How can Bourdieu help us with mapping?

Thoughts on Bourdieu, Distinction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010)

There are at least five ways in which Bourdieu can help us with mapping.

1) Reflexivity in the construction of the research problem:

For Bourdieu, "there is nothing more universal than the project of objectifying the mental structures associated with the particularity of a social structure" (xvi). This is interesting as a response to our question of whether there is something inherently conservative about mapping as a practice (because it involves fixing etc) - Bourdieu would deny this.

Objectification is a key theme in the text: research must include "the point of view from which it speaks" (4); researchers must be careful not to generalise from their own lived experience (94, 209); etc.

 2) Reflexivity regarding method: 

For PB, statistical enquiry is "indispensable in order to establish beyond dispute the social conditions of  possibility" (32) – but he is no positivist. For him, “reflective analysis of the tools of analysis is not an epistemological scruple but an indispensable pre-condition of scientific knowledge of the object.”

That is, “'explanatory factors' are also 'powers' which are only valid and operative in a certain field" (87) . He argues that it is the sociological significance of the relationships that matter, not statistical significant-ness. The identity of the terms themselves is defined in their relationship (10, 14). The “perception and appreciation of what is designated by the 'dependent variable' [varies] according to the classes determined by the 'independent variable'” (94). The statistical relationships between properties and practices "are only fully defined in the relationship between the dispositions of a habitus and a particular field” (87).

So when PB constructs maps, he shows occupational groups and social practices rather than clouds of individuals; only relative positions have significance. His maps show the association between practices and volume/ composition of capital (Crossley, Nick (2009) "Social Class," in Grenfell, Michael (ed.)  Pierre Bourdieu. Key Concepts (Durham: Acumen), p. 91)

 3) Fields and space

PB draws on principles of field theory of early 20th physics; the concept of the field is “a sporting metaphor for visualizing the lay-out of social space”. He deploys techniques of multiple correspondence analysis, derived from field theory (xxi).

Fields are not a system: this is useful as defence against the charge of instrumentalism/functionalist/determinism. To analyse fields, we need to break with linear thinking and “reconstruct the networks of interrelated relationships” (101).  For PB, space is three dimensional, comprising volume of capital; composition of capital; and the change in these two over time (108). Social spaces such as the family and school are where competences are produced and their price set (81).There is a “band of more or less equally probable trajectories” associated with a given volume of inherited capital – the “field of the possibles”(104).

He gives the example (146) of the law graduate who, for lack of social capital, becomes a community cultural worker. This makes me think about the social status of being an NGO worker, which is high in cultural capital but low in economic capital. I am not sure that a law graduate becoming an NGO worker is necessarily a sign of a lack of social capital - but that the cultural value on being an NGOer outweighs its relative lack of economic capital. 

 4) Practices

 Practitioners don't always confer the same meaning on their practice; or, rather, they may not be practising the same practice (208). I find this useful in terms of the meaning associated with "small arms control" practices: what are the various actors doing when they engage in weapons amnesties, DDR programmes etc? 

Some agents have ability to act as “taste-maker” - to stand outside the rules; these are practitioners “whose transgressions are not mistakes but the annunciation of a new fashion" (253). Who has the capacity to change the rules of the game and how? 

 5) Hysteresis

The concept of hysteresis - generational change, and the conflict/lag between changes in field structures and habitus - points to reproduction as an ongoing process. PB is looking at "relatively stable dispositions" so the time lag between his surveys is not so important (506). But there is a methodological question as to how you delineate a time frame.