Abstract
Pierre Bourdieu is universally acknowledged as a founding figure in the revival of interest in theories of practice. He is equally widely recognised for his contribution to the study of modern consumption. Although his analysis of the social distribution of taste remains highly controversial it can rarely be bypassed by scholars seeking to give explanations of patterns of consumption. Distinction is Bourdieu’s best-known and most celebrated work among scholars of consumption. The fact that it is a convoluted, fragmentary and theoretically inconsistent book is compensated for by its originality, verve, critical purpose and sociological relevance. In this chapter I discuss the relationship between its key concepts, with the specific purpose of trying to isolate a usable concept of practice to deal with issues of consumption. This involves an extended discussion of the relationship between his uses of the concepts of practice and field. Bearing in mind that the scientific object of Distinction is not consumption, but social judgements of taste, the relationship between consumption and practice deserves unpacking. I address that by asking why and with what consequences Bourdieu withdrew from extended reflection on the concept of practice and argue that its reincorporation into the contemporary analysis of consumption might resolve some theoretical and empirical problems. Clarification of Bourdieu’s controversial concepts might improve accounts of consumption, particularly so that they may deal with ordinary consumption.
An earlier version of this chapter was contained in ‘Practice and Field: Revising Bourdieusian Concepts’, CRIC Discussion Paper No. 65, April, CRIC: University of Manchester.
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Notes
- 1.
The concept appears in Logic of Practice, only on pp. 51, 58, 66–8.
- 2.
Bourdieu (1984: 175, 208 and 223).
- 3.
Bourdieu (1984: 173, 218, and 212, respectively).
- 4.
If Robbins (2000) was correct that all Bourdieu’s analysis is situational, choosing the concepts for the explanatory task in hand rather than for grand theory-building, then the fact that Bourdieu talks of practice among the Kabyle, and fields when faced with the French bureaucracy and the art world, would be additional corroborating evidence for such an interpretation.
- 5.
Practice appears only 227ff, in an attempt to elucidate the notion of the illusio.
- 6.
The application in The State Nobility is equally impressive if slightly less conceptually self-conscious.
- 7.
Autonomy increases the further away from the heteronomous end of the field or other more heteronomous fields—like the economy or the field of power.
- 8.
See Jenkins (1992), who gives a sound outline of Bourdieu’s notion of field (pp. 84–6) then offers a range of ungenerous critical observations which lead him to dismiss the value of the concept as economistic, deterministic, unoriginal, ontologically unsound, lacking an adequate conception of institutions, ill-defined and functionalist (pp. 86–91). (Jenkins makes these points as part of a more general and interrelated critique of concepts of practice and habitus.)
- 9.
Swartz (1997) noted that field ‘has become a central pillar of [Bourdieu’s] conceptual edifice’ (p. 9) and that it is ‘the most promising for future sociological work’ (p. 291).
- 10.
I tend to agree with Jenkins that it is theoretically confusing to attribute habitus to a field. Conflating the versatile and generative dispositions which an agent brings to a field with the requirements for effective action in that field makes it difficult to contemplate any possibility that agents might be ill-fitted to their positions in a field.
- 11.
Bourdieu is not without any explanation of this, for this is one basis of the power of social capital, but apart from the fact that he rarely uses the concept, he assumes a fit between personal habitus and position without reference to competence. Thus, in The State Nobility (pp. 116–23) he explicitly discusses discrepancies between educational qualification and occupational recruitment, but only at an abstract and functional level, in terms of the consecrating effect of titles conferred through the system of qualifications, but without consideration of any differential effective competence among agents.
- 12.
Martin (2003), in arguing for the potential of field theory, dubs Bourdieu’s contribution an account of ‘fields of organised striving’ and commends this for its demonstration of the role of social fate and a sociologically powerful version of reflexivity. But he sees no compelling reason for focusing solely on competitive and strategic phenomena.
- 13.
Martin (2003: 32–3) notes that field theory’s general focus on contestation, which he thinks is most plausibly founded on a model of agonistic games, is contentious, but offers no solution other than to affirm that ‘not all human action takes place “in the field”’.
- 14.
- 15.
Swartz (1997: 117–42) offers an extensive and appreciative secondary treatment of the concept of field, understanding fields essentially in terms of systems (as does Jenkins 1992: 85 and Robbins 2000: 39). Crossley (2002: 178ff) shows to maximum effect the potential of seeing fields in terms of their game-like features. Both Swartz and Crossley agree that although Bourdieu sometimes uses the term market as synonymous with field, and there is an obvious connection to concepts of capital, this is not a very good analogy for understanding the features of fields—as demonstrated by an application of the concept of field to the analysis of markets by Fligstein (2001).
It would be a mistake to imagine that Bourdieu used the concept of field in identical fashion throughout his career. The concept evolves over time, growing in coherence as it is more precisely formulated. Consequently, it would seem that early formulations are better referred to only for exegetical purposes, for example Bourdieu (1991 [1971]).
- 16.
- 17.
In addition, potentially, we can envisage explanations of the ways in which new fields emerge, besides through internal differentiation and specialisation.
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Warde, A. (2017). Practice and Field: Revising Bourdieu’s Concepts. In: Consumption. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55682-0_6
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