Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics: An Interpretation

Bourdieu’s theory of politics can be divided into three components: a general analysis of the social aspects of the political (le politique), a more specific analysis of politics (la politique), and his political practices. The author analyzes Bourdieu’s conception of social domination through topics such as political judgment and delegation and then his theory of the political field. In Bourdieu’s structuralist framework, the struggle for domination takes place between the dominant and the dominated. The second component restricts political action to a more specific social location, the political field. For Bourdieu, the division of society into social classes forms the explanatory basis f…

The Bourdieu Affair

In this chapter, the author analyzes Pierre Bourdieu as a representative of the French intellectual tradition. In the name of morality, he rose to defend those who suffered injustice. In the Bourdieu affair, the sufferers of injustice were the unemployed and part-time workers. The opponents were the neoliberal market ideologists, historical successors to the form of capitalism Emile Zola had already dissected in his book on the stock exchange, Avarice (greed), as well as audio-visual communication tools, which Bourdieu accused of mediocrity. As in the cases of Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre, Bourdieu’s message is universal, even though the problems selected, the form of their presentation and th…

Rethinking Politicisation

Politicisation, in a broad and basic understanding, means to turn something – an issue, an institution, a policy – that previously was not a subject to political action into something that now is subject to political action. So far, most definitions of the concept would agree. But besides this basic approach, there is much discussion: Politicisation is a concept that is currently much used in the social sciences, and also a concept that is contested in its definitions and understandings. Several paths and subdisciplines contribute to the debate, but they are not necessarily connected to one another. Political theory or political economy discusses politicisation and also what can be termed t…

European Political Science and Global Knowledge

In this chapter, the author maintains that rankings of universities and their social carriers participate in the relatively successful practical realization of the academic standards they seek to codify and of the shaping of reality according to the criteria they promote. In this sense, global university rankings are becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, a prediction that becomes true through positive feedback of varying intensity. They have succeeded in establishing through quantitative objectification certain types of equivalences between scientific excellence and numerical indicators. The reasons for their success are their performative efficiency (‘scientific’, quantitative) and the prac…

The Secondary Reality of the Media

In this chapter, the author explores the relationship between Bourdieu’s idea on communication and his political philosophy. Bourdieu’s approach to communications was dominated by a paradox: on the one hand, he held communication to be a key social activity; on the other hand, he reach as a scientist for a level of existence where reality is not so much communicated as it is imposed on us. The author focuses on two central questions: Bourdieu’s analysis of the social activities as sign activity and his analysis of political representation and its links to civil society on the one hand and the critique of representative democracy on the other hand.

Exit politics, enter politicization

A growing number of recent empirical studies such as the four contributions discussed here examine the politicization of the European Union, Europe, European integration or European governance. Two general research questions mark this emerging research field. A first one is how to theorize and conceptualize the politicization of the European Union (EU) and the reasons behind it. Does politicization have to do with a decline in EU support or Euroscepticism? Does it involve an increased salience of EU affairs within national and transnational public spheres? What are politicization’s repercussions on EU institutions? And how are political parties involved? A second question is whether or not …

Politiikka mahdottomuuksien taiteena

Ranskan presidentinvaali tarjoaa kiinnostavan ikkunan tarkastella sitä, kuinka politiikka tekee mahdolliseksi asioita, joita tutkijoina emme ole osanneet kuvitella aiemmin. nonPeerReviewed

Exit politics, enter politicization

Processes of Differentiation of Political Power in the EU

This chapter starts with reflections on the difficulties of studying the EU. The author then presents some of the research that develops a political sociology perspective to European integration and political power. Key concepts include structural differentiation and stratification. Scholars explore European integration as a process of structural differentiation and stratification, which provides politicians and civil servants new power resources. In this transnational political ‘market’, old resources tied to the nation-state, resources like legislative experience and national political visibility, are exchanged into newer resources tied to the EU. In other words, something old such as a n…

Toward a Political Theory of the Sublime

In this chapter, the author develops a topic undertheorized in Bourdieu’s work: physical violence. He presents the key points of an esthetic theory of the sublime and develops an alternative theory of the sublime, which draws on structural constructivism and Taoist political theory. In contrast to an esthetic theory of the sublime that automatically attributes to exceptional and violent physical actions ontological superiority and performative efficiency compared to the ‘weak’ routines of the ontic Lebenswelt, in a structural constructivist theory the key to the sublime as a defining moment of politics can be found in the links between physical events and symbolic structures. According to t…

Academics as Politicians and as Operators of Global Governance

In this chapter, the author scrutinizes the links between politics and academe in global governance. He analyzes two cases, those of former president of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso and philosopher Michel Foucault, that exemplify different types of political engagement. Social scientists play a key but concealed part in the steering of global governance. Under and beyond global institutions, they partake in the development of influential transnational professional groups. By producing practical knowledge for everyday or ‘banal’ global governance, social scientists shape the politically imaginable at more institutional levels. Yet others provide at a higher level of abstractio…

Demokratia on historian merkittävin innovaatio

Yrityksissä ja politiikassa puhutaan jatkuvasti innovaatioista, joiden toivotaan luovan hyvinvointia. Innovaatiopöhinässä meiltä jää huomaamatta, että hyvinvoinnin perustana on historian merkittävin innovaatio eli demokratia. Toimiakseen demokratia on kuitenkin aina osin keksittävä uudelleen. nonPeerReviewed

Toward a Sociology of EU Politics

In this chapter, the author discusses some of the intellectual tools that sociology can mobilize in the analysis of European Union (EU) politics, and then follows with a closer investigation of some sociological research. To illustrate EU politics, this chapter concentrates on the European Parliament, the most democratic European institution. The author contrasts the sociological approach and its advantages with more traditional research in political science and international relations. European integration has provided new objects of analysis for sociologists. Some focus on the EU as a new polity. Others have developed a more specific approach that has been labeled structural constructivis…

Constructing Transnational Fields

This chapter studies the evolving relationship between the redistribution of social resources and the structuration of institutional spaces beyond the nation-state. The author first discusses general features of transnational fields and then moves to an examination of the European Parliament as an empirical case. In this perspective, the object of this approach, transnational social fields, form the social infrastructure of globalization processes. They are historical constructions, subjected to a double historicity: the development of the position of the scholar and the development of the objects that she tries to elucidate in relation to other objects. Transnational fields enable the scho…

Translation and the Politics of Circulating Ideas

This chapter explores the politics of circulating ideas, as part of a broader reflection on the circulation/diffusion/transfer/transplantation of concepts and ideas in the EU. The chapter starts with a discussion of some main points of Pierre Bourdieu’s text on the international circulation of ideas in which he develops a framework for the analysis of the diffusion of culture. The author then proceeds to develop some further lines of inquiry for an alternative social science approach to these issues. He explores the mechanisms by which ideas and concepts are associated to one another, how they form semantic fields, how they come to form institutionalized and taken-for-granted horizons of ac…

Transnational Social Fields

This chapter excavates Bourdieu’s theoretical insights concerning political sociology to develop a theory of transnational structuration processes. The early Bourdieu implicitly imagined the state as a nationally bounded actor. Only later in his career did he begin to grapple with issues such as globalization, transnationalism, and neoliberalism; and it is this later germ of ideas that this chapter develops. Transnational social fields, this chapter argues, are not reducible to institutional or organizational structures. They require a more holistic analysis of institutions and their underpinnings. To provide an example of how Bourdieu’s political sociology can be extended to transnational …

À la recherche d’un langage de l’action

Dans le champ des Relations internationales, Vincent Pouliot développe une théorie du praticable comme une théorie « matérielle » de la pratique, complémentaire à celle des conséquences, de la convenance, de l’argumentation. La logique du praticable serait paradoxalement la base non théorique de toutes les théories en ri. Comment l’approche de Pouliot, inspirée par les travaux de Bourdieu, se prête-t-elle à ce genre d’exercice ? Deux questions me semblent essentielles pour une analyse sociologique de la pratique en ri d’un point de vue « webero-bourdieusien » : le rôle du politique et de la domination, puis la logique de la pratique.

EU:n sosiologiaa

Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration

In this chapter, the author politicizes the ontological dimension of EU studies. He discusses ontology’s power to determine the real by analyzing some of its unformulated presuppositions and the links with knowledge and action. He argues that key European institutions like the European Commission do not change only because of institutional dynamics but also in relation to transnational interplays of differentiated agents operating simultaneously in multiple social spheres. Institutions and particularly institutional change have to be explained in the light of both new policy challenges and the preferences and habits of the agents making up these institutions and their surroundings. Such an …

Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces: Communication as Practice and Resource

In this chapter, the author offers an analysis of European public spaces and follows with a discussion of the transformations in the European Commission’s communication strategy since September 2004. For the first time, the European Commission openly challenged the monopoly of political legitimacy of national political institutions. It was involved in the construction of a new communication strategy that would fill the gap between supranational segmented publics and general national publics. This risky political move involved the redefinition of the status of political communication, the reinforcement of the communication aspect in all of the Commission’s activities, the recruitment of new …

Intellectual Power in Europe

In this chapter, the author argues that the increasing complexity of European societies accentuates the need for a discourse that unites specialists—mathematicians, engineers, humanists—and the public. European societies are constantly haunted by the fragmentation of knowledge relating to political and social life. This can be seen in the decline in political participation as well as the discontent with globalization and resistance to social reforms. These phenomena are related to the status of intellectuals as producers of public discourse. The author concentrates on two socio-cultural aspects that influence the transformation of the role of intellectuals, a substantial aspect, the questio…

Max Weberin lukutapoja

Max Weber on tämän päivän akateemisessa keskustelussa ajankohtaisempi kuin muutama vuosikymmen sitten. Aikaisempaa historiallisempi ja kriittiseen editioon nojaava tutkimus on muuttanut sovinnaista kuvaa Weberistä. Tässä julkaisussa muutamat suomalaiset politiikan ja lähialojen tutkijat pohtivat omaa suhdettaan Weberin ajatteluun. Lisäksi teoksen toimittajat esittävät katsauksen suomalaisen politiikan tutkimuksen tapoihin kirjoittaa Max Weberistä.

European Academic Identity

This chapter argues that neoliberalism, through its bureaucratically led reform frenzy, produces not only identitarian uncertainty amid a politically relatively unorganized academe but also a scientifically legitimized ambivalent discourse that confuses more than clarifies the mission of the university and research. Resistance to neoliberalism is variable. More resistance can be observed from the humanities and the social sciences, from countries in whose self-image globalization plays a modest role, from individuals operating uniquely in their national contexts while less resistance will be found from those disciplines that are linked with economic development, business, or the internation…

Non-elected Political Elites in the EU

With globalization and Europeanization, profound changes have taken place in the composition and structure of elites. Once solidly tied to the nation state, elites have, following processes of differentiation and specialization, become more transnational than ever before. Their development has been conditioned by the evolving relationship between international, transnational, and national powers. In the European context, key institutional players today include the European Commission, the European Ombudsman and the European Court of Justice as aspiring representatives of the general European interest and the Council of Ministers and member states as representing national interests in the EU…

The Politification and Politicisation of the EU

Publication date: March 1, 2016 In this article, we suggest a novel conceptual framework for understanding and analysing EU politicisation. Recent studies on EU politicisation argue that the post-Maastricht era led to the politicisation of EU integration via an increasing citizens' dissatisfaction. Contrary to this account, we argue that European integration has been from the beginning linked to politicisation, but in an unusual way. To capture its uniqueness we introduce the concepts of politisation as a precondition of politicisation and of politification as a depoliticised modality of politicisation. Politicisation is then not something new to EU integration but rather it is constitutive…

The global ranking game : narrowing academic excellence through numerical objectification

The objective of this article is to study some of the intended and unintended effects on academe of the evolving global ranking game. I will start with some broader points on the global ranking game, the formal terms and economic interests it promotes, then continue with a presentation of the Shanghai ranking and its main rival the Times Higher Education. Through reversed engineering, I will bring out the main problems of the Shanghai ranking. I will finish with some of the key features of the demand side, the uses and effects of the tool: the psychosocial mechanisms that reproduce ranking and the lock-ins it creates. peerReviewed