Abstract
Pierre Bourdieu developed a theory of democratic politics that is at least as indebted to civic republicanism as to Marxism. He was familiar with the civic republican tradition, and it increasingly influenced both his political interventions and sociological work, especially late in his career. Bourdieu drew above all on Niccolò Machiavelli’s version of republicanism, though the French republican tradition also influenced him via Durkheimian social theory. Three elements of Bourdieu’s work in particular—his concept of field autonomy, his view of interests and universalism, and his understanding of how solidarity is generated and sustained—may be understood, at least in part, as sociological reformulations of republican ideas. By drawing attention to these republican influences, the article aims to show that the conceptual resources which some critics, including Jeffrey C. Alexander, consider indispensable to an adequate theory of democracy are not entirely absent in Bourdieu’s work. On the basis of this reassessment, the article concludes that Bourdieu and Alexander are not as opposed in their thinking about democratic politics as it might first appear.
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Notes
Alexander’s work has received criticism as well, particularly in regard to how he conceives the symbolic codes that constitute the discourse of civil society and how he addresses questions of power and economic inequality. These criticisms and Alexander’s rebuttals are beyond the scope of this article. For discussion of Alexander (2006), see the symposium in the Fall 2007 issue of Sociological Quarterly, Emirbayer (2008), and Sciortino and Kivisto (forthcoming).
The hermeneutics of suspicion refers to a mode of interpretation that aims to uncover disguised or hidden meanings, including in its Marxian version the concealment of self-interest in the guise of the universal or general interest (Ricoeur [1969] 1974).
Although Emirbayer and Schneiderhan (2013) find that Bourdieu’s conception of social action is too limited, this limitation does not in their view preclude the possibility of social action with universalistic consequences: “The dynamic [Bourdieu] identified, one he might well have termed … the universality mechanism, was one in which actors in various fields all invoke disinterestedness and universalistic ideals as part of their own strategies for advancement” (p. 154). In this respect, their criticism of Bourdieu is not as far-reaching as Alexander’s. See below on the universality mechanism.
State nobility is Bourdieu’s term for the corps of public officials that contributed historically to the formation of the modern state and, as part of that process, its own formation as the holder of a legitimate monopoly on state power. The authority and legitimacy of this corps rests on the academic qualifications (and thus the cultural capital) of its members (Bourdieu [1989] 1996).
Bourdieu (2010, p. 111) came to view the state as an “ambiguous reality.” On the one hand, the state “can be described and treated as a relay, no doubt a relatively autonomous one, of economic and political powers which have little interest in universal interests” (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 127). As such, he acknowledged, the state itself is a potential threat to the autonomy of cultural production. It would be interesting to compare Bourdieu on this point to Alexis de Tocqueville, who regarded both the state and the market as potential threats to political society. On the other hand, the state can also be treated as “a neutral body which, because it conserves, within its very structure, the traces of previous struggles, the gains of which it records and guarantees, is capable of acting as a kind of umpire, no doubt always somewhat biased, but ultimately less unfavorable to the interests of the dominated, and to what can be called justice, than what is exalted, under the false colours of liberty and liberalism, by the advocates of ‘laissez-faire,’ in other words the brutal and tyrannical exercise of economic force” (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 127). As such, the state can provide resources that furnish cultural producers (and the working class) with greater autonomy from the market. Perhaps because Bourdieu regarded the state as less dangerous than the market at this historical juncture, he seemed to envision a sort of alliance of the state (or at least certain parts of it) with cultural producers, popular movements, and trade unions against the market. But ultimately, Bourdieu suggested, “it is only by reinforcing both state assistance [for cultural production] and [producers’] controls on the uses of that assistance … that we can practically escape the alternative of statism and liberalism” (Bourdieu and Haacke [1994] 1995, p. 73).
This reading of Bourdieu is also indebted to Weintraub’s (1990, chap. 2, p. 32) thesis that the impact of the republican virtue tradition on sociology has been “profound and fundamental” but “not fully recognized.”
Cf. Durkheim ([1893] 1984, p. 320): “liberty itself is the product of regulation.” In his view, the unregulated market did not bring liberty for all, but what he called “the law of the strongest,” the domination of the weak by the powerful (pp. xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxix), and the only alternative was a system of social and moral regulation that came from society as a whole (not a particular class or faction), was binding on everyone, and was accepted by everyone in part because it had a rational basis. This may be read as a sociological reformulation of the republican notion that civic or political liberty is indispensable for personal or individual liberty (Skinner 2002, pp. 186–212). Neoliberalism, in contrast, tends to define liberty exclusively in personal or individual terms. Bourdieu’s fear about the loss of autonomy for cultural producers today brings to mind Alexis de Tocqueville’s lament about the fate of corporate bodies two centuries earlier: “there was in France no township, borough, village, or hamlet, however small, no hospital, factory, convent, or college which had a right to manage its own affairs as it thought fit or to administer its possessions without interference. Then, as today, the central power held all Frenchmen in tutelage” (Tocqueville [1856] 1955, p. 51).
Machiavelli’s reference is to Lucius Junius Brutus, founder of the Roman republic, not the better known Marcus Junius Brutus, who participated in the assassination of Julius Caesar.
For a discussion of field autonomy, the market, and the public sphere that is more critical of Bourdieu, see Lane (2006, pp. 120–140). For another perspective on the formation of publics, see Mische (2007). Her work suggests the possibility that field bridgers are not simply a threat to the autonomy of the field and the purity of its internal logic, as Bourdieu’s work might lead one to conclude, but also a source of new insight and ideas, organizational innovation and hybridization, and transectoral coalition-building. An extended discussion of this question is beyond the scope of this article; I will merely suggest here that it may be possible and useful to distinguish field bridging from the imposition of commercial and political standards of value.
Bourdieu’s references in this context to the “anthropological possibilities” or “capabilities” possessed by all human beings might seem to suggest a foundation for solidarity and universalism in human nature (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 136). However, Bourdieu ([1997] 2000, p. 126) explicitly rejected this inference: “reason is not rooted in an ahistorical nature.” Anthropological potentialities depend on definite social, economic, and historical conditions for their realization (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 136; Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 126). Accordingly, Bourdieu concentrated on those conditions. This article follows suit.
I am indebted to Vincent (2004, p. 137) for this point, which I enlarge upon here. Machiavelli actually relied on a combination of the second and third positions, for he also emphasized the role of civil religion in maintaining liberty (Machiavelli 1965, pp. 223–34; Skinner 1981, pp. 61–64; Skinner 2002, pp. 172–173; Weintraub 1990, chap. 4, pp. 18–19). Civil religion is an element of the Machiavellian vision that Bourdieu, despite occasional references to it (e.g., Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 125), did not transpose into his political sociology. Bourdieu increasingly used the terms illusio or libido instead of interest to signal that self-interested behavior presupposed tacit agreement about the worth of the game (the field of struggle) and its stakes. In this way, he sought to distance himself from the utilitarianism that critics ascribed to him. However, this kind of tacit agreement does not ensure virtuous behavior; to explain the latter, Bourdieu (like Machiavelli) had to postulate the historical development of an interest in the universal.
This thesis brings to mind not only Machiavelli, but also Marx’s notion of the proletariat as a universal class (a concept derived, in turn, from Hegel, who had applied it to civil servants). However, in Bourdieu’s formulation an interest in the universal is not the property of a specific class; rather, it is a property of fields, or, more precisely, of the immanent logic and social mechanisms of the field that compel its participants to sublimate their drives. Intellectuals “are not representatives of universality, still less a ‘universal class,’ but it does happen that, for historical reasons, they are often interested in universality” (Bourdieu [2002] 2008, pp. 131–32). For a critical discussion of Bourdieu’s universalism, see Lane (2006, pp. 141–161).
Bourdieu ([1994] 1998, p. 59) initially claims that the state nobility’s submission to the universal is “only in appearance,” but he immediately adds: “Those who—like Marx—invert the official image that the bureaucracy likes to give of itself, and describe bureaucrats as usurpers of the universal who act as private proprietors of public resources, ignore the very real effects of the obligatory reference to the values of neutrality and disinterested loyalty to the public good. Such values impose themselves with increasing force on the functionaries of the state” (p. 59, emphasis added). Bourdieu ([1994] 1998, pp. 59–60) concludes: “The sociological vision cannot ignore the discrepancy between the official norm … and the reality of bureaucratic practice, with all its violations of the obligation of disinterestedness.... Yet sociology cannot for all that remain blind to the effects of this norm … or … to the effects of the interest attached to disinterestedness” (emphasis added; cf. Bourdieu and Haacke [1994] 1995, p. 62; Bourdieu [1997] 2000, pp. 124–125). This is an explicit repudiation of the vulgar Marxism sometimes attributed to him and perhaps, partly in response to such criticisms, an unacknowledged refinement of his earlier thinking (Silber 2009).
Linking his accounts of solidarity and moral universalism, Bourdieu ([1997] 2000, pp. 201–202) called for the creation of fields in which, “as in gift economies, agents have an interest in disinterestedness and generosity,” and he urged “collective investment in the institutions that … cause the civic virtues of disinterestedness and devotion—a gift to the group—to be encouraged and rewarded by the group” (emphasis added). Silber (2009) rightly points out that the gift played a central and enduring role in Bourdieu’s conception of the social world.
Because of its self-conscious orientation to the autonomy and interests of intellectuals themselves, the “collective intellectual” also differs from the Gramscian organic intellectual, who in Bourdieu’s eyes is reduced to the role of a “fellow traveler” of the proletariat (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 668) or a “symbolic warrant … cynically exploited by the parties” (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, p. 13).
Cf. Bourdieu ([1972] 1977, p. 65): “Insecurity provides a negative principle of cohesion capable of making up for the deficiency of positive principles.” Admittedly, however, the “negative, forced solidarity created by a shared vulnerability” is less stable than the positive solidarity created by gift exchange: it “lasts no longer than the power relations capable of holding individual interests together” (Bourdieu [1972] 1977, p. 65). This analysis presumably does not apply to the “heteronomous” intellectuals within the field—those who draw on “external alliances” and “external … powers” to “overturn the power relations inside the field” (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 663)—since they do not share the common interest in the field’s autonomy.
In seeking to overcome the division between researchers and activists, Bourdieu presumably did not mean to insert the latter into the production of scientific knowledge, which would introduce heteronomy into the field, but to forge an alliance between agents in different fields who were similarly threatened by and therefore had a shared interest in opposing neoliberalism.
Weintraub (1979, p. 6) uses the term willed community to refer to “a dynamic, self-governing community characterized by tight solidarity and fundamental—though usually not absolute—equality. This solidarity does not proceed primarily from personal ties, particularly ties of personal dependence, but from common participation in an active community which forms a moral whole.”
To translate into Bourdieu’s terminology, Alexander (2006) seeks to defend civil autonomy. Civil competence or “civil power” can be understood as a kind of capital that is specific to the civil sphere, while reliance on money, ascribed characteristics, or other non-specific forms of capital (what Alexander calls “social power” as opposed to civil power) introduces heteronomy into the field.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this article were presented at meetings of the Council for European Studies in 2010, the European Sociological Association in 2011, and at the Eastern Sociological Society meeting and the New School for Social Research in 2012. I am grateful to Marcos Ancelovici for the initial stimulus to write it. Although I did not incorporate all suggestions for improvement, I thank everyone who offered them, including Ann Mische, Anna Paretskaya, Lynette Spillman, Gilles Verpraet, and the Editors and reviewers for Theory and Society, including David Swartz. I am also indebted to the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study for the Martin L. and Sarah F. Leibowitz Membership, which generously supported my work in 2011–2012. I dedicate the article to Wisconsin’s union members and organizers, including my friends and colleagues Kevin Gibbons, Alex Hanna, Norm Holsinger, Bryan Kennedy, Jim Molenda, Adrienne Pagac, Anna Paretskaya, Peter Rickman, Julie Schmid, Karen Tuerk, and many others too numerous to mention, who, faced with a radical assault on workers’ rights in February 2011 under the pretense of budget balancing, mounted an extraordinary and historic defense of intellectual autonomy, the public interest, and social solidarity. La lutte continue.
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Goldberg, C.A. Struggle and solidarity: civic republican elements in Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology. Theor Soc 42, 369–394 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-013-9194-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-013-9194-z