuals considered together in their social relations. (King, 1999a, p. 213)

Thus, for King, both cases of numerical and relational emergent properties can be explained in terms of other people. King argues instead for a social ontology which consists only of individuals and their ‘social relations’.12 As this brief account of the debate that ensues between Archer and King shows, there are clearly some issues surrounding Archer’s conception of emergence. Although King has helped shed some light on these issues, the interpretivist position offers limited assistance. However, Elder-­ Vass does offer some help, as is discussed below.  lder-Vass’ Conception of Emergence and Social Structure E Elder-Vass argues that: ‘(e)mergence is thus taken to justify the central ontological claim of social realism: that social structures, although the product of human individuals, have causal powers of their own, which cannot be reduced to the powers of those individuals’ (2007a, p. 27). Elder-Vass describes emergence as: … the idea that a whole can have properties (or powers) that are not possessed by its parts – or to put it more rigorously, properties that would not be possessed by its parts if they were not organised as a group into the form of this particular kind of whole. Such properties are called emergent properties, and any entity that has one or more emergent properties is an emergent entity. (Stephan, 1992, p. 27 in Elder-Vass, 2007a, p. 28)

Elder-Vass’ conception of emergence and his understanding of social structure is based on the premise that emergent properties, also known as 12  Although I am only dealing with King’s criticisms of Archer here, it should be noted that his critique also extends to Bhaskar and his transformational model of social action (TMSA), and Giddens and his structuration theory. King argues that because Bhaskar has argued that his TMSA model has a close connection to Archer’s morphogenetic approach, and also to Giddens’ structuration theory: ‘the positions of three major British social theorists can be shown to have a broad ‘family resemblance’ (1999a, p. 200). King has also made a similar argument elsewhere when he defends the hermeneutical position against critical realism (King, 1999b). I would argue that there are significant differences between Archer and Giddens’ approaches, given their alternative conceptions of social structure, and so King’s grouping of all three approaches is unhelpful. Archer, in her response to King criticisms of her, also makes a similar point (2000b, p. 465).

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the causal powers of an entity, arise from the organisation of the entity’s parts. He cites the example of water to illustrate this point, explaining that the properties of water, that is, it being liquid, or being able to put out fires, are clearly different from the properties of its constituents, hydrogen and oxygen. If these component parts were present simply as atoms, or organised into molecules of other types than water, the resulting substance would not have the properties of water. The same argument can be applied to emergence: its characteristic properties or powers depend both on the presence of its characteristic parts and on their being organised into the characteristic structure of the higher-level entity. Elder-Vass follows the usual convention of regarding wholes as being at a ‘higher-level’ than their parts. He argues that this does not imply a normative value, but is a useful metaphor for describing emergence (2007a). Elder-Vass suggests that emergent properties can be contrasted with ‘resultant properties’, which are described as properties of wholes: ‘that are possessed by its parts in isolation, or in an unstructured aggregation’ (2007a, p. 29). Elder-Vass cites the example of mass as a good example of resultant properties—the mass of a molecule is, for example, the sum of the mass of its constituent atoms. A property that is resultant at one level, can be emergent at another: for example, a dog may have a certain mass (resultant property) and the power to bark (emergent property) (2007a, p. 29). Resultant properties depend upon the mere summation or aggregation of a property in terms of its component parts, whilst emergent properties depend upon the presence of specific relationships between the parts—on their organisation into a particular type of whole. Elder-Vass also argues that the parts involved in emergence and their stability or fluctuation depends upon the operation of causal factors in the actual world. It is at this stage of the analysis that Elder-Vass is dependent upon Archer’s (1995) account of morphogenesis (to account for change in structure) and morphostasis (the endurance of social structures once initial change has occurred, or stability in structure). Elder-Vass recognises that morphogenesis is central to understanding the: ‘existence of emergent entities, and so any account of a specific case of emergence will include a temporal element, an explanation of how the entity concerned has come to exist’ (2007a, p. 30). However, Elder-Vass argues that Archer’s morphogenetic approach has limited explanatory potential in relation to emergence:

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… morphogenesis does not explain how an entity can possess emergent entities. Such an explanation always depends upon the existence of a specific set of synchronic relations between the parts: morphogenesis explains the development of such a set of relations over time, but the operation of a causal law at any given moment depends upon the presence of those parts in those relations at that specific moment in time. Thus the temporal element in the explanation of emergence must always be complemented by a synchronic relational moment. (Elder-Vass, 2007a, p. 30)

Elder-Vass calls this the explanatory reduction, an explanation which identifies how the properties or powers of the higher-level entity result from the properties of its parts and the way that they are organised, or in other words provides a description of the generative mechanism, responsible for the higher level property. The explanatory reduction is to be distinguished from eliminative reduction, where the causal power of the higher-level entity is redundant to the explanation, as explanation is simply concerned with observing its constructive features (2007a, p. 30).  onceptualising the Alternative Facets of Social Structure C Returning to Lopez and Scott (2000), who were discussed earlier, Elder-­ Vass (2008) considers their typology of social structure and argues that their framework is incomplete because it fails to incorporate an understanding of ‘emergence’, or the idea of structure as a ‘whole’ (2008). Further, following Lopez and Scott (2000), he argues that it is misleading as Bourdieu does in his view to give embodiment a greater role in our understanding of social structure, as opposed to other conceptions, such as institutional and relational structure. Elder-Vass builds on the Lopez and Scott’s (2000) typology by attempting to synthesise different conceptions of structure in the literature. He argues that social structure has many facets, including relational, institutional, embodiment, and social wholes, and contends that they should complement each other within a broader critical realist, emergentist framework. I reject Elder-Vass’ reduction of Bourdieu’s account of structure to embodiment, but take his broader argument that there is significant value in developing an account of structure which recognises its myriad forms, such as relational, institutional, embodied, and that such an account would be strengthened through more engagement with the notion of emergence, but also social wholes, which I turn to next.

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S tructures as Social Wholes Elder-Vass clearly supports the idea of structure as ‘social wholes’ and claims that: ‘(P)erhaps the most neglected sense of structure in the sociological literature is structure-as-whole’ (2008, p. 287). He also describes social wholes as the ‘ghost at the feast’, which have never really been acknowledged in the literature on structure (2008, p. 295). Elder-Vass is troubled by this neglect in the literature and argues that, unless the presence of social wholes is recognised, it is hard to make sense of the influences of its properties, its parts, and the relations between those parts (2008, p.  295). For Elder-Vass, the concept of emergence and social wholes are intimately related and he claims: (W)holes are emergent when they possess emergent properties, and properties of wholes are emergent if they would not be possessed by their parts, were those parts not organised into such a whole. (2008, pp. 284–285)

Elder-Vass’ aim here is to distinguish between emergent properties as parts, and the causal power of such properties when they become a social whole. When we describe a causal power in terms of the parts involved, we are referring to what Bhaskar sees as the critical realist notion of the generative mechanism.13 On this understanding, the social whole is always more than the sum of its parts. The key observation that Elder-Vass makes is that there has been much confusion in the literature as many writers: ‘are thinking of relations or properties rather than entities when they use the word structure’ (2008, p.  287, my emphasis on words other than structure). He goes on to explain that relations and properties do not have a substantial existence in any domain and that only entities have substance. The argument in favour of social wholes is developed against Lopez and Scott (2000), who prefer to view social institutions, for example, as a non-reified, cultural phenomena with a virtual, and not a material, existence (Elder-Vass, 2008, p. 287). Elder-Vass argues in favour of the idea that there are structures-as-wholes and that they are causally efficacious, substantial, material, and real (2008, p. 287). He contends that structure should be seen as structure-as-whole and, thus, we can seek and identify the social entities that possess causal power. He suggests that these entities, in turn, are structured by 13  See Chap. 2 for a more detailed discussion of a critical realism’s notion of generative mechanisms.

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structures-as-relations and that they contain the properties which are misleadingly identified as structures themselves and cause those (partial) empirical regularities mistakenly identified as structures. Elder-Vass emphasises that social entities do not necessarily imply a concept of society. He does not reject the notion of society, but maintains that we need to examine structure and people at a more intermediate level, rather than at a broad level of an entity termed society, arguing: If we are to explain the impact of social structure on human beings, then we must find some more determinate sorts of structure at an intermediate level between individual and society that can have more specific effects. The neglect of these intermediate levels is a common problem in the treatments of social structure. (Elder-Vass, 2008, p. 288)

It is important to note that Elder-Vass’ conception of social wholes has been rejected by other critical realists. Porpora is critical of Elder-Vass’ conception of social wholes, describing him as a ‘sociological holist’ who is too quick to ascribe social wholes as: ‘a level of reality, let alone a level higher than the rules of behaviour or behaviour from which they arise’ (2007, p.  198). Further, Porpora argues that Elder-Vass is mistaken to think that: ‘critical realism in general or that Archer and Bhaskar in particular are committed to it’ (2007, p. 199).  econciling Bourdieu and Critical Realism in a Relational R Emergentist Account As was argued in the previous chapter, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus makes sense only if we conceptualise reality as stratified between the real, the actual, and the empirical realms of critical realism’s ontology, but the same argument also applies to the field. Variations in outcomes for individuals and in terms of structural effects arise within and between these levels of structural conditioning (real, actual and empirical), and because they operate within an open and not closed society based on contingency and not necessity. Any given field will have its own internal dynamics, but crucially, this will also depend on the actions and positionality of individual habituses and how they relate to the logic or doxa of any particular field. The principle of relationality and of structural positions within the field is central to this, but Martin (2003) is correct to argue that there is an ontological vagueness to Bourdieu’s conception of relationality in the

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field. This issue, I suggest, can be addressed with input from Elder-Vass’ development of relational emergence. Beyond this broader critical realist ontological framing for habitus and field, the relational field sits comfortably with an emergentist view of social structure because it corresponds to one of its general structural elements. As Elder-Vass explains, relational structure is: ‘the relations between, or the organisation of, the parts of a whole’ (2008, p. 292, 2007b, p. 464). Further, he insists on the acknowledgment that there is a whole of which any particular relational structure is the organisation, and so we might describe the field and individuals within it as comprising a particular social whole. Elder-Vass contends that failure to accept the notion of social wholes may lead to reductionism as a result of seeing the parts of the whole, not as parts, but as social entities in themselves. Also, reductionism can occur when relational social structures are seen to relate to society as a whole, rather than more specific social entities, or fields. Relational structures are also implicated when understanding relations between individuals who are parts of structures, such as organisations (as field).14 Relations in themselves do not have causal effects in this scenario; they may produce social relations amongst individuals for example, but it is only when the relations and the things related combine that a social entity or the field is produced, which may have causal power in its own right (2008, p. 293). The debate between Elder-Vass (2007b) and Porpora (2007) provides a further clarification in this consideration of relational structure, as Elder-­ Vass uses this opportunity to defend his understanding of relational structure. Porpora, in his discussion of Elder-Vass’ critique of Archer (2007a), states that: it remains unclear what Elder-Vass ultimately means by social structure. Does he mean social relations, social rules, both or something else? (2007, p. 195)

In response, Elder-Vass contends: ‘(F)or Porpora, it seems, social structure is social relations, and so he finds it odd that I speak of structure as if it is something else’ (Elder-Vass, 2007b, p.  464). I would agree with Elder-Vass here, as Porpora seems reluctant to acknowledge social 14  It is also worth noting that an organisation can function as a field itself (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Also, see Elder-Vass (2007b) for an interesting illustrative example of how relational structure operate within organisations. In this example, he discusses his interaction with a TV sales assistant in a shop (2007b, pp. 473–474).

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structure as a separate entity, unless it emerges from human actions. In response to Porpora’s criticism, Elder-Vass clarifies two meanings of the terms ‘relational structure’, which in turn extends our understanding of fields. He argues that the two meanings can describe different aspects of the emergence of social structure and so he makes a distinction between: ‘a Relation, as an entity that is composed of its parts plus the relations between them’ (2007b, p. 464). In this explanation then, Relations, with a capital ‘R’, refer to relations-as-wholes and relations, with a lower-case ‘r’, refer to relations-as-connections (2007b, p. 464). Elder-Vass suggests that both understandings of relations remain popular in the literature and I would suggest that they enhance our understanding of the field. However, relation-as-connection is perhaps the meaning of relations that Porpora is referring to when he discusses the connections between factors (2007b, p. 464).  lder-Vass on Institutional Structure and Social Institutions E The next chapter provides an extended discussion of Bourdieu’s contested engagement with the concept of institutions, but it would be amiss to not briefly consider critical realists’ conception of institutions as part of the present discussion on structure and emergence. Institutional structure is said to be different to relational structure in an emergentist ontology, because, rather than corresponding to a structural element in the general theory of emergence, like relational structure, it is: ‘a particular, uniquely social, kind of structure—that of social institutions’ (Elder-Vass, 2008, p. 293). Institutions are seen as properties and, as such, their causal effectiveness derives from the existence of the entity possessing the property, for example, a norm group and from the parts and relations that make up this group. Elder-Vass explains that, without the norm group, there can be no institution, and therefore institutions depend upon the existence of a whole social entity, or a specific field. In addition, relations are also needed between people to make a norm group, thus establishing a link between relational and institutional structure (2008, p. 293). Elder-Vass regards social institutions as referring to arrangements involving large numbers of people whose behaviour is guided by norms and roles (Jary & Jary, 2000, in Elder-Vass, 2008, p. 288). He claims that the notion that social institution involves patterns of behaviour is an example of a flawed, but commonly used, method of understanding structure, that is, ‘structure-as-empirical-regularity’ (2008, p. 288). Elder-Vass goes on to consider the definition of the term ‘norm’ and states that the

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concept can be traced back to Durkheim and his notions of individual representations and collective representations (2008, p.  288). Elder-Vass suggests that this approach can imply two meanings, either that individuals enact beliefs, because of the particular normative views that they hold, or that the standardisation of these beliefs arises, at least in part, from the fact that the corresponding normative views are shared amongst the members of the cultural community concerned. In terms of causality then, this position refers to either, first, items of knowledge or belief held by individual human agents or, second, the argument that it is not individuals beliefs, but collective ones, that are causally effective (2008, p. 288). The latter, in Durkheim’s classification, form a part of a collective representation. Dissatisfied with Giddens’ structuration theory as an account of social institutions, Elder-Vass concludes that it seems to leave us with a contradiction: ‘He wants norms and values simultaneously to be more widely binding than their individual instantiation because of their collective character, but also nothing more than their individual instantiations in ontological terms’ (2008, p. 289). The former depends upon accepting that collective representations have causal powers in their own right, while the latter depends upon denying it. Elder-Vass poses the question: do collectives have representations or are collective representations nothing more than a group of individual representations that are similar? However, Elder-Vass accepts that Giddens’ ambivalence on this issue is understandable as the former depends upon having a mind/brain to form a representation and collectives don’t have them, only individuals do. For Elder-Vass, there is internal inconsistency in Giddens’ structuration theory, which is evident in Giddens’ commitment, on the one hand, to the existence of wider social structures (as shown in the case of social institutions) and, on the other hand, his conception of structure as only existing ‘in its instantiations in such practices as memory traces’ (Giddens, 1984, p. 17 in Elder-Vass, 2008, p. 289). Elder-Vass explains that this position is similar to Durkheim’s notion of collective representations, suggesting that structure is wider than individual social beliefs. However, an alternative notion of structure is involved if Giddens believes structures to exist as ‘instantiations’ in the actions of individuals. Elder-Vass argues that the collective approach is implied when Giddens considers structures to be: ‘rules and resources organised as properties of social systems’ (Giddens, 1979, p. 66, emphasis 57 added: Elder-Vass, 2008, p. 289). Elder-Vass suggests that norms are not collective representations and that the only representations involved in social institutions are those of the

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individuals concerned. Further, he adds that social institutions are not ‘entities’ either, although they are often conceptualised in these terms. In Elder-Vass’ view, norms are ‘actually properties of groups’ (2008, p. 290) and should be considered in terms of the emergentist framework that he advocates, in a manner which is similar to how all social practices are produced. Relating this to Bourdieu, an emergentist field-based account suggests that the institution is the causal power of the group which tends to produce the practices concerned. Elder-Vass claims that, like all causal powers in the critical realist position, the institution does not determine behaviour and is only really sustained if the members of the group endorse the practice with each other: ‘whether by advocating it, by praising or rewarding those who enact it…’ (2008, p.  291). These relations, then, when combined with these sorts of parts, provide a generative mechanism that gives the norm group causal power. The property is the institution and the causal power is the effect that the institution has on the behaviour of members of the norm group (2008, p. 291). This position does not deny that individuals have normative beliefs, but involves a broader recognition that multiple layers are involved at the level of ontology, each with their own emergent powers. Accordingly, we cannot fully explain emergent social structure without theorising the mechanisms at the level of the agent that combine to generate them.

3  In Conclusion For critical realists such as Elder-Vass (2007c), we can detach Bourdieu’s theoretical account of habitus and field from his purported conflationist ontology,15 but also the thin account of relationalism he is said to espouse and integrate it into a critical realist view of agency and structure. While I do not accept that habitus and field are conflationist, I endorse the overall sentiment, and agree that such an exercise is both possible and logical, and would address the ontological evasions or silence that characterise Bourdieu’s approach to field, but also habitus. The discussion of the concept of social structure as a field undertaken in this chapter is an important cornerstone of this book, and contributes to an understanding of the context within which habitus must operate or how structure and agency function in relation to each other. Bourdieu’s 15  A conflationist account is one that conflates the characteristics of structure and agency (Archer, 1995).

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notion of the field allows the social scientist to understand specific domains, identifying the particular battles for capital and power that characterise them, while also exploring how agents are affected by, but also affect the construction of the field. While Bourdieu advances our notion of structure as embodiment and field theory is clearly based on a relational understanding of structure, it has been the aim of this chapter to show that we can develop this into a more complex ontological account through engagement with critical realism. Just as a notion of embodiment cannot exhaust our understanding of social structure, so we must be vigilant against narrow accounts which privilege one type of structure over another within the field. Further, and as the extended critique of social structure in this chapter shows, there has been much work done on identifying the range of social structures that exist, that is, relational, institutional, and embodied, and such literature provides the social scientist with a rich set of tools with which to study the social world. Lopez and Scott, Giddens, and Elder-Vass’ conceptions of structure were considered in order to provide some context and points of intersection and refinement with Bourdieu’s concept of field. Elder-Vass, in particular, has been shown to be an important figure in this literature, and has done much to contribute to the literature on structure, and, relatedly, to our understanding of relational emergence and social wholes. The next chapter extends this discussion further by considering the relationship between agents, structures, and institutions, and develops a specifically Bourdieusian account of institutions.

Bibliography Akram, S. (2012). Fully Unconscious and Prone to Habit: The Characteristics of Agency in the Structure and Agency Dialectic. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 43(1), 45–65. Alexander, J. C. (1995). The Reality of Reduction: The Failed Synthesis of Pierre Bourdieu. In Fin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction and Problems of Reason (pp. 128–202). Verso. Archer, M. (1995). Realist Social Theory. The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (2000a). Being Human. The Problem of Agency. Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (2000b). For Structure: Its Reality, Properties and Powers: A Reply to Anthony King. The Sociological Review, 48, 464–472. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The Possibility of Naturalism. Harvester. Bhaskar, R. (1986). Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation. Verso.

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Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). The Field of Cultural Production. Columbia University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood. Bourdieu, P. (2005). The Social Structures of the Economy. Polity. Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo Academicus. Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990a). In Other Words. Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990b). The Logic of Practice. Polity. Bourdieu, P. (1996a). The Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1996b). State Nobility. Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L.  J. D. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Polity. Brubaker, R. (1985). Rethinking Classical Social Theory. The Sociological Vision of Pierre Bourdieu. Theory and Society, 14, 745–775. Bryant, C. G. A., & Jary, D. (Eds.). (1991). Giddens’ Theory of Structuration: A Critical Appreciation. Routledge. Buchholz, L. (2016). What Is a Global Field? Theorizing Fields Beyond the Nation State. The Sociological Review, 64(2), 31–60. Burnes, B., & Cooke, B. (2013). Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(4), 408–425. Decoteau, C. L. (2017). The AART of Ethnography: A Critical Realist Explanatory Research Model. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 47(1), 58–82. DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147–160. Elder-Vass, D. (2007a). For Emergence: Refining Archer’s Account of Social Structure. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 37(1), 25–44. Elder-Vass, D. (2007b). Social Structure and Social Relations. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 37(4), 463–477. Elder-Vass, D. (2007c). Reconciling Archer and Bourdieu in an Emergentist Theory of Action. Sociological Theory, 25(4), 325–346. Elder-Vass, D. (2008). Integrating Institutional, Relational and Embodied Structure: An Emergentist Perspective. The British Journal of Sociology, 59(2), 281–298. Fligstein, N., & Adams, D. (2011). Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields. Sociological Theory, 29(1), 1–26. Giddens, A. (1979). Central Problems in Social Theory. Macmillan Press Ltd. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration. University of California Press.

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Giddens, A. (1993). New Rules of Sociological Method. Polity. Go, J. (2008). Global Fields and Imperial Forms: Field Theory and the British and American Empires. Sociological Theory, 26(3), 201–229. Healy, K. (1998). Conceptualising Constraint: Mouzelis, Archer and the Concept of Social Structure. Sociology, 32(3), 509–522. Hilliers, M., & Mangez, E. (2014). An Introduction to Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Fields. Routledge. Jenkins, R. (2002). Pierre Bourdieu. Routledge. King, A. (1999a). Against Structure: A Critique of Morphogenetic Social Theory. The Sociological Review, 47(2), 199–227. King, A. (1999b). The Impossibility of Naturalism: The Antinomies of Bhaskar’s Realism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 29(3), 267–288. Kluttz, D. N., & Fligstein, N. (2016). Varieties of Sociological Field Theory. In S. Abrutyn (Ed.), Handbook of Contemporary Sociological Theory (Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research). Springer. Lopez, J., & Scott, J. (2000). Social Structure. Open University Press. Martin, J.  L. (2003). What Is Field Theory? American Journal of Sociology, 109(1), 1–49. Mey, H. (1972). Field Theory: A Study of Its Applications in the Social Sciences. St. Martin’s Press. Mische, A. (2011). Relational Sociology, Culture, and Agency. SAGE Publications Ltd.. Pachucki, M. A., & Breiger, R. L. (2010). Cultural Holes: Beyond Relationality in Social Networks and Culture. Annual Review of Sociology, 36(1), 205–222. Porpora, D. (2007). On Elder-Vass: Refining a Refinement. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 37(2), 196–199. Rummel, R.  J. (1975). Understanding Conflict and War. Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field. Wiley. Shilling, C. (1997). The Undersocialised Conception of the Embodied Agent in Modern Sociology. Sociology, 31(4), 737–754. Steinmetz, G. (2008). The Colonial State as a Social Field: Ethnographic Capital and Native Policy in the German Overseas Empire before 1914. American Sociological Review, 73(4), 589–612. Swartz, D. (1997). Culture and Power. The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. University of Chicago Press. Swartz, D. (2013). Symbolic Power, Politics and Intellectuals. University of Chicago Press. Wu, Z., & Jia, F. (2018). Toward a Theory of Supply Chain Fields – Understanding the Institutional Process of Supply Chain Localization. Journal of Operations Management, 58–59, 27–41.

CHAPTER 5

A Bourdieusian Approach to Institutions

In fact, without doing violence to the meaning of the word, one may term an institution all the beliefs and modes of behaviour instituted by the collectivity; sociology can then be defined as the science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning. (Durkheim, 1895/1982, p. 45) Institutions are clusters of norms which have emerged through social interaction as a society deals with particular issues/norms, which are more general than such organizations may be formed relative to the same issues. (Goodin, 1996, p. 235)

The social sciences have long been interested in institutions; a concept and unit of social analysis which has dominated in discussions from Durkheim to Parsons, with the latter, echoing Durkheim’s quote above, claiming that the breadth of the application of the term institution is so broad as to invoke the whole of the social (Parsons, 1985). Yet, despite the longevity of this interest there remains much confusion about what an institution is; how institutions differ from, but interact with organisations, structures and agents; and how they shape and inform the everyday. Bourdieu, I will argue, is someone who has largely been absent in debates on institutionalism, but potentially has much to offer. While Bourdieu’s work has often been brought to bear on structure and agency debates, it has had less impact on debates about institutions, or for

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thinking about the relationship between structures, agents and institutions, as well as the relationship between institutions and organisations. Further, while there has been some attention paid to institutions within critical realism, again this has been secondary to the focus on structure and agency debates. In this chapter, I consider Bourdieu’s nascent engagement with institutions and organisation in his work, while drawing on insights in critical realism to extend this into a more robust account of the relationship between structures, agents and institutions, thereby developing a critical realist inspired Bourdieusian account of institutions. Some of this work is already underway. Scholars have begun to note the traces of an organisational sociology in Bourdieu’s work (Hallett & Gougherty, 2018; Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008; Swartz, 2008). They have made the valid point that Bourdieu has always been interested in organisations and institutions despite never addressing these concepts in an explicit way. Consequently, while we may see occasional references to organisations and institutions in Bourdieu’s various texts, it does not constitute a significant theme in his body of work in the same way that habitus or field do. From another perspective, organisational sociology and debates on new institutionalism evidently bear the hallmark of Bourdieu’s influence as can be seen in the concept of the ‘organisational field’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). That the concept of ‘field’ in ‘organisational field’ derives from Bourdieu but is not always credited to him speaks to the somewhat ambivalent relationship Bourdieu has to organisational sociology (Powell & Colyvas, 2008).1 Nonetheless, Bourdieu’s influence on this issue is undoubtably evident when we recognise the cultural turn in the sociology of organisations and in new-institutionalist thought for which Bourdieu bears significant responsibility. Thus, an additional aim of the chapter is to recognise but also extend further the potential value of Bourdieu’s insights for organisational sociology. Far from being solely an academic concern, it is my aim in this chapter to demonstrate how the neglect of the conceptualisation of institutions goes to the heart of our ability to address institutional-level inequality. Confusion about institutions is seen most acutely in contemporary debates about institutional racism. While the Macpherson Report (1999) into the handling of the police investigation into the racist murder of Stephen  For example, not one of the 38 articles in the encyclopaedic Blackwell Companion to Organisations mentions Bourdieu (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008). 1

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Lawrence was a seminal moment in anti-racist struggles in the United Kingdom for specifying the role of institutions as distinct from individuals in perpetuating racism, there remains much contestation about how racism becomes embedded in institutions; the relationship between individuals and institutions; and how to approach institutional reform. Consequently, there is a need to question whether the concept of institutional racism, as identified by Macpherson, and as practiced post-­ Macpherson, is up to the task it sets itself, and if we need a more sustained and critical discussion about what institutional-level racism is, how it is reproduced, and how such insights can be extended to thinking about gender or other forms of institutional-level inequality. At the core of this debate, there is a need to think critically and in a more focused way about the concept of institution in institutional racism. To this end, after discussing how to conceptualise institutions which forms the main labour of this chapter, the chapter then applies this critique to tackling institutional racism, delineating the move from concept to practice. This chapter proceeds in five key moves. First, it is useful to address the nomenclature in this debate and establish the difference between organisations and institutions. Taking time to define the two terms sets the stage for the subsequent analysis and will avoid slippage between the two terms which, although related, are distinct, but are often used interchangeably. Second, I address the issue of whether there are traces of an organisational and institutional analysis to be found in Bourdieu’s oeuvre. Bourdieu did not describe himself using these terms or locate himself in the sub-discipline of organisational studies, but others have argued that he has a contribution to make. Third, I explore the scholarly literature on new or neo-institutionalism and look at how it has engaged with Bourdieu’s ideas to further its insights. Here, I particularly focus on the concept of the ‘organisational field’. In the fourth section, I draw out key insights for a Bourdieusian analysis of organisations and institutions, showing how this enriches Bourdieu’s project, while also filling a gap in social critique. I draw on critical realism to extend new institutionalist approaches to organisational analysis. In the fifth and final section of the chapter, I return to the problem of institutional racism, and drawing on insights from both Bourdieu and critical realism, show the difference that a more critical engagement with the concept of institutions makes for conceptualising and tackling institutional racism.

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1   Organisations and Institutions: What’s the Difference? Institutions and organisations can often be used interchangeably, or can be synonymous (Etzioni, 1964), but while there may be some relationship or overlap between the two, it is imperative that we distinguish between them because they in fact refer to separate social objects and confusing the two distorts our view of the world; it reflects a muddying of the units of social analysis.2 As a preliminary stage to the analysis and for clarity then, let us start by defining organisations and institutions, looking at points of overlap and distinction. Organisations can be social but also political in nature—in the same way that social phenomena can be ceremonial, industrial or economic. We can talk of social organisations such as a school, college or the mosque, and political organisations such as think tanks, interest groups or political parties. Similarly, institutions can be social or political, in the form of the family, marriage, religion or patriarchy and gender. There is obviously some overlap here as well as some blurring of boundaries in that patriarchy

2  Exceptions exist and for notable discussion of the relationship between institutions, social structures and their relationship to agency see Fleetwood (2008a, b). Fleetwood takes the time to distinguish institutions from structures, arguing against the easy slippage between institutions and structures but also ambiguity with regards how agents fit into the picture. He notes and cautions against the usage of vague phrases like ‘institutions and structures condition, govern, influence, or shape agency’ (2008b, p. 183). Drawing on Hodgson and Archer, Fleetwood defines institutions as ‘systems of established rules’ (2008a, p. 247), suggesting that ‘habituation is the process that links institutions and agency’ (2008a, p.  260), where habit is the linking mechanism. Social structures ‘effect’, ‘influence’ or ‘shape’ institutions (rules, conventions, norms, values, and customs) and are themselves defined as ‘structure-­as-relation’ or a latticework of relations, ‘with different latticework’s referring to different ways in which the parts relate’ (2008a, p.  258). Interestingly, Fleetwood adopts Archer’s account of structure and agency, meaning he adopts an overly reflexive account of agency, whereby: ‘reflexive deliberation, via the internal conversation is the process that links social structure and agency’ (2008b, p. 184).

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can be a social as well as a political institution, invoking issues of personal and social relationships but also of power and conflict.3 Bouma (1998) defines institutions as sets of norms, which apply across a variety of specific organisations, while organisations are structures of social relationships and social actors who are arranged in positions and roles, usually but not always deliberately arranged and designed to achieve one end. For Hallett and Gougherty (2018), institutions are the governing rationale that characterise the environments into which organisations are embedded, while Galaskiewicz defines institutions as a ‘network of roles, sanctions and ideologies’ (1991, p.  294). So, organisations are meso-level phenomena, while institutions are macro-level, forming the broader context within which organisations are located. For our purposes here it is important to understand institutions as relational and complex phenomena precisely because, as Mohr and White (2008) put it, any definition of institutions ‘must stretch across a broad and deep expanse of social life’, meaning that institutions are ‘immediately implicated in a much broader system of sociological theorizing’, invoking ‘a theory of actions, persons, social organization, cultural systems’ (2008, p.  488). Similarly, and emphasising the links between institutions and actors, Eisenstadt points out that, at their core, institutions are set of norms and expectations regulating the interaction of social actors—groups, agencies and individuals—with respect to some aspect of human social life (Eisenstadt, 1964). Mohr and White (2008) alert us to the ‘stickiness of institutions’, recognising that institutions reflect the more enduring ways of dealing with recurrent social and political issues. Institutions establish an environment in which organisations operate, they provide a normative context shaping the activities of groups, both limiting and facilitating change. But, while institutions tend to reproduction, hence their longevity, this is not necessarily the case. Thus, we need to be able to explain stability as well as change in institutions. Mohr and White (2008) are again useful here in 3  For example, Wajcman’s (1998) analysis of patriarchy in the organisational culture of several MNCs provides a good example of the relationship between institutions and organisations but also the enduring nature of institutions despite attempts to change them. For Wajcman, patriarchy as a social institution provides a set of norms and expectations related to gendered relationships, which is broader than the shapes, formation and operation of specific organisations. As a set of normative expectations affecting schools, the home and family life, Wajcman in her research documents old and more recent organisations, exploring and tracing the persistence of patriarchy in the face of intentional change.

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proposing that institutions are linkage mechanisms that bridge across three kinds of social divides: they link micro systems of social interaction to meso (and macro) levels of organisation; they connect the symbolic with the material; and the agentic with the structural. Principles of relationality and duality are key to this formulation. Relationality emphasises inter-locking networks while duality ‘is a relationship that inheres within and between two classes of social phenomena such that the structural ordering of one is constituted by and through the structural ordering of the other’ (Mohr & White, 2008, p. 490). On this account, institutional stability or resilience is directly linked to the overall degree of structural linkages that bridge across domains of level, meaning and agency—and as the authors argue, such weaving across the social and cultural domains occurs with difficulty and infrequently, but once accomplished institutions ‘effectively resist change’ (Mohr & White, 2008, p.  506). Institutional change or reform, on the other hand, requires that a change in knowledge is complemented with changes in social organisation, or ‘change in values requires change in style and thus in styles social fitting’ (Mohr & White, 2008, p. 507). Such change might be described as over-bridging, defined as multiple styles within the same institutional site. A further relevant point of distinction between institutions and organisations, which has implications for institutional analysis is that while organisational norms may be visible and subject to documentation and revision, the norms of an institution may be invisible and require deciphering because they may operate at a more general level compared to organisational norms. It is also worth noting that organisational norms and roles may be limited to a single organisation, while institutional norms, such as patriarchy, for instance, are trans-organisational and inter-organisational.

2   Bourdieu on Organisations Although Bourdieu spent much time focusing on schools (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) and, later, universities (1988, 1996) as the site of the reproduction of legitimised and dominant forms of cultural capital, which is misrecognised as universal; formal organisations were not a concern of his sociology. In his writing, organisations clearly feature as a central component of Bourdieu’s work and there is some brief mention of institutions, but he did not explicitly discuss or define either concept in the detail that he affords habitus, field and capital, nor did he engage with the insights of

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organisational theory. Furthermore, it is fair to say that in those instances where he does discuss the school or university, it is the concepts of habitus, field and capital that underpin his account of organisations and constitute the vectors through which he analyses the social dynamics of organisations rather than extending his conceptual vocabulary in new directions. Organisations in Bourdieu’s Work Reviewing the development of Francophone organisational studies as against Anglo-Saxon and the dominant North American School, Chalat (1994) is keen to point out the ‘relative autonomy’ of French organisational studies, indicating the ways in which the French school of thought resisted North American approaches to produce accounts of organisations which were distinctive to the French context. One point of distinction in Francophone organisational studies is to focus on wider socio-historical contexts within which organisations are located, and to explore the links between organisations and society but also the potential for transformation. Yet, Chalat highlights Bourdieu as someone who has more ‘modest’ aims in his work, and despite being interested in macro contexts, frames his approach in terms of transcending the traditional oppositions of individual and society and agent and structure rather than in terms of the role of organisations, or ‘thinking about the world in organisational terms’, as has been the call of organisational studies (Chalat, 1994, p. 47). It is The Social Structures of the Economy (2005) that we see Bourdieu’s most explicit engagement with organisations. In this text Bourdieu applies his theoretical framework to the housing market and orthodox economic theory, arguing that the housing market is socially constructed by the state, which can decide, for example, whether to promote private housing or collective provision, rather than through abstract economic concepts such as supply and demand, the market or value. Bourdieu relies on the notions of habitus, field and capital to build this critique. While the field concept may be familiar to readers of Bourdieu’s work, in this text, Bourdieu introduces the notion of ‘firm as field’. Bourdieu defines the firm as follows: In other words, if we enter the ‘black box’ that is the firm, we find not individuals, but, once again, a structure - that of the firm as a field, endowed with a relative autonomy in respect of the constraints associated within the firm’s position within the field of firms. (2005, p. 205)

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Bourdieu’s point here is to remind us that there are internal dynamics and power struggles within the firm. He explains that there is correspondence between the wider field and the firm over the volume of the firm’s capital, the structure of that capital and the structure of the distribution of capital amongst the various directors, managers and others involved in the firm. To understand the firm as a field of power, we need ‘to understand the logic of the struggles in which the firm’s goals are determined’ (2005, p. 206). Citing the example of Henry Ford who, despite displaying ‘brilliant success in production and distribution in the post-war period’, drove out his experienced and competent managers who subsequently became his competitors, Bourdieu reminds us that ‘the interests of the firm’ needs to be considered in relation to ‘interests within the firm’ (2005, p. 207— emphasis in original). If we were to be as optimistic as Hallett and Gougherty (2018) are, then we would see The Structures of the Social Economy (2005) as an attempt to develop the organisational sociology that implicitly if not explicitly frames Bourdieu’s work on education. I do not concur with this reading, and despite some attention to a notion of the firm in this book, it is clear that it is the concepts of habitus, field and capital which remain the core conceptual building blocks in The Social Structures of the Economy (2005), rather than any detailed and explicit engagement around the notion of organisations and institutions, which illuminate their distinctiveness, or how they interact with habitus, field and capital. Nonetheless, if we accept that Bourdieu does not explicitly engage with organisational theory, others have sought to rectify this neglect and argue that Bourdieu’s oeuvre may benefit from developments in organisational theory but, also, crucially, that organisational theory benefits from closer engagement with Bourdieu. To this end, Hallett and Gougherty (2018, p.  274) identify ‘traces of an organisational sociology’ in some of Bourdieu’s canonical works, suggesting that Bourdieu’s work can be used ‘to gain leverage for understanding organizations and the institutional environments in which they are embedded’ (2018, p.  273). This has largely been achieved through interpreting organisations through the prism of a habitus-field-capital triumvirate (Hallett & Gougherty, 2018; Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008, Swartz, 2008). Underpinning such an approach is engagement with structure and agency debates as was Bourdieu’s primary concern in his work. What has not been addressed in this emerging literature is thinking about the precise conceptualisation of institutions at an ontological level—something which remains latent and

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implicit in much of the literature, and not just in Bourdieu’s work, or for those who argue for a Bourdieu-inspired organisational studies. Furthermore, there is limited attention paid to extending beyond structure and agency debates to reflecting on structure-agency and institutions. These inter-­relationships are worthy of further exploration, as will be detailed below, but first let us turn to encounters between (new) institutionalism and Bourdieu.

3   Bourdieu and New Institutionalism All social systems - hence, all organizations - exist in an institutional environment that defines and delimits social reality. (Scott, 1987, p. 507)

Writing in 1996, Goodin suggests that ‘(S)ocial scientists have rediscovered institutions’, pointing out that there is a resurgent interest in the ways in which social and political institutions ‘shape the patterns of individual interaction that produce social phenomena’ (1996, p. ii). Lowndes and Roberts (2013) go further to suggest that a new institutionalist ‘revolution’ is taking place, reminding us that institutions matter and are, in fact, ‘central to the subject matter of political analysis’ (2013, p. 1). Dating from around the 1980s, this resurgent interest in institutions presents something of a paradox because while institutional analysis ‘is as old as Emile Durkheim’s exhortation to study “social facts as things”’, new institutionalism is also ‘sufficiently novel to be preceded by new in much of the contemporary literature’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 1). Thus, we might be justified in asking what’s new about new institutionalism but also to look back and trace the roots and early development of the approach to track the course that this debate has taken. If, for instance, we consider the discipline of political science, Lowndes and Roberts (2013, p. 1) recount that: ‘…up until the 1950s, institutionalism was political science’ and by this they mean that the discipline concentrated upon the study of constitutions and the formal organisational arrangements of representation and government, meaning that in practice it was concerned with comparing executives and legislatures, parties and electoral systems across countries and over time. Challenges in the form of the behavioural revolution but also from Marxism and rational choice theorists resulted in the need for more complex accounts of ‘what lay beneath the formalisms of politics’ (Lowndes & Roberts, 2013, p.  1), leading to a move away from what we might call ‘old institutionalism’.

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This ‘rediscovery’ or re-turn to institutions is usefully situated within a longer historical perspective, because while the study of institutions has long been a preoccupation of the social and political sciences, the more recent work in this area marks a departure from a more traditional approach to institutions. There are several features of the turn to new institutionalism, which are worth highlighting and will help to navigate more recent work in this area. New institutionalism differs from old institutionalism in recognising ‘the descriptive and atheoretical style of a generation of earlier institutionalists’, it also operates with ‘more explicit (if diverse) theoretical frameworks’ (Lowndes & Roberts, 2013, p.  2). Accordingly, a distinct number of approaches to the study of institutionalism have emerged, and we can note historical, rational choice and sociological institutionalism as distinct analytical approaches (Peters, 2005). Despite the proliferation of theoretical approaches to new institutionalism, there remains some ambiguity about what institutionalism is, because there is a tendency to be ‘rather casual’ about defining institutions (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 1), which is not helped by the fact that different disciplines may have their own interpretation of institutionalism as per their disciplinary interests.4 A notable part of the resurgence of interest in institutions is the turn to institutions in organisational studies, thus reaffirming the need to think carefully about the relationship between organisations and institutions. Over the last 20 years, organisational studies have been increasingly preoccupied with explaining how institutions come into existence, remain stable, and are transformed but also how they impact organisational life (March & Olsen, 1984; DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Oliver, 1991; Scott & Meyer, 1994; Clegg & Hardy, 1999; Rego et al., 2004; Scott, 2008). For this reason, the discussion below centres on organisational studies but also takes in some broader insights where relevant to show the evolution of 4  For a concise overview of how the different disciplines have each engaged with and interpreted shifts between old or a more traditional form of institutionalism to new institutionalism, see Goodin (1996, pp. 2–20). As Goodin argues, institutionalism is a concept that is relevant to history, sociology, economics, politics, and social theory more broadly and each discipline sees ‘social institutions as solutions to the problems which each respective discipline deemed central’ (1996, p. 2). Similarly, DiMaggio and Powell (1991) argue that there are many new institutionalism(s) as interpreted by a range of disciplines, but that while discipline-­ specific they are ‘united by little but a common skepticism toward atomistic accounts of social processes and a common conviction that institutional arrangements and social processes matter’ (1991, p. 3, also see pp. 2–26).

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new institutionalism. Throughout, my key concern is to illuminate Bourdieu’s influence on new institutionalist approaches to organisational studies. Organisational Studies Meets New Institutionalism As established earlier, distinguishing between organisations and institutions to avoid easy slippage between the two is helpful from a conceptual point of view for recognising that they are distinct concepts but also for elaborating on their interactions. This point of clarification has been instrumental for enabling organisational studies to benefit from engagement with new-institutionalist analysis as has been the insight of some landmark scholarship which advocates a new institutionalist approach to organisations and organisation studies (Meyer & Rowan, 1991; DiMaggio & Powell, 1991) but also to organisations in political science (March & Olsen, 1984).5 Meyer and Rowan’s (1991, 1977)6 work highlights a tendency for conformity or homogeneity in organisations and explains this through ­reference to the contextualising and legitimising role of institutions to organisations. This reading of organisations challenges the longstanding orthodoxy in organisational studies for focusing on variations in structure and behaviour in organisations but also for understanding organisational environments largely as a source of ‘stocks of resources’ and ‘technical know-how’ (Scott & Meyer, 1987). Positing the ‘institutionalised organisation’, Meyer and Rowan (1991) argue that organisational structures are not the outgrowth of rational action in response to technical needs as much of the literature in the field posits, rather they point to the institutional parameters within which organisation are to be found. Meyer and Rowan argue that:

5  For a good example of a new institutionalist approach to political science see: March, J.G., and Olsen, J.P. (1984). ‘The new institutionalism: Organizational factors in political life.’ American Political Science Review, Vol. 78. pp. 734–749. 6  The 1991 version of Meyer and Rowan’s argument was also published in 1977. See: Meyer and Rowan (1991) ‘Institutionalised organisations: formal structure as myth and ceremony’ in DiMaggio and Powell ed. New Institutionalism in Organisational Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Also see: Meyer, J.  W., and Rowan, B. (1977). ‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony’. The American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 83. No. 2. pp. 340–363.

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Many of the positions, policies, programs, and procedures of modern organizations are enforced by public opinion, by the views of important constituents, by knowledge legitimated through the educational system, by social prestige, by the laws, and by the definitions of negligence and prudence used by the courts. (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, p. 343)

Functioning as ‘manifestations of powerful institutional rules’, the ‘positions, policies and programmes’ noted in the quote above operate as ‘rationalized myths that are binding on particular organizations’ (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, p. 343). At the institutional level, it is by engaging with institutional and ‘rational myths’, shared belief systems and ‘ceremony’ that the organisation secures itself, rather than through a primary focus on the demands of day-to-day work activities. On this view, organisations must ‘couple’ with institutions in order to be ‘more legitimate, successful and likely to survive’ (Meyer & Rowan in DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 61). ‘Decoupling’ may need to occur where day-to-day activities of the organisation differ from institutional norms, thereby reducing uncertainty about the effectiveness of institutional alignment. Drawing on Goffman’s notion of ‘face value’, Meyer and Rowan argue that decoupling or coupling with institutions where relevant leads to ‘confidence’ and ‘good faith’ in organisations, thereby securing internal consistency. Practical matters, of course, still matter, and while formal structures in organisations ‘actually co-ordinate and control work’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 43), the ideal scenario is to maintain the organisation in a loosely coupled state with prevailing institutions (1991, p. 60). Ultimately, coupling with the cultural and symbolic aspects of the institutional environment rather than efficiency or technical rationality are the primary goal for organisations (Meyer & Rowan, 1991). An illustrative example might prove instructive here. Exploring approaches to pedagogy in schools, and through analysing American schools, Meyer and Rowan (1978) found that while one might expect the formal rules of the school to be tightly coupled with classroom activities or the day-to-day activity of schools, the opposite was in fact true. Institutional alignment in the case of the American school system means that schooling reflects a bureaucratised, uniform and professionalised standard. They found that schools reflect widespread myths or beliefs about how schools should operate, regardless of whether this is efficient, but in the long term, this ensures legitimacy and, ultimately, their survival. The authors argue that reforms in school signal compliance, but teaching is

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largely unsupervised and practice varied. This suggests that when organisations confer to rules understood as myths, this ensures their survival. Schools thus subscribe to cultural ideas about what a school or organisation should look like. With this insight, Meyer and Rowan (1991) shifted their insights from intra-organisational processes to examining the structural dynamics of the macro cultural or institutional environment that frame organisations. But as DiMaggio and Powell (1991) argue, the institutional approach associated with Meyer and colleagues posits the importance of myths and ceremony but does not ask how these models arise and whose interests they initially serve.7 In his review article exploring the different approaches to institutionalisation, Scott (1987) points out that among the different versions of institutionalisation in the literature,8 each with their own points of difference, the common feature in all of these definitions is that institutionalisation is viewed as ‘the social process by which individuals and organisations come to accept a shared definition of social reality’ (1987, p. 496). Scott, therefore, echoes Meyer and Rowan’s point that institutional organisations reflect: ‘the widespread understanding of social reality’ (1977, p.  343). The key feature of the shared view is that is that its validity is seen as independent of the actor’s own views or actions but is also taken for granted as defining the “‘way things are’ and/or the ‘way things are to be done’” (Scott, 1987, p. 496). Bourdieu and New-institutionalism Since the 1980s scholars have drawn on Bourdieu’s work to gain insight into organisations and the institutional environments in which they are embedded. This turn to Bourdieu is related to a broader Bourdieu-inspired cultural turn in the social sciences (Scott, 1987), and this influence can be

7  It is also useful to note Scott and Meyer’s (1987) study into public, private and parochial schools across six counties in the San Francisco Bay area, where they found that ‘organizations operating in more complex and conflicted environments will exhibit greater administrative complexity and reduced program coherence’ (Scott & Meyer, 1987, p.  129). They conclude that organisations are negatively impacted when the broader institutional environment is conflicted. 8  Scott (1987) outlines four different approaches to institutionalisation: as value-based process; as a process of creating reality; as a class of elements; and, finally, as distinct societal spheres.

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seen most clearly in DiMaggio’s extensive body of work on this issue (DiMaggio, 1979; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983, 1991). The Organisational Field A Bourdieu-influenced ‘new institutionalism’ has largely become the dominant paradigm in organisational sociology, and it is the concept of field which has had most influence. DiMaggio was the first to term the word organisational field, which is invoked in the sense of common purpose and conflict over strategy and capital in the organisational field, leading him to argue that organisational fields are characterised by conformity, thus challening anarchism and individualism as the dominant approaches to organisational survival. Acknowledging the influence of Weber on organisational studies, DiMaggio and Powell (1991) accept that, while rationalised bureaucracy under capitalism was indeed an iron cage, ‘the engine of organisational rationalization has shifted’ (1991, p. 63) and it is time to revisit the causes of bureaucratisation and rationalisation. Whilst recognising that organisational homogeneity and bureaucracy remain the common organisational form today, they argue that structural change is less driven by competition or efficiency and instead: Bureaucratisation and other forms of homogenisation emerge, we argue, out of the structuration of organizational fields. (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 64)

‘(T)he great rationalisers of the second half of the twentieth century’ (1991, p. 64), the state and the effect of professionalisation are held to be largely responsible for this shift and DiMaggio and Powell find that: ‘individual efforts to deal rationally with uncertainty and constraint often lead, in the aggregate, to homogeneity in structure, culture and output’ (1991, p. 64). DiMaggio and Powell, like Meyer and colleagues, are concerned with the question of: ‘why there is such startling homogeneity of organisational forms and practices’, leading them to want to explain ‘homogeneity, not variation’ (1991, p.  64). Let us consider their definition of organisational fields: By organizational field we mean those organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognised area of institutional life: key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organisations that produce similar services or products. (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, pp. 64–65)

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DiMaggio and Powell’s definition of the organisational field is interesting for highlighting who belongs in the field but also the broader context within which organisations sit and share in ‘a form of institutional life’. Such an approach directs our attention not simply to competing organisations or to networks of organisations that interact—but to the ‘totality of relevant actors’, thus emphasising ‘connectedness and structural equivalence’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 65). I return to the term structure below but continue the focus on the organisational field here. Tellingly, DiMaggio and Powell are heavily reliant on the notion of field, but in their seminal chapter from which the quote above is taken, and in the earlier article (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), they do not attribute the term to Bourdieu although elsewhere DiMaggio has discussed Bourdieu’s body of work and influence.9 With regards to Bourdieu, DiMaggio acknowledges that: ‘(F)ew bodies of work are so systematic, so comprehensive, so creative or fertile as Bourdieu’s (1979, p. 1466), but also that: ‘Bourdieu’s work is in many respects inchoate - to paraphrase Merton, a collection of new departures and too few arrivals’ (1979, p. 1466). Evidently, the adoption and integration of the field concept into new institutionalist approaches to organisation studies is complete to the extent that Bourdieu does not require mentioning. DiMaggio and Powell (1991) identify stages associated with the emergence of the organisational field. In the initial stages of their life cycle, organisational fields may display considerable diversity in approach and form, but once a field becomes established: ‘there is an inexorable push towards homogenisation’ (1991, p. 64). Any new entrants to the organisational field are subject to homogenisation once the field is secure. For example, DiMaggio and Powell cite research denoting the evolution of American college textbook publishing, which changes from a large selection to the dominance of two models. Similarly, they document the eventual dominance of organisational forms in legal education, hospitals, public schools, radio, as well as in provision of high culture in the late nineteenth century—examples which all point to the dominance of single models, or homogeneity in their respective areas (1991, p. 64).

9  The arguments developed in DiMaggio and Powell’s (1991) edited collection, prefaced by their stellar introduction, were first made in DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W. (1983). The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review, Vol. 48. No. 2. pp. 147–160.

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What does structural mean in this approach to the organisational field, and what do DiMaggio and Powell mean by the ‘structural equivalence’ of organisational fields as noted earlier? (1991, p. 65). Structural or ‘structuration’ processes are historically and logically prior to processes of institutional isomorphism (or homogenisation). Drawing on Giddens’ conceptualisation of the relationship between structures and agents, structuration refers to ‘the continual and necessary reproduction of social structure by “knowledgeable agents” in everyday life and the reciprocal indexing of their actions to shared typification’ (1991, p.  22).10 For DiMaggio and Powell, the organisational field is subject to structuration as a result of the activities of the organisation, and to understand the institutionalisation of organisational fields, we must first attend to its structuring. DiMaggio and Powell (1991, p. 268) identify a tendency to neglect structuration of the organisational field, which has the effect of providing a ‘one-sided vision of institutional change’ that emphasises taken-for-­ granted evolution at the expense of myriad intentional and otherwise processes that define the field and set it upon a trajectory that may eventually appear as natural. This structuration of the organisational field cannot be determined a priori but must be defined on the basis of empirical observation of the organisational field in question. Fields only exist to the extent that they are institutionally defined, and this process of institutional definition, or structuration, consists of four parts: (a) There is an increase in the extent of the interaction among organisations in the field; (b) the emergence of sharply defined interorganisational structures of domination and patterns of coalition; (c) an increase in the information load with which organisations in a field must contend; and, finally, (d) the development of a mutual awareness among participants in a set of organisations that they are involved in a common enterprise (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Once organisations are structured into a particular field, forces emerge that lead them to become similar to each other. Organisations may try to change their goals, develop new practices, but in the long run organisational actors making rational decisions construct around themselves an environment that constrains their ability to change further. 10  For Giddens the same structural characteristics are present in the subject (the actor), as in the object. Accordingly, structure and agency are seen as a duality, not a dualism; they are interdependent and internally related, thus: ‘structure is both the medium and outcome of interactions’ (Giddens, 1979, p. 15).

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Institutional Isomorphism DiMaggio and Powell (1991) describe organisational homogenisation as isomorphism.11 They identify two types of isomorphism: Competitive isomorphism and institutional isomorphism. Competitive isomorphism invokes Weber’s formative influence on the subject, suggesting organisational competitiveness in open systems. Building on Weber, DiMaggio and Powell (1991) propose the utility of institutional isomorphism—an approach which takes the world or macro context and other institutions into account. DiMaggio and Powell identify three mechanisms through which institutional isomorphism occurs. It is worth outlining each of these. Coercive isomorphism occurs because of political influence and the problem of legitimacy and may be experienced ‘as force, as persuasion, or as invitations to join the collusion’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 67). It arises as a result of formal and informal pressures exerted by organisations towards other organisations upon which they are dependent but is also informed by the cultural expectations of a society. Government imperatives such as safety or control standards may function as channels for coercive isomorphism. Large organisations may dominate in coercive isomorphism, while small organisations may need to adapt to ensure survival, which may also lead to reinforcement of hierarchy. Secondly, there is mimetic isomorphism, which arises from responses to uncertainty and emerges when organisations ‘are poorly understood’, when ‘goals are ambiguous’ or the environment creates uncertainty, leading to a situation where an organisation may seek to imitate other organisations (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p.  69). There are clear benefits to such an approach: It means that an organisation can draw on other people’s experiences and so other organisations become models, sometimes unwittingly. DiMaggio and Powell give the example of Japanese modernisers in the late nineteenth century modelling new governmental 11  DiMaggio and Powell (1991, p.  66) are not the first to identify institutional isomorphism and follow Meyer (1983) and Fennell (1980) in their identification of competitive and isomorphic institutionalism as the two types of isomorphism. DiMaggio and Powell (1991) acknowledge Hawley (1968) and Hannan and Freeman’s (1977) earlier work on isomorphism. Hawley focuses on selection, defining isomorphism ‘as a constraining process that forces one unit in a population to resemble other units that face the same set of environmental conditions’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 66). Hannan and Freeman’s (1977) definition of isomorphism builds on Hawley’s but identifies non-optimal forms of selection out of a population of organisations. It also acknowledges organisational learning and adaptation of behaviour to the environment.

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institutions on apparently successful Western prototypes. They detail how the Japanese sought to copy Western approaches to the courts, army, and police from France, while also looking to the navy and postal system in Great Britain. While organisations tend to model themselves after similar organisations in their field that they perceive to be more legitimate or successful, this does not suggest that organisations will be more efficient, but they may increase their legitimacy in maintaining conformity. The final mechanism, normative isomorphism, and the model explored in DiMaggio’s critique of the development of the art museum organisational field (discussed below), is associated with professionalisation and allows for the development of, but also conformity that arises from, professional standards. Following Larson, DiMaggio and Powell (1991) interpret professionalisation ‘as the collective struggle of members of an occupation to define the conditions and methods of their work, to control the ‘production of producers’ (Larson, 1977, pp. 49–52) - and to provide a cognitive base and legitimation for their occupational autonomy’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p.  70).12 Professionalisation relies on two criteria: (1) The first rests on formal education and the legitimation of a cognitive basis produced by university specialists; (2) the second is the growth and elaboration of professional networks that span organisations and across which new models diffuse rapidly. Universities, training institutions, and trade associations provide for the definition and promulgation of normative rules about organisational and professional behaviour, which means that there is significant homogeneity in the types of people who occupy roles at various levels of hierarchy, leading to the claim that ‘individuals who make it to the top are virtually indistinguishable’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 71). Overall, DiMaggio and Powell (1991) argue that different forms of isomorphism may intermingle in empirical settings, but that they derive from different conditions and may lead to different outcomes. In short, then, DiMaggio and Powell can be seen to bring a Bourdieu-­ inspired macro approach to the study of organisations. This perspective challenges orthodox views in organisational studies which see organisations as either anarchic or as federations of loosely coupled parts, or autonomy seeking agents, which are immune to broader societal influences, at a structural and institutional level. Such a position brings organisational 12  The internal reference here is to: Larson M. S. (1977). The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. University of California Press, Berkeley.

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studies in line with broader thinking about the nature of societies in which organisations are located. DiMaggio and Powell (1991) are persuasive in arguing that they: ‘find it difficult to square the extant literature on organisations with these macrosocial views’ in social theory (1991, p. 78). They find that while not rejecting the natural selection, nor elite control arguments out of hand: ‘(b)ut we contend that neither of these processes is sufficient to explain the extent to which organisations have become structurally more similar’ over time (1991, p. 79). Recognition of institutional isomorphism has the added benefit of allowing for recognition of the role of elites in society but also explains frustrations of power, and the lack of innovation that is so commonplace to organisational life. Situating organisations within a macro scale enables one to explain why certain organisations attain legitimacy and become widespread. Further, an understanding of the manner in which fields become homogenous would prevent policy makers and analysts from confusing the disappearance of an organisational form from its substantive failure. It would also account for the role of power and of state actors to exert dominant effects on the field, meaning to set norms and shape the field, thus challenging longstanding attempts to encourage organisational diversity which tend to occur in an organisational vacuum while not recognising field effects.  he Art Museum Field T Attempts to understand the institutionalisation of organisation fields has been tackled in some notable empirical studies and it may be worth outlining one such example to illustrate the arguments presented here. DiMaggio (1991), for instance, offers us the now classic example of the construction of the US Art museum field between 1920 and 1940 as an example of the development of an ‘organisation field’ but also as an illustration of normative isomorphism as outlined above.13 DiMaggio’s (1991) starting point is to question the long-standing assumptions in organisation studies to focus on organisational diffusion at 13  I focus on DiMaggio’s (1991, pp. 267–292) account of the museum as organisational field here, but a further useful empirical example of the significance of the macro environment to organisations is highlighted in Galaskiewicz’ account of the institutionalisation of corporate socially responsible behaviour throughout the business community in Minneapolis, St Paul (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, pp. 293–310). We should also note Fligstein’s account of the diversification of large firms in the United States (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, pp. 311–336).

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the local level while using organisational or geographic areas as units of analysis, as well as the implicit understanding that organisational forms ‘are standardized through the effortless evolution of common sense understandings about how to organise’ (1991, p. 268.). Taking the example of museums, DiMaggio highlights substantial disagreement about key aspects of museum form and function, while documenting a pivotal role for professional occupations as well as philanthropic foundations who are critical to shaping this particular organisational field. Offering a historical account of how to map an organisational field in order to understand institutionalisation at the macro level but also its effects on organisations at a micro level, DiMaggio details the influence of professional occupations on inter-organisational relations, thus showing the effects of organisations that employ professionals and professionally controlled organisations in the organisational field. According to DiMaggio: Diffusion of museums was guided and shaped by the emergence of fieldwide structures at the national level, outside the boundaries of particular museums, and that this professionally constructed environment was the site of much organising by actors who wished to change the museum’s structure and mission. (1991, pp. 286–287)

DiMaggio explains that while we might be tempted to focus on those employed within museums, or formal relations between museum to understand and explain their diffusion over this period, there are factors outside of the museums themselves, or factors within them, which deserve our attention. Specifically, we see a huge growth in the wider field which supported the growth and emergence of the museum organisational field. To understand and document this broader context, we must recognise that there are multiple factors which inform the growth of museums in the United States between 1920 and 1940, including the expansion of higher education in fine arts which led to a growth in consumers of museum services; an increase in museum experts in the form of graduates of art-related subjects; as well as the consolidation of art history or fine arts courses at universities. However, it is philanthropy from large foundations including the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, which provided the source of capital to fuel the growth of art museums during this period. Yet, DiMaggio’s core point here is that this financial support, particularly from the Carnegie Foundation under president Frederick Keppel (1923–41)

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was a ‘concerted effort to treat the arts as a coherent field susceptible to central influence and direction, that is as an object of policy’ (DiMaggio, 1988b in DiMaggio, 1991, p. 275).14 Through funding, but also controlling the direction and strategy of museums, Carnegie’s grants contributed to professionalising museum work as a means of co-ordinating the museum field. The overall result of this is that it is the organisational work of museum professional and intra-museum associational activities of museum professionals that shape and structure the development of museums during the period in question, rather than the formal ties among the museums that employed them. DiMaggio (1991) identifies five elements of professionalisation,15 some of which have already been discussed above, and four elements of structuration that define this organisation field. Let us consider this account of structuration as it is important for thinking about the broader themes that help to consolidate an organisational field. The first factor noted by DiMaggio (1991) in the structuration of the organisational field is the increase in the density of interorganisational contacts. For instance, the Carnegie Foundation provided support for various national and local museum conferences and the creation of the corporation’s own professionals increased the intensity of interaction among museums. A second factor relates to increases in the flow of information. As such, the Carnegie Foundation increased the flow of organisationally salient information by increasing the volume of research findings, sponsoring educational programmes for museum professionals and funding the publication of books, periodicals and directories. Third, we can note the emergence of a centre-periphery structure. This was achieved by making grants to selected museums for pilot projects, and the Carnegie Foundation drew attention to successful applicants in a way that enhanced their position in the field as a whole. Finally, the collective definition of a field is achieved by focusing its grant making on the contribution of art museums as a group as can be seen in supporting the American Association of Museums, funding production and directories of museums and museum workers, as well as collecting data on museums. As a result of these 14  To be clear, the internal citation here in DiMaggio (1991) refers to earlier work by DiMaggio (1988). 15  DiMaggio (1991) identifies the five elements of professionalisation as: production of university-trained experts; the creation of a body of knowledge; organisations of professional associations; consolidation of a professional elite; and increasing the organisational salience of professional expertise (1991, pp. 275–276).

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activities, the Carnegie Foundation reinforced the idea that museum professionals were part of a collective enterprise, meaning that they would look to each other as models and sources of innovation. Of course, such an approach on the part of the Carnegie Foundation may not be part of an intentional, or conscious design, and the Carnegie’s own interests may be far ranging, even scattered, but their overall effect on the development of the museum field through promoting professionalisation was to increase homogeneity, or normative isomorphism (1991, p. 279).

4   Organisations and Institutions: The Re-turn to Agency Bourdieu’s influence on new institutionalism and the study of organisations is clearly evident in the widespread adoption of the concept of the organisational field, but there remain concerns about the relative neglect of habitus and capital, and whether the concept of field can be divorced from Bourdieu’s broader theoretical framework. Demarcating the concept of field from habitus and capital, as has been argued to be the case in organisational studies, has consequences not only for how field has been used in the literature but, in neglecting habitus, for understanding how actors act in, reproduce and sustain the organisational field. As Mangi (2009), Emirbayer and Johnson (2008) and Swartz (2008) note, Bourdieu’s master concepts of habitus, capital and field must be seen as internally linked to each other in order for them to achieve their full analytical potential. Even though a Bourdieu-inspired new-institutionalist approach to organisational studies has taken shape in recent years, the sub-field has encountered challenges, which reflect the problems associated with adopting a cherry-picking approach to Bourdieu’s theoretical framework. As Mangi (2009) notes, three lines of criticisms can be made: First, the idea that organisational fields wield similar influence throughout an organisational field continues to be disputed. Specifically, there have been questions about the sources of institutional pressure, particularly where do myths come from; how do practices spread; and over sources of legitimacy. Second, it has been argued that fields are not necessarily unified and can be fragmented and heterogenous partly because of actors’ behaviour, which cannot be pre-determined, but is subject to multiple endogenous institutional influences. For instance, government influence in the form of

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regulation of the workplace is a notable consideration for organisations (Edelman, 1992, Edelman et al., 1999; DiMaggio, 1988; Scott, 1987). Third, and perhaps this is the underlying issue in this debate: It would seem that, despite DiMaggio and colleagues’ adoption of the organisation field, which derives from their critique that the old institutionalist literature neglected the issue of structure and agency by, in turn, neglecting habitus, it has, in fact, evaded discussions of how actors operate within the organisational field. The issue of structure and agency, although seemingly a focus for DiMaggio and colleagues, is yet to be addressed if organisational studies is to move forward. While Giddens’ understanding of the structure and agency relationship is clearly an influence in DiMaggio and colleagues’ adoption of the organisational field concept, agents remain under-theorised in new-institutionalist approaches to organisations and institutions given that this perspective relies on Giddens’ notion of agency, and so sees agents as making use of rules and regulations, rather than engaging with a more complex account of agency as developed in Bourdieu’s habitus. The Turn to Agency ‘Neo-institutionalism more often bends towards (the) organisational field as the level of analysis’ (Mangi, 2009, p. 326) without recognising that if we want to understand how actors behave within the field, then you must employ a notion of habitus, yet: ‘habitus has always been seen with suspicion and barely employed’ in American sociology (Mangi, 2009, p. 330). While there has been some recognition of the need to recognise and account for agency in new institutionalism, it is, in fact, a very narrow or naïve account of agency. Agency, within this perspective, has largely been conceptualised under the influence of the cognitive turn, which means that it emphasises cognitivist metaphors of mental models involving ‘scripts’ and ‘schemas’, rather than a more nuanced account of how agents interact, reproduce or challenge structures or fields (Mangi, 2009). For Swartz, the cognitive turn in new institutionalism only ‘partially taps the dispositional character’ of habitus while neglecting the corporeal or embodied dimension of the concept (2008, p. 48). A narrow approach to the field, which divorces it from its relational counterparts is reflective of the broader tendency in the American appropriation of Bourdieu’s sociology to pick up single concepts such as field or culture capital and to subtract them from the overall framework while

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subjecting them to empirical testing (Mangi, 2009). Wacquant (2018) highlights the tendency to apply Bourdieu concepts in a rhetorical fashion and without serious engagement with their meaning, arguing that: ‘(T)he concept of field is perhaps the most abused in this manner’, while pointing out that the ‘organizational field’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991) and ‘strategic action field’ (Fligstein & McAdam, 2011) ‘are loose derivations or semantic echoes of Bourdieu’s champ (field) that obfuscate the latter’s distinctiveness’ (2018, p. 13). The problem with this piecemeal approach is that it is contrary to the relational and interactive mode in which Bourdieu positioned his core concepts. As such, to adequately account for practices in social life and the dynamic of fields, this necessarily calls for the use of Bourdieu’s other master concepts, particularly habitus and strategy, but also capital. For Mangi (2009), neo-institutionalism, then, ends up reinforcing some of the ever-present dichotomies in the social sciences, especially those of agency and structure or individual and society. We need a better account of how actors operate in, are affected by, and negotiate the field. The notion of capital is also relevant for thinking about how resources are mobilised within the field and will impact upon agential strategies within the field. The way forward requires a recognition of the situated, but dispositional account of agency, which takes account of socialisation over the life and work course. A more detailed and nuanced account of agency would also recognise Bourdieu’s emphasis on practice, that actors become socially situated in a field but also how they balance different conceptions of identity and heterogeneous interests that invariably come into play. Fields, in relation to institutions, do not exercise effects in a uniform way. Furthermore, actors possess different amounts of capital and will have varying strategies. Such an approach requires moving beyond thinking about fields as enabling and constraining. Rather, and as Mangi (2009) argues, actors whether under stable or unstable institutional conditions, are not just captured or constrained by shared meanings in a field. Instead, they operate with certain resources (or capital) to produce, reproduce, or contest systems of power and privilege. Emirbayer and Johnson (2008) similarly criticise neo-institutionalism and organisational studies’ relationship with Bourdieu’s theoretical work. They contend that although the field concept has made significant inroads into the discipline and the ‘concept of cultural capital has been omnipresent in organisational studies’ (2008, p. 3), there has been almost ‘complete inattention to habitus’ (2008, p. 1), thus affirming, as Mangi (2009) does, a primary concern with macro-context within which organisations

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are located, rather than thinking about organisations at the macro and micro level. Divorcing field from habitus (and capital in some cases) has serious implications for the utility of the field concept but also undermines Bourdieu’s commitment to the principle of relationism. For Emirbayer and Johnson (2008): ‘the concept of the field has tended to function as a loose metaphor rather than as the rigorous analytical tool that was originally envisaged by Bourdieu’ (2008, p. 37). However, these concepts only make sense when situated in relation to each other and the way forward for organisation studies lies in adopting a relational approach to fields, which considers the notion of field in relation to Bourdieu’s larger theoretical suite—habitus, field, capital—something which, in Emirbayer and Johnson’s view, is intrinsic to Bourdieu’s approach. Emirbayer (1997) defends a notion of relationalism and relational sociology in a more extended form elsewhere, but it may be useful to recount here what Emirbayer and Johnson mean by the term ‘relational’: (S)ingular things act, but they act together. Nothing has been discovered which acts in entire isolation. (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008, p. 5)

For Emirbayer and Johnson (2008), a relational account of field would also discuss the wider effects on fields as elaborated on in the following quote: A truly field-based framework for organisational analysis must bring the field-theoretical approach to bear, not only on the analysis of clusters of organisations, but also on the analysis of the social configurations in which organisational fields are themselves embedded  - configurations too often designated by vague terms such as the ‘economy’ or ‘political sphere’ but analysed in detail by Bourdieu as a system of semi-autonomous fields as well as on individual organisations themselves. (2008, p. 3)

A relational approach would thus mean paying attention to inter- and intra-organisational relations. At a macro level, a field-theoretic approach for Emirbayer and Johnston replaces the ‘vague terms’ noted in the quote above, with a more precise language which accounts for the effects of the economy, for example, but in also centring the role of power, recognises the configurations of organisations as structured by power in relation to each other. Power is understood as operating external to the field (in the

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form of government regulations, for example) but also within the organisational field. Internally, power functions in the form of struggles over capital to secure domination within the field. Additionally, at the micro level, each organisation is a temporally stable structure of power, which is reflected in the position of organisational members, the structure of the organisation and hierarchy. Emirbayer and Johnson (2008) further complicate our understanding of the inter-relations between fields, institutions and actors by introducing the notion of ‘organisations as fields’ rather than the conventional focus on ‘organisational fields’. ‘Organisations as fields’ recognises organisations not simply as a collection of actors but, again, in advocating a relational approach, they theorise organisations as a series of relations thereby recognising internal complexity in roles and hierarchy between teams within a firm such as sales and finance, rather than reducing organisation to actors, strategic or otherwise. There is clear overlap between Emirbayer and Johnston’s ‘organisation as field’ with Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘firm as field’, as developed by Bourdieu in The Social Structures of the Economy (2005). While cognisant of the need to highlight the role of agents in the organisational field, Galaskiewicz (1991) reminds us of the importance of maintaining an analytical distinction between the micro and macro social order. The macro is made up of ‘roles, incentive systems and ideologies or belief systems’, while the micro is made up of ‘preferences, capacities and expectations of individuals’ (1991, p. 295). Galaskiewicz warns that while it may be tempting to identify patterns at the macro level and infer that they are the product of purposeful actors pursuing some well-reasoned strategy at the micro level, ‘such inferences can lead to premature and erroneous conclusions’ (1991, p. 295). Galaskiewicz, I suggest, operates with a rather narrow concept of agency as either constrained or facilitated by the macro context, and should be replaced with Bourdieu’s habitus, but his notion of loose coupling between the macro and micro is a useful metaphor. It is also a reminder to not infer direct relations between organisations, institutions and actors, and to avoid overinterpreting the interpretative and creative capacities of actors. The neglect of agency in organisational studies is a serious problem, but the situation is not terminal. The work of Corsun and Costen (2001), Vaughan (2008), and Mutch (2003) standout as rare exceptions which do engage with habitus.16 There have also been attempts to address the  See also Dobbin (2008) for a defence of a more thorough engagement with habitus but also Bourdieu’s broader framework, rather than simply through the field concept. 16

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problem of agency in new institutionalism, which do not engage seriously with, or take their departure from the concept of habitus. For example, Hallett and Ventresca (2006), in their concern to link the micro and the macro social order, explore how institutions are ‘inhabited’ but turn to Gouldner’s symbolic interactionism for insights. Similarly, Hallett and Gougherty (2018), by developing the micro foundations of institutions in Bourdieu’s work, draw on Goffman to develop a Bourdieusian-inspired organisational interactionism.17 The work of Hallett and Ventresca (2006) and Hallett and Gougherty (2018) are worthy for, in different ways, highlighting the role of agency within organisations, but repeat the trend of disassociating the organisational field from habitus.18 DiMaggio and Powell (1991, pp.  25–26), in their invocation of the organisation field, argue that habitus, when deployed in relation to Bourdieu’s other concepts ‘holds great promise for organisational studies’ but, and as the discussion here testifies, this promise has not materialised. In sum, addressing the neglect of agency via a notion of habitus but also recognising that a relational approach, which situates habitus in relation to field and capital, seems the most sensible way forward. However, we need not adopt Emirbayer’s (1997) argument in favour of relationism in full, and can still take the defence of relationism, but reject Emirbayer’s attendant ontological scepticism, while recognising that relationality, much like practice, is central to Bourdieu’s project. Accordingly, and on a relational reading, the concept of field only makes sense when placed in relation to the concepts of habitus and capital, but such an approach would be underpinned by ontology and not despite it thus countering Emirbayer’s position (1997).19

17  See also Ciborra’s (1996) work on the ‘platform organisation’ as a further example of the need to recognise increased complexity in organisational life through acknowledgement of agency and strategy, but with minimal reference to habitus. 18  We should also note the existence of the ‘organisational habitus’ or the idea that organisations have a particular culture, which shapes how they approach challenges and strategy within the organisation (Vaughan, 2008). 19  To be clear, for Emirbayer, an argument in favour of relationism is an argument against ontological reification, which Emirbayer (1997) has elaborated at length elsewhere in the form of a manifesto for a relational sociology. A relational sociology would replace a sociology of ‘substances or processes’, or static ‘things’ with a sociology of ‘dynamic unfolding relations’ (1997, p. 281).

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Organisations: An Agenda The preceding discussion may seem overly technical in part, but this is not my intention. Rather, my aim here is to establish how Bourdieu has been used in new-institutionalist accounts of organisational studies; and to highlight the widespread adoption of the field concept but also the neglect of Bourdieu’s broader framework, which necessarily hinders the potential utility of a Bourdieusian account of organisations and institutions that engages with Bourdieu in a more wide-ranging manner. Engaging with the suite of Bourdieu’s master concepts should furnish us with an approach, which brings organisations and institutions into the purview of Bourdieu’s broader theoretical framework as they relate to habitus, field and capital as a trio, but it should also align with Bourdieu’s insights regarding the reproduction of inequality. This means that we should be able to document, explain and understand how organisations through their daily practice and doxa reproduce domination in routine and mundane ways. It will facilitate an understanding of the relations between the dominant and the dominated but also the role of individual habituses to reproduce—or in some cases challenge—this domination. Ultimately, this should provide us with the tools with which to understand and explain organisational and institutional-level behaviour as well as inequality. We need a more sociologically centred understanding of organisations which provides an alternative account of organisations to counter the focus on economic tendencies propagated by business and management schools. Such a perspective shows the limitations of a rational actor approach to organisational behaviour and managerial strategy (Swartz, 2008) and allows for a palimpsest of sociological concepts to inform organisational analysis. From this perspective, organisations do not reflect the self-interest of individuals or of the organisation-as-actor but reflect compromised outcomes of the organisations: ‘the whole complex of struggles and negotiations of multiple interests in inter-and intra-­ organisational fields that unfold over time’ (Swartz, 2008, p. 48). A sociological account would also draw on Bourdieu’s long-standing concern to explain domination, but as applied to organisations. It would situate the study of domination in relation to an understanding of how workers interact with, and are influenced by, their organisation and its attendant institutions. This necessitates analysing the relationship between the structural and institutional characteristics of the organisations that exercise it and, drawing on habitus, exploring the dispositions of the

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agents upon whom it is exercised. Organisational domination, as Swartz suggests, might be explained through a type of inertia which can be ‘illuminated by the interaction between habitus attuned to past socialisation and current organisational position’ (Swartz, 2008, p. 48). Doxa, where the organisational order appears natural, is another useful concept for helping us to understand the organisational order where domination and violence continue to reproduce itself. This order may appear as natural, self-evident and legitimate, but rests upon a delicate matrix whereby habitus, field and capital are secure and unchallenged, and are therefore unchanged and reproduce. Without denying agency, such an account, reliant as it is upon Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, helps to understand how organisations and the individual’s habitus are complicit in their own domination. The reproduction of the organisation is one obvious route for organisations, but organisational failure or innovation are others. For example, Emirbayer and Johnson (2008) cite the example of Dior, which functioned on the model of steady reproduction across the generations whilst it was being handed down within the family from one generation to another. This tendency towards reproduction only changed when one family member sought a radically different approach and form, which leaves us with the model of Dior that we have today. It is only through grasping the intricacies of the concept of habitus, historizing action, but also being careful to avoid universalism, that we can move beyond a language of choice or constraint as tends to dominate in the literature on agency, and instead recognise the subtle ways in which individuals tend to reproduce or innovate organisations and institutions, whether they are conscious of doing so or not. Operating at the level of field and habitus, and the micro and macro levels, we need to think about the malleable character of habitus, and the effects of bringing habitus from different fields and how varied experience across fields may help to initiate change within a field. Rather than being fixed in form or dispositions, habitus is eternally dynamic thus challenging accounts of downward socialisation. We should also note that organisations can sometimes instil certain dispositions that do not trace back to early family socialisation. Alternatively, of course, organisational change might be understood to emerge from a pattern of mismatches between members of the organisation, their habitus and their positions in the organisational field. A Bourdieusian-inspired approach to organisational analysis is one where internally complex and inter-related organisations are at the

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forefront, but institutions are at the backdrop and shape the broader context within which organisations are located. A focus on agency or habitus in relation to the field is welcome, as is an emphasis on bringing in capital. The work of Mangi (2009), Emirbayer and Johnson (2008), Swartz (2008), Hallett and Gougherty (2018), and Galaskiewicz (1991) takes us down this path, and represents an important extension of Bourdieu’s influence, but we can go further. In the final section of this chapter, I want to look at the difference that critical realism can make to these debates and show how engaging with critical realism strengthens accounts of institutions and organisations, thereby providing greater ontological depth and complexity.

5  Institutional Racism: An Institutional Critique The preceding discussion has been largely conceptual, establishing the utility of taking the time to conceptualise institutions and organisations and their relations. I now turn to exploring the direct implications of such an exercise for engaging in social and political critique and I consider the concept of institutional racism and how to understand and, in turn, tackle it. Within this focus, I discuss institutional rather than organisational-level analysis. The discussion is concerned specifically with exploring the relationship between institutions, structures and agents, while drawing on insights from critical realism. The Macpherson Report (1999) into the handling of the police investigation into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence was a seminal moment in anti-racist struggles in the United Kingdom for specifying the role of institutions as distinct from individuals in perpetuating racism. Viewed more than 20 years on, and in the broader context of the global Black Lives Matter movement which emerged after the killing of George Floyd in the United States, it is pertinent to assess how far the United Kingdom has come in addressing institutional racism. Equally important is the need to question whether the concept of institutional racism as identified by Macpherson (1999), and as practiced post-Macpherson, is up to the task it sets itself. Our ability to understand and address contemporary forms of racism is inextricably shaped by the robustness of the concepts we use to diagnose the problem. I begin by providing a critical analysis of institutional racism, showing that attempts to address institutional racism have ended up targeting individual level-racism and neglect its institutional and structural

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features. Institutional racism invokes ontological issues relating to the nature of agents, institutions and social structures. Yet, to date, ontological critique remains strangely absent in these debates. Critical realism’s depth ontology, based on a distinction between the world and our knowledge of it offers a way forward in deciphering the interactions between these relational concepts, thereby helping to establish the stratified nature of social reality and causality. With regards to agency, Bourdieu’s habitus is shown to play a critical role in exploring how individuals are affected by, engage with, and ultimately reproduce structures and institutions. Examining these concepts through an ontological lens, and making these ontological presuppositions explicit helps us to grasp the complexity of social reality and marks a foundational step in recognising the nature and problem of racism. The concept of institutional racism has suffered from a troubled history; although there has been widespread support for the recognition of institutional racism as distinct from individual racism, there remains much contestation about how racism becomes embedded in institutions and how to approach institutional reform. I problematise an under-theorised notion of institutions in the concept of institutional racism and argue that addressing this omission helps to identify institutions as distinct from structures and agents. I then specify the precise role of institutions in perpetuating racism, thus countering the slide to agency, which is evident in the history of the concept. Racism as Conceptualised in Institutional Racism: The Debate Thus Far The literature addressing the concept of race has experienced significant difficulty in identifying the status of a concept which many have agreed has no ontological basis, but which continues to have popular usage and functions as an explanation of difference (Miles, 1982; Carter, 2000). The scientific discrediting of race as a concept without any substance does not then help us when individuals employ it as a means of making sense of their lives or when political parties employ it for political gains. The tendency in some of the literature is to suggest that because people believe in race, this means race is real (Cashmore & Troyna, 1990) while others suggest that race is a social structure (Wight, 2003)—and others still have argued that the term race should be rejected outright and be replaced by racism, thereby recognising the effects of race without according it

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ontological status (Miles, 1982). I follow Carter (2000) in suggesting that social scientists cannot reject a term which remains in use in society, but that we must understand how and why it continues to be employed but also that we need to critique the strategies used to address racism. Institutional Racism Returning to the question posed earlier about how far the United Kingdom has come in addressing institutional racism, we might begin by noting that a move away from institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police Service was signalled in no uncertain terms by Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in 2020 in an interview with Channel 4 News, where she insisted that the term institutional racism was no longer ‘helpful’ for understanding racism in the police service; instead pointing to a ‘zero tolerance approach’. In this interview, Dick insists that following positive changes implemented since the publication of the Macpherson Report in 1999, the police had come a ‘very, very, very long way’.20 Yet data from the Home Office shows that in 2019–2020 Black males were nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than white males, highlighting a clear example of ethnic disparities within the use of stop and search powers and confirming long-standing concerns about the over-policing of certain ethnic groups (Bowling & Phillips, 2007). The concept of institutional racism did not originate with the Macpherson Report and earlier references can be found although they refer to an American context (see Carmichael & Hamilton, 1967). The Macpherson Report defines institutional racism as follows: The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people. (The Macpherson Report, 1999, 6.34, p. 28)

Institutional racism represents an advance in the understanding of racism because it moved the discussion beyond a focus on ‘bad’ individuals to the role of institutions. Institutions comprise individuals, but institutions 20  Channel 4 News interview with Cressida Dick, 13 August 2020; https://www.channel4.com/news/met-police-commissioner-cressida-dick-responds-to-institutional-racism-­ claims (accessed 18 February 2022).

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are also more than the sum of those individuals. It was in the aftermath of the Brixton riots of the 1980s that the Scarman Report (1981) first considered the claim that Britain is an institutionally racist country, but Scarman famously rejects the concept and, crucially, he links it to a society that ‘knowingly, as a matter of policy, discriminates against black people’ (Scarman, 1981, 2.22). For Scarman, institutional racism is linked to overt and intentional policy pursued by an institution, but he also accepts that institutions may engage in unwitting discrimination, but doesn’t dwell on the point unlike Macpherson, for whom this is critical. Macpherson, in his definition of institutional racism, jettisons the narrow terms of Scarman’s definition by linking it to ‘unwitting prejudice’ as well as ‘ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping’ (1999, 6.34, p. 28), thus importantly acknowledging the unintended consequences of institutional behaviour. On this definition, the focus for Macpherson is systematic and collective discrimination exercised at witting and unwitting levels. Despite this expanded definition of racism, in practice, however, Macpherson also struggles to link unwitting discrimination to institutional analysis because he is locked into a paradigm where he ends up focusing on individual-level racism, thus failing to distinguish individuals from institutionally generated behaviour and dynamics (Wight, 2003). This can be seen in the 70 recommendations of the report which are largely aimed at improving behaviour, and increasing recruitment, retention and promotion opportunities available to ethnic minority groups (Wight, 2003). Adopting a performance-orientated approach, New Labour’s response was to identify targets for improving the recruitment and progression of minority ethnic staff, while also encouraging Black and Asian professional associations. This trend had the unintended consequence of promoting racial profiling or selecting ethnic minorities for unfair treatment (Cashmore, 2001). This is racism that is not necessarily the result of deep-­ rooted prejudices, but at least partly the product of practical necessities, with Cashmore arguing that it shows ‘how the racist behaviour of individuals may be addressed in terms of institutional imperatives without resorting to terms such as institutional racism which obscure the mechanism through which policy converts to action’ (Cashmore, 2001, p. 657). Taking a longer view and looking at the police service post-­Macpherson, the overriding lesson from the literature is that although the Macpherson Report had a profound effect on the organisational life of the police, it did not eradicate racism, but made it more subtle and moved it underground (Souhami, 2014; Cashmore, 2001). Not unrelated to this fact is that

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definitional ambiguity relating to how institutional racism was applied in practice led to a diversity of approaches (Souhami, 2014; Cashmore, 2001; Phillips, 2005; Holdaway & O’Neill, 2007). For example, Souhami (2014) found that, in practice, targeting institutional racism translated as managerial scrutiny and surveillance of discriminatory language used by staff, which led to the virtual eradication of overt racist language, but racism in its more subtle forms continued. By way of illustration, Phillips (2005) found Black individuals being given impossible tasks to perform; being inadequately supervised or trained; and differential appraisal and promotion criteria compared to non-Black colleagues. Similarly, and although Macpherson’s definition of institutional racism is complex, one would expect Assistant Crime Commissioners (ACCs) and Black Police Association (BPA) officials in constabularies to have a similar view of its sources and effects if they are to work together. Nevertheless, Holdaway and O’Neill (2007) found a variety of understandings of institutional racism among ACCs and BPA officials, both within and between constabularies. These include a focus on policy outcomes; to acknowledging that racist individuals may have gone underground; and accommodating cultural differences within and beyond constabularies. The literature post-Macpherson has rightly noted that Macpherson, in practice, downplays the role of institutions, instead focusing on individuals (Wight, 2003; Lea, 2000; Anthias, 1999), but important questions remain unanswered. Specifically, this literature continues to evade the question of what an adequate conceptualisation of institutions as a collective entity looks like and how this corresponds to broader structures of racism. It also lacks an account of where institutional norms and culture come from and how they are reproduced.  rom Agents to Institutions F Institutional racism inadvertently returns us to an agential perspective despite outward attempts to move the debate from agents to institutions. One way forward is to apply a structure and agency lens to institutional racism, which as Wight (2003) shows, helps to fill in some of the gaps. For Wight (2003), there is an over-emphasis on institutional racism as outcome, rather than an explanation of its causes that remains the key issue in the Macpherson Report. The solution is to ‘locate the source of institutional racism in a genuine structural context’ (2003, p. 712) meaning to situate the policies and procedures of the Metropolitan Police Service

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within a contextualised account, drawing on the criminal justice system and wider societal structures, thereby linking individual actions with causes. Wight’s solution is to suggest a structural analysis, but it is important to be clear about what this entails—and the omissions therein. Drawing on Bhaskar’s (1979) approach to structure and agency, Wight accepts that individuals are situated in structural relations, which have causal tendencies, and that they may not always be aware of their positioning. Wight introduces Bourdieu’s habitus as a ‘mediating link between individuals’ subjective worlds and the socio-cultural world (2003, p. 714), whilst also emphasising the role of habit rather than consciously learned rules, thereby recognising that individuals may be unaware of the structural relations in which they are embedded. It is into this framework that Wight locates institutional racism, suggesting that it resides covertly or overtly in institutional outcomes and patternings that such relations may produce. Wight’s (2003) intervention in this debate highlights the causal role of structures in institutional analysis, but the full explanatory potential of an ontological framework incorporating structures, agency and institutions remains untapped. Questions such as the relationship between structures and institutions—and, more specifically, why some institutions endure, while others collapse and how agency is necessarily implicated in institutional reproduction, require more precise elaboration than is provided by Wight. Such an approach can be gleaned through engaging with the critical realist ontology and paying more attention to our definition of structure, institutions and agents; and their inter-relations, which I turn to next. Towards a Critical Realist Framework  n Race as a Social Structure O My starting point is to argue that we need to go beyond Wight’s argument linking structures and institutions, to specify what structures are and, separately, what institutions are, and how they relate to each other, before delineating the role of agency in both. I address these sub-questions below while drawing on the critical realist ontology. Bhaskar (1979), the founder of the critical realist ontology’s foundational distinction between the transitive (knowledge) and the intransitive (the world) dimension, serves as a critical reminder that the world is not equivalent to our knowledge of it. A further ontological refinement relates to the nature of the intransitive and it is this which informs the conception

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of structure and institution developed here. The intransitive realm is delineated into a stratified and depth ontology, comprising three domains: the real, the actual and the empirical. Briefly, the real domain refers to all that exists, be it natural or social phenomena, and whether we have access to it or not. The actual refers to what happens if and when the powers of those phenomena are activated and, finally, the empirical refers to the domain of experience, or what can be documented, and this can be with respect to either the real or the actual (Bhaskar, 1975, 1979).21 For the social scientist studying race this depth ontology necessitates sharper conceptualisations, which go beyond stating that race is a structure involved in perpetuating racism. Instead, we need to understand how structures operate and this may be done through the lens of Bourdieu’s notion of field,22 but we need to be able to explain why race as a social structure exerts effects in some scenarios but not others. There also needs to be greater recognition that observation cannot be a criterion for the existence of race. Thus, while the actual and the empirical domains of the stratified ontology can be documented in empirical research, the domain of the real is not always observable, but may be observable in its effects. On this reading, the stark disparities in suspicion-less stop and search rates for Black people can be explained by structural racism and the overcriminalization of Black individuals by the police (Atrey, 2021). The domain of the real in which one may postulate race, as a set of ideas about racial group hierarchies, is best understood as an open rather a closed system, meaning that there is no fixed pattern to race, thereby preventing determinism or necessity—positions which are untenable in accounts of a dynamic social world involving active agents. The real exists in a network of relations and gives rise to emergent properties. Structures, where exercised, may bring about certain effects described as generative mechanisms. Generative mechanisms are complex and non-predictable phenomena, which operate at different levels in the social world. The principle of emergence establishes the fact that structures give rise to new phenomena, which are not necessarily reducible to their constituent parts as in the case of water or H2O. In the same way, social phenomena is emergent from individuals, but not reducible to them, but we might also say that emergent properties give rise to particular generative mechanisms, so  See Chap. 2 for an extended discussion of critical realism.  See Chap. 4 for a chapter-length critique of Bourdieu’s field concept.

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the confluence of racism and class may lead to a variety of effects. The task of the social scientist is to identify the roles of particular social structures and generative mechanisms. An example may be helpful. Institutional outcomes may differ for ethnic groups compared to the white majority thus indicating racism, but this may be an uneven scenario affecting some, but not all, and may differ from year-to-year (Dy et al., 2015). How do we explain this? Institutional racism may offer an explanation, but these mechanisms may not always be recognised by those affected, or by the perpetrators. The generative mechanisms, however, continue to exist regardless of whether they are acknowledged. In said institution, we may also factor in the promotion of equal opportunities policies. Thus, although the overall tendency of the structure is racist, this may not be actualised in all cases (Dy et al., 2015). This account of structures moves us beyond Wight (2003), but it can only take us so far because we are still unclear about the status of institutions. On Institutions There has been an important shift in the literature on institutions to rectify a top-down approach where institutions shape behaviour, to recognising that agents play an active role in this process (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013). This shift reflects engagement with structure and agency debates (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Leca & Naccache, 2006). The paradox of inserting agency into this debate, however, as Leca and Naccache (2006) and Mutch (2007) note, is that it is difficult to attribute agency—as in autonomy—to actors while also recognising that agents are embedded not only within structures but also institutions, and with regards the latter, there is no neutral realm from which to exercise agency—meaning monitor, evaluate, change, reform—institutions. Further to this point, we can see two trends in the literature on this issue: First, structure and agency are invoked in institutional critiques, but it is not clear where institutions fit in. Wight (2003), for example, suggests a relationship between structure and agency (habitus) but there remains an equivocation about the notion of institutions in his account. Second, there have been attempts to address the ‘black box of agency’ in debates on institutions by drawing on Archer and Emirbayer (Mutch, Delbridge & Ventresca, 2006; Mutch, 2007; Delbridge & Edwards, 2013). However, although Delbridge and Edwards (2013) and Mutch (2007) take structure and agency seriously, they end up conflating agency with reflexivity. Such a position cannot explain the

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taken-for-­ granted aspects of institutional reproduction, which Wight (2003) emphasises through a notion of habitus, but his account cannot mitigate against an absent notion of institutions. The central problem is that institutions need to be analytically and ontologically distinct from structures and agents, while recognising that they remain relational phenomena. At root then, I suggest that the debate on institutional racism still hasn’t achieved consensus on what an institution is—and its relationship to structures and separately, agents, which in some cases leads to a conflation of the properties of the three. What is an institution? The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) is an institution, as are social phenomena such as the British penchant for queuing—they are accepted ways of doing things. While institutions may have formal rules, which may be subject to anti-racist critique, institutional reform at this level, might be construed as an above-the-water approach to the iceberg. This, of course, matters, but to get at the iceberg beneath the water, we need to focus both on the individuals who create and maintain institutions in the present, as well as those who have historically helped to sustain the institutions by perpetuating the culture, norms and values of an institution such as the MPS. A few points emerge from adopting this position: First, institutions invoke agential characteristics such as cognition and taken-for-granted beliefs, but these characteristics, crucially, must be attributed to individuals and not to institutions (Douglas, 1987). Agents are involved in institutionalisation and, leading to my second point: Institutions are created and affirmed by individuals, but institutions are more than individual cognition. Institutions necessitate their own ontological status, as is supported by the notion of sedimentation (Cooper et al., 1996), which I return to below. Third, while institutions operate in relation to social structure, they are distinct phenomena. Douglas (1987) warns against the conflation of individuals and institutions but also the tendency for institutional reification, arguably a latent tendency in this debate. Douglas contends that agents and institutions are distinct phenomena, while recognising the active role of agents in institutions, meaning they produce, maintain and reform institutions. Douglas’ intervention is instructive, but ultimately remains partial because it evades the question of the relationship between institutions and social structure. From a critical realist perspective, institutions are best understood as self-producing recurrent patterns of behaviour, which pre-exist actors. Their pre-existence is testament to the fact that actors do not create the world when they enter it, it pre-exists them (Archer, 1995). Institutions

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exist as sedimented conventions, which are shaped by structures (Cooper et al., 1996). Although they arise from and inform behaviour, they cannot be conflated with agency, but equally they should also be distinct from structures, because they are ontologically discrete phenomena and should also remain so for analytical purposes. As Lawson (2003) points out, if institutions and structures were the same, what would be the point of distinguishing between the two? For Lawson, institutions exist as sub-sets of structures, but I would suggest a more pronounced separation is necessary, which can grasp the unique features of institutions. The geological term sedimentation is useful for understanding the life course of institutions as it invokes temporality and shift and is a reminder that what is exposed at the surface of the institution is the result of a ‘complex and historical process of faults and disruptions’ as well as erosions and strengths of logics’ (Cooper et al., 1996, p. 624). While recognising the potential for institutional change and apparent stasis, sedimentation also acknowledges that a footprint has been made—an institution has been created unlike phenomena, which are essentially in flux. Whether intentional institutions, or those that may only be diagnosed in a post-hoc manner, institutions in an open system, have the potential to evolve but many clearly endure. How does one engage in institutional analysis? Shifting from ontological principles to analytical ones is not straightforward, but we can identify some key insights for institutional critique. Conceptualisation of the interrelations between institutions, agents and structures can be best articulated if conceptualised within the three levels of critical realism’s stratified ontology, comprising the real, actual and empirical. Within the domain of the empirical, analysts would explore actors’ experiences and perceptions of institutions—their everyday understanding of the police, for example. Some institutions operate at a taken-for-granted level, so that actors may enforce them despite not perceiving them as institutions. This would be situated at the domain of the actual and would affirm the notion of institutions as self-reproducing re-current patterns of behaviour (Jepperson, 1991). The long-standing nature of these institutions mean that social scientists can observe and study them (Leca & Naccache, 2006). The domain of the real comes into focus when we understand institutions in terms of their higher-order logics (Friedland & Alford, 1991), which supply principles of organisation, justification and legitimacy, principles which Douglas (1987) also recognises as being intrinsic for making institutions appear natural and organic. These logics incorporate assumptions, beliefs

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and rules through which individuals live in and understand the world— and it is here where there is a link between institutions and social structures. Institutions exist as the specific or empirical operational rules, but they are informed, shaped and articulated in relation to social structures at the level of the real, drawing on their systems of meaning-making and justification. Having addressed the notion of structure and institutions, in the third and final section, I bring the concept of agency to the fore. On Agency As has been the argument of this chapter, while (new) institutionalist approaches have addressed the neglect of structure on organisations and action through a turn to the organisational field, they have, in turn, neglected agency within the field. Notably, Macpherson identifies the specific characteristics of agency which are implicated in institutional racism, specifying that institutional racism occurs through ‘unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping’, thus recognising an amalgam of intentional and unintentional stances (Macpherson, 1999, p. 28). Habitus, developed within Bourdieu’s theory of practice, speaks directly to these features of agency given that it emphasises the taken-for-­ granted, routinised nature of everyday experiences of race and racialisation. It is not the question of whether individuals engage with social structure such as race in a routine matter, but how they do this that animates the concept of habitus. Habitus proffers a nuanced account of how agents move through a racially structured world in a seamless and mundane way—without consciously negotiating structures [cf. Archer, 1995], but inevitably engaging with them and in some cases reproducing them. For Bourdieu, it is through habitus that one learns the doxic nature of one’s society—the deeply held, enduring and practiced experiences of race and racism, which are perhaps not discussed, but are taken-for-granted and comprise the givens in any particular society (1977). Doxa is the experience by which the ‘natural and social world appears as self-evident’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 164). As an embodied form of social activity in the world, habitus structures our perception of the world, thus as the child is socialised into the world, they learn about certain givens such as racial hierarchies and racism. In other words, habitus structures how the world appears to us before we even begin to reflect upon it and become reflexive, and thus structures like racism are built into that very perception, so operating unconsciously and into the fabric of the perceived world. Prejudice,

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then, is the learning of views that distort the cognition of an individual. It is then up to the individual to re-think the unthought as it were and to uproot deeply unconscious notions of race. Bourdieu’s critics accuse him of determinism, but re-thinking the unthought is not impossible, but it is difficult and comes with costs for the individuals concerned (Akram & Hogan, 2015). Bourdieu’s unconscious habitus cannot be considered in isolation from a critique of structural racism because, for Bourdieu, agency is always considered in relation to structure. Structural racism, as Solomos (2003) explains, is a complex totality of forces in British society which have produced racialised political ideologies and practices. In the case of the United Kingdom, a structural approach to racism necessitates interrogation of the deep roots, history and culture of racism as it has evolved from former colonial and imperial times to the present. It necessitates unravelling how different institutions, be they the police, law courts, hospitals or schools are implicated within this matrix not only in tackling racism, but in consolidating it. It requires an analysis of racism in structures, but especially those structures which the British state itself governs and affects. Following Goldberg (2002), the racial state is not necessarily explicitly racist as Nazi Germany was, but it leads to racist outcomes and racialisation—meaning attaching racial meaning and hierarchy to people. Returning to the issue of how change occurs, structural-level change is necessarily radical change as it requires large scale, government-led, inter-connected efforts, which take people with them. It is undoubtedly difficult, but focusing on individual-­level change as institutional racism ends up doing is an inherently partial approach, which does little to address the structures that contextualise individual action. Institutions matter hugely in this effort and Macpherson was pivotal in identifying the empirical existence of institutional racism, but the history of the implementation of the concept and the enduring and unrelenting nature of structural and institutional racism today as illustrated by the Black Lives Matter movement is testament to the fact that Macpherson was unable to offer or accept the radical solutions—that is, structural and real institutional change—that needed to occur to dismantle structural racism. An ontological critique of race as it is implicated in structures, institutions and agents as outlined here enhances the reach and scope of socio-­ political analysis, but such an approach remains untapped and must be developed to its full implications. A genuinely institutional approach would dissect the relationship between individuals, structures and

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institutions, exploring how structures and institutions contextualise agency. It would explore the broader power relations which undergird racism and which ideas inform the thoughts that individuals hold in any particular period—are these conscious, or taken-for-granted, and what would it take to bring these to the fore? At the micro level, an institutional analysis must examine the ordinary, routinised, everyday life of institutions to document how norms are reproduced. This includes paying attention to how institutions ‘do’ race rather than provide a singular focus on crisis, failure, or explicit acts of racism. We must question why, despite much introspection, institutions remain overwhelmingly white as well as querying who the institution is for, and who it is shaped by (Ahmed, 2012). More broadly, an approach critical of institutional racism is one which identifies structures, discourse and ideology as the context within which agents operate.

6  Conclusion Bourdieu’s own work, but also the rich secondary literature on Bourdieu, has made significant advances in helping us to understand structure and agency debates, but less attention has been paid to thinking about Bourdieu’s contribution with regards the structure-agency-institution nexus. This chapter has been concerned with exploring the potential for a Bourdieusian account of institutions, which incorporates an understanding of the inter-relations between organisations, structures and agents, and which is underpinned by critical realism. The chapter makes the case that while the concept of organisational field derives from Bourdieu’s development of the concept of field, there has been limited engagement with Bourdieu beyond this point. Tracing the development of new institutionalism, I suggest that while this school of thought strengthens our understanding of the interrelations between institutions and organisations, it would benefit from greater engagement with critical realism’s stratified ontology and with attending to the concept of agency through closer engagement with Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Such debates are far from being merely academic as is evidenced in the discussion of institutional racism in the latter part of the chapter. As the discussion of the myriad problem that have arisen in operationalising and developing strategies to tackle institutional racism has shown, institutional-­ level inequality whether it relates to race, gender or other forms of stratification may now commonly be recognised as problems that need

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addressing, but there remains a large disconnect between our conceptual understanding of the problem, and how to move from this to developing strategies to tackle it. To address institutional level inequality, we must start with thinking carefully about what we mean by institutions, and as I have argued here, Bourdieu and critical realism can start us on this path.

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CHAPTER 6

Habitus: From Theory to Method? A Six-­Point Heuristic

The concept of habitus constitutes a central pivot in Bourdieu’s theoretical oeuvre, a body of work which addresses, inter alia, forms of capital, symbolic power and modes of domination. Habitus is a uniquely nuanced concept designed to capture how agency operates in a socially structured world. Developed within his theory of practice, habitus operates as a set of dispositions, reflecting ‘the internalization of externality and the externalization of internality’ (1977, p. 72). Devised by Bourdieu as a theoretical and methodological concept to be realised through empirical research, explorations of habitus as method have received much less attention to date than of its position as theoretical construct. Capturing habitus as method is all the more intricate a task given Bourdieu’s unique approach to theory and method in that he sees the two as essentially coterminous, arguing for a ‘fusion of theoretical construction and practical research operations’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 34) On account of this one must ‘continually blend concept and precept, reflection and observation’ (1992, p. 35). Yet, the challenge of habitus as method becomes even more formidable given Bourdieu’s preoccupation with capturing practice—that is, ‘the moment of action’ rather than a focus on abstract theory or questions of method. As Wacquant, Bourdieu’s long-term collaborator

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suggests, it is Bourdieu’s ‘signature obsession with reflexivity’ which means that these preoccupations were front and centre throughout his half-century oeuvre (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 36). Notwithstanding Bourdieu’s stated commitment to habitus as a blend of theory and method, habitus is neglected in discussions of methodology in his own work and those in the secondary literature. In this chapter I provide a review of the landscape with a view to problematising various aspects of Bourdieu’s general methodological approach to habitus in his own empirical research and in wider applications of habitus in the literature. I argue that the theory underpinning habitus is not always clearly reflected in the methodological principles espoused by Bourdieu or his advocates. This has led to much confusion and inconsistency in methodological applications of habitus in Bourdieu-inspired empirical research. In previous work, I have argued that while an understanding of the unconscious is implicit within, and central to habitus, Bourdieu’s writing on this issue can often be confusing (Akram, 2012; Akram & Hogan, 2015). Here, my aim is to show that the unconscious is also neglected in Bourdieu’s discussions of methodology and habitus, but that it is central if we are to grasp the ‘hand in glove’ manner in which habitus operates. In order to examine these claims, I critique one of the last large-scale empirical projects in which Bourdieu was engaged, as presented in The Weight of the World (1999). Moving from Bourdieu to applications of habitus in the literature, I argue that the wider literature on habitus has also suffered from a lack of clarity in methodological principles. To establish this critique, I conduct a systematic review of methodological discussions of habitus in the qualitative methodology-focused journal, Qualitative Research, from 2001 to 2020. My aim is to tease out and illuminate some of the complexities surrounding habitus by exploring and analytically reviewing the different ways it has been conceptualised and operationalised. In the final section of the chapter, I develop a heuristic identifying key features of a methodology for habitus. Before I can discuss questions of habitus as method, I commence by defining habitus and outlining six inter-relating theoretical dimensions, which undergird the proposed methodology. Chapter 3 provides an extended discussion of habitus if one is needed, but here I provide an overview, which will suffice as a foundation to guide the discussion on methodology.

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1   Habitus as Theory  What is habitus? Seeking to transcend overtly structuralist or subjectivist accounts of structure and agency, Bourdieu rejects a notion of action as ‘a sort of unprecedented confrontation between the subject and the world’ (1977, p. 73). Bourdieu is also dismissive of the claim that agents operate in terms of ‘mechanical obedience to the explicit, codified rule’ (1990, p.  63). Habitus, then, is Bourdieu’s answer to how people engage in a socially structured world, leading him to define habitus as ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions’ and ‘structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures’ (1977, p. 72). For Bourdieu, the key aspects of the social world are experienced as embodied. Ergo, habitus is not only a mechanism relating to mental phenomena or dispositions, which he defines as ‘a predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination’ (Note 1, Bourdieu, 1977, p.  214), but also refers to embodied practices, as it encompasses ‘bodily hexis’, or the way in which the physical and material body is implicated in structural conditioning. Temporality and the ability to incorporate a longitudinal perspective of the agent’s life is central to the operation of habitus. The individual’s habitus is the product of their upbringing and, more particularly, of their class (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 87). Bourdieu explains that habitus brings about a ‘unique integration, dominated by earliest experiences’ (1977, p.  87), which leads to a ‘subjective but not individual system of internalised structures common to all members of the same group or class’ (1977, p. 86). Although oft-mentioned in passing but not explicitly discussed, habitus quite clearly contains an unconscious element and I have argued in Chap. 3 of this book that this is reflected in the subtle ways that it operates (also see Akram, 2012). The unconscious I suggest is critical for enabling Bourdieu to focus on the agent’s ‘practice’, as opposed to the theoretician’s interpretation of the agent’s actions. The unconscious is deeply implicated in the way that habitus operates as the agent’s practices, according to Bourdieu, are ‘ “regulated” and “regular” without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them’ (1977, p. 72). Bourdieu’s aim here is not to reduce the role of reflexivity or consciousness per se in agents’ actions but to argue that, alongside these factors, other principles of agency are also involved when considering interaction

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between structures and agents. Bourdieu’s task here reflects his more general concern to move away from the manner in which the relationship between structure and agency has usually been defined, that is, by interpreting agents as intentional, rational, reflexive and strategic. Bourdieu’s argument regarding habitus is often misunderstood, leading to criticism that habitus is determinist, leaving little room for reflexivity and conscious behaviour (Alexander, 1995; Jenkins, 2002; King, 2000; and Shilling, 1997). However, I would argue that stating that agents act in an unconscious and habitual way in terms of everyday structural interaction is not the same as arguing that agents have no conscious and reflexive capabilities, rather it is to argue that structural and agential interaction occurs in a mundane, habitual and unconscious manner.

2   Habitus as Method? Reay’s considerable body of work on educational inequality draws extensively on Bourdieu’s concepts (2002, 2004). The unique value of habitus for Reay is its designation as both a theoretical and methodological concept which is best realised through empirical research. This corresponds with Bourdieu’s own writing on the subject and his vehement rejection of arbitrary academic distinctions between theory and method, instead seeing his concepts as in a continual process of being reworked, and viewing them as constructs which take shape for and through empirical research (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). To Reay, Bourdieu uses method in a very elastic sense, but the notion that habitus is a conceptual tool to be used in empirical research, rather than an abstract theoretical concept, is central to his approach—as is shown in the following quote: The main thing is that they (Bourdieu’s concepts) are not to be conceptualised so much as ideas, on that level, but as a method. The core of my work lies in the method and a way of thinking. To be more precise, my method is a manner of asking questions rather than just ideas. This I think is a critical point. (Bourdieu, 1985, quoted in Mahar, 1990, p. 33 in Reay, 2004, p. 439)

Surveying the now significant influence of Bourdieu on the field of education, Reay laments a tendency whereby this research ‘references habitus’ and it is ‘assumed or appropriated’ (2004 p. 440), becoming ‘whatever the data reveals’ (2004, p. 438), rather than working with the concept as Bourdieu advocated. Paradoxically, for Reay, it is the very flexibility of

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habitus as theory and method which is both its strength and its weakness because it can end up peppered across texts in a somewhat loose fashion, leading her to bemoan a propensity in which ‘it’s all becoming a habitus’ (Reay, 2004). While habitus has been subject to less critique as method than as theory, there are notable exceptions which merit mention (Grenfell, 1998; Grenfell & James, 2004; Costa et al., 2019; Barrett, 2015). Grenfell and James, for example, propose a three-level field analysis based on (1) the field and the field of power, (2) the field and competition for capital and authority, and (3) the habitus of those occupying positions in the field (see Grenfell & James, 2004). Chapter 4 provides a chapter-long discussion of the field concept, but for present purposes, we can note that fields are Bourdieu’s conception of structure (Bourdieu, 1977). For Bourdieu, social space is divided into multiple fields and not simply in relation to economic capital; such fields are characterised by struggles over capital and authority. Grenfell and James’ (2004) approach is worthy, but it is notably stronger in discussing fields than it is in accounting for habitus. The latter is limited to descriptive biography with no mention of how one would document dispositions. Costa et al. (2019) suggest that habitus can be observed through the repetition of both attitudes and practices, which seems like a good starting point. The authors offer two methods for documenting habitus: Biographical narrative interview method (BNIM) and practice-based narrative inquiry (P-BNI). BNIM can provide a comprehensive account of an individual’s personal trajectory in their own words (also see Barrett, 2015, on life-history approach). Using narrative, P-BNI aims at bringing forth that which is implied, but not necessarily made explicit. It looks at an individual’s practices in a given moment to explore the social reality that is being expressed. Both of these approaches are noteworthy for their respective foci on the longitudinal aspects of habitus and the role of narrative in bringing forth the tacit, but they remain partial much in the same way that Grenfell (1998) and Grenfell and James’ (2004) approach addresses fields, but offers a limited account of habitus. Rather, what is required is a more comprehensive account of habitus which can, in turn, address its multiple theoretical features, as delineated above, namely, its practice-based embodied nature, its unconscious operations, as well as its temporal aspects and how it adapts to change or tensions. From this initial overview, I extend the analysis by gleaning insights from Bourdieu himself and explore Bourdieu’s use of method in his final

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empirical project, The Weight of the World. Following this, I provide a systematic review of discussions of habitus as method in the methodology-­ focused journal, Qualitative Research.

3   Methodological Reflections on Bourdieu’s The Weight of the World The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (1999) (henceforth WOTW) is one of the last examples of empirical social research published by Bourdieu prior to his death in 2002 and so provides a good indication of his methodological, and, relatedly, theoretical position at the end of a career which spanned five decades. A joint collaboration between Bourdieu and a team of 19 researchers, the text offers a collection of case studies with a focus on the ‘great’ and ‘little miseries’ that affect individuals living in France from the 1990s onwards. While Bourdieu had conducted empirical research before,1 this book in its emphasis on in-depth interviews and transcription marks a departure. The book contains 41 interviews with an analysis of each interview, followed by an edited transcript of the interview. The interviews are subdivided into areas of sociological analysis such as, for example, The Space of Points of View (1999, p. 3) or The Abdication of the State (1999, p. 181), and each collection of interviews is preceded by a contextualising introduction. The final chapter of the book, ‘Understanding’, deals with the methodology used in the research. Understanding The final chapter of WOTW (1999, pp. 607–626) is dedicated to a discussion of the methodology used in the interviews and, therefore, serves as a point of focus for analysing Bourdieu’s methodology. It is telling that, in a book of 646 pages, the index contains only eight references to the term ‘habitus’ (1999, p.  638). While references to Bourdieu’s broader theoretical framework pepper the book, especially in the analysis sections preceding the transcripted interviews, there is confusion and distinct ambiguity as to how habitus is sourced from the interviews. Perhaps this approach was intentional in order to make the book 1  Bourdieu’s methodological preferences can be described as eclectic. See Distinction (1984) for quantitative analysis, The Bachelors’ Ball (2008) for ethnographic analysis and Sketch for a Self-Analysis (2007) for an approach which most resembles autobiography.

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accessible to the lay public, which may explain the popularity of the book in France, where it is described as topping the best-sellers list (comments on the back cover of the Polity Press Edition, 1999). An alternative reading is that this reflects the much more fundamental problem of translating theoretical concepts into their methodological equivalents, a problem which applies to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus in the text. Further, Bourdieu’s position in relation to habitus is all the more perplexing in this text considering his often-repeated commitment to ‘the importance of focusing on the simultaneously practical and theoretical problems that emerge from the particular interaction between the investigator and the person being questioned’ (1999, p. 607). It is my argument that Bourdieu and his team often make claims and produce interpretations of the individual’s habitus in the interviews without justifying them, or, indeed, explaining how they came to their conclusions. Active and Methodical Listening: The Importance of the Individual Voice Bourdieu’s methodology in WOTW is best described as ‘active and methodical listening’ (1999, p.  609), where the individual is given the opportunity to speak freely with minor interruptions and questioning from the interviewer. Bourdieu’s theoretical strategy in WOTW is on one level very clear: he is seeking to answer his critics and refute the over-­ determination of agents in habitus, a position for which he has received much criticism in the past (Alexander, 1995; King, 2000; Jenkins, 2002). Thus, he presents the reader with a vast array of individual voices in the form of in-depth interviews. The use of detailed interview transcripts in the book is also a successful strategy, as the reader is brought closer to the interviewees; we can almost hear their voices and can also see where the interviewer’s analysis of the interviews is sourced. Contrary to Bourdieu’s critics who argue that habitus is deterministic and, as was elaborated in Chap. 3, I would argue that habitus is capable of change under certain conditions—the issue is not that change is impossible, but rather that it is difficult. Notwithstanding this point, and while there is much focus on the individual in these interviews, and her/his voice and viewpoint in this book, the precise relationship between habitus and the voice is much less clear. Bourdieu’s project, McRobbie argues, attaches ‘special, almost transcendental status’ to the voice of the individual (2002). McRobbie also

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criticises Bourdieu for the lack of contextualisation of the interviews in WOTW, arguing that ‘(W)ithout the wider web of social relations in which they are embedded, these testimonies exist merely as the stated truths of personal testimonies’ (2002, p. 131). Given that habitus’ core function is to reflect internalised forms of external social structures, or the context within which the agent operates, the de-contextualisation of the interviews that McRobbie points to is clearly an important issue. Bourdieu perhaps recognises these problems, as he acknowledges that total objectivity in interviews is difficult, if not impossible, and that the broader aim in his theory, as well as in his book, is not to achieve objectivity in the interviews but to avoid ‘the objectivising distance that reduces the individual to a specimen in a display case’ (1999, p. 152). In his focus on the individual voice and on allowing often-excluded and silenced interviewees to speak, Bourdieu’s approach does champion the individual voice but also leads to an over-reliance on the individual voice to identify habitus. That there may need to be qualifications to what individuals say, as well as a need to link this to broader social structural analysis, are important points which seem to have been neglected. Participant Objectivation Preceding each transcription of the interview is an analysis section and here we see Bourdieu’s attempt at a discussion of his broader social theory. Bourdieu employs a strategy known as ‘participant objectivation’ to locate the interview within the underlying social relations in which the individual is acting in terms of social fields, dispositions and habitus. His approach is discussed in the following comment on one of the interviews:2 one cannot properly hear what is being said in the apparently quite banal conversation between three secondary school students unless one avoids reducing the three young girls to the first names which stand for them as in so many ‘tape recorder sociologies’, and knows how to read in their words the structure of objective relations, present and past, between their trajectory and the structure of the educational establishments they attended, and through this, the whole structure and history of the teaching system expressed there. (1999, p. 618)

2

 Bourdieu (1999). ‘A Paradise Lost’, pp. 441–454.

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As Bourdieu suggests, then, it is his aim in the individual interviews ‘to read in their (the girls’) words the structures of objective relations’ (1999, p. 618). How is this achieved in practice? In order to answer this question, let us also consider the following extract taken from Bourdieu’s analysis of an interview with two young men, François and Ali, on a housing estate3: As I was listening to these two young men describe, in the most natural way, despite some hesitations and silences linked to the fear of revealing too much or being too shocking, what makes their lives, the life of their project and even the ‘stupid stuff’ …, everything also became natural to me, so present in their words and their actions was the ‘inert violence’ in the order of things, the violence inscribed in the implacable wheels of the job market, the school market, racism … I did not have to force myself to share in the feeling, inscribed in every word, every sentence, and more specially in the tone of their voices, their facial expression or body language of the obviousness of this form of collective bad luck that attached itself. (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 64)

As Couldry states, Bourdieu’s approach to participant objectivation involves ‘getting close enough to the agent’s point of view to reproduce it in all its taken-for-granted depth’ (2005, p. 365). Clearly, we can see in the above extract an attempt by Bourdieu personally to understand the young men’s lives, ‘to share in [their] feeling’ and understand the ‘inert violence’ (1999, p. 64). The statement ‘everything also became natural to me’ (1999, p. 64) is quite telling because the idea that the researcher must personally understand, indeed feel, the interviewee’s social situation in a manner similar to how it is for the interviewee is crucial to this methodology. Let us consider a further example. In explaining an extract from The Fall,4 which examines the strained relationship between a father and son, Patrick Champagne, who conducted the interview, writes: If there was nothing to surprise me in these aggressive observations, which I had heard many times over without really understanding them, I was still astonished at just how sociologically coherent those observations are once they are connected to the social position of the person making them. (1999, pp. 392–393)

3 4

 Bourdieu (1999). ‘The Order of Things’, pp. 60–76.  Bourdieu (1999). ‘The Fall’, pp. 392–407.

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As these two quotes reveal, researchers must of course use verstehen5 and try to understand interviewees’ experiences. However, there is significant complexity involved in linking what is said by individuals in interviews with Bourdieu’s broader social theory, via a notion of habitus. Whilst Bourdieu and his team may feel comfortable locating habitus in the method adopted in the quotes above, I would argue that the possibilities for ambiguity and misreading of the data are many, and that, simply put, as social researchers, we require more precise techniques for locating habitus, although I acknowledge that habitus operates in subtle ways, and so our methodological tools must also be nuanced. The Problems of Transcription, Language and Non-verbal Communication The decision to publish the interview transcripts alongside the analysis of the individual interviews allows the reader to view the text of the interviews. However, Bourdieu contends that constraints relating to making a transcript ‘readable’ for the reader meant that a lot of non-verbal communication is lost from the final transcript. In particular, Bourdieu points to the importance of ‘voice, pronunciation (notably in its socially significant variations), intonation, rhythm (each interview has its own tempo which is not that of reading), gesture, gesticulations and body language’ (1999, p. 622) as important aspects of the interview which are generally neglected in the transcripts. Bourdieu also acknowledges the importance of ‘hesitations, repetitions, sentences interrupted and prolonged by gestures, looks, sighs or exclamations: there are laborious digressions, ambiguities that transcription inevitably resolves’ (1999, p. 622) and of how ‘certain add-on developments, certain confused phrases, verbal expletives or linguistic tics (the “rights” and the “ers,” etc.)’ (1999, p.  623) were also removed from the text. Some of these aspects of the interview are occasionally commented on during the analysis, as in the quotation from François and Ali above, but as Bourdieu himself states, the transcripts cannot capture this level of detail and a decision was made not to comment on these issues. This is unfortunate because this data is lost from the interviews and their analysis.

5  The concept of verstehen comes from Weber, for a good summary see: Tucker, W.T. Max Weber’s ‘Verstehen’ (1965). The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 2. pp. 157–165.

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Whilst Bourdieu is able to discuss the multiple forms of non-verbal communications in which actors engage, his methodological strategy for locating habitus is unable to incorporate them. It would seem to me that the gestures, hesitations and silences, amongst other aspects of the interviews, should be features of a methodology for habitus. They correspond to Bourdieu’s notion of bodily hexis in terms of identifying actions which are part of the structured habitus; they are not necessarily vocal but emerge from the body. There is a clear divide between Bourdieu’s theory and method, which users of his work must grapple with if this body of work is to remain relevant. In his reading of WOTW, Burawoy (2019) notes the surprisingly lucid way in which interviewees are able to diagnose their own social problems and thus we might say see their habitus. Burawoy notes the absence of discussion of concepts such as misrecognition, symbolic violence and domination in the text, concluding that there are two Bourdieus—with the WOTW version representing a shift away from the earlier Bourdieu who spoke of these hugely important concepts.

4   Methodology: A Systematic Review In order to explore how habitus is operationalised in wider research, I now turn my attention to conducting a longitudinal analysis of how habitus has been understood across time, with a specific focus on questions of method. To answer this question, I conduct a systematic review of articles published in the methodology journal, Qualitative Research, from the journal’s birth in 2001 to 2020, covering a period of 19 years. Two search terms were utilised: ‘Bourdieu’ returned 91 articles and ‘habitus’ yielded 38. Accounting for cross-over (30), book reviews (18), and miscellanea (1), in total 80 articles were considered. While there are a number of journals that are concerned with methodology and could have been selected for this systematic review, Qualitative Research was chosen because of its longevity given that it has been in existence for circa two decades (2001–2020), which, therefore, provided a significant number of articles for review. Further, it was selected because of its specific focus on qualitative methods and methodology as detailed in the journal’s ‘Aims and Scope’. The website for the journal states that it

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welcomes research that ‘debates and enlivens qualitative methods, and that pushes at the boundaries of established ways of doing qualitative research’.6 What is a systematic (or meta-) review? Can one conduct a systematic review of qualitative methods? What type of data does systematic review reveal? Since its emergence in the 1990s, there is now a nascent literature on this issue (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006; Denzin, 2009; Fielding, 2010; Jamal et al., 2015), with much of it sceptical of an apparent shift towards evidence-based quantitative methods and the denigration of qualitative methods (Greenhalgh et  al., 2005; Dixon-Woods et  al., 2006; Denzin, 2009; Fielding, 2010). A systematic review of qualitative research may be considered inconsistent with the origins of an approach which has roots in quantitative studies (Dixon-Woods et  al., 2006). Valued for its rigour, reproducibility and transparency, systematic review originates in medicine providing systematic searches of the results of randomized control trials (RCTs).7 Associated with a ‘what works approach’, quantitative systematic reviews seek to influence policy and practice. Despite these roots, systematic review is now becoming more visible in qualitative designs (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006). Systematic review, I suggest, is a suitable methodology for this project if we adopt some features of the model but adapt others, given that this is a review of qualitative research and seeks to offer a qualitative discussion of data. Key considerations shaped the research design. First, as Dixon-­ Woods et al. (2006) highlight, a qualitative approach must be clear about which question it is addressing. My focus here is not on ‘what works’ or the identification of the best method to document habitus but to look at how the literature using and discussing habitus has evolved over time. Thus, my approach to the literature is ‘holistic and iterative’ (Dixon-­ Woods et  al., 2006) and involves mapping and delineating recurring themes, recognising that research questions will emerge as the research progresses and may not be settled until the end of the research (see Jamal et al., 2015 for more on this as it relates to meta-narrative approaches). Integral features of the systematic review involve clarity about search criteria, about the mapping stage and synthesis of material. I address each 6  Qualitative Research’s ‘Aims and Scope’ can be viewed on the journal website: https:// journals.sagepub.com/aims-scope/QRJ—accessed 19.04.23. 7  The Cochrane Collaboration produces a not-for-profit global network of systematic reviews of health care interventions.

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of these issues in turn. With regard to search terms, I conducted a search of the Qualitative Research online archive using the terms ‘habitus’ and ‘Bourdieu’, seeking to cast as broad a net as possible. I read through all articles before selecting those which mentioned ‘habitus’ and/or ‘Bourdieu’. Following this stage, I mapped the data according to the following criteria: . How is habitus invoked and operationalised in the research? 1 2. Which elements of habitus are invoked in the discussion, and which, if any, are neglected? For the synthesis stage, central to my approach is the recognition that appraisal will depend upon an overview of articles that are ‘intuitively relevant’ (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006). Synthesising this account is necessarily a subjective process as is acknowledged by Jamal et  al. (2015) and Greenhalgh et al. (2005). In engaging in a systematic review, it is my aim to make sense of a large body of work to identify similarities and differences and to provide a thematic overview. Appraisal Conducting a search through Qualitative Research’s online database from 2001 to 2020 returned 80 articles which satisfied the search criteria of containing the search terms ‘Bourdieu’ and/or ‘habitus’. The articles spanned the range of Bourdieu’s theoretical oeuvre addressing, inter alia, topics such as researcher and respondent reflexivity; embodiment; practice; cultural capital; lieu (place); and field and power relations. Unsurprisingly for a journal concerned with methodology, the articles utilised Bourdieu’s theory to reflect on a range of methods, incorporating discussion of multi-modal and multi-sensory methods; (auto)ethnography; interviews; participant research; the use of photography; VRS transcription; and letter and diary-writing. What is the value in engaging in this kind of systematic mapping exercise? My intention in this systematic review is to map out the varied ways in which habitus specifically, but also Bourdieu’s related concepts where relevant, have been operationalised in order to explore variety, similarity and difference in approach to, and application of, habitus. I am particularly concerned to explore how and if habitus’ implicit or unconscious dimensions are accounted for in the methodology with a view to

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developing a methodology for habitus which recognises this crucial feature. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to comment on all of the different applications of habitus—rather I will focus on a selection identifying what in my view reflects the key themes and tensions in the literature. Of the 80 articles considered, in each case, I identify a sample of literature to illustrate my point rather than providing an exhaustive list. One of the key findings of this systematic review is that in a significant number of cases utilising habitus as a method to address a research question, habitus is employed as a theoretical concept rather than a methodological one (see Payne, 2017; Allan, 2018; Calvey, 2019; Bergman & Wettergren, 2014; Scott et al., 2012; DeNora & Ansdell, 2017). By this I mean that there is description of an individual or group’s habitus but there is no related discussion of methodology. Such an approach is unproblematic if a theoretical definition is all that is required, but it becomes insufficient if the researcher seeks to document habitus—and it is here that a methodology to elicit habitus should be invoked, but it is often not. In the cases noted above, following Reay (2004, p.  432), habitus functions as ‘intellectual hairspray’, being appropriated or assumed rather than explained. If habitus is to be discussed, attention must be paid to how something which is dispositional and taken-for-granted, as Bourdieu understood it to be, might be brought forth. A variation of this problem emerges when habitus is extrapolated directly from an interviewee’s comments without any discussion of methodology. For example, in Wainwright et al.’s (2006) article discussing ballet in terms of embodied habitus, description of habitus is extracted from stated comments as if habitus only pertains to conscious reflection rather than anything more ingrained. Documenting the relationship between individual, bodily and institutional habitus in ballet, comments such as those below regularly feature in the research and do not evoke qualifications from the authors (the first quote is from the ballet dancer, the second from the authors): We all have the same identity in a sense … We don’t mind getting hot and sweaty and killing ourselves. We get a buzz from being exhausted, and still managing to get up and do it again. (Megan, ballet dancer) The example above is a powerful depiction of the way in which the social world of the professional ballet company becomes embodied in its dancers. (Wainwright et al., 2006, pp. 540–541)

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Further reiterating their reliance on stated comments alone, the authors suggests that the ‘[…] dance quotations gleaned both from our interviews with Royal Ballet dancers and from the memoirs of dancers provide a useful insight into the bodily habitus of classical ballet dancers’ (Wainwright et al., 2006, p. 547). Clearly interviews constitute an important element of research methods, but they are not transparent windows on a life and especially not in the case of habitus. Notable exceptions which advance our understanding of methodological access to habitus were also documented in the systematic review. These can be subdivided into those which engage with habitus explicitly and those which do not but are nonetheless worth noting. Let us consider a selection. Given their widespread use as a qualitative method as discussed in this journal and elsewhere (Slembrouck, 2004), interviews were discussed multiple times in the sample (Philipps & Mrowczynski, 2021; Watson, 2006). What is an interview, how much do interviewer effects affect the data and to what extent is the self that is offered in the interview the real self? It is with this final question that Philipps and Mrowczynski (2021) are concerned; they seek to go beyond the subjective presentation of self in interviews and establish the often implicit ‘frame of orientation’ of interviewees, or to borrow from Mannheim, the ‘weltanschauung’, which shapes how social realities are constructed. The parallels with habitus are clear in terms of habitus operating seamlessly at an implicit level such that its precise shape and effects may not be obvious to the individual and so must be bought forth. Using a documentary method of interpretation (DMI) as well as narrative analysis, the authors combine a focus on ‘formulating interpretation’ with ‘reflecting interpretation’, to encourage a shift from what was said to how it was said and to elicit frames of orientation. Delving deeper into the ambivalence of the interview, Watson (2006), in her research on teacher professional identities, posits the notion of unreliable narrators referring to the ‘tensions that might be variously termed inconsistency, contradiction, ambiguity (and inconstancy)’ that arise in the interview (2006, p. 367). From this view, an interview is not necessarily a mirror where we see individuals for what and who they are. Rather, interviewees may be unreliable narrators, and it is the task of the interviewer to operate with caution and care. Extending this insight to habitus, the reasons for inconstancy and contradiction may be many, and the researcher may want to counterbalance a focus on interviews with a

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broader analysis. We are reminded here of Billig’s (1997) insights into the dialogic unconsciousas was discussed in Chap. 3 on habitus. For Billig, repression can be studied discursively, and if repression is a feature of the unconscious habitus as I argue it is, the unconscious habitus reveals itself through language, but crucially through what is said, but also what is not said, or the nearly said. A further illuminating discussion of habitus is provided by Perry (2018), who examines how engaging research participants directly in collective theatre creation can offer insight and disruption of habitus. Habitus from this perspective is revealed through crisis, disjuncture in the field, breach— all of which lead to disruption of the status quo and open up opportunities for change if realised. Discussing the experiences of workers in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), Perry emphasises the value of an embodied and kinaesthetic approach to methodology to echo the physical and kinaesthetic labour that SAWP workers undertake. Perry describes how workers’ engagement with dramatic movement, collective play-creation, and group discussions offered a method for deep reflection and making explicit internal monologues which may be beyond the bounds of the traditional interview, thereby uncovering habitus and tacitly held knowledge. Also, see Townsend and Cushion (2021) and Bergman and Wettergren (2014) for approaches which involve disrupting habitus. The theme of extended reflection as a way of bringing forth the unconscious habitus is also explored by Fitt (2018), who utilises a repeat question diary (RQD) over seven days, thereby ‘enabling participants to notice and analyse previously taken-for-granted, pre-conscious, or corporeal aspects of their practices’ (Fitt, 2018, p.  662). Investigating the role of social meanings in everyday transport practices in Christchurch, for Fitt, the RQD is an effective tool addressing the dual challenge of bringing the unconscious to awareness as well as effectively communicating it to researchers. Combining ethnography and multi-modality to elicit ‘fractures of habitus’, Rowsell (2011) suggests that artefacts and the stories that they sustain are meaningful and offer promise as a tool to access information that might not be available through observation, document analysis and even interviews (also see Hurdley & Dicks, 2011). For Rowsell, everyday objects offer us ‘fractures of dispositions, beliefs, values’ (2011, p. 332) that express habitus by enabling a focus on participants’ agency, contexts and practices.

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Habitus is a complex theoretical and methodological concept and how it is applied in research must be explained rather than simply assumed. In conducting this systematic review, I provide an overview of how habitus is discussed and, in some cases, operationalised in research principally concerned with questions of method. The summative finding is that in the majority of cases habitus is assumed and functions as theory rather than method. The problematisation of interviews, the need for extended reflection and the use of theatre, repeat diaries and artefacts to evoke habitus are welcome insights to take forward. Perhaps one further and broader insight to be drawn from this systematic review is that in Qualitative Research, a journal expressly concerned with methodology which has discussed aspects of habitus and/or Bourdieu a significant number of times, there has not been a dedicated methodological discussion of habitus which incorporates its myriad features into a combined and interconnected approach— embodiment, the unconscious, temporality—to name but a few. It is to this task that I now turn.

5   Habitus as Methodology: A Heuristic I now turn to outlining an innovative methodology for habitus which integrates the various aspects of habitus as discussed in this chapter. This methodology recognises the temporality of habitus, so it will look backwards and forwards, while also maintaining a focus on the present as ‘practice’. The methodology documents the biography of the individual, the taken-for-granted, and unconscious as well as the reflexive, or that which involves deep reflection. Documenting habitus also requires accepting that we must go beyond the verbal, incorporating multiple forms of meaning-­making, not least in the body but also in such non-verbal communication as silence and gestures. All of the above requires not only posing the question of extending sources of data but also involves a consideration of how we interpret the visual. In the heuristic developed below, I consider each of these features in detail. A biographical interview-based approach which explores the life-course comprises the pivot of this methodology, as does broader social structural analysis of the fields within which the individual habitus is situated. Combining analysis at the level of the individual and group habitus as situated within a broader field ensures that habitus is dynamic but also affects wider social structures.

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I advocate use of the biographical narrative interview method (BNIM (see Costa et al., 2019). The interview typically occurs over two sittings and involves three components. In the first sitting, interviewees are offered an uninterrupted opportunity to talk about their lives (session 1). It is in the same sitting that the interviewer can ask for greater clarification of any part of the first session (session 2). The second interview, scheduled at a later date, is based around questions or prompts from the interviewer— who has by then had time to study the first interview (session 3). A biographical approach will provide an account of a life as understood by the interviewee, yet while the spoken words of interviewees must be our first port of call, this is the starting point of the analysis rather than the end. Interview material must be re-positioned from the centre, or at least de-­ centred to account for varied forms of meaning-making in the interview (Scolon, 2001). The recognition that habitus must be brought forth because it is often taken-for-granted rather than assumed is central to this methodology. For Bourdieu, habitus and its dispositions are gleaned through the repetition of attitudes and practices, but to access and explore the less than explicit features of habitus, we may require tools to aid reflection, but which also encourage in-depth and prolonged reflection. Fitt (2018), Perry (2018) and Brear (2017) in different ways remind us about the importance of extended reflection for enabling participants ‘to notice and analyse the taken for granted elements’ of habitus (Fitt, 2018, p. 662). There is recognition here of the importance of moving beyond reflexivity or the idea that individuals are acutely aware of the reasons and motivations behind all action (Akram, 2012; Akram & Hogan, 2015), and acknowledging that some things are buried deep or repressed and must be teased out. For Perry, it is through play and discussion that migrant workers are able to engage in deep reflection and share their internal monologues. The act of repeated-diary writing for Fitt similarly encourages deep-reflection as does Brear’s (2017) concern with deliberation in participatory action research. The temporal dimension of habitus requires balancing chronology with synchronic (consideration of the individual at particular points) and diachronic (looking at individuals over time) analysis. Longitudinal analysis is an option, but this is resource-intensive. A more feasible but no less worthy approach would be to engage in retrospective analysis of habitus (Scolon, 2001), but attention would have to be paid to where to begin the analysis, that is, in the present, past or even future. Henderson et  al. (2012), in their longitudinal research on young people across a 12-year

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span, devise a form of biographical and narrative analysis which they term ‘case history method-in-process’. This approach captures different timescapes, meaning that their analysis documents the various frames through which individuals move, thus incorporating biographical, generational, and historical critique. A point to bear in mind is that a retrospective approach may result in historical recontextualization and ‘genesis amnesia’ (Bourdieu, 1977). That is, we often forget, do not know, or reconstruct our pasts to suit our own present or anticipated purposes (Scolon, 2001, p. 34). Perhaps the most exciting advance in recent discussions of methodology comes from multi-modal and multi-sensory methods for qualitative research. The overriding concern with this approach is to ‘attend to data other than the ‘spoken’ words’ (Dicks, 2014, p.  224)—and includes a focus on sound, images, movement, interaction with objects and visual participatory methods, to name just some areas of interest (Dicks, 2014). Dicks reminds us that multimodal and multisensory research is concerned with how communication and material surroundings combine in the production of meaning, and so on this basis, depending upon the individual and context in question, we may introduce objects of interest into the interview as talking points—photographs, or the tools which symbolise a trade, such as a paintbrush, scissors, or hammer (also see Rowsell, 2011; Hurdley & Dicks, 2011). Embodiment signifies a further strand of this methodology. In attempting to capture the body, we recognise the limits of language in capturing habitus. However, what do we mean by the body and what specifically is worthy of documentation? In their illuminating discussion of what was initially deemed a ‘failed’ interview, but then reconsidered, Nairn et  al. (2005) identify key coordinates which feature in an interview when we pay attention to phenomena other than words. The authors encourage consideration of silence and laughter, banter, jokes and inaudible comments as indicators of power relations between interviewers and interviewees which function ‘within the bounds of acceptable politeness’ (Nairn et al., 2005, p.  230). The body can be a source of resistance and refusal within the interview setting; thus, silence may represent a powerful or powerless position. Beyond this, it is important to reflect on the tools that may be of use for capturing embodiment such as video, while more routine devices such as audio recording devices will also capture silence. Figure 6.1 visualises the inter-connecting features of this methodology.

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FIELD

FIELD

embodiment taken-forgranted/ unconscious

temporality

HABITUS deep reflection

biography

FIELD

multi-modal/ multi-sensory

FIELD

Fig. 6.1  Habitus as method: internal components and field

6  Conclusion (S)cientific theory as I construe it emerges as a program of perception and of action […] which is disclosed only in the empirical work that actualizes it. It is a temporary construct which takes shape for and by empirical work. (Bourdieu in Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 161)

As the quote above affirms, Bourdieu never intended his theoretical concepts to remain fixed in meaning like objects in a museum, but saw them as ‘temporary constructs’ to be refined through concrete research practice. Questions of method are central to this exercise of actualisation. Wacquant, Bourdieu’s long-term collaborator, recommends that we use Bourdieu’s oeuvre in a pragmatic fashion as he did—as toolkits designed to solve problems (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), but doing so runs the risk of cherry-picking that which suits the researcher, which may, in turn, modify the broader theoretical project, so we must proceed with caution. It has been the aim of this chapter to show that, although critical to Bourdieu’s oeuvre, and while habitus has spurned much empirical research, the concept lacks focused methodological discussion. This chapter seeks to address this gap. In providing a systematic review of habitus as

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operationalised in a methodology-focused journal—Qualitative Research—as well as critiquing the ambiguity, inconsistencies and silences in Bourdieu’s own research using habitus and the wider literature, I have identified a lacuna in the methodology of habitus. I develop a heuristic which incorporates the varied aspects of habitus, combining its position in the field, its ingrained unconscious features, a focus on biography alongside temporality, embodiment and the need for deep reflection. Of course, all of these features may not always be apparent in any one research situation; it is the role of the researcher, rather, to reflexively be alert to them in case they appear, rather than approach them as a tick-box exercise. This methodology is itself open to further refinement and, as Bourdieu would recommend, it is only through application in empirical research that we can do so, which is a challenge that I look forward to pursuing in future research while also inviting readers of this book to do the same.

Bibliography Akram, S. (2012). Fully Unconscious and Prone to Habit: The Characteristics of Agency in the Structure and Agency Dialectic. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 43(1), 45–65. Akram, S., & Hogan, A. (2015). On Reflexivity and the Conduct of the Self in Everyday Life. The British Journal of Sociology, 66, 605–625. Alexander, J. C. (1995). The Reality of Reduction. In Fin de Siècle Social Theory (pp. 128–202). Verso. Allan, A. (2018). Using the Once Familiar to Make the Familiar Strange Once Again. Qualitative Research, 18(5), 538–553. Barrett, T. (2015). Storying Bourdieu: Fragments Toward a Bourdieusian Approach to “Life Histories”. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1–10. Bergman, B. S., & Wettergren, Å. (2014). The Emotional Labour of Gaining and Maintaining Access to the Field. Qualitative Research, 15(6), 688–704. Billig, M. (1997). The Dialogic Unconscious: Psychoanalysis, Discursive Psychology and the Nature of Repression. British Journal of Social Psychology, 36, 139–159. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. Harvard University. Bourdieu, P. (1990). In Other Words. Polity. Bourdieu, P. (Ed.). (1999). Weight of the World. Polity. Bourdieu, P. (2008). The Bachelors’ Ball. The Crisis of Peasant Society in Béarn. University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Polity.

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Brear, M. (2017). Swazi Co-researcher Participants’ Dynamic Preferences and Motivations for, Representation with Real Names and (English-language) Pseudonyms – An Ethnography. Qualitative Research, 18(6), 722–740. Burawoy, M. (2019). Symbolic Violence. Duke University. Calvey, D. (2019). The Everyday World of Bouncers: A Rehabilitated Role for Covert Ethnography. Qualitative Research, 19(3), 247–262. Costa, C., Murphy, M., & Burke, C. (2019). Capturing Habitus. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 42(1), 19–32. Couldry, N. (2005). The Individual Point of View: Learning from Bourdieu’s ‘The Weight of the World’. Cultural Studies  – Critical Methodologies, 5(3), 354–372. DeNora, T., & Ansdell, G. (2017). Music in Action: Tinkering, Testing and Tracing Over Time. Qualitative Research, 17(2), 231–245. Denzin, N. (2009). The Elephant in the Living Room: Or Extending the Conversation About the Politics of Evidence. Qualitative Research, 9(2), 139–160. Dicks, B. (2014). Action, Experience, Communication: Three Methodological Paradigms for Researching Multimodal and Multisensory Settings. Qualitative Research, 14(6), 656–674. Dixon-Woods, M., et  al. (2006). How Can Systematic Reviews Incorporate Qualitative Research? Qualitative Research, 1, 27–44. Fielding, N. (2010). Elephants, Gold Standards and Applied Qualitative Research. Qualitative Research, 10(1), 123–127. Fitt, H. (2018). Researching Mobile Practices: Participant Reflection and Audio-­ Recording in Repeat Question Diaries. Qualitative Research, 18(6), 654–670. Greenhalgh, T., Robert, G., Macfarlane, F., Bate, P., Kyriakidou, O., & Peacock, R. (2005). Storylines of Research in Diffusion of Innovation. Social Science and Medicine, 61, 417–430. Grenfell, M. (1998). Language and the Classroom. In M. Grenfell & D. James (Eds.), Bourdieu and Education (pp. 72–88). Falmer Press. Grenfell, M., & James, D. (2004). Change in the Field, Changing the Field. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25, 507–523. Henderson, S., et  al. (2012). Storying Qualitative Longitudinal Research: Sequence, Voice and Motif. Qualitative Research, 12(1), 16–34. Hurdley, R., & Dicks, B. (2011). In-between Practice. Working in the ‘thirdspace’ of Sensory and Multimodal Methodology. Qualitative Research, 11(3), 277–292. Jamal, F., Bertotti, M., Lorenc, T., & Harden, A. (2015). Reviewing Conceptualisations of Community: Reflections on a Meta-narrative Approach. Qualitative Research, 15(3), 314–333. Jenkins, R. (2002). Pierre Bourdieu. Routledge. King, A. (2000). Thinking with Bourdieu Against Bourdieu. Sociological Theory, 18(3), 417–433.

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McRobbie, A. (2002). A Mixed Bag of Misfortunes? Theory, Culture & Society, 19(3), 129–138. Nairn, K., Munro, J., & Smith, A. B. (2005). A Counter-Narrative of a ‘Failed’ Interview. Qualitative Research, 5(2), 221–244. Payne, L. (2017). Visualization in Analysis: Developing ANT Analysis Diagrams. Qualitative Research, 17(1), 118–133. Perry, J. A. (2018). Play-Making with Migrant Farm Workers in Ontario, Canada. Qualitative Research, 18(6), 689–705. Philipps, A., & Mrowczynski, R. (2021). Getting More Out of Interviews. Understanding Interviewees’ Accounts in Relation to Their Frames of Orientation. Qualitative Research, 21(1), 59–75. Reay, D. (1995). They Employ Cleaners to do that. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 16(3), 353–371. Reay, D. (1997). Feminist Theory, Habitus and Social Class. Women’s Studies International Forum, 20(2), 225–233. Reay, D. (2002). Shaun’s Story: Troubling Discourses of White Working-Class Masculinities. Gender & Education, 14, 221–234. Reay, D. (2004). ‘It’s all Becoming a Habitus’: Beyond the Habitual use of Habitus in Educational Research in British. Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(4), 431–444. Rowsell, J. (2011). Carrying My Family with Me: Artifacts as Emic Perspectives. Qualitative Research, 11(3), 331–346. Scolon, R. (2001). Action and Text. In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage. Scott, S., Hinton-Smith, T., Härmä, V., & Broome, K. (2012). The Reluctant Researcher: Shyness in the Field. Qualitative Research, 12(6), 715–734. Shilling, C. (1997). The Undersocialised Conception of the Embodied Agent in Modern Sociology. Sociology, 31(4), 737–754. Slembrouck, S. (2004). Reflexivity and the Research Interview. Critical Discourse Studies, 1(1), 91–112. Sweetman, P. (2003). Twenty-first Century Dis-ease? Habitual Reflexivity Or the Reflexive Habitus. The Sociological Review, 51(4), 529–549. Townsend, R. C., & Cushion, C. J. (2021). ‘Put that in your fucking research’: Reflexivity, Ethnography and Disability Sport Coaching. Qualitative Research, 21(2), 251–267. Tucker, W.  T. (1965). Max Weber’s ‘Verstehen’. The Sociological Quarterly, 6(2), 157–165. Wainwright, S. P., Williams, C., & Turner, B. S. (2006). Varieties of Habitus and the Embodiment of Ballet. Qualitative Research, 6(4), 535–558. Watson, C. (2006). Unreliable Narrators? ‘Inconsistency’ (and Some Inconstancy) in Interviews. Qualitative Research, 6(3), 367–384.

CHAPTER 7

Taking Bourdieu into the World

In describing habitus and field as ‘open concepts’ which defy simple definition and closure, Bourdieu expressed a life-long commitment to constant vigilance regarding his core concepts to avoid any form of complacency, but also to keep in mind the limits of epistemology and the chasm between theory and practice. This approach, when coupled with the vast array of interconnected topics that Bourdieu researched, from the subject of class to taste and the education system, has meant that for some Bourdieu was the most ‘multivocal’ of contemporary theorists (Lamont, 2011) making him as a ‘modern classic’ (Lizardo, 2012). However, and as Burawoy reminds us: ‘(g)reat theorists display great contradictions’ (2019, p. 174), and we can either dismiss the theorist as the critic will, we can repress or deny the contradictions as an acolyte may do, or we can investigate ‘to initiate, deepen, and advance a theoretical tradition’ (Burawoy, 2019, p. 174). It is in the spirit of the latter that this book was written. Bourdieu has advanced our understanding of how humans live in a socially structured world not of their own making, but his is not an approach without imperfections, which in turn provides challenges to those who find value in his work. This book has sought to take Bourdieu’s core concepts of habitus and field as developed within his theory of practice, and subject them to ontological critique. Drawing on critical realism, I have shown how engaging with Bhaskar’s development of this position, but also

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refinements offered by fellow critical realists such as Elder-Vass, offer those broadly defined as realist such as Bourdieu with a more complex, layered, and nuanced account of interactions between agents, structures, and institutions. Using a vocabulary of emergence, generative mechanisms and a depth ontology, premised on the real, actual, and empirical, I have made the case that we can develop accounts of domination and the reproduction of inequality and society, which provide a richer understanding of the ‘ordinary experience of the social’ as was the principle aim of Bourdieu’s oeuvre (1990a, p. 5). My aim in this concluding chapter of the book is to signal two issues, which arise from but extend the existing analysis and offer paths for further extension of the project undertaken here. The first is the need for more complex accounts of agency that are premised on habitus. The second issue that I raise here represents the logical extension of this book, namely, the move from questions of theory and ontology to practice—and the importance of taking Bourdieu into the world.

1   Towards More Complex Accounts of Agency The discussion of habitus in Chap. 3 laid the foundations for a more complex account of agency, which recognised the role of the unconscious as intrinsic to habitus and its mode of operation. I also made the case for a conception of reflexivity and strategy that operate in relation to the unconscious basis of habitus. In doing so, it is my intention to present an argument, which reclaims the unconscious from psychoanalysis, and shows that in order for individuals to move through, but also be affected by a socially structured world, we need a more nuanced account of agency as habitus, which recognises the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious dispositions of the habitus. My aim here is to indicate some further lines of analysis, which potentially strengthen this conception of agency further. Habitus and Temporality Accounts of habitus must necessarily include a temporal component, given that the individual’s habitus develops over the life course, rather than is something that one picks up and puts on, on a daily basis. As Bourdieu reminds us, we do not re-create ourselves anew every day, but are the product of ‘yesterday’s man’ (Bourdieu, 1977). The individual’s habitus is

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the product of her upbringing and, more particularly, of her class position (1977, p. 87); as such it develops and can be traced over the life course. But we can go further than this to say that temporality for Bourdieu is engendered in the very act of practice, so all action contains a reference to the past, the present, and the future. Such an approach dismisses abstract notions of time and history, instead offering a framework which recognises that the agents’ actions in the present are informed by their past and by the way they look to the future. In documenting the habitus, we can explore how life experiences consolidate and inter-connect and this provides a sense of history for the agent. The intrinsic temporal basis of habitus makes it a particularly well-­ placed concept for studying life-long processes such as, for example, political socialisation. Research on political socialisation tends to be quantitative, taking measure of a range of inputs into one’s political socialisation, so looking at the role of family or parents, education, media and peer group (Hooghe, 2004; Kudrnáč, 2015). Documenting such measures is certainly useful, but the sub field lacks conceptual tools to look at the interplay between factors such as family and educational influences, or indeed, how they combine in a cumulative way to create one’s socialising experiences. Habitus can help, yet notably research on political socialisation has struggled to move beyond its quantitative approach, and roots stemming all the way back to Greenstein, who famously argued that study of political socialisation is premised on the questions of: (1) Who (2) learns what (3) from whom (4) under what circumstances and (5) with what effects? (Greenstein, 1965, p. 15). Surveying the literature, we see that the political socialisation literature that has appeared since Greenstein’s intervention in 1965 is characterised by a pre-occupation with specific points of influence, namely childhood, adolescence or adulthood; and a form of synchronic analysis, whereby we are provided with snapshots of periods of influence (Jennings et al., 2009; Quintelier, 2011; Abendschön, 2013; Grasso et  al., 2017; Kudrnáč & Lyons, 2017; Dahlgard, 2018). Snapshots are important and it is clearly of value to document significant periods of political learning in the individual’s life, but what is missing from this literature is a conception of the life-cycle, or of how events and influence are interconnected and the individual looks back (and forward). Furthermore, conspicuously absent in this debate is the question of how we learn and whether this is a wholly conscious or partially unconscious process—which we might add to Greenstein’s quote mentioned above. A further key point to highlight

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here is that becoming an adult cannot be the end point of political socialisation, yet this is the assumption that prevails in the literature. As far back as 1971, Marsh’s critique of the early studies of political socialisation challenged the assumption that ‘adult opinions are in a large part the end product of political socialisation’ (1971, p. 455). Such persistence, Marsh concluded, applies only to important personality variables, whereas the enduring nature of political attitudes remains uncertain. As such, who learns, what they learn, and how they learn continue to be important question in political socialisation but, we need a greater focus on the mechanisms by which we learn political behaviour, and to develop concepts with which to address the sequence of learning; these are issues which stand out as key questions for the sub field of political socialisation. Moving forward then, a concept of habitus with an in-built concept of temporality is a potentially valuable conceptual tool for the sub field of political socialisation, because the unconscious habitus provides a frame for thinking about political socialisation as a life-long process that entails both continuity and change across the life course. The example of political socialisation discussed here provides but one brief illustration of the value that a more complex account of agency premised on habitus can provide to social and political analysis. If we are to build better accounts of how people think and act in the world, this requires paying more attention to the concept of agency which underpins our understanding of the individual, and habitus offers a good place to start from. Repression and Psychic Harm A further area for refinement in accounts of agency premised on habitus is to invest in more detailed accounts of habitus, which explore the role of the unconscious as relates to notions such as repression, and social, but also psychic harm. The experience of domination and the reproduction of inequality, themes which are central to Bourdieu’s theory, have material effects, but also a psychic impact, yet this aspect of the unconscious habitus is often little explored in the social sciences. Poverty, racism, and gender discrimination have a range of consequences for the individual and we would benefit from thinking about the myriad effects they impart. Fanon, for example, explicates the psychic trauma of racism and colonialism in his seminal texts: Black Skin, White Masks (1952/2021) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961). Fanon speaks of the ‘psychology of colonialism’ in Black Skin, White Masks (1952/2021, p.  16), showing the ways in which

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identity, particularly Blackness, is constructed and produced, but also the dominance and internalisation of whiteness by Black (and white) people. Exploring this trauma, Fanon documents the objectification of Black people, which leads to ‘the black man’s dimension of being-for-others’ (1952/2001, p. 1), but also to psychic complexes including divided selves, inferiority complexes, and shifts and splits in personality as the individuals that he documents make sense of life in the metropole (France) and the colony (Martinique). We might also take inspiration here from Mukherjee (2022) who, in adopting an interdisciplinary blend which incorporates health and literary studies, psychoanalysis, sociology, and urban geography, alerts us to the fact that the: ‘psychological toll of extreme disenfranchisement tends to be neglected by governments and NGOs alike’ (2022, p.  8). Mukherjee offers us rich accounts of the psychic lives of the urban poor, pointing out that existing research into the unconscious seems to imply that: ‘to be poor is to have an impoverished inner life’ as is evidenced by the fact that the poor have tended to be largely absent in such debates (2022, p. 7). Drawing on research on the use of free-clinics dedicated to providing free care to the poor in London, India, and New York, Mukherjee shows that the urban poor’s needs are often characterised as material rather than psycho-­social, and the high costs of psychic care also rules out such provision. The field of psychoanalysis is deeply implicated in this neglect, and Mukherjee points out that psychoanalysis, in its focus on inner lives, often distinguishes the patient from their environment rather than seeing the deep interaction between psychoanalysis and race and class, leading to the situation where: ‘the primitive or the socially objected did not have an unconscious: they were the unconscious’ (2022, p. 3). The potential for research documenting the unconscious habitus is huge, whether this be a focus on a notion of repression, or forms of harm. Billig’s insights regarding the dialogic unconscious as explored in Chap. 3 may be useful here as would the six-point methodological heuristic developed in Chap. 6, which offers a methodology for accessing the partially unconscious habitus. As was discussed in Chap. 3, efforts to acknowledge and address psychic lives should be founded on the basis that, although a notion of psychic harm, and indeed, repression are the traditional preserve of psychoanalysis, this need not be the case and the social sciences can and indeed must develop its own tools and concepts to address these areas if it is to recognise, as Bourdieu did, that the social world affects the body, but also the mind.

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Self in Habitus Alongside the oft-repeated charge of the lack of reflexivity in habitus is the criticism that Bourdieu neglects discussion of identity or ‘self’ within the habitus. Alexander claims that habitus is ‘self-neutralising’ (1995, p. 136): ‘(I)n any real sense there is “no self” in Bourdieu’s theory at all’ (1995, p. 143). He elaborates on this point, suggesting that there is no space for ‘identity, character, conformity and independence’ (1995, p.  138) in Bourdieu’s account of habitus, nor for acts of ‘solidarity, sympathy or even love’ (1995, p. 142). Alexander is clearly troubled by Bourdieu’s neglect of the self within habitus, arguing that habitus requires a more developed understanding of internal complexity or its own emergent properties. Alexander’s critique is in line with his broader critique of habitus and his claim that it is determinist. Indeed, he identifies the lack of the self as a further example of how habitus is a mere reflection of external structural determinants and so has no real independence to establish personal capacities, such as identity or morals. Alexander sees Bourdieu’s neglect of the self as a broader problem related to the fact that habitus is not formed around: ‘“relatively autonomous” values or ideals’ (1995, p. 137). He interprets this problem as a fundamental flaw with Bourdieu’s position, arguing that: ‘this standard of the relative autonomy of culture… is fundamental for understanding the weakness in Bourdieu’s theory’ (1995, p. 137). He argues that Bourdieu, like the other proponents of cultural Marxism before him, remains trapped in an economic conception of life, where habitus: ‘is a materially reflective rather than a culturally mediated conception of socialisation and family life’ (1995, p.  137). Alexander suggests that real economic causes of action, as opposed to subjective representations, are important to Bourdieu, thus emphasising Bourdieu’s commitment to traditional Marxism. Whilst it may be fair to argue, as Alexander does, that Bourdieu neglects the more personal capabilities of agents in favour of those determined by the social world, it should not be assumed that this means they do not exist for Bourdieu as features of agency. Identity, as has been argued throughout the decades, is, after all, partially social. Dispositions, as socially influenced phenomena, are essentially personal and do relate to ‘the self’, as Alexander terms it. Bourdieu is able to reject claims of structural determinism in habitus, because he has argued that, whilst habitus is formed according to the various fields (structures) in which it operates, it

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is not determined by these structures, but provides a ‘“creative” , active, inventive capacity’ (1990a, p.  13) and a capacity for the ‘intentionless invention of regulated improvisation’ (1977, p.  79). Whilst Bourdieu’s theory does tend to focus on habitus and its social determinants, the realm of dispositions vis-a-vis habitus is an area of potential further exploration to develop notions of self in habitus. Alexander is correct to argue that the self is an important aspect of agency and a more detailed account of the self or the personal within habitus would complement Bourdieu’s broader theory of practice and thus poses a challenging and exciting avenue for further research. Alexander, however, moves from his assessment regarding the neglect of the self, to argue that habitus ‘is a trojan horse for determinism’ and this seems misguided (1995, p. 136). The concept of habitus was originally developed as a theoretical tool for thinking about stratifying forms of capital, but there is an emerging consensus that other forms of experience might also be constitutive of habitus. For example, Sayer (2005) provides an account of ethical dispositions and the normative and moral orientation of habitus, arguing that one’s morals are formed through one’s experiences in the world, which shape habitus (also see Lau, 2004; Ignatow, 2009). In line with the practical and less-than conscious operation of habitus, Sayer argues that people often produce moral responses spontaneously, and without reflection. To illustrate this point, Sayer cites the following example: ‘on seeing a pensioner being mugged, we might respond instantly with horror, anger and sympathy, before we had a chance to reflect on what happened’ (2005, p. 42). Much like the effects of race, class, and gender on dispositions of the habitus, ‘ethical dispositions, virtues and vices are acquired and become embodied through practice involving relations with others, so people become habitually honest, trusting, or deceitful and suspicious’ (2005, p. 43).1 In essence, and while avoiding the temptation to make habitus into an all-encompassing concept, we might instead recognise that the individual’s habitus is potentially capable of blending a range of experiences, be they relating to one’s personal relationships, one’s political experiences, or one’s moral outlook. After all, habitus aims for synthesis, rather than

1  We might also usefully note Sayer’s  (2011)  book, Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press—as further support in favour of the role of ethics in people’s lives.

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rule-like following and more complex accounts of agency would be receptive to the range of experiences, dispositions, and outlooks that constitute a life.

2   Taking Bourdieu into the World Lizardo (2012) notes the different stages of Bourdieu’s reception in the United States, identifying three phases. The first phase is the profusion of research on the reproduction of inequality in education. The second phase refers to the spread of Bourdieu’s influence on new institutionalism and field theory, leading to the notion of the organisational field, which was discussed in Chap. 5. The third phase returns us to the ideas established in Bourdieu’s signature text, Outline of A Theory of Practice (1977), which was revised and republished as The Logic of Practice (1990b), and considers the relationship between culture, cognition, and action (Lizardo, 2004, 2007). A notable feature of this third phase of Bourdieu’s influence is the use of ethnographic methods inspired by Wacquant’s call and demonstration of the value of ‘following Pierre Bourdieu into the field’ (Wacquant, 2004a). The ethnographic work of Desmond (2007) on wild firefighters; Mahler (2006) on political engagement; and Winchester (2008) on constructing the Muslim habitus takes up this challenge. Tracing the lineage of Bourdieu’s work, Wacquant (2004a) emphasises that Bourdieu’s early forays into research were deeply ethnographic and were to shape his approach to his subject matter throughout his career. Notably, and as early as 1959–1961, Bourdieu conducted concurrent and parallel ethnographic studies of the Kabyle of colonial Algeria, while also immersed closer to home in an ethnographic study of Bearn, his childhood village in South-Western France. These studies were to be a formative experience for Bourdieu in developing his theoretical, but also methodological approach.2 In conducting the studies in parallel, Bourdieu became acutely aware of the dangers of structuralist approaches, which fail to capture the unique forms of logic and practice that operate in specific locales. Region-specific ethnographies helped him to realise the limitations of abstract theorising and the need for the epistemic reflexivity which today distinguishes his theory. This formative influence can also be 2  Wacquant (2004a) cites Bourdieu (1972) as the source for these studies. See: Bourdieu, P. (1972) Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique. Précédée de trois études d’ethnologie Kabyle. Geneva: Droz. (Reprinted Paris, Points Seuil 2000).

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traced in the ‘participant objectivity’-based methodology that Bourdieu and his team of researchers would later adopt in the detailed interviews and stories that he documents in The Weight of the World (1999) as was discussed in Chap. 6 of this book. Throughout his career then, Bourdieu’s own ‘inquiries into education, art, class, language, gender, the economy, and the state are laden with close-up observation in real time and space’, thus affirming his commitment to a theory of practice, but also a methodological approach that can do justice to this theory (Wacquant, 2004a, p. 388). The lesson to be drawn here is that while conceptual clarification, as this book has pursued, is critical to Bourdieu’s project, such commitments must be held in tandem with the pursuit of field-specific research, which benefits from immersive methods such as ethnography. Wacquant’s own record of taking Bourdieu into the field is impressive. Wacquant, Bourdieu’s long-term collaborator, has done much to promote and advance the work of Bourdieu beyond France, not least in his own research in the sub field of urban sociology. Wacquant’s research on boxing (Wacquant, 2004b, 2005), but also on the American ghetto, as well as on the French banlieues (Wacquant, 1993, 2002, 2008) shows the value of taking Bourdieu into the field, and the value of applying Bourdieu’s conceptual framework in deeply engaged, immersive, and experientially-­ informed research into everyday life to explore the reproduction of contemporary society and inequality. As Wacquant’s body of work reveals, research which uses Bourdieu in an applied manner is clearly already underway and builds on a rich history of empirical research in the field of education and cultural production as were the original sites of application of Bourdieu’s ideas. The present book is an exercise in theoretical and ontological explication rather than the application of such ideas to empirically informed research that addresses particular field(s). Yet, I proffer this book as the first-stage in a two-stage process, because the ideas developed here are ripe for application at the level of empirically informed research and, in providing a conceptual framework, set the agenda for such work. In developing an ontological account to enrich Bourdieu’s theory, this book strengthens Bourdieu’s conceptual toolkit and offers forth a challenge and an opportunity to engage in richer, more rigorous, and engaged research, which addresses pressing social issues. I hope to take up this challenge in future projects and encourage others to do the same.

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Index1

A Abstraction, 8, 26–29, 27n2, 92, 108 Active and methodical listening, 193–194 Adkins, L., 9, 63, 75, 79–81, 83–85, 88 Ahmed, S., 180 Alexander, J. C., 4, 8, 63, 81, 89–91, 110, 190, 193, 216, 217 Alford, R. R., 175, 177 Algeria, 12, 88, 218 Anthias, F., 172 Applied rationalism, 13, 15, 16 Archer, Margaret, 8–10, 15, 75, 76, 92, 94–102, 95n29, 108, 119–135, 120n7, 135n15, 142n2, 175, 176, 178 Atkinson, W., 4, 5

B Bachelard, Gaston, 5, 7, 8, 11–16 Beck, U., 75, 76, 88 Bhaskar, R., 2, 5–8, 10, 17, 28n3, 29–50, 31n4, 53–56, 92–95, 119, 123, 123n9, 127n12, 130, 131, 173, 174, 211 See also Critical realism Billig, M., 67, 69–74, 202, 215 Biographical narrative interview method (BNIM), 191, 204 Biography, 19, 59, 191, 203, 207 Bouma, G., 143

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Akram, Bourdieu, Habitus and Field, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41846-4

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224 

INDEX

Bourdieu, P., 1–20, 29, 56, 59–69, 59n1, 60n2, 60n3, 60n5, 68n8, 73–83, 73n12, 80n21, 83n24, 85–92, 94–102, 107–136, 139–141, 140n1, 144–169, 164n16, 173, 174, 178–181, 187–197, 199, 200, 203–207, 211 epistemology, 1–20, 61 influence of Bachelard on Bourdieu, 12–16 introduction to, 6, 102 ontology, 1–20, 56, 61, 62, 92, 180 See also Field; Habitus Bouveresse, J., 65 Brown, J. L., 177 Brubaker, R., 65, 110 Burke, C., 204 Butler, J., 79, 84n25 C Callinicos, A., 49, 50 Carter, B., 52, 169, 170 Cassirer, E., 109 Causality, 26, 26n1, 29, 31, 50, 53, 93n27, 109, 113, 117, 134, 169 Chalat, J. F., 145 Chamboredon, J. C., 11 Class, 3, 4, 27, 53, 60, 65, 77, 80n21, 94, 98, 110, 144, 151n8, 175, 189, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219 Classical empiricism, 26, 29, 31, 40–41, 43 Collier, A., 10, 30, 31 Constructivist structuralism, 8 Conversation analysis, 69n10, 70 Cooper, D. J., 176, 177 Costa, C., 191, 204 Couldry, N., 69, 195 Critical realism

actualism, 32 applied critical realism, 51–56 critical naturalism, 34, 42–45 depth realism, 32 epistemic fallacy, 7, 28, 28n3, 30, 41–42, 46, 47, 94 epistemic relativism, 42 explanatory critique, 55–56 generative mechanisms, 30, 37–39, 38n5, 45, 93, 129, 130, 135, 174, 175 judgemental rationality, 55–56 laminated systems, 54 retroduction, 51–54 stratified conception of reality, 36–39, 56, 108 transcendental realism, 31, 34–35, 37, 38, 42 Cruickshank, J., 35, 46–47 Cultural omnivore, 3 D Delbridge, R., 175 Dennett, D. C., 100 De-traditionalisation thesis, 76, 82, 82n23, 84, 86–88 Dialogic unconscious, 69–74, 202, 215 Dick, C., 170 DiMaggio, P., 3, 112, 112n3, 113, 132n14, 140, 147–159, 148n4, 149n6, 153n9, 155n11, 157n13, 159n14, 159n15, 161, 162, 165 Discursive psychology, 69–72, 70n11, 74 Douglas, M., 176, 177 Doxa, 6, 77n16, 131, 166, 167, 178 Durkheim, E., 11, 118, 134, 139, 147 Dy, A. M., 175

 INDEX 

E Edwards, T., 175 Elder-Vass, D., 8, 10, 17, 63–65, 80n20, 92, 94–102, 108, 117, 119, 121–136, 212 See also Emergence Elias, Norbert, 60, 109 Elster, J., 78n18 Embodiment, 19, 81, 129, 136, 199, 203, 205, 207 Emergence and agency/habitus, 94n28, 98 emergent properties, 93, 94, 97, 99, 123, 124, 124n10, 127, 128, 130, 174, 216 relational emergence, 124–126, 132, 136 and structure/field, 121–135 Emirbayer, M., 140, 140n1, 146, 160, 162–165, 165n19, 167, 168, 175 Empirical realism, 31, 40, 41 Epistemology, 1–20, 25, 28, 28n3, 30, 31n4, 34–36, 40, 41, 51, 54, 61, 211 See also Critical realism Ethnomethodology, 70 Extended reflexivity thesis, 76 F Fanon, F., 214, 215 Feyeraband,P. K., 32, 33 Field art museum organisational field, 156 field theory, 107–109, 111–114, 117, 126, 136, 218 strategic action field, 112, 162 Firm as field, 145, 164 Fleetwood, S., 9, 142n2 Fligstein, N., 112, 113, 157n13, 162 Forms of capital, 3, 84, 187, 217 Fowler, B., 68, 69, 74

225

Freud, S., 66, 72 Friedland, R., 175, 177 G Galaskiewicz, J., 143, 157n13, 164, 168 Gaventa, J., 26, 26n1 Generalisation, 15, 26–29, 53 Genetic structuralism, 8 Giddens, A., 9, 75, 76, 88, 96, 98, 108, 117–120, 127n12, 134, 136, 154, 154n10, 161 Goldberg, D. T., 179 Gougherty, M., 140, 143, 146, 165, 168 Greenstein, F., 213 Greenwood, R., 177 Grenfel, M., 191 H Habitus bodily hexis, 60, 60n3, 98, 117, 189, 197 deep reflection, 202–204, 207 determinism, 2, 4, 16, 18, 29, 49, 61, 63, 64, 75, 77, 88, 174, 179, 216, 217 dispositions, 2, 63–66, 167, 204, 212, 217 habitus clive, 78, 78n17 –methodology, 188, 197, 200, 203–206 reflexivity, 9, 10, 15, 16, 62, 74–76, 80–88, 95, 216 repression, 66, 68–69, 71–74, 202, 214–215 strategy, 72, 88–91, 102, 107, 162 temporality, 19, 60, 203, 212–214 unconscious habitus, 62–75, 91, 179, 202, 214, 215

226 

INDEX

Hallett, T., 140, 143, 146, 165, 168 Hermeneutics, 29, 36, 44, 45, 47–48, 83, 122 Hinings, B., 177 Hume, D., 38, 40, 41 I Illusio, 77, 77n15, 113 Immanent critique, 29, 36, 46, 47, 56, 121 Institutional isomorphism coercive isomorphism, 155 competitive isomorphism, 155 institutional isomorphism, 154–157 mimetic isomorphism, 155 normative isomorphism, 156, 157, 160 Institutional racism, 17, 18, 140, 141, 168–180 Institutions, 7, 17, 18, 26, 29, 56, 78n17, 110–112, 112n3, 116, 118, 130, 133–136, 139–181, 212 J James, D., 191 Jenkins, R., 4, 63–65, 76, 110, 190, 193 Johnson, V., 140, 140n1, 146, 160, 162–164, 167, 168 K King, A., 47–48, 63, 95, 108, 121–127, 127n12, 190, 193 Kuhn, T., 7, 32, 33 L Lacan, J., 66, 112n2 Lamont, M., 3, 4, 211 Lareau, A., 4

Leca, B., 175, 177 Lewin, K., 67n7, 109, 112 Lizardo, O., 3, 4, 211, 218 Lopez, J., 108, 117–119, 129, 130, 136 M Macpherson, W., 141, 168, 171, 172, 178, 179 Mangi, L. C., 160–162, 168 Marlow, S., 175 Martin, L., 51, 52, 84, 108, 109, 111–114, 117, 131 Marxism, 49–51, 147, 216 McAdam, D., 162 McNay, L., 4, 5, 75, 81–83, 83n24, 85, 86, 88 McRobbie, A., 193, 194 Merleau-Ponty, M., 4, 5, 60, 80 Meyer, J. W., 148–152, 149n6, 151n7, 155n11 Miles, R., 169, 170 Misrecognition, 6, 197 Mohr, J. W., 143, 144 Mukherjee, A., 73, 74, 215 Multi-modality, 19, 202 Murphy, M., 204 N Naccache, P., 175, 177 Naturalism, 11n1, 34, 42–46 Neo-institutionalism, 140, 141, 151–162 Network analysis, 112 Neuronal network, 100, 102 O Ontology, 1–20, 25–56, 74, 91–93, 96, 102, 108, 121, 123, 125, 127, 131, 133, 135, 165, 169, 173, 174, 177, 180, 212 See also Critical realism

 INDEX 

Organisational field, 112, 140, 141, 152–154, 156, 157n13, 158–161, 163–165, 167, 178, 180, 218 Organisational sociology, 3, 112, 140, 146, 152 Organisations, 67n7, 95, 111, 112, 112n3, 123, 123n9, 128, 132, 132n14, 139–168, 140n1, 151n7, 155n11, 157n13, 159n15, 170, 177, 178, 180 P Parsons, T., 139 Participant objectivation, 194–196 Pascal, B., 1 Passeron, J. C., 11 Performativity, 85 Phenomenology, 4, 5, 80 Political socialisation, 213, 214 Popper, K. R., 32, 33 Porpora, D., 131–133 Powell, W. W., 3, 112, 112n3, 132n14, 140, 147–157, 148n4, 149n6, 153n9, 155n11, 157n13, 162, 165 Practice-based narrative inquiry (P-BNI), 191 Psychic harm, 214–215 Psychoanalysis, 13, 62, 66–71, 74, 212, 215 Psychology, 4, 29, 52, 69–72, 70n11, 74, 112, 214 Q Qualitative research, 52, 198, 205

227

R Race, 3, 53, 74, 94, 169, 173–175, 178–180, 215, 217 Reay, D., 3, 190, 191, 200 Reflexivity crisis, 77–81 decision-making, 75, 95, 100 hybridising reflexivity and habitus, 81–88 Relationism, 16, 109, 111, 113, 117, 163, 165, 165n19 Robbins, D., 4, 5 Rowan, B., 149–151, 149n6 S Sayer, A., 7, 9, 10, 17, 26–28, 27n2, 38, 50, 65, 80n21, 81, 93, 93n27, 94, 217, 217n1 Scarman, R., 171 Scott, J., 108, 117–119, 129, 130, 136 Scott, R. W., 148 Scott, S., 200 Scott, W. R., 147–149, 151, 151n7, 151n8, 161 Silence, 67, 73, 135, 195, 197, 203, 205, 207 Smith, A., 125, 126 Social structure embodied structure, 118, 119 institutional structure, 118, 119, 133–135 relational structure, 2, 118, 129, 132, 132n14, 133 social institution, 130, 133–135, 143n3, 148n4 structure as whole, 130 Souhami, A., 171, 172 Structuration theory, 120, 127n12, 134 Swartz, D., 5, 108, 109, 111, 113, 140, 146, 160, 161, 166–168

228 

INDEX

Sweetman, P., 9, 75, 86–88, 111 Systematic review, 188, 192, 197–203, 206 T Transcendental idealism, 31, 40–41, 43 V Verstehen, 44, 196, 196n5

W Wacquant, L., 11, 12, 15, 76, 77, 77n15, 107, 109–111, 109n1, 113, 115, 116, 116n4, 162, 187, 188, 190, 206, 218, 218n2, 219 Watkins, J. W. N., 121, 122 Weber, Max, 43, 44, 110, 116n4, 152, 155 White, H. C., 143, 144 Wight, C., 169, 171–173, 175, 176