Bourdieu’s Method
An Exposition and Application
Stephen J Ball
Institute of Education, University
of London
Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)
QuickTi me™ a nd a
TIFF (Uncompre ssed ) decomp resso r
are need ed to se e th is p icture.
French sociologist, anthropologist, philosopher, and
champion of the anti-globalisation movement, whose work spanned a
broad range of subjects from ethnography to art, literature, education,
language, cultural tastes, and television. Bourdieu's most famous book is
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984). It was
named one of the 20th century's 10 most important works of sociology by
the International Sociological Association.
Pierre Bourdieu was born in the village of Denguin, in the Pyrénees'
district of southwestern France. His father was the village postmaster. At
school Bourdieu was a bright student but also gained fame as a star rugby
player. He moved to Paris, where he studied at the École normale
superiéure - his classmate was the philosopher Jacques Derrida
A method - not a theory
as Bourdieu often urged, he wanted his readers to read his works as “exercise
books” rather than theories and was keen to “remind us that ‘theory’ should
not be valued for its own sake” (Karalayali, 2004, p. 352). He felt strongly
that we need to be reflexively aware of the implications and effects of theory
in relation to the social world we conjure up in our work. He was indeed
critical of what he called the “intellectualist bias” which always arises when a
researcher is insufficiently critical of the “presuppositions inscribed in the act
of thinking about the world” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 39) and the
failure to grasp “the logic of practice” which stems from this. Indeed part of
Bourdieu’s endeavour was to destabilise and re-invent the sociological
habitus, “a system of dispositions necessary to the constitution of the craft of
the sociologist in its universality” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 271).
• Summary of Bourdieu’s
general theory of practice
[(habitus)\(capital)]+field
=practice
• Action as the outcome of a
relationship between
habitus,
capital and field.
Habitus produces and reproduces regularities but also as it is constantly
subjected to experiences it generates diversity. Despite its apparent
determinism Bourdieu is adamant that habitus represents and escape
from the structure/agency binary and encompasses the possibilities of
improvisation and invention; 'this degree of indeterminacy, of openness,
of uncertainty, means that one cannot depend on it entirely in critical,
dangerous situations' (Bourdieu 1990 p. 78). The crucial point about
habitus is that it is 'durable but not eternal' (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992
p. 133).
“Habitus is a system of dispositions, that is of permanent manners of
being, seeing, acting and thinking, or a system of long-lasting (rather
than permanent) schemes or structures of perception, conception and
action” (2005)
The 'mental structures' and 'dispositions' from which choices derive are
generated within the habitus.
Habitus is a 'conditioned and conditional freedom' it generates 'things to
do or not to do, things to say or not to say, in relation to a probable
'upcoming' future' (Bourdieu 1990 p. 53).
In this way structure is 'embodied', working 'in' and 'through' peoples
dispositions and activities, rather than 'on' them (see Reay 1998). This is
a world of common sense and self-evidence, that is 'intelligible,
foreseeable and hence taken for granted', 'what is and is not "for us"'
(Bourdieu 1990 p.64).
This ‘does not even require active consent merely the non-occurrence of
a refusal’ (Connell 1989 p. 297).
It is at this point that the 'practical principles of division' (Bourdieu 1986
p. 471) and in particular 'the distances that need to be kept' (p. 472) begin
to come into play.
This is what Bourdieu calls 'the objectivity of "second order"' - symbolic
templates for practical activities' (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992 p. 7).
• As principles and schemes, habitus generates and
organizes practices - as a kind of acquired generative grammar.
As representations of the
world of objects, habitus can be adapted to the social
world without a conscious aiming at ends or an
expression mastery of the operations necessary in
order to attain them, that is without rational
calculation of means to achieve ends.
• As a product of practical sense, or of a socially
constituted “sense of game,”habitus enables
agents to encounter a social world of which it is
the product, and agents find themselves “as fish in
water,”without feeling the weight of the water and
take the world about habitus for granted
The habitus of a group of persons occupying a
nieghbouring position in social space has a
Systematicity ‘style’
practical unity
speaking, saving, loving, music, food, art, cinema, dress
[Habitus has to be considered in relation to field - actions
stem from the confrontations between dispositions and
position (match, mismatch, tension and contradictions comfort/discomfort
habitus is a practical rather than a rational or reflexive logic
- a modus operandi
beware of imposing the scholastic bias
Summary
• Social agents are endowed with habitus, inscribed
in their bodies by past experiences. These systems
of schemes of perception, appreciation, and action
enable them to perform acts of practical
knowledge, based on the identification and
recognition of conditional, conventional stimuli to
which they are predisposed to react; and, without
any explicit definition of ends or rational
calculation of means, to generate appropriate and
endlessly renew strategies, but within the limits of
the structural constraints of which they are the
product and which define them
We can always say that
individuals make choices, as
long as we do not forget that
they do not choose the
principle of these choices.
–Pierre Bourdieu
CAPITALS
Bourdieu’s theoretical framework
Capitals:
- capitals are forms of power in social life
- economic capital is deemed equal to personal wealth
- cultural capital encompasses three dimensions:
(i) personal educational credentials and experiences
(educational capital) that facilitate the accumulation of
cultural tastes
(ii) social background, whereby cultural tastes are passed
down through socialization from parents’ own educational
experiences
(iii) the cultural tastes and dispositions themselves
- social capital is “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources
which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less
institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition or in other words to membership of a group”
What is field?
• Field is a spatial metaphor.
• Field is a network of relations among the objective
positions.
• A field is a social arena within which struggles or
maneuvers take place over specific resources or stakes
and access to them.
• Fields are defined by the stakes which are at stake—
cultural goods (life-style), housing, intellectual
distinction (education), employment, land, power
(politics), social class, prestige or whatever—and may
be of differing degrees of specificity and concreteness.
• Field is different from “positivist conceptions of social location,
such as “milieu,”“context,”and “social background,”which
failed to highlight sufficiently the conflictual character of social
life.
• Different from Institutions
Field
(game-playing - cards you are dealt)
Bourdieu uses the concept of field: a social arena in which people
maneuver and struggle in pursuit of desirable resources.
All human actions take place within social fields, which are
arenas for the struggle of the resources. Individuals, institutions,
and other agents try to distinguish themselves from others, and
acquire capital which is useful or valuable on the arena.In
Bourdieu's work, a field is a system of social positions (e.g. a
profession such as law) structured internally in terms of power
relationships (e.g. the power differential between judges and
lawyers). More specifically, a field is a social arena of struggle
over the appropriation of certain species of capital--capital being
whatever is taken as significant for social agents.
A field is constituted by the relational differences in position of social agents,
and the boundaries of a field are demarcated by where its effects end.
Different fields can be either autonomous or interrelated (e.g. consider the
separation of power between judiciary and legislature) and more complex
societies are "more differentiated" societies that have more fields.
Fields are constructed according to underlying nomos, fundamental principles
of "vision and division" (the division between mind and body for example, or
male and female), or organizing "laws" of experience that govern practices and
experiences within a field. The nomos underlying one field is often irreducible to
those underlying another, as in the noted disparity between the nomos of the
aesthetic field that values cultural capital and in some sense discourages
economic capital, and that of the economic field which values economic capital.
Agents subscribe to a particular field not by way of explicit contract, but by their
practical acknowledgement of the stakes, implicit in their very "playing of the
game".
Fields are organized both vertically and horizontally. This means that fields are not
strictly analogous to classes, and are often autonomous, independent spaces of social
play.
 Draw on an ESRC funded study of middle class families
choosing child care as they organise and plan the care and
education of their children.
 In particular the range of ‘enrichment’ activities in which
these families enrolled their children (most of the examples here
pertain to the under 5s).
 These activities are just one example of the efforts families
devote to cultural transmission and the inculcation in their
children of the capacity to recognize ‘legitimate culture’ – as
Bourdieu calls it – and which he distinguishes from the middlebrow’ and ‘popular’ culture, and the reinscription of
‘classificatory practices’.
 Bourdieu’s work also sensitises us, in a very immediate and
down-to-earth sense, to the ways in which forms of behaviour,
including verbal and bodily forms, constitute an exterior
representation of who we are or who we are becoming.
 Bourdieu suggests that ‘nothing more clearly affirms one’s ‘class’, nothing
more infallibly classifies, than tastes in music’ (1986 p. 18).
 classification and affirmation of class comes about ‘by virtue of the rarity of
the conditions of acquiring the corresponding dispositions’ (p.18).
‘for an adequate interpretation of the differences found between the classes
or within the same class as regards their relation to various legitimate arts,
painting, music, theatre, literature etc., one would have to analyse fully the
social uses, legitimate or illegitimate to which each of these arts, genres,
works or institutions considered lends itself’ (p.18).
 For Bourdieu music – classical music that is - has a special place in
distinguishing the ‘bourgeois world’ from that of the ‘populace’ or as he also
suggests ‘inheritors’ from ‘newcomers’ .
 Of particular importance for him in making such distinctions, even among
those who share an enjoyment of classical music, is not simply what kind of
classical music is enjoyed but the ‘conditions of reception’ involving either
‘belated knowledge through records’ or ‘early knowledge through playing the
piano, the bourgeois instrument par excellence’ (p. 19).
 The latter ‘early, domestic, practical acquaintance’ (p. 76), is a particular
mode of acquisition of cultural capital and a particular relation to music.
 The dispositions and distinctions involved in all of this also
have a particular relevance for Bourdieu for understanding the
functioning of the education system and the relationships between
cultural capital and academic capital.
 Such an understanding is not possible by concentrating on the
education system alone. ‘Academic capital is in fact the
guaranteed product of the combined effects of cultural
transmission by the family and cultural transmission by the school
(the efficiency of which depends on the amount of cultural capital
directly inherited from the family)’ (p. 23).
 In other words, in order to fully come to grips with the
distribution of academic capital we must look at the work done
inside the family in the transmission of cultural capital and in
particular ‘in its earliest conditions of acquisition … through the
more or less visible marks they leave’ (2004 p. 18).
You know, I’m not one for thinking your childcare arrangements, or
even school necessarily, has to be the one where you, you know,
they have to impart values and things. I think that most education
occurs at home. And I think that the fact that children go to school
is not incidental but it’s just a kind of- it’s a structured way of some
learning occurring. I think we do so much of the teaching, or
facilitating of learning, as parents … The help is convenience help;
we’re not looking for, you know, fantastic quality creative….
Because Connie is incredibly creative with them, you know, she
provides this incredibly creative environment. And, you know,
there’s just all those things going on, and they’re all playing
musical instruments and, you know, they’re constantly painting
and crafts and…. You know, and that’s the role of the home. I’m
not looking to the school to provide all those types of things or the
child minders. So it’s really if you’ve got someone who’s reliable
and safe, you know, that’s much, much more important than being
creative in play, for example. I think it’s our, as parents, it’s our
responsibility. (Re-interview Connie and Daniel, SN, p.36)
God, yeah, they do masses. He has flute lessons, piano lessons, football, he also does cubs, they
both do swimming. Yeah, both. (Kathryn, B, p. 40)
I’m just, I try, I took her to ballet and it was about the same time that I started her at playgroup and I
just thought she’s too young, she sat rather frightened on my lap, so I’ll leave that for a while . I
sort of want to start her on violin, but I’m still debating because it’s a big undertaking to do it, I’d
have to also learn it apparently. I’ve sort of just got the papers, but I’m not 100 percent sure we’ll
do it. (Denise, SN, p.23)
Yes, we have an eldest child who has got an enormous amount of energy… and has wanted to get
into everything. And I should think he’s tried everything. And last year he was doing tennis,
swimming, he was in the school play …and that took up early evening and lots of the days, and
whatever, that he was doing. So, that’s, sort of, singing, drama. Art he did, they’ve all done
French club but I haven’t managed to keep them going because I think it’s their choice after
school. They don’t have to do anything, but if they want to they can. They both started piano and
didn’t want to continue, which is a real pity because I think the youngest would have liked to have
done but he wanted to be like his brother; still, I think he might come back to that. And now [one
son] wants to learn the saxophone, but we’ll have to see about that. My middle one adores cubs,
has got himself organised to go to the little church club as well, which I never thought he would – he
didn’t join any clubs for a long while, and then suddenly the swimming tutor got him in the pool
rather than just watching. The swimming club, which is like a- it’s a fun club, got him in the pool
rather than just watch. (Linda, B, p. 28). She’s going to do ballet soon. They do extra lessons at
the nursery if you want them so she does an hour a week of drama and an hour a week of music.
And then we take them with us [out] on the weekends, but it’s not another activity with other kids.
And then I think we should think about a musical instrument. Oh God - the violin. (Jessica, Stoke
Newington)
Yeah, I do, I mean the ballet thing, it’s actually partly because
[daughter] like myself, turns her feet in and we have to encourage her
to turn her feet out and I think she’s going to be a big girl like myself
and I think she’s going to need to know how to coordinate herself, and I
think she enjoys dancing, and there’s not an awful lot of option at the
age of this age for dancing, so ballet seems to be it really, I guess every
girl wants to get dressed up in pink (laughs), I don’t know, but we do
that on Saturdays up the road at the top of Clapham High Street, and
she steps into the class, she doesn’t know anyone there and she gets
on with it, and I like to do that because I think she really does have a
really good, a very kind of well mixed social circle, and I like the fact
that she’ll get out and meet new people doing other things. That is the
only thing we additionally pay for. (Lauren, B, p.28)
 There is learning about gender, self-control, social graces, skills of
interaction, and as noted already grace and movement. Transmission is
written onto and into the bodily hexis, Bourdieu asserts that: ‘Taste, a
class culture turned into nature, that is, embodied, helps shape the
class body” (1986 p. 190).
The nature of these enrichment activities and
classes would suggest though that there is an
accumulation of ‘gratuitous knowledge’ (p. 26)
through ‘unintended learning made possible by
a disposition acquired through domestic or
scholarly inculcation of legitimate culture’ (p.
28).
 This is ‘the work of the bourgeois family’ (p.
28) and their agents.
 It involves the development of ‘the capacity
for inspired encounters with works of art and
high culture in general’ (p. 29) or introduction
into ‘the principles of specific aesthetic
legitimacy’ (p. 30) in particular artistic fields.
 social class as a lived condition, a set of practices and values,
distributions of and the enactment and deployment of differently valued
capitals, in different social fields.
 social class is invested in who we are, what we do, how we perceive
ourselves and others, and relate to and deal with those 'others'.
 It is through practices and perceptions that class boundaries are
maintained, trajectories and resources defended, and social advantages
ensured, in particular through the work of families.
"Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by
their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make,
between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in
which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or
betrayed." (from Distinction)