For Bourdieu, Against Alexander
Reality and Reduction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8975690 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Garry Potter (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 229-246 |
| Publication date | 2000-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1468-5914.00127 |
| OpenAlex | W1980628597 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 27 |
| References cited | 11 |
Jeffrey Alexander argues that despite Bourdieu’s considerable achievements ultimately his work is reductionist and determinist. He further argues that though Bourdieu is a middle range theorist he is implicitly realist in his meta‐theoretical assumptions. This article accepts these conclusions but argues that Bourdieu’s meta‐theoretical realism is a virtue rather than a vice and that the manner in which he is a reductionist and determinist necessitate a re‐thinking of what is meant by these notions. Alexander uses Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to demon‐strate a fundamental contradiction in Bourdieu’s theorising. According to him habitus presents us with the oxymoron of unconscious strategisation. This article uses a discussion of habitus in order to demonstrate that in its relationship with the concept of field it instead produces a practical resolution of long standing theoretical problems concerning structural determination and human agency. It is also argued that these problems are resolved at the meta‐theoretical level in the form of critical realist ontology and that it is Alexander’s misunderstandings on this level which cause him to fail to appreciate the significance of Bourdieu’s achievements
Agency (philosophy · Contradiction · Critical realism (philosophy of perception · Determinism · Epistemology · Field (mathematics · Habitus · Historicism · Realism · Reductionism · Social science · Sociology · Unconscious mind · Critical Realism in Sociology · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
Hacia un relacionalismo metodológico pragmático. De la filosofización de la sociología a la sociologización de la filosofía
Hacia un relacionalismo pragmático metodológico
Agency and hysteresis encounters
Power and Knowledge
Epistemology Contextualized
Justifying Sociological Knowledge
Die Instabilität der Praxis
The Aart of Ethnography
Fully Unconscious and Prone to Habit
Bourdieu's Gift to Gift Theory
Epistemology Contextualized
A relational approach to health practices
(Re)Conceptualising the third face of power
Capital and distinction or goods and traditions? Toward a post-Bourdieusian cultural theory
Making Play or Playing the Game? On the Question of a “Cleft Habitus” at the Doorway to the Art Field
Back to Basics
Sui Generis Micro Social Structures
Class or individual habitus ? Willingness to spend more on reconciliation policies in Europe
Toward Pragmatist Methodological Relationalism
Habitus and Higher Order Desires
The two stories of the habitus/structure relation and the riddle of reflexivity
Mirror Neurons,” Collective Objects and the Problem of Transmission
Creativity, Habit, and the Social Products of Creative Action
Justifying Sociological Knowledge
The reflexive habitus
Some Implications of Pierre Bourdieu's Works for a Theory of Social SelfOrganization
Strategies of public intellectual engagement
Reduction and Deceit in Social Theory
Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (Rle Social Theory)
Distinction
Outline of a Theory of Practice
The Logic of Practice
Bourdieu, Smith and Disinterested Judgement
The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason
La reduction. Critique de Bourdieu
Theoretical Logic in Sociology-Volume 1
Pierre Bourdieu and the Reproduction of Determinism
Rethinking classical theory
| Unique citing works | 27 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,17 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2023 (21) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 25 |