Paris school
Petr Ocelík
ESSn4007 / MEBn4001
Outline
• International political sociology (IPS): assumptions
• The “practice turn”
• Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu: field, capital, and habitus
IPS: assumptions
• IPS shares constructivist background with Copenhagen school and
CSS
• Both security and insecurity are products of an (in)securitization
which consists both of discursive and non-discursive processes
• Non-discursive processes: technologies, routines and practices etc.
→ The central questions of the IPS: who does securitize what, under
what conditions, against whom, and with what consequences?
IPS: background
• The IPS emerged during 1990s; often related to “Paris school” which
draws on sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (1930 - 2002)
• Bourdieu attempted to overcome distinction between individualism
and structuralism
IPS: the “practice turn”
• The IPS is a part of the “practice turn” in IR → focus on what actors
do and why (Emmanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot)
• Investigates practical, common-sense knowledge rather than
theoretical knowledge
• Conceptual differentiation: behavior, action, practice
• Behavior: material dimension of “doing”
• Action: adds meaning to the behavior
• Practice: embeds action within social organized context
IPS: the “practice turn”
Bourdieu: field
• Field: a relatively autonomous, hierarchically organized social space
within which transactions, interactions, events etc. in a particular
sphere of social life take place
• Analogy: a “sports field” or a chess board
• There are different kinds of fields: political, military, organized crime,
academia, art, medical, bureaucratic, security experts etc.
• Each field operates according to its own logic (nomos)
Power-positions in field
Bourdieu: field
• Actors compete among themselves according the field’s rules for
specific benefits associated with the field
• There are social positions given by power-differentials of actors
within the field
• The movement of actors between the positions is called (life)
trajectory
• There is a hierarchy of fields: most fields subordinated to the field of
power (what is dominant source of power/capital) and class relations
(sometimes called field of the fields)
Kivelä 2019
Bourdieu: capital
• The structure of the social world is conditioned by the distribution of
various forms of capital
• Capital: an accumulated labor that enables actors to influence their
position and position of others within a given field
• Economic capital: an accumulation of money, assets, property rights
• Cultural capital: an accumulation of knowledge, abilities,
qualifications etc.
• Social capital: an accumulation of social ties to potential resources
• Symbolic capital: an accumulation of prestige, honor, recognition etc.
Bourdieu: capital
• There are various types of capital – anything that differentiates
individuals/stratifies society can be seen as a form of capital
• E.g., in sport (or bouncers) field, a physical capital crucially stratifies
the field
• Also, any form of capital can be transformed into a symbolic capital
(capital that does not appear as capital)
• Symbolic capital is capital of “a different order”
Bourdieu: habitus
• Habitus: an embodiment and internalization of the social world which
structures how the social world is perceived and experienced and is
structured by objective structures of the social world which are not
controlled by the actor
• Habitus is the link between the private experience of the world
(subjective) and the social world itself (objective)
• Habitus consists of dispositions that define habitual state, tendencies,
and inclinations of an actor
• Dispositions (and consequently habitus) are formed by the actor’s
encounters of the objective conditions of the social world
Bourdieu: habitus
• Preferences vs. dispositions: “real” preferences might be hidden vs.
dispositions (do not have to correspond with preferences) are
performed
• The continuous performance of dispositions, often in form of
practices, situates actor within a field
• Field, capital, and habitus are interdependent
• → Bourdieu: we should research both subjective (habitus) as well as
objective (field); see Pouliot “sobjectivism”
practice = [(habitus) (capital)] + field
Summary
• IPS shares constructivist background with Copenhagen and
Aberystwyth schools (CSS)
• Transdisciplinary
• Blurs borders between international and domestic, strategic and
everyday...
• Many actors compete for their definition of (in)security within
various fields
• (In)securitization moves have roots in the practices and routines →
goal is to uncover and disrupt those “regimes of truth”
Scientific (expert) knowledge production
• Science influences what can be said and what not:
• The non-politicized has no language; it is what we know without
knowing that we know it (Berling 2011: 391)
• Scientific or expert knowledge: a privileged form (Berling 2011)
• legitimation
• mobilization
• objectification
Non-knowledge: “conscious or unconscious,
concrete or theoretical, it can signify willful
ignorance or an inability-to-know.” (Beck
2009: 123)