Social Practice

Bourdieu's Reflexive Sociology

In the attempt to develop a theory of practice (alternatively named reflexive sociology or praxeology), French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has dealt extensively with the relationship between modern forms of power and social practices. Thus, one of the overarching ambitions of his reflexive sociology was to reveal how, in modern societies, power tends to work through symbolic and often-unnoticed mechanisms.

Bourdieu suggested that we understand social practices in terms of the embodiment of social structures, which includes economic, cultural, and political relations. The individual embodiment of these social structures is neither an absolutely voluntary act nor an absolutely determined act. Instead, each and every person is disposed to incorporate (objective) social structures in a particular fashion according to his or her so-called habitus. The latter is at once the product of the person's previous experiences and socialization and the producer of the person's actions. It is, above all, through these dispositions incorporated into the body of each and every individual that modern power comes into effect. Thus, in modern societies, power works above all through indirect, symbolic means rather than through direct, coercive devices. It is through symbolic capital (authorized understandings and classifications), which acts as a kind of translation mechanism, that other forms of capital (economic, cultural, or social) are translated into effective power. Without this translation, the other forms of capital may be useless.

In any social field where power is put into play, it is linked to and depends upon a particular symbolic capital or authorized understandings and classification. This entails that certain understandings are taken for granted or go undisputed; they constitute the doxa. While no single individual or group in modern societies are able to control doxa at their will, doxa is produced and reproduced in a manner that tends to favor those positively endowed with economic, cultural, or social capital. For example, academics and others, rich and poor, spontaneously tend to support the idea that entry to a university should depend solely on academic merit, not on wealth. While this may be [Page 896]regarded as a reasonable and nonbiased standard, educational policies based on this doxa nonetheless systematically favors students of academic parents and, to some extent, students with rich parents who are able to pay for their children's enrollment in expensive, elite schools.

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