Bourdieusian Perspective Research Articles

Uncovering Non-native Speakers’ Experiences in Global Software Development Teams——a Bourdieusian Perspective

Uncovering Non-native Speakers’ Experiences in Global Software Development Teams——a Bourdieusian Perspective

Interrelations of Social, Physical and Symbolic Space – Assessing Residents’ Spatial Perceptions of Gentrifying Neighbourhoods with Multiple Factor Analysis

ABSTRACT Adopting a Bourdieusian perspective on the trialectic relationship between symbolic, social, and physical space, we assess how perceptions, evaluations, and expectations towards one’s surroundings interrelate and are associated with social status and physical location. We analyse survey data from two German neighbourhoods undergoing gentrification, arguing that in this process, residents of different class backgrounds and with different expectations towards their residential area live side-by-side. To reconstruct residents’ symbolic space of spatial perceptions, we apply multiple factor analysis (MFA) to several sets of variables on neighbourhood perception, and relate these to residents’ location in physical space (different neighbourhoods) and social space (socio-demographics). We find that differences between neighbourhoods in levels of social cohesion and disorder are the most important dimension in symbolic space, emphasizing the crucial role of social bonds in residents’ perception of their surroundings. Expectations towards neighbourhood change, the second dimension, are strongly influenced by socio-demographic characteristics.

Exploring the virtuous circle of societal value creation and capture by non-profit organizations from a Bourdieusian perspective

ABSTRACT For non-profit organizations, the way that societal value is created, captured and articulated remains ambiguous. While value creation is well-established in the literature, the understanding of value capture, particularly in its non-economic dimensions, is in its nascent stages. However, understanding value capture beyond its economic dimension is crucial, as it impacts the capacity to create more societal value. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of forms of capital (economic, social, cultural, and symbolic), this research proposes a theoretical framework to explain societal value creation and capture for the non-profit sector, illustrated by the case study of Doctors Without Borders.

Analyzing The Sense Of Belonging From A Bourdieusian Perspective: Women From Türkiye In North London

Analyzing the sense of belonging from a Bourdieusian perspective: Turkish women in North London Abstract The Cambridge Dictionary defines belonging as the feeling of safety and comfort in a given place. For migrants, defining belonging is complicated as it also means establishing good relations with other members of society. A sense of belonging encompasses being included in the family, the country in which one lives, and the group to which one belongs. This study sought to answer the question “How is the sense of belonging established in a diaspora?” It also poses the question “Does the sense of belonging differ between generations in a diaspora? This study was conducted in North London between 2017–2019. In-depth interviews were conducted with 8 first-generation women, 10 second-generation women and 7-third generation young women. Interviews were conducted at the North London Alevi Association. Although the first step of this study was to identify a sense of belonging and how it is established, also generational differences regarding belonging were examined. The analysis was conducted within the framework of Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and capital. Generally, it is observed that first-generation womens’ sense of belonging is still concentrated in the home country they left, whereas for the younger generation it is related to the country in which they were born or went there when they were children.

A framework for investigating immigrant students’ attitudes towards science, exemplified with data from Turkish families

In this article, we draw on sociocultural, cognitive and affective perspectives to investigate the factors lying behind immigrant school students’ attitudes and aspirations towards science. We combine Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social capital to produce a new theoretical framework for understanding how these factors operate. One part of our framework focuses on students’ cognitive and affective resources, such as enjoyment, self-efficacy, engagement and intrinsic motivation. Another relates to students’ sociocultural resources, such as gender, class, home language, parental expectations and perceived teacher encouragement, which are filtered through notions of field and students’ immigrant status. We then exemplify this framework by exploring the attitudes towards science of two Turkish immigrant secondary school students in England, as revealed by questionnaires that they completed and interviews with them and their parent(s). Our tentative conclusion is that our theoretical framework, in its combination of a Bourdieusian perspective and Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory, may help make sense of why some immigrant school students continue with science and others do not.

Countering Journalist Curse in A Bourdieusian Perspective: Metajournalistic Discourse on Doxing in Remotivi Indonesia

This research explores the phenomenon of doxing as a digital form of attack against journalists, reflecting a shift from physical threats to digital harassment facilitated by the accessibility of digital media. Utilizing a metajournalistic discourse approach, this study examines how Indonesian journalists perceive and respond to the pressures of doxing within the framework of their professional practices and identities. By analyzing metajournalistic discourse documents from the Remotivi website, this research positions journalists as both victims and defenders within their field, facing pressures from both the political and economic spheres. Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical constructs of the journalistic field, capital, and habitus are employed to interpret the responses of journalists to these digital threats. The findings indicate that doxing represents a significant external influence, perpetuating a high degree of heteronomy within the journalistic field. However, there also exists a discursive resistance among journalists, characterized by efforts to define and uphold a journalistic identity aligned with autonomy and ethical norms. This study highlights the need for greater cybersecurity awareness and protections for journalists, emphasizing the importance of maintaining journalistic integrity in the face of evolving digital threats.

“Standing out like a sore thumb”: exploring socio-cultural influences on adherence to cardiac rehabilitation

ABSTRACT Exercise-based rehabilitation forms a key part of the UK National Health Service patient-care pathway for cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Only around half of all eligible patients attend core CR, however, with social inequalities affecting participation. Few qualitative studies have explored in-depth the key factors influencing engagement with CR, specifically from a sociological theoretical, and ethnographic perspective. Utilising an ethnographic approach allowed us to get a sense of the embodied experiences of 10 participants attending or declining core CR, together with a further seven family members/significant others. This provided in-depth appreciation of participants’ lifeworld contexts as key influences on CR participation. The article draws on these qualitative data and focuses on 1) participants’ initial thoughts about CR; and 2) navigating the field of CR, analysed via thematic analysis. We utilise a Bourdieusian theoretical perspective to theorise the findings, including salient socio-cultural factors influencing attendance/non-attendance and (non)adherence. The article findings highlight how perceptions of CR and the ability to navigate the field are strongly influenced by habitus and capital, and how personal biographies and socio-material conditions affect adherence to CR programmes. The study provides original insights into embodied experiences of exercise-based CR, and novel understandings of the reasons for drop-out/poor adherence, theorised from a Bourdieusian perspective.

Students’ Cultural and Economic Family Background and Duration of University Studies in Finland

Applying a Bourdieusian perspective, we investigate whether families’ institutionalized cultural capital (parental education) and economic capital (family income) are associated with the duration of university studies in Finland. We use register data comprising 10,516 students enrolled in universities between 1999 and 2002 and Tobit modeling. The results do not entirely support our hypothesis Institutionalized cultural capital is not associated with students’ duration of university studies. However, having higher economic capital decreases the duration of university studies.

Mobilising resilience to symbolic violence with Chinese international research students in Australia: a Bourdieusian perspective

ABSTRACT Psychological studies on international research students’ resilience to mental distress have attracted much scholarly attention. Yet, sociological inquiries into resilience to ‘invisible’ pressures such as power imbalances remain limited. Drawing insights from Bourdieu’s relational sociology, we recast the psychology of resilience to adversities into a sociology of resilience to symbolic violence. To delve into the latter, we surveyed 220 Chinese international Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students across Australian universities using a self-designed instrument and analysed the data through Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Findings revealed that Chinese international HDR students were drawn into a space of forces fraught with the symbolic violence of supervisor authority, English hegemony, and neoliberalism; yet, simultaneously, they ventured into a space of struggles with such forms of symbolic violence by virtue of their agency and reflexivity as well as peer and supervisor empowerment. Such resilience practice was complicated by their capital portfolio and habitual dispositions, which in turn, contributed differently to their perceptions of symbolic violence and resilience to it. We thereby offer diverse stakeholders strategies in building resilience for (Chinese) international research students within and beyond Australia.

A longitudinal study on content learning of EMI students in Vietnam from Bourdieusian perspectives

Abstract English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has increased rapidly. This study adopts a Bourdieusian framework to investigate two research questions. First, it examines whether there is a change in the content learning of EMI business students over time. Second, it explores the connection between students’ social milieus and their academic performance in an EMI tertiary context. The study collects GPA scores and background survey data from EMI and Vietnamese-medium instruction (VMI) students over a two-year period. The findings reveal that EMI students experience a greater decline in learning when transitioning from year 3 to year 4, compared to VMI students. Additionally, students with higher levels of cultural capital, as measured by English entry grades and English private tuition time, experience a drop in their academic performance. From a Bourdieusian perspective, the EMI group lacks the necessary form of capital to reproduce their class privilege in relation to the VMI cohort over time. Theoretically, the study reinforces the notion that EMI serves as a mechanism of cultural reproduction that aligns with the unequal distribution of resources. Empirically, it contributes to the understanding of EMI’s impacts, and its implications for policy implementation in Vietnam and similar contexts.

The making of problematic tax regulation: A Bourdieusian perspective

The implementation of thorny or problematic regulation is challenging for both regulators and regulatees. The reasons for the existence of problematic regulation are not to be found in the regulation itself, but rather in the policy-making process that creates it. This paper examines the process by which a problematic tax rule, the transfer pricing rule, was created in Chile in 1997. Based empirically on documents and semi-structured interviews with relevant elite rule-makers and other informants, and theoretically inspired by Bourdieusian concepts, this paper illustrates how powerful rule-makers in various spheres of activity confront each other in the definition of the final content of the rule. On the one hand, how bureaucratic, professional and scholarly rule-makers drafted the bill of law depended on their relevant technical capital, administrative capacity, and political concern that the rule would make it through the parliamentary process in the hands of political adversaries. On the other hand, this paper shows that once the rule entered the political sphere, political adversaries’ views about the role of the State, the mobilisation of silence and other explicit techniques were used to curtail the State’s power. Eventually, these power struggles gave rise to a problematic tax regulation. This paper broadly illustrates the role of powerful agents in favouring or constraining the creation of fairer tax systems and the factual operation of democracy and politics.

A Bourdieusian analysis of vaccine hesitancy. The case of Italian upper secondary school students

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to propose an original analysis of the association between social status and attitudes toward Covid-19 vaccines regarding upper-secondary students in Italy. The research was conducted by administering an online survey on a probabilistic and stratified sample of 5,699 students, in the spring of 2021, when the vaccination campaign in Italy had been underway for only a few months. Following the bourdieusian perspective, we have used a multiple correspondence analysis to examine the polarization between pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine groups as the clash of stances that agents take in accordance with their position in the cultural field. Our results suggest that the construction of a negative school experience by the subordinate classes is the source of a lack of social recognition in the cultural field, which feeds an aversion to everything the main institutions in this field recommend should be done.

How is the Illusio of Gender Equality in Entrepreneurship Sustained? A Bourdieusian Perspective

How is the Illusio of Gender Equality in Entrepreneurship Sustained? A Bourdieusian Perspective

Balletic bodies under lockdown: The consequences of a pandemic for highly disciplined habitus.

Like other elite athletes, ballet dancers are highly dedicated to the pursuit of their vocation. They work to perfect their bodies, their movements and their expression of the art form. The lockdowns that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic represented a significant interruption to the extraordinary but everyday lives of ballet dancers, creating unique environments where exploration of the embodied habitus of ballet can be further investigated. The impacts of lockdown upon dancers were explored via a series of interviews with 12 professional dancers from Germany. Framed by previous research, theorising the balletic body from a Bourdieusian perspective, interview data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Our research highlights the way in which COVID-19 lockdowns and associated restrictions disrupt the habitus of dancers and results in a form of suffering that is comparable to injury or chronic illness. Our research suggests that individuals respond to the 'structural injuries' of lockdown measures in a manner comparable to the way they respond to physiological injury. Thus, dancers sought to repair or re-establish the social structures they ordinarily inhabit whilst the inevitable limitations of such efforts engendered occasions for reflexive thinking about their role, careers and identity as dancers.

Stratified Citizens: Conceptualizing Civic Capital in Mediatized Societies

While there are many ways to understand citizenship in terms of what constituents (should) do, think, feel, and say, there is a felt absence of a perspective that factors in the social reasons for how people enact citizenship and the role of media in enacting such forms of citizenship. Based on a review of key studies of citizenship in audience research and political science, this study introduces a Bourdieusian perspective to examine citizenship in mediatized societies. We argue for two main advantages to this approach. First, it cuts across scholarly silos and scrutinizes the civic habitus of people as it unfolds across both mediated and non-mediated life. Citizenship is thus seen as a complex interplay of online and offline practices that vary for agents across the social space. Second, this approach is attentive to dimensions of social inequality and power, emphasizing how the many citizenship practices in the modern era are situated in a vertically stratified social world with a distinct symbolic order. Linking this to the concepts of symbolic power and dominance, we develop the notion of civic capital to illuminate how certain forms of citizenship practices, mostly those available to the affluent strata, are elevated as correct expressions of legitimate citizenship, whereas others are frowned upon.

How is the Illusio of Gender Equality in Entrepreneurship Sustained? A Bourdieusian Perspective

AbstractStudies of gender and entrepreneurship highlight the problematic emphasis of the gender equality discourse in entrepreneurship that ignores wider structural inequalities but provide a limited explanation of how the allure of this discourse is sustained. To address this lacuna, we draw on Bourdieu's theoretical ideas to theorize and demonstrate how certain women trade‐off their capital endowments to compensate for gender inequality in entrepreneurship. Through an analysis of forty‐nine biographical interviews with women entrepreneurs in London (UK), we show two forms that the ‘illusio’ of gender equality manifests: ‘illusio of work‐life balance’, and ‘illusio of meritocracy’, and reveal how this doxic experience that escapes questioning and allows certain women to continue to play the game, entrenches the illusio of an entrepreneurial field free from gender bias. We thus illustrate the conditions of possibility and the various trade‐off mechanisms through which gender inequality in entrepreneurship is reproduced or contested.

Futures in the present: Unraveling foreclosing and pre-opening desired futures in the local environment with a Bourdieusian perspective

Citizens are considered to play an increasingly active role in dealing with sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss. The active involvement of citizens is a new policy practice in the Netherlands, institutionalized in a so-called neighborhood approach. To understand why some citizens take up this role, while others face difficulties, the anticipation of futures is increasingly gaining attention in literature on sustainable transformations. Although these processes of anticipation are non-linear, literature shows that insights of Bourdieu have the potential to better understand such processes. Therefore, applying a narrative approach with walking interviews, this study innovatively combines insights from future studies (making of futures and using of futures) and the terminology as provided by Bourdieu (field, habitus and capital). The research shows two ways of how extrapolating futures lead to foreclosing a desired futures: one enacted in the habitus and one enacted in the field. The research also shows that in the process of pre-opening of futures, dynamic relations between different forms of capital are essential and that these relations are influenced by anticipation of futures: citizens whose extrapolated and desired future are aligned, whether in the field or enacted in the habitus seem to be more inclined to pre-open futures.

When little things make a big difference: A Bourdieusian perspective on skilled migrants’ linguistic, social, and economic capital in multinational corporations

When little things make a big difference: A Bourdieusian perspective on skilled migrants’ linguistic, social, and economic capital in multinational corporations

Accounting, tax compliance and New Zealand indigenous entrepreneurs: a Bourdieusian perspective

PurposeThis study offers a Bourdieu-oriented analysis of the tax compliance practice for indigenous entrepreneurs in New Zealand. It examines the intersection of accounting and tax for Māori entrepreneurs and their relational interactions with the Inland Revenue Department (IRD)/state/Crown and accountants by considering the contextual factors of history, culture and society of Māori.Design/methodology/approachQualitative research was adopted using face-to-face in-depth interviews with 34 participants and reviewing government documents. The authors analyse the tax compliance practice by drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital and habitus to conceptualise the tax field as a site of struggle for power and control by the IRD, accountants and indigenous entrepreneurs.FindingsThis study demonstrates how the tax field is structured as a game between tax reporting, taxpaying and monitoring functions. The position within the field is determined by the actor's access to the relevant capitals and habitus. It identifies how accounting, given its centrality to tax compliance, facilitates the power relations between the IRD, accountants and Māori entrepreneurs. The Eurocentric accounting-based tax reporting and the contextual factors illuminate how indigenous entrepreneurs are being dominated in the tax field. They experienced cultural dissonance with conflicting responsibilities when traversing the collectivistic indigenous and tax fields. Their collectivism involves sharing resources as they cherish whanaungatanga (relationship, kinship) and manaakitanga (kindness, generosity), which are at odds and are not valued in the tax field.Practical implicationsIt is an empirical illustration of the connection between accounting, tax and power for indigenous taxpayers and their relationship with the IRD/Crown and accountants. It has practical implications for developing and enhancing tax compliance in jurisdictions with indigenous taxpayers. Such an understanding is helpful for policymakers, government, business agencies and the accounting professions when assisting, empowering and educating indigenous groups regarding tax compliance.Originality/valueThis paper responds to the call for accounting research with modern-day indigenous peoples rather than historical ones. The paper fills a gap in the accounting and tax literature by examining the tax compliance practice of indigenous small and medium enterprise (SME) entrepreneurs using Bourdieu's framework. It identifies how the role of accounting creates, maintains and reinforces power structures in the tax field. Tax/accounting reporting based on Eurocentric rules disempowers and alienates indigenous entrepreneurs. They misrecognise their actions in reproducing the existing power structures in the tax field due to deeply held historical and cultural factors about the fear of the Crown/state and their practice of rangitaratanga (esteeming authorities).

Different while being similar: The dual institutional process and differential organizational status

Connecting the neoinstitutional theory with Bourdieu's field theory, we develop a framework on the dual institutional process of integration and differentiation in a field. While the neoinstitutional theory has focused on similar organizational structures, we shift the research focus to offer an institutional explanation of differential organizational status. Drawing insights from Bourdieu's theory and key concepts, we highlight that the very institutional mechanisms causing isomorphism-regulative forces, normative pressures, and cognitive processes-also generate systematic status differentiation among organizations via their different levels of capital, homologous structures, and various habitus in a field. Our extended framework has theoretical significance in advancing the neoinstitutional theory, the research of status in organizational and economic sociology, and the Bourdieusian perspective. By theorizing status differentiation among organizations, it also adds an important dimension to enrich our understanding of multilevel status and social hierarchies.