BOURDIEU, SMITH AND DISINTERESTED JUDGEMENT
Andrew Sayer, University of Lancaster
Sociological Review, Aug99, Vol. 47 Issue 3, p403, 29p.
Abstract
The paper presents a sympathetic critique of Bourdieu's work in terms of the tension between its
critical intentions and its leanings towards sociological reductionism. Although Bourdieu argues
against such reductionism in his methodological pronouncements, his empirical studies tend to reduce
actors' putative disinterested judgements to functions of their habitus in relation to the social field and
to unconscious strategies of distinction. Further, his concept of (non-monetary) forms of capital
occludes the difference between use-value and exchange-value and the corresponding distinction
between the pursuit of goods and the pursuit of distinction, which are vital for both explanation and
critique. Moreover his suspicion of normative judgement on the part of social science and his
concealment of his own normative standpoint subvert his critiques. Thus in relation to Bourdieu's
analysis of the role of misrecognition in social life I argue that this requires a delineation of the extent
of justified recognition. In developing the argument I draw upon Adam Smith's analysis of moral
sentiments and his critique of undeserved recognition and the pursuit of distinction. Where Bourdieu is
dismissive about moral issues, Smith treats moral sentiments as irreducible to interest or instrumental
action and as a significant element in the reproduction of social order. The paper concludes with some
implications for the nature of critique in social theory.
Introduction
As an admirer of the work of Pierre Bourdieu I sometimes wonder why I appreciate it. Is it because of
my habitus -- those deeply engrained dispositions towards other people, objects and practices in the
social field, which orient what I think and do? Am I just swayed by Bourdieu's educational capital? Is
my appreciation actually an unconscious strategy of distinction, a way of ingratiating myself with
academic colleagues? I can't rule these out altogether and of course distinction can be achieved
unintentionally. However, despite these possibilities, I would claim that I like his work mainly because
it is so good, and I would be prepared to argue the case, citing its extraordinary perception, the
brilliance of its descriptions of actions and dispositions, its sophisticated methodology, and so on. But
Bourdieu is of course highly suspicious of such putative `disinterested' judgements, and repeatedly
shows them to conceal (unknowingly) interests deriving from the habitus and the struggles of the
social field. Despite my admiration for his work, it is this paradox which animates this critique.
In a major critical essay, Jeffrey Alexander has accused Bourdieu of sociological reductionism,
reducing ideas to their social origins, coordinates and uses, as if their adequacy was of no consequence
(Alexander, 1995). However, at least in his orientating, methodological remarks, Bourdieu is highly
critical of such reductionism; for example, in the introduction to his critique of Heidegger, he insists
that any adequate analysis must avoid both sociological reductionism and the treatment of texts or
practices as independent of social influences (Bourdieu, 1986: 2). Further, while sociological
reductionism implies a relativist stance towards judgement, the critical thrust of much of Bourdieu's
work is not relativist; for example, he frequently claims that forms of `misrecognition' are present in
social practice. Nevertheless, I would argue that his empirical analyses are indeed characterised by a
strong sociological reductionism, evident particularly in his reluctance to acknowledge that actors'
judgements and actions can at least in part be disinterested.
In response to this tension between reductionist tendencies and a critical stance which implies the
possibility of disinterested judgement, I want to focus on one of the aspects which gets squeezed out
by sociological reductionism -- the role of normative judgement, on the part of both actors and
researchers. I wish to argue that even allowing for the bodily, habitual character of much social
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behaviour, Bourdieu's deflation of the role of actors' normative, often reasoned, judgements
undermines his explanations. Moreover, this, together with his suspicion of normative judgement on
the part of social scientists and his concealment of his own normative standpoint, subverts his
critiques. We need to accept that actors make distinctions between deserved and undeserved
distinction, that these are not necessarily wholly reducible to misrecognized social distinctions, and
that as researchers we cannot escape such judgements ourselves. Without the latter, there is bound to
be some confusion over what are the targets of our critiques. Arguments about what is good or bad,
what is merited or undeserved, cannot be sociologised out of existence by reducing them to arbitrary
custom, unconscious emanations of the habitus, or the pursuit of power for its own sake. Most
importantly, I want to concentrate on the reduction of moral sentiments, judgements and actions to
functions of the habitus or strategies of distinction. In opposing this reduction I shall draw upon Adam
Smith's analysis of moral sentiments. Where Bourdieu is reductive and dismissive about moral
influences, Smith treats moral sentiments as a significant element in the reproduction of the social
order.
I shall begin by outlining three key features of Bourdieu's work -habitus, `strategized action', and his
economic view of culture, indicating some of the insights and problems which they generate. I then
take up the question of whether social action can be explained without reference to actors' normative
judgements regarding functional quality or use-value, aesthetic qualities, and moral-political issues.
This leads on to the role of judgement in critical social science, and arguments about the inescapability
of disinterested judgements regarding whether recognition is deserved or undeserved. It will be argued
that Bourdieu's use of the concept of capital requires but fails to provide a distinction between the usevalue and exchange-value of practices. The concept of `interest' and disinterestedness also needs to be
disambiguated if we are to understand the social influences on judgements and whether they
compromise their legitimacy. I conclude by indicating some wider implications for critique in social
theory.
Habitus
`Habitus' refers to deeply imprinted dispositions subconsciously acquired mainly from early social
experience. These dispositions are attuned to the structure and divisions of the social field as
experienced by the individual, and internalise and tacitly classify ideas, practices and objects within
that field. The habitus disposes actors to choose what is in any case available in their position relative
to others in the social field, and conversely to refuse what they are refused.
For Bourdieu, most action lies between the extremes of external determination and rational choice,
having an unexamined, bodily, practical character, scarcely mediated let alone directed by reason.
Given our habitus, we can't help liking certain things and disliking others, and being oriented to
objects and others in different parts of the social field in ways which reflect these subconsciously
internalised classifications. Thus, those whose lives have been dominated by making ends meet and
evaluating everything in terms of its immediate utility, tend to have a taste for what is necessary, for
what can be seen to have a direct function. While realist art is acceptable to them, abstract art and
abstraction in general, and the pursuit of things `for their own sake', are impatiently rejected. By
contrast, those who have led more leisured and economically secure lives, in which work is not
directly related to satisfying immediate needs, are more open to abstraction, and to doing things for
their own sake.
The concept of habitus provides an important counter to over-rationalised views of behaviour and to
academics' unwitting projection of their own contemplative viewpoint onto those they study. It also
offers a counter to symbolic interactionism and to more recent idealist views of dispositions as mere
constructions of discourse (`subjectivism without a subject'), having only an arbitrary relation to the
material world. Hence, Bourdieu's approach has been described as `perspectivally-enhanced realism'
(Fowler, 1996).
Strategized action
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A major problem of the concept of habitus is how it can be reconciled with Bourdieu's
overwhelmingly instrumental characterisation of action and taste, according to which actions,
including those which appear to be disinterested, are argued to be related to strategies, albeit
unconscious ones, which affect actors' `capital'. As Alexander (1995) points out, `strategy' implies
intentionality and hence the concept of `unconscious strategy' is an oxymoron. Bourdieu does not deny
that people choose, but asserts that their habitus heavily circumscribes their choices. Apparently
`disinterested' tastes and judgements are argued to derive from a particular kind of habitus, especially
that of the educated branch of the dominant classes, whose habituation to a life removed from material
production resonates with a taste for the formal, abstract or superfluous. Indeed, as he repeatedly
shows, so strong is this association that expressions of disinterested taste have the effect of affirming
the subject's dominant position in the social field.
Despite the emphasis on the practical, unconscious, embodied nature of action, including strategies, it
is tempting to ignore these qualifications, for Bourdieu regularly uses terms implying intentionality
and rational consideration, particularly `calculation'. As we shall see, in consequence, having rejected
rational choice explanations and emphasized habitus, the repeated references to strategy and
calculation ironically lead to accounts not unlike those of rational choice theorists (Calhoun,
1995).(n1)
My concern is not whether Bourdieu can square the circle and reconcile habitus and strategy -- on this
see Alexander -- but with the fact that the nearest he comes to acknowledging intentionality, reason
and reflexivity is in the form of instrumental action. It is hard not be struck by the zeal with which
Bourdieu denies that certain actions are disinterested, that things can be valued for their own sake
rather than as means which (unconsciously?) bring the actor some kind of advantage or at least defend
their position in the social field. Altruism is therefore disguised egoism. In this respect, Bourdieu's
radicalism, often assumed to be Marxist-influenced, joins up round the back with public choice theory
-- commonly associated with the Right -- and which is similarly resistant to ideas of altruism and
disinterested action (Downs, 1957; Udehn, 1996). There is a double irony here -- in terms of both the
politics associated with these positions and Bourdieu's opposition to rational choice explanations.(n2)
They further resemble each other in implying a Hobbesian, Mandevillian social order.
An economic view of culture
One of the striking features of Bourdieu's work is that in the midst of the cultural turn and the
associated decline of interest in political economy, it presents an economic view of culture, one which
applies concepts of exchange, circulation, price, capital, profit and the like to areas of life beyond the
domain of conventional economics -- in particular to the circulation and valuation of symbolic
phenomena.(n3) A consequence of Bourdieu's rejection of claims that certain actions can be
disinterested rather than (subconsciously) instrumental is that the dynamics of the social field are
therefore characterised as an amoral economy. I shall argue that this weakens his work both as an
explanation of social action and as critique.
Apparently disinterested actions such as socializing, learning, expressing tastes, acting honourably, are
treated as ways in which social, educational, cultural and symbolic capital are accumulated. Like funds
of goodwill, albeit not necessarily deriving from services provided to others, these forms of capital
bring their possessors various forms of advantage. They have exchange-value, though the rates of
exchange between the various forms of capital are always contested through the struggles of the social
field. They can yield profits, and generate `soft forms of domination'. Thus cultural capital can be
signalled not only by formal representations such as an arts degree, but by subtle indications of social
location -- a certain bearing and social ease, an assured, unpressured command of appropriate cultural
goods --which bring the holder advantages, whether intended or not. Actors can enhance their social
capital by developing networks of contacts which are useful both practically and in terms of
reputation. They may be able to transform these forms of capital into others, including standard
monetary capital. The soft forms of domination are always context-dependent, according to the
position of the holders relative to others in the social field. Likewise what has value in one social
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circuit need not in another. The pursuit of various forms of capital and the struggles over their value
are held to pervade not only the culture of modern societies but everyday life in pre-capitalist societies
too, as indicated in Bourdieu's studies of the Kabyle (Bourdieu, 1977; Calhoun, 1995).
Bourdieu's economic view of culture obviously complements his strategization or instrumentalisation
of action. Economic action in the normal sense is instrumental; though not necessarily done to bring
actors advantage over others, it is essentially a means to the end of living well. However, culture -- at
least in part -- is different. Culture concerns meanings and representations, and hence must have, at the
moment of understanding, a dialogical character (Lash and Urry, 1994), involving, in Habermas's
terms, practical rather than instrumental reason. Given Bourdieu's emphasis on the bodily, practical
and subconscious character of much of social action, he might have doubts about the level of
understanding which a `dialogical' relation might suggest, but to resist it entirely is to suggest a crude
behaviourism.(n4) Culture is widely instrumentalised but in virtue of its dialogical character, it always
also includes a noninstrumental dimension too. The danger of an economic analysis of culture is that it
exaggerates its instrumental aspects.
Bourdieu's sophisticated materialism and his critiques of domination may appeal to the Left, but his
view of economy is closer to that of neoclassical economics, commonly associated with the Right.
While he describes his project as dealing with the production and circulation of cultural goods, it is
overwhelmingly concerned with exchange and exchange-value. Like neoclassical economics, it
assumes an egotistical (albeit subconsciously egotistical) model of individuals and emphatically resists
acknowledging non-instrumental action. Furthermore, Bourdieu's version of the concept of capital
elides the distinction between use-value and exchange-value. Objects or practices have use-value
insofar as they are judged to have particular useful qualities in themselves, such as the nutritious and
tasty quality of food or the insights of Bourdieu's books. Their exchange-value, by contrast is a
quantitative matter of how much they can be exchanged for money or for other use-values, or -- in
terms of Bourdieu's concepts of non-monetary capital -- how much status or prestige they bring their
holders. As we shall see, this is a crucial distinction not only for understanding any economy, but for
understanding the struggles of the social field.
Bourdieu strenuously resists the many accusations of economism which his work has attracted,
insisting that his reduction of behaviour to instrumental action is `deliberate and provisional'
(Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 116, see also Thompson, 1991: 15-17), and he specifically criticises
the neoclassical economists, `whose homo economicus is simply a universalization of homo
capitalisticus' (1993a: 18). Nevertheless, he invites the criticism since his empirical analyses do not tell
us what aspects of behaviour are not so reducible, that is, what, in everyday practice, lies beyond
interest and instrumental action. This, of course, is in keeping with his reluctance to concede that lay
actors' behaviour may be even partly based on disinterested judgements. As Alexander notes, for
Bourdieu, `even the most traditional peasant plays the game of life like the stock market' (Alexander,
1995: 150).(n5) Ironically, economic imperialism is not restricted to public choice theory and the like
but is to be found in Bourdieu's sociology.
These features of Bourdieu's work -- habitus, strategized action, and the economic view of culture -combine to produce a view of action as instrumental, egotistical, and amoral, in which actors either
don't make judgements or only make them in a way which is self-interested, at least in the sense of
complying with their habitus. I shall now argue that this creates problems firstly with regard to the
adequacy of his explanations and secondly in terms of the implications of his critique of social
practice.
Judgement and explanation
The fallacy of sociological reductionism lies in the belief that once one has situated ideas and beliefs
in their social context, demonstrated their social coordinates and uses, this exhausts their content.
Although Bourdieu is aware of the fallacy, as is evident in his criticism of those who dismiss feminism
by describing it as `middle class' (1993a: 2), and in his rejection of a reductionist view of his own
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work (1990a: 23-4), his sociological method is overwhelmingly reductionist. This weakens his
analyses, for the content and adequacy of the ideas, etc., make a difference to social action. In
particular Bourdieu tends to discount actors' own normative judgements in explaining what they do. I
shall now attempt to demonstrate the untenability of this position by reference to judgements of usevalue, aesthetics, and moral-political issues.
Judgements of use-value
How is it that certain objects can function as signifiers of distinction, bringing their holders envy,
admiration, symbolic profit? For Bourdieu, we prefer objects which fit with our habitus. Although
Bourdieu demonstrates how particular characteristics of an object or practice resonate with a particular
kind of habitus so that those people tend to want and feel comfortable with it, he excludes evaluations
of quality or use-value from his explanation of preferences and actions. This abstraction from the
question of whether particular objects and practices are good or bad is problematic. I may buy a BMW
to show I have arrived (or because it fits my habitus), but it won't function as an object of envy unless
others can be convinced that it is worthy of envy. If BMWs were unreliable and awful to drive they
would not bring their owners any distinction. In other words, BMWs wouldn't have the exchangevalue they have -- in either the sense of price or distinction -- if they didn't also have a high use-value.
The rich are not fools for preferring big, well-heated houses to damp shacks, and the poor are not fools
for envying them. Of course it is possible that the status of poor quality goods and practices may be
`talked up' or gain added exchange-value by their association with a dominant group; and sometimes,
as Bourdieu emphasizes, it is possible for a lack of apparent utility to become stakes in these struggles
and indeed for this to be a marker of distinction -- superfluity signifying superiority, the absence of the
pressure of necessity. In such cases, rival and subordinate groups may attempt to deflate others' capital
by exposing the spurious nature of their investments' assumed quality, showing that their exchangevalue bears no relation to their use-value. Therefore we cannot explain how struggles for distinction
work out without acknowledging the role of judgements of intrinsic quality or use-value. Struggles
over distinction are also contestations of the intrinsic worth of objects and practices, and the fact that
that worth is contested does not make it simply arbitrary.
Researchers who wish to remain neutral may be tempted to suppress such interpretations and to ignore
valuation of use-values or treat it as arbitrary, while making judgements in their own lives and
providing justifications for them which they can hardly pretend not to believe. In other words,
attempting to relativise or derationalise such judgements inevitably involves a theory-practice
contradiction.
A rare instance where Bourdieu does distinguish something like use-value from distinction or
exchange-value is to be found in his analyses of the comments of tutors on students' work in The State
Nobility (1996). This is primarily concerned with how tutors' supposedly disinterested judgements are
actually biased by class, in other words with how students' competence is unequally recognised
according to class. However, the competence itself is also likely to be unequally distributed across the
student population, irrespective of its recognition by tutors.(n6) If we are to assess the extent of the
unequal recognition of competence we need to assess the unequal distribution of competence itself.
Although, as Bourdieu points out, competence is itself socially defined in ways that are influenced by
class, he does not take a sociologically reductionist position on this: it takes more than an act of
labelling to make individuals able or unable to do specific tasks. Consequently, if we are to understand
the inequalities at the level of symbolic power in terms of unequal recognition or misrecognition, we
need to assess what is being recognised or misrecognised.
Aesthetic judgements
5
As Bourdieu demonstrates, aesthetic tastes vary according to habitus, so that, for example, art dealers
tend to like opera whereas car dealers generally do not. But habitus only partly determines their tastes,
for within any genre attuned to a particular habitus, judgements are made of quality which are not
reducible to sociological influences. Thus a certain kind of people may favour opera, but they would
prefer to hear it sung by Pavarotti rather than me, not because of any difference in our social positions,
but because my voice is inferior to his(n7) (see also Frith, 1989). Such judgements may worry
sociologists when on duty, but as with judgements of utility and moral behaviour, when off duty they
make them no less keenly than anyone else.
Moral judgements
References to moral sentiments, values and judgements are conspicuous by their rarity in Bourdieu's
work. What little he does say suggests that moral sentiments and judgements depend only on the
habitus of the actor and its relation to the social field, or are merely a front for strategizing.
Apparently, people do not abstract from and go beyond these limits. Bourdieu's reluctance to
acknowledge morally-guided behaviour is evident in a recent article on families in which he describes
them as `a site where people refuse to calculate and the pursuit of equivalence in exchanges is
suspended' (1996: 22). In a similar fashion to neoclassical economics and public choice theory,
calculation, instrumental action and exchange are seen as the norm, and are used to explain what is
present even when they are absent. While he refers to the numerous acts of kindness that occur in
families their relation to moral sentiments is left without comment.
Of course, this evasion of morality is common enough in contemporary sociology. Sometimes it
appears to result from a slippage between the descriptive and evaluative uses of the term `moral'. To
acknowledge the moral character of beliefs and practices is not necessarily to give them our approval,
indeed we may judge them as immoral. Nor need morality be associated with conservativism and the
Right; there is plenty of radical moral reasoning around, even if it doesn't describe itself as moral
(Sevenhuijsen, 1998). Another common fear is that acknowledging moral action might involve
ignoring instrumental action, domination, and in some cases, including that of families, violence.
However it is possible for all of these to co-exist, indeed they can be interdependent. Some forms of
domination depend on moral commitments by taking advantage of them. To be `left holding the baby'
is an expression of disempowerment resulting from someone else refusing their moral obligations. If
we had no moral commitment to the baby's welfare then we could not be dominated by such means.
This shows that we cannot explain certain kinds of behaviour without acknowledging the normative
force of moral norms and sentiments.
A sociologically-reductionist view of moral actions reduces them merely to `what we do round here',
to arbitrary norms backed up by sanctions, thereby rejecting the possibility that they might have any
internal normative force grounded in what is good or bad for us and others. On this view, racism and
anti-racism would just be arbitrary conventions, which some might feel committed to but neither of
which had any justification beyond custom. Such a view can only be sustained through theory-practice
contradictions; sociologists who profess it cannot apply it to their own lives and are as upset as anyone
else when unjustly treated, and they do not treat such behaviour as beyond the scope of justifiable
criticism.
There is also a common cynical response to invocations of morally-guided action, according to which
they are merely camouflaged self-interested acts intended to bring the actor some advantage, perhaps
we could say `moral capital'. But it is important to beware a kind of adolescent iconoclasm here,
according to which the more audaciously cynical an account of social life is, the better or more true it
must be. Of course scepticism is required in social research, but this is not the same as cynicism and
we can and should be sceptical about cynicism itself.(n8)
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1757), Adam Smith attacks Mandeville and others who treat
moral conduct as nothing more than egotistical action in disguise, so that moral acts are always done
only in order to win praise and prestige. Smith argues that the diagnostic feature of moral
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commitments is that at the limit they are held regardless of whether the actor receives praise, indeed
even in the face of disapprobation. Of course, it is possible for people to go through the motions of
acting morally merely to win recognition, but what distinguishes moral action is that it is done even if
it brings us disadvantage. Therefore moral deliberation and action cannot be reduced to instrumental
action.
Bourdieu is undoubtedly right to warn against an over-rationalised view of action, and to emphasize
how much of what people do is not subject to conscious deliberation, but moral evaluation is
nevertheless a common feature of everyday life. People frequently evaluate each other and themselves
on moral grounds in a manner similar to the mutual and self-monitoring described by Smith (Smith,
1759). They also often have to confront moral dilemmas; for example, school teachers regularly face
the dilemma of deciding how to respond to disruptive pupils who are known to be having an
intolerable home life and thus might be excused their behaviour, when the interests of the other pupils
whose work is interrupted have to be taken into account too.
Morality cannot be sociologized out of existence by treating it as a mere effect of the habitus. As
Alexander puts it:
Values possess relative independence vis-a-vis social structures because ideals are immanently
universalistic. This is so... because they have an inherent tendency to become matters of principle that
demand to be generalized. (1995:137)
Alexander proceeds to cite research in developmental psychology, which with `the signal and
revealing exception of behaviourism' supports the acquisition of this process of generalization. The
recognition of a different form of morality involving concrete others is not incompatible with this -moral action concerns both concrete and generalized others (see Benhabib, 1992, chapters 5 and 6;
Sevenhuijsen, 1998).
Affecting agnosticism regarding moral issues leads to theory-practice contradictions, for it involves
denying what most of our actions presuppose.
Moral judgment is what we `always already' exercise in virtue of being immersed in a network of
human relationships that constitute our life together .... The domain of the moral is so deeply
enmeshed with those interactions that constitute our lifeworld that to withdraw from moral judgment is
tantamount to ceasing to interact, to talk and act in the human community. (Benhabib, 1992: 125-6,
emphasis in original)
In describing the actions of others, then, it is important to remember that `From the perspective of first
persons, what we consider justified is not a function of custom but a question of justification or
grounding' [even if it turns out to be a mistaken justification] (Habermas, 1990: 19).(n9)
So far I have argued that we can't explain social action if, like Bourdieu, we sociologize out of
existence normative judgements and their warrants, be they about use-value, aesthetics or morality. I
now turn to the second problematic dimension of Bourdieu's suppression of normativity, which
concerns not just explanation but critique.
Judgement and critique
The critical character of Bourdieu's work is evident in his use of terms like `domination', in prefatory
remarks to his critiques of practice (eg Bourdieu, Passeron and de Saint Martin, 1994: 3), in the tone
of his analyses of social practice, and in responses to interviews (Bourdieu, 1993; Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992). It is unusually explicit in a recent political article in New Left Review in which he
attacks economic fatalism and advocates `rational utopianism' -- a view which clearly implies the
possibility of disinterested action (Bourdieu, 1998). As Wacquant argues, Bourdieu does not believe
reason is `an illusionist trick fuelled by the will to power' (Wacquant, 1996: xix). While he sees the
development of reason as having specific historical social preconditions, he clearly wants to promote it
by extending those currently restricted preconditions to those presently denied them (Bourdieu,
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1990c). The force of much of his work derives from his exposures of what most readers would take to
be normally hidden, `soft' kinds of injustice, such as class biases in tutors' evaluations of students'
work (Bourdieu, 1996).
Any critique presupposes a critical standpoint which embodies a normative position from which
practices are judged; for example to describe a practice as a form of `domination' is to imply a
negative judgement which requires justification (Sayer, 1997). Yet with the glaring exception of
scientific methodology, on which he is highly judgemental, Bourdieu is suspicious of normative
argument in social science, explicitly warning against its dangers:
When, as their education and their specific interests incline them, researchers try to set themselves up
as judges of all judgements and as critics of all criteria, they prevent themselves from grasping the
specific logic of a struggle in which the social force of representations is not necessarily proportional
to their truth value... (1991: 226)
Note that strictly speaking this doesn't rule out the researcher making some judgements of judgements,
and the qualification `not necessarily' of course implies that the force of social representations can, on
occasion, indeed be proportional to their truth value. To assert that actors' judgements and
representations do not have truth value is itself a judgement of judgements, and it is characteristic of
Bourdieu to reserve his judgements of actors' judgements for denials of their assumed disinterested
status and truth value. But there is no reason to suppose that actors' judgements are always forms of
misrecognition. Thus the cynicism of many academics about whether high status positions in
academia, such as Dean or pro-vice Chancellor, are worth having, might indeed be just a
rationalisation of their failure to achieve them, but they might also be reasonable in judging the
rewards to be not worth the extra work and responsibilities. If this is so, then an adequate explanation
would need to avoid denying this. Again, cynicism itself should not be spared from sceptical scrutiny.
Actors' accounts face researchers' accounts as both object of study and rivals. In order to decide on
what is an adequate account of a situation researchers need both to note the constitutive role of actors'
beliefs in their practice and to decide whether they adequately describe and explain what is going on.
This is why so much social science is necessarily at least implicitly critical of the beliefs and practices
it studies. But it is as important to know where we think actors' judgements (such as tutors' judgements
on students) seem to be correct as it is to know where they involve `misrecognition'. Again, if we are
to identify misrecognition we need to say what correct recognition would involve.
Since Bourdieu does not elaborate his critical standpoint, he evades the normative questions which his
analyses beg; for example, what is unfair about evaluating students' essays according to their class,
gender or race, etc., and what would be a fair way of doing it? (Bourdieu, 1996). Not surprisingly, it's
not at all clear what the nature of his critique is.(n10) To be sure, Distinction is subtitled `a social
critique of the judgement of taste' -- one which shows that what are widely assumed to be
`disinterested' judgements of taste are actually related to habitus and the struggles of the social field.
Much of his work therefore involves `unmasking' -- showing that what appears to be one thing is
actually something else. As such, it stands as a critique of an illusion, a mistaken way of thinking.
Insofar as this illusion is operative in society, his work is critical not merely of certain academic
accounts but of lay thought and practice itself. But what exactly is the illusion here? Is it (1) that there
can be no such thing as disinterested judgement, that all judgements are actually forms of social
distinction? Or is it (2) that disinterested judgements are possible (albeit difficult) but often get
distorted by habitus and the struggles of the social field, and that those struggles can be masked behind
apparently disinterested judgements?
The first interpretation fits comfortably with the postmodern relativist belief that all claims to
universals merely mask a local self-interest, and that epistemological authority is wholly reducible to
social authority. If this is the case, then the implications of unmasking are strictly limited, and the
critique becomes ambiguous and self-subverting. How can Bourdieu or any other critic escape the
charge of interested judgement? If the way a tutor marks a student's essay can only be a function of
unconscious class, gender or other distinctions alone, and these influences could never be escaped,
then why complain about the inescapable? Unmasking as critique can only work where it exposes
distortion or suppression of something which could be realized and which is better than what currently
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exists. If everything can only be camouflaged power and interest beyond justification, then there is
nothing to criticise.(n11) Moreover, if we are as reluctant as Bourdieu to acknowledge actors' capacity
to reason critically, then there is nothing in lay practice for any normative argument to work on, no
existing critical impulses to develop.(n12)
A possible response to my argument here might be that it's based on the mistake of taking Bourdieu's
exaggerations at face value, instead of treating them as attempts to `bend the stick', as he puts it
(Bourdieu, 1990a: 106). When he says `x is nothing but y', we should read this as `x is partly y'. This
may be right, but he often responds to the charge of exaggeration by reinforcing the exaggeration.
Thus, in response to the argument that it is possible for teachers to become aware of the social
influences such as those of class on judgements of students' performance and thereby counteract them,
Bourdieu tells us that it is precisely those who imagine themselves to have escaped such influences
who are most in their thrall. Yet if there is no escaping the field of social gravity, no possibility of
disinterested judgement, what is the social critique of, say, educational judgements, directed at?
Showing that actors' (and social scientists') beliefs have particular social coordinates or associations
may be critical in the sense of correcting a common misconception, but this neither ratifies nor
condemns the beliefs and still leaves open the question of whether any injustice is involved.
At best, there is only a limited acknowledgement in Bourdieu's work of the possibility of the second
kind of critique, when he argues that though difficult, it is possible, given appropriate kinds of
reflexivity, for social scientists to identify and neutralise the effects of their habitus. Yet if few social
scientists achieve this, how much more difficult, one presumes, it must be for lay actors to do the
same? Moreover it should be noted that this is a negative exercise in removing sources of distortion,
without any complementary normative discussion of how critical judgements might be made in the
absence of this distortion. Thus Bourdieu says in interview that he wants actors to become aware of
the soft forms of domination to which they are subject, so that they can `speak with their own voice'
(Bourdieu, 1993; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), but there is no indication of what this might involve,
whether it would amount to a suspension of the influence of habitus, a shift towards disinterested
judgements, or what such judgements would be like. This of course also presupposes that they have
the potential to reflect critically on their situation, including their habitus -- a possibility which
Bourdieu is reluctant to concede in explaining existing practice. If we want a critique that does not
merely subvert its own rationale through sociological reductionism, we need both to recognise that
sociological determination is limited and contingent rather than exhaustive and that there are
normative grounds for acting differently (Garnham, 1993).
An example of a critique which takes this second line and which does acknowledge and defend its
normative standpoint regarding a subject close to that of distinction -- recognition and the judgements
involved in it -- is again to be found in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. In a widely cited passage,
Smith discusses the ways in which moral sentiments can get distorted by inequalities:
This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at
least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition,... is... the great and most universal cause of the
corruption of our moral sentiments. (Smith, 1759)(n13)
The critical intent is clear in Smith because the normative standpoint is acknowledged and elaborated
in his work, and he refers to something which he argues is good which is being distorted and
repressed.(n14) By contrast, in Bourdieu's work it is hard to see what there is that could be distorted
and repressed.
We now know that there are other important sources of distortions of moral sentiments and
judgements besides those of inequality and wealth. They concern gender, race, age, sexuality, cultural
difference, style, beauty and ugliness, all of which are associated with double standards and
undeserved kinds of recognition; what is acceptable in a man is unacceptable in a woman, what the
beautiful can get away with the plain cannot, and so on.(n15) To speak of `undeserved recognition'
may seem unacceptably judgemental for social science, but while the term is not generally used
explicitly therein, identifying and critically explaining instances of such recognition is common
enough in critical social science: the recognition given by tutors to students from the right background
is not merely a social influence but an illegitimate one.
9
Judgement always involves a choice between better and worse, and yet hierarchical judgements, such
as that between high and low or popular culture, are increasingly regarded with suspicion in sociology.
A good reason for this is that they often are little more than masks for arbitrary social distinctions.
However, we need to distinguish criticism of particular hierarchies from criticism of hierarchy in
general. The latter corresponds to our first interpretation of unmasking in that it undermines all
judgement. The former is compatible with our second kind of interpretation of unmasking, as
revealing the way in which disinterested judgements are contingently overridden by habitus and social
struggle, hence allowing the possibility of resisting such influences. Opposing any and every hierarchy
in principle implies that no practice (culture) is better or worse than any other, while criticising just
particular hierarchies allows that some things may indeed be better than others, but that existing
hierarchies wrongly identify which are better and which worse. Thus one could invert the high and
low culture hierarchy or reorder it so that some but not all popular culture is ranked above some elite
culture.
Which kind of critique of hierarchy does Bourdieu offer? Homo Academicus (1990b) provides a social
critique of academic hierarchies of institutions, disciplines and qualifications. At one level it is
devastating in its exposure of social distinctions masquerading as disinterested judgements -- a `book
for burning', indeed. But when the unmasking is done, are we to conclude that all academic disciplines
and qualifications are on the same level, that none is in any sense better than any other? Or should we
conclude that they are indeed unequal, though not in the ways which they are conventionally
understood to be so? Existing status hierarchies might be unjustifiable, but that does not mean that
there might not be some other hierarchy which would better reflect the relative merits of the
institutions, etc. Even if we take the view that disciplines as different as engineering and classics can't
be compared in terms of intrinsic merit, it doesn't rule out intra-disciplinary comparisons of, say, how
one engineering degree rates against another.(n16) Again, whatever their methodological inhibitions,
sociologists make such judgements as willingly as anyone else.
If, on the other hand, the judgements are wholly reducible to disguises for struggles lacking any
justification other than the participants' habitus and/or desire for power, then what is there to criticise
beyond the belief that things are otherwise? (Equally, if the differences in prestige are all deserved,
then obviously there is nothing to criticise.) Again, it is only if there is a divergence from a situation
which would be both possible and more justifiable, that there is anything to criticise. Some might like
to affect a belief in the arbitrary and interested nature of all judgement, but in their own practice (eg
essay marking, arguing) they presuppose the possibility of making justifiable distinctions between
better and worse that are not merely self-interested, and which do more than merely reflect their
position in the social field. Even in arguing for relativist positions they presuppose the possibility of
distinguishing between more and less justifiable beliefs.
We can further illuminate the unavoidability of normative judgement, including distinguishing
between deserved and undeserved recognition or distinction, by reference to Bourdieu's concept of
capital, and the goods and practices to which it corresponds. As he shows, the value of educational
capital, like social, cultural, or any other kind of capital, is contested, being valued differently
according to the social position of the valuer. Bourdieu does, of course, acknowledge that distinction
can be pursued consciously, through bluff or pretension (1984: 253), but he is primarily concerned
with the unconscious production of distinction deriving from the habitus. Again, two kinds of critique
might be implied, firstly one showing that, though it is not generally noticed, cultural judgements and
practices can function as a form of capital, bringing their makers profits, and secondly one questioning
the legitimacy of such forms of distinction. His explicit critique is mainly concerned with the first,
sociological dimension, but as readers we can hardly avoid considering the latter.
However, in order to go beyond mere unarticulated hints, the latter kind of critique requires the
concept of capital to be qualified. The use-value/exchange-value distinction as developed by Aristotle,
and later Marx, is crucial here (Meikle, 1995). Marx insisted on distinguishing capital from mere
machines, materials or buildings. The latter have use-value, but only become capital when they are
acquired in order to command the labour or tribute of others and to earn exchange-value.(n17) In
equivalent fashion we should insist on the difference between `investments' -- say in education -- made
for their own sake (for example, learning German) and investments made in order to enhance the
10
holder's social standing (educational capital). Of course, the use-value of education includes an
instrumental dimension -- enabling one to communicate with people who speak a different language,
or whatever --as well as a possible intrinsic interest, but this is different from instrumentalisation in
order to gain social advantage vis-a-vis others. Further, the use-value/exchange-value distinction
parallels Aristotle's other distinction between `economy' (the production of goods for their immediate
consumption, for their own sake) and `chrematistics' (money-making); like chrematistics, the pursuit
of distinction may contingently be dependent on the production and acquisition of goods and on
specific actions and achievements, but these become mere means to the acquisition of an abstract,
convertible form of social power.
In relation to all Bourdieu's forms of capital -- cultural, educational, linguistic, social and symbolic -the distinction between them and the practices or goods to which they relate is vital for both
explanation and critique. Getting an education, enjoying music, making friends may contingently give
one educational, cultural and social capital, but to treat the former as the same as the latter -- even
where the latter arise unintentionally from the former -- is a disastrous category mistake.
Another important difference between capital and the goods or activities to which it relates is that
capital is a positional good, that is one whose value is depleted the greater the number of people who
come to have it (O'Neill, 1997), whereas the same is not necessarily true of the activities to which
capital relates. Thus, educational qualifications --as educational capital- are devalued as more people
come to get them, though the value of their education is not necessarily devalued too. A particular
maths lesson has a certain quality no matter how many other maths lessons of the same kind are given.
A further important difference is that while the use-values of different kinds of activity -- such as art
history and engineering -- are incommensurable, the exchange-values of the corresponding forms of
capital -- of art historians and engineers -- are effectively treated as commensurable.
Although Bourdieu is primarily interested in the unintended production of effects of distinction, the
relations between motives and effects, whether intended or unintended, are important from both
explanatory and critical points of view. Consider the possible relations between (A) activities and their
use-values, (B) their exchange-value (if any) as capital, and (C) their effects. It is contingent whether
A brings B. A can be pursued without regard for B. B can be sought after and indeed be the motive for
A, or it can be an unintended consequence of A, or it may even be achieved independently of A
through bluff or accident. Thus, one student might gain a first class degree because they may be
deeply interested in their subject, though not in any advantages it may bring them, and another might
get a first through being motivated by the social advantages they hope it will bring. Of course, the first
student may gain these advantages inadvertently too, and indeed may even gain extra status in certain
circles for being uninterested in the exchange-value of their capital. Further, no matter how B arises,
whether it is deserved or undeserved, sought after or not, it can be used for good or ill effects (C). For
example, Diana Princess of Wales had three undeserved sources of recognition or capital -- beauty,
wealth and royal connections -- but she used these as a lever to do good works, where others with
similar capital have failed to do so.
That the relation between the use-value of an activity and the exchange-value of the corresponding
form of capital is contingent is of vital importance. In general we may tend to assume that exchangevalue is or should be a reasonable measure of different use-values, but (not surprisingly in view of the
interests at stake) exchange-value can also vary independently of use-value. There is, for example, no
necessary connection between the splendour and superfluity of the Oxbridge college and the quality of
the education that goes on within it, though the inmates might like to believe that they deserve their
privileges, that the high exchange-value of their educational capital is a reflection of the quality of
their education and their own ability. The assumed or claimed qualities used to defend the value of the
educational capital may even be a sham, as in the case of the Oxbridge MA. (Students who have an
Oxbridge BA can get an MA just by waiting a certain number of years and paying a fee! -- that some
people make excuses for this bogus degree is a reflection of the cultural privilege enjoyed by
Oxbridge.) The exchange-value of an Oxbridge MA as educational capital is undeserved for it lacks
any corresponding process of education. Its market value depends on the success of the illusion that
Oxbridge MA students have done something more than a BA, and on the associated exchange-value
(prestige) of the symbolic and cultural capital of Oxbridge, which serve as collateral, so to speak. If we
11
failed to note the illusory character of the recognition we would misdescribe the situation. In other
words, in failing to be critical we would fail to explain.
The contestation of use-value also differs in kind from that of exchange-value: whereas the prime
consideration in the latter contest is instrumental -- whatever will fetch the best `price' -- the contest
regarding the quality of the goods is by reference to the internal goods of the relevant practice.
Imagine we are evaluating a course taught by Pierre Bourdieu. Our judgements might be products of
our position in the social field relative to Bourdieu's, we might be influenced by his gender, race, age,
class, bearing and appearance, by the surroundings. All of these things might influence his educational
capital and that of the students who have been taught by him. Of course, one would hope that our
judgements were based instead on the quality of the education itself, his insights, the rigour of his
arguments, his success in communicating his ideas, etc. These qualities might also influence the status
and prestige of the course as educational capital, but if it's a good course, then it is so regardless of
whether it brings him or his students any such exchange-value rewards.
Similarly, arguments within practices about what is good or worthy of recognition are not reducible to
bids for distinction, mere means to the ends of inflating the value of one's capital. Thus the point of
arguments regarding the worth of various practices within social science -- for example, those made by
Bourdieu about methodology -- is not to inflate the value of the contributor's capital (though a motive
for making the arguments might be), but to improve the practice of social science.(n18)
Thus, a critical analysis of educational capital cannot evade judgements of the use-value or intrinsic
quality of the education with which it is associated. In other words it cannot evade distinguishing
between deserved and undeserved recognition or misrecognition. Nevertheless, any attempt to make
such a distinction is likely to invite suspicion that one is trying to establish an authoritative, indeed
authoritarian, basis for judgement, an absolute set of values. However, I fully accept that judgements
of (use-) value are contestable. But this does not mean either that all claims to recognition are of equal
merit, or that there must always be some ulterior motive behind the judgements and contestations such
that critical distinctions can never be rationally justified.
To treat exchange-value as a measure of or substitute for use-value is to imply that recognition is
purely a subjective, emotive matter having no justification in what those who are recognised do (the
'boo-hooray theory of value'); the famous can only be famous for being famous, not for doing anything
worthy of fame, and the good is whatever happens to be praised. In Oscar Wilde's words, it amounts to
knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing. In terms of use-value we try to evaluate
practices in terms of what is done, whereas the exchange-value of capital can be influenced by
irrelevant associations. Bourdieu's reluctance to acknowledge disinterested judgement restricts him to
exchange-value, but his apparent critical intentions imply the need for references to use or intrinsic
value. In refusing this, he weakens his own critique. Moreover, in view of Bourdieu's enthusiasm for
market economy concepts, we might note how this is complicit with the tendency noted by Rousseau,
Smith and Marx, for identity in commercial society to become a matter of appearance which is
divorced from the qualities a person actually has, a complicity shared by postmodernism (O'Neill,
1998).
However, there is a possible way of reconciling or partly reconciling Bourdieu's sociological
explanation of judgement via habitus with the position being advanced here. One criticism of my
position might be that it implies a rather Kantian view of values, one which ignores their originating
social contexts. Now although judgements of what is good might indeed appeal to principles, such as
Kant's categorical imperative, they can also appeal(n19) to the way we are, to our being. In other
words one can argue that certain things are good or bad in terms of whether they are good or bad for
beings like us, beings having certain qualities. Such arguments usually invoke a common human
nature at some basic level, but they don't have to do so exclusively. While we might appeal to some
features of the human condition as indeed universal, such as our need for food and sociality, the ways
in which those needs can be met are strongly culturally mediated, as Bourdieu's discussion of the taste
for food and the manner in which it is eaten show (Bourdieu, 1984). Moreover, there are values which
are largely the product of particular habituses. If we find ourselves in situations which do not fit with
our habitus, then we are likely to feel discomfort, out of place. In other words, we could possibly argue
12
that what was good was to be justified in terms of our habitus -- not just the particular kind of beings
we are as humans, but as humans having a particular socialisation and hence set of dispositions and
abilities.(n20) However, this begs the question of whether a particular habitus is desirable in the first
place. For example, the habitus of the dominated, which gives rise to deferential, self-abnegating,
compliant behaviour, is more likely to be one that we would want to change than accommodate to.
Hence critical social science, such as feminist theory, often finds itself at odds with the habitus of
those it wishes to defend, wanting to change their dispositions. We don't have to assume that all
habituses are of equal value.
One of the main problems in interpreting Bourdieu concerns what is meant by 'disinterested' (and
interested)judgement, and what to make of his suspicion of claims to disinterested judgement. The
common definition of disinterested as 'not influenced or biased by self-interest' could mean either 'not
influenced by habitus', or 'not influenced by the pursuit of advantages, such as status, prestige,
distinction'. My judgements of a work of art, or of Bourdieu's books, might be influenced by my
habitus, but that does not mean that those judgements are thereby (sub)consciously influenced by
strategies of distinction, though they might have the unintended consequence of affecting my prestige.
If I like something because of my habitus, I can scarcely help liking it, regardless of whether it brings
me advantages relative to others. Insofar as Bourdieu defines habitus in terms of an internalisation of
the divisions of the social field, and insofar as he is concerned with the unconscious reproduction of
distinction, the concepts of habitus and unconscious strategies are presumably intended to tie the two
senses of interest together; dispositions do not exist in a vacuum but are dispositions towards others
(people, practices and things) associated with different parts of the social field. Thus, the dispositions
and demeanour of the bourgeois include condescension towards the petit-bourgeois and working class,
which has the effect of reinforcing the former's dominance. Tying the two kinds of 'interest' together
makes sense up to a point; for example, the lowly tend to choose what is chosen for them and make a
virtue out of necessity because they have subconsciously learnt what works, given their position, and
hence have developed a 'feel for the game'. Other things being equal, in comparison to other possible
courses of action, this behaviour brings them an advantage.
However, while it is important to note that a fusion of the two kinds of 'interest' is possible, they can
also be distinct and should be recognised as such; to make a judgement in accordance with your
habitus is not necessarily to seek some kind of advantage over others, and the possibility that the latter
may happen unintentionally does not alter this. Moreover, the two kinds of interest are likely to be
judged very differently. A consciously instrumental interest is likely to be thought of less favourably,
unless distinction is sought through the pursuit of internal goods such as excellence in sport.(n21)
Finally, to pre-empt one last objection to this critique of sociological reductionism, Bourdieu's position
regarding the issues I have addressed might simply be defended in disciplinary terms; viz., that it is
only appropriate for sociologists to restrict themselves to analysing the social coordinates of
judgements, taste, moral sentiments, etc. Bourdieu is surprisingly attached to his discipline, defending
sociology, arguing that like any other discipline it should push its questions as far as possible so as to
challenge others (1993: 25). This of course is an argument for disciplinary imperialism, although in
Bourdieu's case he does it by appropriating an economic form of analysis. Fruitful though this
undoubtedly is, it overruns its limits. As we saw with the unavoidability of acknowledging actors'
normative judgements for explanation of their actions, we have to go beyond sociology as
conventionally defined in order to understand its subjects. (Similarly we have to go beyond economics
to understand economies.) It is absurd to put the interests of a discipline before the need to follow
processes and questions wherever they lead.
Conclusion and further implications
I am aware that the wider implications of the arguments in this paper regarding the role of normative
judgement in social science are controversial. There is not space to pursue them here (but see Sayer,
1997), save to note that the principal source of resistance to them is the highly questionable view that
all matters of value lie beyond the scope of reason, a view which we contradict every time we argue
13
about moral-political values. 'Bracketing out' our values when doing social science does not of course
mean that we have no values, but it creates a vacuum into which relativistic interpretations are likely
to rush. Bourdieu's use of terms like 'domination' clearly implies criticism of injustice of some kind,
but his avoidance of the question of whether and why distinction, recognition, or capital are deserved
or undeserved leaves us no ground for concluding that anything is unjust. He is certainly not the only
critical social scientist to leave the nature and basis of their critique largely at the level of insinuation.
The strategy offers an apparently safe course between the twin pitfalls of making what appear to be
absolute judgements which are open to charges of authoritarianism or ethnocentricism and related
kinds of bias on the one hand, and uncritical, conservative relativism on the other.(n22) However,
critiques which do not make explicit their normative grounds generate explanatory and critical
lacunae, indeed reluctance to engage in normative judgement and argument can inadvertently lead to
uncritical social science. If we evade the question of whether distinction or recognition is deserved, or
hint that in certain cases that it is undeserved but refuse to give any grounds for such judgements, then
either there is no 'critique' or its nature is unclear (Garnham, 1993).
Strictly speaking, Bourdieu's brilliant analysis of the way in which lay and academic distinctions
between reflection and sense, the transcendental and the empirical, the disinterested and the
instrumental, mask social distinctions is only critical in that it shows that those who don't notice this
are mistaken. To go beyond that to a critique of the judgements themselves we need an argument
regarding in what respects such valuations are wrong. Yet Bourdieu is at his most cryptic in discussing
such normative judgements and his scattered remarks are overshadowed by his analyses which
repeatedly demonstrate the strength and ubiquity of symbolic violence and how easily emancipatory
intentions are subverted by it. Others, however, have provided arguments for such normative
judgements: for example, feminists have re-valued the body, care and unpaid work, and socialists such
as Raymond Williams have revalued manual labour and working class culture. But Bourdieu avoids
such normative reasoning. A reasonable response to his 'critique', like that of Foucault, which also
conceals any normative standpoint, would therefore be 'so what?, what's the problem?' Insofar as we
don't respond to this, and find it, on the contrary, as I did, critical, progressive and liberating, it is
because we can scarcely read his work without bringing the second kind of judgement to our readings.
But then the critique is ours, not his, albeit one which his analysis of the hidden intricacies of soft
forms of domination greatly enriches.
The conflation of social power and aesthetic, moral or epistemic authority in everyday life is a major
problem, but if we are to have a critical stance towards it we must both be aware of how common the
conflation is, and use an approach which itself refuses to conflate them. As, in their different ways,
Tawney and Habermas argued, equality -- ie the levelling of social power -- may be necessary to
counter soft forms of domination so that undistorted judgements of worth can be made (O'Neill, 1998).
These problems are reinforced by tendencies outside Bourdieu's work. 'Ethical disidentification' in the
double sense of reluctance to acknowledge actors' reasoned normative judgements and to judge their
behaviour -- is common in postmodernism (Connor, 1993; Sayer, 1999). An uncritical stance towards
recognition or distinction is also evident in its deference towards difference, where groups' selfdefinitions and assessments are treated as authoritative.(n23) Associated with this is an increasing
emphasis of aesthetic over moral-political values. If cultural studies in particular are defined as the
study of the stylization of life (Bourdieu, 1984; Featherstone, 1994), so that moral-political values are
overlooked or reduced to matters of style, then cultural studies are complicit in the aestheticization of
moral-political values. Political values have a definite sociology, and may be associated with
particular aesthetic tastes, to be sure, but they are also evaluated -- in lay as well as academic circles -according to features which do not reduce wholly to those social contexts. Not all of these tendencies
are shared by Bourdieu, but they provide a tolerant reception for his sociological reductionism.
Given Bourdieu's reliance on market economy concepts, it is not surprising that he views social
practice as arational and amoral, for markets themselves are reason-blind and amoral (Sayer, 1995;
Keat, 1997; O'Neill, 1998). In their common relativism and subjectivism, postmodernist and neoliberal
market rhetorics complement one another.(n24) On the first page of Sociology in Question, Bourdieu
notes that 'Paradoxically, intellectuals have an interest in economism since, by reducing all social
phenomena, and more especially the phenomena of exchange, to their economic dimension, it enables
14
intellectuals to avoid putting themselves on the line' (1993: 1). The bigger paradox is that if one had
read only Bourdieu's empirical analyses and not his theoretical prescriptions or his rare political
statements, one could be forgiven for thinking that this applies to Bourdieu himself.
Received 2 March 1998
Finally accepted 12 February 1999
Notes
(n1) ' . . . the motive force of social life is the pursuit of distinction, profit, power, wealth, etc .... despite his
disclaimers, Bourdieu does share a good deal with Gary Becker and other rational choice theorists' (Calhoun,
1995: 141).
(n2) Insofar as some actions are based on something like rational choice, and involve the kinds of motivation
assumed in public choice theory, this is not necessarily a problem. What is problematic is the assumption that all
behaviour is of this kind.
(n3) Bourdieu indicates that he does not regard this formulation as merely metaphorical -- for him, culture is
economic (1993: 36).
(n4) As Alexander points out, one of the paradoxes of Bourdieu's work is that while the concept of habitus and
accounts of social research do not clearly acknowledge their hermeneutic dimension, his accounts of particular
social phenomena show him to be an outstandingly perceptive interpreter of meaning in practice.
(n5) However, in one respect, his work differs emphatically from neoclassical economics, since instead of taking
preferences as given, he explains them.
(n6) Strangely, Bourdieu does not discuss technical competence itself and its unequal distribution until after a
hundred pages of analysis of the inequalities in recognition of competence (1996:116).
(n7) It might still be possible to relate such aesthetic judgements to habitus, for what is good and bad might be a
function of resonances and dissonances between the music and the body. In other words, this would be a
modified naturalistic explanation of aesthetic taste.
(n8) Surprisingly for someone whose work involves a hermeneutics of suspicion, Bourdieu attacks such an
approach as 'politically obnoxious' (1993: 32).
(n9) For both Habermas and Aristotelians our basic moral intuitions stem from something deeper and more
universal than contingent features of our local tradition -- in the case of Habermas from the normative
presuppositions of social interaction in any society, for Aristotelians from our nature as social beings.
(n10) Foucault's work involves a similar but more extreme form of 'ethical disidentification'. The resulting
normative confusion is particularly clearly exposed by Fraser (1989, chapter 1). See also Walzer in Hoy (1994).
(n11) Again, parallel, though more glaring contradictions subvert Foucault's work (Fraser, 1989).
(n12) To be sure there is a danger of projecting the intellectual's orientation onto others without realising its
specialised conditions of existence, but it is equally misleading to assume that others never engage in something
similar. There is a notable irony in Bourdieu's article on 'The scholastic point of view' (1990c) in which he -- the
scourge of academic elitism -- pins his hopes for an extension of reason on the expansion of suitably restructured
educational practices, ignoring the capacity for reason of lay people in other less privileged 'publics' (Fraser,
1997; Emirbayer and Sheller, 1998).
(n13) Those familiar with Smith will know that the omitted parts of this quotation are important for
understanding Smith. However, delving into this would require a substantial digression which does not affect my
argument.
(n14) The influence of Smith's social position and habitus are only too clear in The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
but this does not necessarily undermine all of his observations and judgements. How far it does is a matter of
argument and evidence, not a priori dismissal through sociological reductionism.
(n15) Deciding what would be fair and justified judgements in the context of these forms of difference is often
not a matter of disregarding difference and attempting to impose a single standard; thus the differences between
the young and the elderly may not all be false ascriptions but may require judgements which take them into
account. In other words, the issue of deserved and undeserved recognition takes us into the debate over equality
and difference, explored particularly in feminism (eg Phillips, 1987).
(n16) This point is analogous to my earlier argument about judgements internal to genres such as those made of
opera singers. Note also that even to argue that the merits of different disciplines are incommensurable is to
imply criticism of those who compare and rank them in everyday life.
(n17) Ironically, Bourdieu does offer an explicitly Marxist definition of his forms of capital as 'accumulated
labour (in its materialized, or its "incorporated", embodied form), which when appropriated on a private, ie
exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or
living labour' (1986: 241). However, he fails to take note of Marx's connection to the use-value/exchange-value
distinction.
15
(n18) Adopting a sociological reductionist position and treating all methodological arguments as nothing more
than attempts of academics to inflate the value of their capital involves a massive performative contradiction, for
it would mean reasoning that reason is impossible and no more than disguised power play. To be consistent, such
a position could not be defended by argument, only by force or offering bribes of some kind.
(n19) 'Appeal' is deliberately ambiguous here -- ie the 'appeal' may be tacit and affective or explicit and rational.
(n20) Such a position is not relativist in the idealist sense of relative to just any system of thought, regardless of
its practical adequacy in referring to and guiding practice in the material world. To say that ways of thinking are
to some degree relative to habitus, which is partly an internalisation or embodiment of material external
conditions, is quite unlike the idealist claim that they are relative to any discourse, cut off from material practice
in the material world.
(n21) See O'Neill, 1998, chapter 8 for an excellent discussion of recognition.
(n22) Relativism is conservative rather than radical because if anything goes, everything stays (Krige, 1980).
(n23) Those who fear that any other course of action would be ethnocentric might consider applying it to, say,
the Northern Ireland Orange Order and its claimed right to intimidate catholic communities. As Marx said, we
would not judge individuals by reference to their opinion of themselves, and neither should we do so for groups.
(n24) eg in Herrnstein Smith's work, which Bourdieu endorses on the back cover, the connection is explicit
(Herrnstein Smith, 1988). For further examples of the alliance of postmodernism and market advocacy, see
Latour and Woolgar, 1979 and Wade Hands, 1994.
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By Andrew Sayer, University of Lancaster
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Source: Sociological Review, Aug99, Vol. 47 Issue 3, p403, 29p.
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