A View on Bourdieu's Legacy: Sens pratique v. Hysteresis

Abstract

1. Introduction Bourdieu's last publications (1) before his recent death in January have been object of considerable attention and controversy (Alexander, 2000; Callon, 1999; Critique, 1995; Grignon, 1996; Grumberg & Schweisguth, 1996; Hamel, 1997 & 1998; Magazine Litteraire, 1998; Lahire, 1999; Martucelli, 1999; Mayer, 1995; Mongin & Roman, 1998; Pinto, 1998; Sciences Humaines, 2000; Verdes-Leroux, 1998). The controversy has not always been about Bourdieu's sociological work as such. Rather, it has been about conciliation between, on one hand, content of his sociology and, on other hand, his numerous interventions in French public and political debate in past ten years,(2) and Bourdieu's explicit ambition to embrace standpoint of French intellectuel.(3) The object of this note is not to nourish French controversy about Bourdieu as an intellectuel, albeit some of arguments developed below might shed a new light on controversy itself. Rather, it aims at highlighting and exploring what, at first sight, seems to be an important shift in epistemological orientation of Bourdieu' s work or, more precisely, a tension between two distinct positions that he has simultaneously taken about construction of sociological knowledge and its usefulness for lay people. Bourdieu has certainly been one of most convincing advocates of break between sociology and common sense (Bourdieu, Chamboderon & Passeron, 1991). For him hallmark of ordinary knowledgeability is a sens pratique (Bourdieu, 1980) that is markedly different from sociologists' scholastic posture. While constantly re-affirming break between sociological knowledge and common sense, Bourdieu's last publications exhibit empirical and methodological characteristics which put into que stion overarching dichotomy between lay people's sens pratique and sociologists' scholastic posture. 2. Sens Pratique and Scholastic Posture Common sense and social science, for Bourdieu, refer to two radically different kinds of knowledgeability, or modes of relating to world, namely practical and theoretical modes respectively. Lay people's senspratique involves an immediate competence in making sense of world, but a competence which is, as it were, oblivious to itself (1980: 37), insofar as it does not contain knowledge of practices it generates (1980: 175). The practical mode of relating to social world is a relation of placid ignorance [docte ignorance] (1980: 37). Senspratique is based on correspondence between objective structures of society and internalised structures of habitus, which implies that the 'choices' of habitus are accomplished without consciousness of constraint (Bourdieu 1991: 51). In contrast, social scientists' theoretical or scholastic mode involves a distance via-a-vis immediate intelligibility of world (Bourdieu, Chamboderon & Passeron, 1991). Theoretical knowledge owes a number of its most essential properties to fact that conditions under which it is produced are not that of (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 70). The sociologist must adopt a theoretical or scholastic posture when studying social processes, this posture being fundamentally different from logic of agents actually involved in these processes (Ibid. : 69). The sociologist's posture is a disposition to regard his or her experience and practice as an object about which one talks and thinks (Bourdieu, 1997: 74). In his Meditations Pascaliennes (1997), Bourdieu reaffirms that scholastic disposition is, in his view, exclusive posture of those who have access to academic and scientific fields. Although scholastic posture is a universal anthropological possibility (Ibid.: 27), which means that scholars and scientists do not in principle have monopoly of scholastic posture, conditions for its development can mainly be found, for Bourdieu, in scientific and intellectual fields. …