The Promises, Problems, and Potentials of a Bourdieu-Inspired Staging of International Relations1

Abstract

The promise of Bourdieu‐inspired analysts to provide a “different reading” of the international is receiving increasing attention in the academic discipline of international relations (IR). This attention also generates awareness and of problems inherent in the Bourdieuian approach and a desire to develop it further (or abandon it). These discussions have often focused on the difficulties that arise for IR as a consequence of the structuralism of Bourdieu’s approach, and as such they dovetail with the discussions between Bourdieu’s “critical sociology” and the “pragmatic school” in the French context. This article uses these discussions to clarify what it entails to paint a different picture—my picture—of the international using Bourdieu’s thinking tools. More specifically, it argues that Bourdieu’s thinking can be used as a basis for a non‐structuralist staging of the international taking on board the critique raised by pragmatists and integrating many of the insights developed by them. Bourdieu often referred to his own thinking as a “structuralist constructivism,” so this article takes Bourdieu’s thinking in a direction he may not have liked to go. However, it sticks closely to the spirit of his contention that one should never privilege scholastic theorizing for the sake of theorizing nor hesitate to “read a thinker against himself.”

‘Children and armed conflict’ and the field of security studies

“…This both overcomes the structure-agency binary in IR and transcends predetermined levels of analysis and constructed binaries such as domestic/international or public/private. Not only is the socio-political space for analysis reconceptualized (Bigo 2011;Huysmans and Nogueira 2012), but it allows for the recognition of multiple actors, in asymmetrical power arrangements, to be present in a given space and to recognize the subjective, material, and ideational processes at work in shaping practice (Leander 2011).…”

EU Civil Society

“…However, Greenwood (Chapter 11 in this volume) points out some of the difficulties in capturing the full variety of motives and experiences that arise when analysing the ECI from a field perspective. Anna Leander (2011) suggests an escape of the 'rigidities and fixities' voiced by critics of Bourdieu's work by downgrading its structuralism and by linking to a Goffmanesque dramaturgical sociology. In her field approach to international relations, she employs 'staging' as a way of thinking of fields in a more pragmatic fashion, and rather than speaking of fields as stable entities, she analyses a 'snapshot' of the field.…”

Building an economic field with supranational supports? Lessons from wine production in Romania

“…Although these analyses are somewhat sketchy, researchers inspired by Bourdieu have taken pains to make them more precise: for these commentators, it is possible to identify an international field where efforts to reproduce national elites are played out; these elites draw upon their international cultural capital, inherited from their family (familiarity with foreign languages and international codes of sociability) in order to regain or consolidate lost or threatened positions within the internal order (Dezalay and Rask Madsen 2006, p. 280). Conversions between forms of capital acquired in the national and international fields can be identified (Dezalay 2011, Leander 2011. We can supplement these analyses by pointing to the power exerted by supranational and international administrations over the economic field.…”