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Bourdieu in American Sociology, 1980-2004

Author(s): Jeffrey J. Sallaz and Jane ZaviscaSource: Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 33 (2007), pp. 21-30, C1-C3, 31-41Published by: Annual ReviewsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737752 .

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Bourdieu inAmericanSociology, 1980-2004Jeffrey . Sallaz and Jane ZaviscaDepartment of Sociology, University ofArizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721;email: [email protected], [email protected]

Anna. Rev. Sociol. 2007.334M1F1i3tpiiUishedo3ilineasaReviewinAclvaiKeonApril 1,2007ThtAmnuU Review of ociology s online athttpc//90C4IUMIUKV?GWSXiIgThis article* doi:10.U467anmircvjoc.33.(M0406.131627Copyright?2007 byAnnual Reviews.AU nghts reserved036O-O572/O7/O811-O021$20.00

Keywordshistoryof sociology, sociologyofknowledge, researchprogram,field theoryAbstractThis article traces the transatlanticdiffusionof Pierre Bourdieu?ideas intoAmerican sociology.We find that rather thanbeing re?ceived as abstract theory,Bourdieu has been activelyput to usetogenerate new empirical research. In addition,American sociol- ?""

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Texts such as mine, produced in a definite po?sition in a definite state of theFrench intellec?tual oracademicfield, have little chance ofbeing

grasped without distortion ordeformation in theAmerican field.

(Bourdieu 2000b, p. 241)

INTRODUCTIONThe passing in 2002 of the French sociol?ogist Pierre Bourdieu provides us pause toexamine his influence on the practice of re?search in American sociology over the pastthree decades. From his position as Chair ofSociology at theColl?ge de France, Bourdieubecame a global public intellectual, shapingscholarship internationally in a wide rangeof disciplines. It is often forgotten, however,that he first forged his unique scholastic vi?sion through an engagement with Americansociology. Schooled originally inphilosophy,Bourdieu entered sociology as an autodidact,by readingAmerican sociologywhile doingfieldwork in Algeria and as a visiting scholarat Princeton University. Bourdieu would latertranslate and publish major works ofU.S. so?cial science (including the firstFrench edi?tionsofkeyworks byErvingGoffman,whomhe had befriendedduringhisU.S. stay) inhisown book series and journal. U.S. sociologywas forhim ameans bywhich tobreakwiththe antiscientific bent of the French academicfield (Calhoun 2003). However, Bourdieu(1990a, p. 5)was deeply criticalofwhat he sawto be a "mediocre and empirical" strand within

much sociology. In the United States, such dryempiricism resulted from disciplinary insular?ity, itself a historical product of the prematurespecialization of the various social and hu?man sciences (Ross 1991, Gulbenkian Comm.

Restruct. Soc. Sei. 1996).Just as Bourdieu was highly reflexive abouthis use of American sociology, so too did

the initial publication of Bourdieu's works inEnglish stimulate debate within American so?ciology (e.g.,DiMaggio 1979,Brubaker 1985,Calhoun et al. 1993,Alexander 1995).Thisearly debate was organized around an over

arching metaphor of Bourdieu as a producerof knowledge that American sociologists re?ceived and consumed. Typically, as the open?ing epigraph attests, the latter were foundguilty of hermeneutical errors. Wacquant(1993), for example, blamed "recurrent mis?interpretations" by American scholars onvarious factors, including unfamiliarity withthephilosophical underpinnings ofmany ofBourdieu's concepts and a general frustrationwith his opaque writing style (see also Simeoni2000; Swartz 1997,pp. 3-6; Lane 2000, p. 3).

We seek to spark a second wave of re?flection, one that, in the spirit of Bourdieu,transcends the binary opposition of knowl?edge producers versus consumers. Indeed,Bourdieu (2000a [1997], p. 62) himselfarguedthat his conceptual oeuvre is not to be treatedas an "end in itself"; rather, we should "dosomething with [his concepts]... bring them,as useful, perfectible instruments, into a prac?ticaluse" (cf.Brubaker 1993,p. 217; Breiger2000). To what extent, we ask, have actorsin American sociology both used Bourdieu'sideas to advance key debates in the field and at?tempted to extend these ideas in turn? Has, inother words, Bourdieu's sociology constituteda progressive research program for sociolog?ical research in theUnited States (Lakatos1978)?

To address these questions, we first pro?vide a brief overview of Bourdieu's main con?cepts, the range of empirical topics to whichthey were applied over his career, and com?mon critiques of his work. Second, we exam?ine how Bourdieu's ideas have been put to usein research published inmajor American so?ciology journals since 1980, through a quan?titative content analysis.1 Third, we presentcase studies of four books that have explicitlyapplied Bourdieu's key concepts to a major

1These data of course do not permit a thoroughmappingof theAmerican academic field in theBourdieuian sense;thatwould require systematicstudy f thepositions, trajec?tories, and dispositions of sociologists, aswell as the rela?tionshipbetween academic and scientificcapital in the fieldinwhich theyoperate (Bourdieu 1988 [1984]).22 Sallaz ? Zavisca

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Substantivearea of the discipline (the fourwe consider are economic sociology, politi?cal sociology, urban sociology, and the soci?ology of culture). In generalwe find that therecent upsurge of interest in Bourdieu's the?ory is neither fad nor homage, but rather theculmination of a long and steadydiffusion fBourdieu's ideas into American sociology. Notonly are scholars increasingly likely to citeand acknowledge Bourdieu, but many are us?ing theirfindings to problematize and pushforward his research program. Bourdieu theoutsider, we may say, has gradually acquiredinsider status.

OVERVIEW OF BOURDIEU'SSOCIOLOGYThe son of a rural postman, Bourdieu wouldbecome the most prominent sociologist inFrance, and at the time of his death, a globalpublic intellectual. This unusual trajectorysensitized him to both the power of so?cial structures to reproduce themselves andthe possibility for social change (Wacquant2002). Following graduatework in philoso?phy,Bourdieu was drafted into theFrencharmyduring theAlgerianWar for Indepen?dence of the late 1950s.There he conductedhis first major study, on the Kabyle people'sexperience of colonization (Bourdieu 1962[1958], 1979 [1977]).2The most importantwork to emergefrom this study isOutline ofa Theory ofPractice (1977 [1972])?later re?vised and expanded in thebook The Logic ofPractice (1990b [1980])?-in which he devel?ops his theory of social structure and socialaction. Moving from philosophy through an?thropology to sociology, Bourdieu continuedto develop his conceptual system through sus?tained empirical research on a wide range oftopics. Upon returning from Algeria, he first

turned his attention to the role of educationin the reproduction of inequality in France(Bourdieu& Passeron 1977,Bourdieu 1988[1984]).This interest n social inequalitynextled him to study cultural production and con?sumption (Bourdieu 1984 [1979], 1993, 1996[1992]). In later ork, Bourdieu developed histheory of the state through studies of language(1991 [1982]), elite schools (1998 [1989]), andhousingmarkets (2005 [2000]).Bourdieu's theoreticalproject bridges thedeep philosophical divide between the struc?turalism of L?vi-Strauss and the existential?ism of Jean-Paul Sartre. Structuralism estab?lishes "objective regularities independent ofindividual consciousness and wills," privileg?ing scientists' formal models of social relationsover agents' commonsense understandings oftheworld (Bourdieu 1990b [1980], p. 26).Phenomenology, by contrast, equates agents'representations f theworldwith reality tself,without analyzing the conditions of possibil?ity f subjective experience (Bourdieu 1990b[1980], p. 25).Neither perspective takes intoaccount the scientist's own relationship tothe social world and the attendant effectson the production of knowledge. The nov?elty of Bourdieu's theory lies in the synthesisof the objectivist and subjectivist epistemologies underpinning these two traditions. So?cial structures inculcate mental structures intoindividuals; these mental structures in turn re?produce or (under certain conditions) changesocial structures(Bourdieu 1988 [1984],p. 27;1989,p. 15; 1991 [1982],pp. 135-36).

Furthermore, Bourdieu assembled a set ofconcepts to describe these processes: capi?tal, field, habitus, and symbolic power. Webriefly define each concept in turn. The var?ious species of capital are resources that pro?vide different forms of power. Economic cap?ital consists of not just monetary income, butaccumulated wealth and ownership of pro?ductive assets. To possess cultural capital isto demonstrate competence in some sociallyvalued area of practice. Bourdieu speaks ofthree subspecies of cultural capital: an embod?ied disposition that expresses itself in tastes

2During thisperiod, Bourdieu also conducted a parallelstudyof his childhood village inFrance.Most of thisworkhas yet to appear inEnglish, but some initial translationsare available in a special issue of the journalEthnography[Volume 5, Issue 4 (2004)].

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and practices (an incorporated form), for?mal certification by educational institutions ofskills and knowledge (an institutionalform),and possession of esteemed cultural goods(an objectified form). Social capital consistsof durable networks of relationships throughwhich individuals can mobilize power and re?sources (Bourdieu&Wacquant 1992,p. 119).Any form of capital can serve as symbolic capi?tal ifpeople recognize itsunequal distributionas legitimate Bourdieu 1991 [1982],p. 118).

In American sociology, the forms of cap?ital are usually operationalized and analyzedas individual-levelvariables. Bourdieu (1984[1979], pp. 105-6), however, was critical of

variable-oriented analysis, in particular re?gression approaches that try to separate theeffects of independent variables. Althoughpeople may vary in the overall volume andcomposition of the capitals that they possess(Bourdieu 1985, p. 231), it is insufficient ostudy social space as an aggregate of individu?als and theircapitalholdings.This isbecausethe power that capital provides depends on thestructure of the field inwhich it is activated.

Field is amesolevel concept denoting thelocal social world inwhich actors are embed?ded and toward which they orient their ac?tions. In his review of field theory,Martin de?lineates three senses of the concept of field?atopological space of positions, a field of rela?tional forces, and a battlefield of contestation.All three senses are present inBourdieu's writ?ings, but the sense of contest ismost signif?icant (Martin 2003, pp. 28-30), as exempli?fied by his frequent use of a game metaphor.Like a game, a field has rules for how to play,stakes or forms of value (i.e., capital), andstrategies for playing the game. In the pro?cess of playing, participants become investedin and absorbed by thegame itself Bourdieu& Wacquant 1992, pp. 98-100).3 Yet themost

importantgame in any field is establishingthe rules to define "the legitimateprinciplesof thefield" (Bourdieu 1991 [1982], p. 242).Bourdieu (1991 [1982],p. 167) considers thisthe most effective form of power, the capac?ity of dominant groups to impose "the defi?nition of the social world that isbest suitedto their interests," which he calls symbolicpower.What are the differenttypesoffields,andhow are theyrelated?We can identify ieldsby what is at stake within them: "In empir?ical work, it is one and the same thing todetermine what the field is, where its limitslie... and to determine what species of capitalare active in it" (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992,pp. 98-99; cf. Bourdieu 1989, pp. 132-33).The "fundamental species of capital" (eco?nomic, cultural, and social) tend to operatein all fields, whereas specialized forms existthat have value only within a particular field?for example, scientific capital within the aca?demic field (Bourdieu 1991 [1982], pp. 12425). The concept of field also provides entr?einto Bourdieu's theory of history: Premodernsocieties did not have fields per se, as all ac?tion occurred in a single social space, whereas

modern societies are characterized by a pro?liferation of fields. The relations among dif?ferentiated fields are governed by themodernstate, characterized by Bourdieu as the pos?sessor of a metacapital through which rulesand hierarchies of value are established acrossfields. It is, nBourdieu's (1989, p. 22) famousextension ofWeber's formulation, the "holderof the monopoly of legitimate symbolicviolence."

The metaphor of field is reminiscent ofphysics. However, "social science is not a so?cial physics" because people, unlike particles,can change the principles that structure a field(Bourdieu&Wacquant 1992,pp. 101-2).Totheorize the relationship between structureand agent,Bourdieu (1991 [1982], p. 53) in?troduces the concept of habitus, a system of"durable, transposable dispositions." Habitusis a slippery concept; we offer what we think tobe its three essential characteristics. First, as

3For applications of thegamemetaphor inBourdieu's so?ciology, see the analysis of the field ofpower as a "gamingspace" in he StateNobility (Bourdieu 1998 [1989],pp. 26478) and the explication of therelationship between habitusand field as a "feel for the game" inThe Logic of ractice(Bourdieu 1990b [1980], pp. 66-69).

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a disposition, habitus is less a set of consciousstrategies and preferences than an embodiedsense of the world and one's place within it?a tacit "feel for the game" (Bourdieu 1984[1979], p. 114; Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992,pp. 128-35). Second, because it is internal?ized in individualsthroughearlysocializationin the familyor primary group, habitus isdurable (althoughnever immutable).Third,habitus is transposable, in that people carrytheir dispositions with them as they enter newsettings.Bourdieu'swork isfrequentlycriticizedontwo grounds: for being too static and for beingtoo specific to French society (e.g., Gartman1991,Alexander 1995,Griswold 1998). Ac?cording to the stasis critique, the interlockingconcepts of field, capital, and habitus depictan airtight system inwhich structures produceindividuals who in turn reproduce structures.Whereas Bourdieu did document a great dealof reproductionof inequalityinhis empirical

work, he also argued that his theory can ac?count for change. Mental structures and socialstructures rarely correspond perfectly. Undersuch circumstances, such as those observedby Bourdieu in revolutionary Algeria, a dis?placement of the habitus occurs: The every?day world is now problematic. This in turnmay open "space for symbolic strategies aimedat exploiting the discrepancies between thenominal and thereal" (Bourdieu 1984 [1979],p. 481). Even relatively stable fields can bedestabilized by exposing the symbolic vio?lence supporting existing power relations?for Bourdieu, this is a central task of sociolog?ical inquiry.What of the criticism that Bourdieu istoo French? Early critiques of Bourdieu ar?gued that he attempted to universalize theparticularities of French society and thathis empirical findings could not be general?ized to America. However, scholars are in?creasingly adopting a relativist rather thansubstantivist view of his theory. Bourdieuhimself didnot expect thathis empiricalfind?ings on France could be directly reproducedelsewhere; he merely identifiedunderlying

structures whose contents could differ crossnationally:

Those who dismiss my analyses on accountof their "Frenchness" (every time I visit theUnited States, there is somebody to tellmethat "in themass culture of America, tastedoes not differentiate between class posi?tions") fail to see thatwhat is truly importantin them is not so much the substantive re?sults as the process through which they areobtained. "Theories" are research programsthat call not for "theoretical debate" but for apractical utilization (Bourdieu & Wacquant1992, p. 77).

BOURDIEU INAMERICANSOCIOLOGY JOURNALSTo see precisely how Bourdieu's research pro?gram has been utilized practically inAmericansociology since 1980, we indexed its influenceon empirical research published inmajor jour?nals. We compiled a database of all articlespublished between 1980 and 2004 infourso?ciology journalswith consistently igh impacton thefield (according to the Social ScienceCitation Index). These were the American

Journal of ociology, heAmerican SociologicalReview, Social Forces, and Social Problems. Itis possible that this selection of journals un?derstates Bourdieu's influence, as his work

may have entered American sociology via lessmainstream journals (although a preliminaryanalysis yields little evidence of such a trend).4By concentrating on general journals in the

4This is certainly true of Theory and Society, to whichBourdieu was a frequent contributor. As early as 1980?1984, approximately 11% of articles inTheory and Societywere citingBourdieu. By 2000-2004, Bourdieu appearedinnearly one of every three articles in that journal. Con?versely,we found scant reference toBourdieu in two otherjournals thatonemight expect tohave been earlyadopters.In Qualitative Sociology,only 3 out of 200 articles citedBourdieu between 1983-1994. Citations have increasedsince then?with 5 articles (5%) from 1994-1999 and 8articles (8%) from 2000-2004, a rate below that of thejournalswe analyze. Similarly,only 3 articles citingBour?dieu appeared inGender and Societyfrom 1987-1994, with7 articles (4%) from 1995-1999, and 6 articles (3%) from2000-2004.

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discipline, we develop a barometer for Bour?dieu's influence where it may be least ex?pected, constituting a strong test of themainstreaming of his theory.

From this database of 4040 articles, we ex?tracted all that cited Bourdieu at least once,generating a total of 235 articles (5.8% of allarticles published in the period).5 We sub?sequently analyzed and coded them so as totrack the following: thegeneral diffusion ofBourdieu's ideas and concepts into the fieldover this time period and the level of engage?ment with Bourdieu by scholars, as well astrends in the main concepts used and specific

works cited.

Finding 1 :Citations of Bourdieu AreIncreasingFigure 1 (see color insert) documents amarked increase during our 2 5-year study pe?riod in the percentage of articles in the topfour sociology journals that cite at least one

writing of Bourdieu (numbers given are totalsper five-year eriod).Whereas only 2% of allarticlesdid so in the 1980-1984 period, 11%did so during the2000-2004 period.Figure 2 (see color insert)displays this

growth in terms of the total number of ar?ticles citing Bourdieu in each journal dur?ing each five-year period. The number morethan doubled from 1984 to 1994 (from 16to 40) and then doubled again from 1995?2004 (from 0 to80). Figure 2 also illustratestrends across journals. Whereas during thefirst15years of the study eriod, themajority(69%) ofBourdieu-citing articlesappeared inAmerican Journal of Sociology or American So?ciological Review, during the past 10 years thedistribution across journals has equalized con

siderably. In sum, Figures 1 and 2 demon?strate a steady diffusion of Bourdieu's writingsinto American sociology throughout the past25 years.

Finding 2: IncreasinglyComprehensive CitationsAll citations of course do not have equal signif?icance. Having documented an increase in thetotal number and percentage of articles cit?ing Bourdieu, we sought to discern preciselyhow Bourdieu's work was being put to use inthese articles. To what extent has Bourdieu in?spired a research program, in that sociologistsdraw on his work to formulate questions, de?sign research, and interpret results? We classi?fied each article according to a three-categoryschema to capture the degree to which theauthor engaged Bourdieu. At one extreme are

what we call limited citations. These are arti?cles thatmention Bourdieu but briefly typi?cally only once, rarely in the text itself, and of?ten in a string of related citations) and withoutany further elucidation of his theory or works.

The following example, taken from the dataanalysis section of an American Journal of 'Soci?ologyrticlebyGiordano et al. (2002, p. 1028),qualifies as a limited citation:

As we indicated in the previous examina?tion of the lives of three specific women,the ways inwhich the respondents are po?sitioned structurally varies and is a foun?dation upon which any change effortswill be constructed. However, the respon?dent's comments above make clear thatthis involves perceptual as well as objectiveelements (Bourdieu 1977).

We label this article's engagement limitedbecause, although stating that one respon?dent's comments can be interpreted as gen?erally in line with Bourdieu's framework, theauthors neither mention Bourdieu again nordeploy any of his concepts specifically in theirresearch design. Of course, in labeling an ar?ticle a limited citation, we are not evaluatingthe article's overall quality. These citations

5Some of these articleswere authored by scholars whomight not be identified as American sociologists (e.g.,economists, or sociologists based outside the UnitedStates).We nevertheless included them in the final sam?ple insofar as articles published in these four journals aregenerallywritten for and read by scholars situated in thefield ofU.S. sociology.

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signal awareness of the general significanceof Bourdieu's research program, even if thatprogram is not essential to the study's socio?logical contribution.

We label as an intermediate citation onethat goes beyond a cursory reference, butstops short of a comprehensive engagement

with Bourdieu's theory. An intermediate ci?tation provides some discussion of specific

writings, often engages Bourdieu at multiplepoints in the article, and may even structureameasure around one of his concepts. Con?sider Paxton's (1999) article "Is Social Capi?talDeclining inthe nited States?", inwhichshe develops several measures of social capital

with which to test Putnam's "bowling alone"thesis. Although her results are striking in thatthey challenge conventional assumptions re?garding the decline of trust and associations inAmerica, what is important for our purposesis that one of her social capital measures isspecifically derived from Bourdieu's concep?tualization, a connection she dedicates severalparagraphs to explaining.We in turn label an article a comprehen?sive citation if it sustains a theoretical engage?ment with Bourdieu. Such articles derive theircentral research questions and/or hypothe?ses from his theory. Furthermore, they typi?cally mention Bourdieu in the abstract and citethree or more of his works. A good example isthe article "Forms of Capital and Social Struc?ture nCultural Fields: Examining Bourdieu'sSocial Topography" (Anheieret al. 1995).Assignaled by both the title and thefirstsen?tence of the abstract?"This article tests onekey assumption of Bourdieu's theory of cul?ture fields"?this article is centered entirelyon a prolonged dialogue with Bourdieu.Figure 3 (see color insert) presents ourfindings concerning the depth of citations.Overall we witness a fourfold increase in theraw number of articles with an intermediateor comprehensive engagement, from 7 in theinitialperiod of our study 1980-1984) to 27inthefinalperiod (2000-2004). The percent?age of such articles, however, is decreasing,as limited citations proliferate. Whereas in

the 1980-1994 period justover half of all ci?tationswere limited,by 1995-2004 approxi?mately two-thirds were. This increase in lim?ited engagements does not necessarily meanthat citing Bourdieu is a purely ceremonialact. Itmay in fact be a sign that at least someof Bourdieu's core concepts have become sotaken for granted within the sociological lexi?con that they may serve as building blocks forlarger arguments and therefore their elabora?tion is no longer needed in the context of ajournal article.

Finding 3: Progression of Bourdieu'sResearch ProgramHaving shown that Bourdieu is increasinglycited in American sociology journals, wenext sought to discern whether these arti?cles push back on Bourdieu byproblematizing and/ordeveloping his key concepts.Weasked, in other words, whether Bourdieu's

work has engendered a progressive researchprogram inAmerican sociology. As elaboratedby Lakatos (1978), there are two types of re?search programs. A degenerative program isone in which troubling findings are assidu?ously avoided. In contrast, a research programis progressive to the extent that its core postu?lates and concepts are aggressively applied tonew areas of empirical research, resulting inanomalies. These anomalies in turn representchallenges to which the researcher respondsby extending the program through the refine?ment of core postulates or the specification ofauxiliary ones.

We thus coded all 49 articles in our studythat comprehensively engage Bourdieu ac?cording to whether they either use their em?pirical findings to extend Bourdieu's theoryor use Bourdieu's theory to extend a subfieldwithin sociology.Of these49 articles,25(51%) explicitly ttemptto extendBourdieu'sresearch program. A good example of thistype of project is Erickson's (1996) article"Class, Culture and Connections." In it sheapplies Bourdieu's two-dimensional schema ofsocial spaces (accounting for the distribution



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Table 1 Bourdieu's key concepts used over time

Key conceptCapital_Field_Habitus_Symbolic owerNone_Key capital1*Cultural_Social_Other

44*13378614

45143592

55152586

4012

417918

3211

40464212

'Percentages based on our analysis of our American sociology journals (American ournal of ociology, mericanSociological eview, SocialFortes,and Social Problems).bKey capital is listedas a percentage of those articles or which capital is thekey concept

of economic and cultural capitals) to theorganization of a private security industry.Contra Bourdieu's well-known findings re?ported in Distinction on the importance ofhigh-culture knowledge, Erickson discoversthat thebreadth of one's culturalknowledgealong with one's networks are responsible forintrafirm patterns of hierarchy. These results,she claims, allow us to expand and modifyBourdieu's theory, y specifying hedifferentsorts of capital thatmight structurea field(Erickson 1996,p. 247).

The remaining 24 comprehensive arti?cles (49%) use Bourdieu's ideas to engageand extend an existing research programinAmerican sociology.Ron (2000), for in?stance, interviewed Israeli soldiers regardingthe use of repression during actions againstPalestinians. By putting to use Bourdieu's dis?tinction between rules and practices, Ron'sarticle advances political sociology's under?standing of state violence.

Finding4:Capital (EspeciallyCultural) DominatesOur final set of questions concerns trendsin the use of specific concepts and the cita?tionof specificworks. For each article in thedatabase, we coded which, ifany, of Bourdieu's

fourprimaryconcepts (capital,field,habitus,and symbolic power) was most central to theanalysis. We also checked whether each arti?cle employed all these concepts relationally,as Bourdieu intended?only 9% did so, andnearly all of theseengagedBourdieu's ideas insome depth.Table 1 demonstrates that capital is andhas been the most popular concept. Capitalwas cited by 45% of all articles inour anal?ysis, and in each period itprevailed over thesecondmost frequently ited concept by atleast a three-to-one ratio. Capital's popularityamong researchers, however, seems to havedeclined over the past ten years, droppingfrom ahigh of 55% of cites in the 1990-1994period to just 32% in the 2000-2004 period.The sameholds for abitus,whichwas thesec?ondmost frequentlyused conceptfrom 1980to 1994,butwhose use has sincedeclined.Thefield concept, in contrast, has slowly workeditsway intoAmerican sociology.Although itwas citedonly rarely nthefirst 15yearsofourstudy, tnow iscited inapproximately10% ofarticles.

Considering the importanceof thecapitalconcept to research published inU.S. sociol?ogy journals,we investigated further hichspecies of capitalwas the primary focus ofthese articles. Overall, 74% of these articles

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centered on cultural capital and 18% on so?cial capital. There appears, however, to be anongoing dramatic shift in the relative pop?ularity of these two capitals. In 1980-1984,86% of articles thatemployed capital as thecore concept concentrated on cultural capi?tal (undoubtedly reflectingthepopularity atthis time of Bourdieu's work on education,buoyed later by the popularity of Distinc?tion), while none focused on social capital.By 2000-2004, cultural capital's share haddeclined to 46%, while social capital's hadrisen to 42%. This trend can likelybe ac?counted for by the increasing interest in so?cial capital across several subfields: social net?

work analysis, race/immigration, and politicalsociology.To understand these changing patterns, weexamined trends in the citations of specificworks. Figure 4 (see color insert) presentsthese data for all writings that were cited byat least 10% of the articles in any time period.We see, first, a sharp decline in citations ofBourdieu's main book on education, Reproduc?tion n ducation,SocietyndCulture (Bourdieu& Passeron 1977). Cited by approximately40% of articles in the 1980s, it isnow citedby only approximately 10%. Citations of thetwo Practice books also dropped in the early1990s, although they have since regained their

place as the second most frequently citedworks. By far the most influential work overthe past 15 years, however, is Distinction,which during itspeak period of 1990-1994was cited by nearly 60% of all articles. In sum,Bourdieu's cultural capital?especially as elab?orated in Distinction?remains the key influ?ence on research inAmerican sociology jour?nals. These trends may be attributed in partto the timing of the translation of Bourdieu'sworks into English. The books that appearedearliest have experienced a dip in popular?ity as translations of additional works appear.Time will tell whether more recently trans?latedworks such asThe StateNobility andTheSocialStructureof heEconomy ill gain a broadaudience, or whether reference to Bourdieu

will be mostly limited to a few canonical texts.

FOUR BOOKS EXTENDINGAMERICAN SOCIOLOGYWe now turn from a quantitative study of ci?

tation patterns to a qualitative analysis of howBourdieu has been put to use in recent booklength studies. We chose four monographsto examine in detail based on the followingfour criteria: First, the author is a prominentscholar in a particular sociological subfield;second, he or she is based at an American uni?versity; third, the monograph incorporates atleast one of Bourdieu's major concepts into itsresearch design; and fourth, ithas been subse?quently judged as an important text in the subfield.They areEyal etal.'s (1999)Making Cap?italism Without Capitalists, on forms of capitalin political sociology; Fligstein's (2002) TheArchitecture of arkets, on fields in economicsociology; Lamont's (1994) Money, Morals and

Manners, on symbolic power in the sociol?ogy of culture; andWacquant's (2004) Bodyand Soul, on habitus in urban sociology. Thesebooks also employ a diverse range of researchmethods, including survey analysis, interview?ing, comparative historical, and ethnography.For each of the four books we ask the fol?lowing questions: What role do Bourdieu'sconcepts play in the project's research design?How do the authors use Bourdieu's ideas toadvancekeydebates in the subfield? nd howare the findings used to extend Bourdieu's re?search program?

Capital and Political SociologyIn theirbookMaking CapitalismWithoutCap?italists,yal et al. (1999) pose a puzzle:Howdid capitalism emerge inpostcommunist Cen?tral Europe without the formation of a prop?ertied bourgeoisie? Some predicted that com?munist elites would become a bourgeois classby turning state resources into their own pri?vate wealth. However, Eyal et al.'s survey ev?idence inHungary, Poland, and the CzechRepublic reveals divergent patterns of mo?bility among fractions of the Soviet elite.They employ Bourdieu's concept of capital to

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describe the winners and losers in the fieldof power.Holders of Soviet political capital(i.e., party bureaucrats) and economic capital(i.e., informal entrepreneurs) failed to adjustto new conditions, whereas the holders of cul?tural capital used knowledge rather than prop?erty to foster a new variety of capitalism (Eyalet al. 1999,p. 74).

What allowed cultural elites to dominatethe economic and political fields after social?ism? he hybridpropertyforms hatemergedduring the transition period created an open?ing for new types of strategies for controllingassets without formally owning them (Stark& Bruszt 1998). Cultural capital providedcertain elites with not simply knowledge onhow to manage an economy, but the abil?ity to stake symbolic claims to legitimate thenew order. In tracing elite power struggles,

Eyal et al. (1999) show how a "governmentality of managerialism"?in Foucault's senseof the production of truth claims as a meansto power (cf. Eyal 2003)?emerged via an un?easy alliance between communist technocratsand dissident intellectuals. Neoliberal tech?nologies such as monetarism appealed to themanagerial ethos of technocrats, whereas dis?sidents embraced the ideology of civil soci?ety. This alliance grafted dissident rituals ofsacrifice, purification, and confession of com?

munist sins onto neoliberal ideologies thatcalled for collective belt-tightening, personalresponsibility, and fiscal austerity.Eyal et al. (1999) deploy Bourdieu to ad?vance political sociology in two ways: Theydevelop a framework for understanding intraelite power struggles, and they mergeBourdieu andWeber to propose a new schemafor classifying social systems. The book's em?phasis on elites is both a strength and a sourceof controversy. Eyal et al. follow Bourdieu(1984 [1979], pp. 176, 421) in analyzing the"dominant and dominated fractions of thedominant class," thus moving beyond a sim?ple story of elites versus masses. Having foundthat cultural capital is ascendant in CentralEurope, theauthorshighlightthe crucial role

of control over symbolic meanings in politi?cal power struggles. In their words, "We seethe essence of 'cultural capital' not as the ap?propriation of 'surplus-value' but as the exer?ciseof symbolicdomination" (Eyal et al. 1999,p. 236).A sophisticated treatment of postcom?

munist elites, the book ignores the lowerclasses because "capitalism isbeing made fromabove" (Eyal et al. 1999, p. 160).This deci?sion may appear to reflect Bourdieu's lead: Indefining the lower classes in terms of whatthey lack (capital),Bourdieu hasmore to sayabout struggle among elites than about varia?tion within other classes (Crane 2000, p. 27).In a reviewo?Making CapitalismWithoutCap?italists,urawoy (2001,pp.1103,1112) pointsout that Bourdieu, in analyzing "the reproduc?tion and mystification of class relations," doespresent extensive evidence about the workingclasses.Eyal et al. (2001,p. 1122) respond thatelites simply matter more in Central Europe,where there is no collective working class,but rather a "demobilized, disorganized massof workers." Nevertheless, whether the lowerclasses recognize the cultural elite and theircapitalist project as legitimate is an impor?tant question, unanswered inMaking Capital?ismWithout Capitalists.

This study of the transition to capitalism inCentral Europe motivates a broad theoreticalagenda: to reconstruct Weber's theory of his?tory via Bourdieu's theory of social structure.Eyal et al. (1999)mapWeber's classificationof stratification orders onto Bourdieu's formsof capital: Social capital dominates societiesstratified by rank (status), whereas economiccapital is ascendant in class societies. They historicize these concepts by asking what formsof capital dominate at various times, lead?ing them to rethink neo-Weberian theoriesof both socialism and capitalism. Many an?alysts of socialism characterize Soviet soci?eties as having a neotraditional status order,in contrast to the modern class order of cap?italism (Jowitt 1992). However, a status or?der can be modern: In the Soviet case itwas

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1960-1084 1005-1080 1000-1004 1995-1999 2000-2004

Figure 1Percent of articles in top sociology journals citing Bourdieu.

80h

60somS 40IE3

20

AJSASRSFSP

1980-1984 1985-1989 1990-1994 1995-1999 2000-20045-year intervais

Figure 2Number of articles citing Bourdieu by time period and journal (AJS,American Journal ofSociology; ASR,American Sociological Review, SF, Social Forces; SP, Social Problems).

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1080-1984 1085-1080 1990-1004 1005-1099 2000-20045-year intervals

Figure 3Depth of citations by time period.

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1080-1064 1085-1080 1000-1004 1005-1000 2000-2004

Figure 4Percent of articles citing key works ("Distinction" refers to the book by the same name; "Practice"refers to either of the books Outline ofa Theory ofPractice or The Logic ofPractice, which we grouptogether because somuch of their content overlaps; "Invitation" refers toAn Invitation toReflexiveSociology; "Forms" refers to the 1986 article, "Forms of Capital"; and "Reproduction" refers to the bookReproduction inEducation, Society and Culture).

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institutionalized as political capital andfounded on the substantive rationality of theparty-state (Eyal et al. 1999, pp. 66-67). Sim?ilarly, contra both Weber and Marx, some ofthe chief institutions of capitalism?i.e., mar?kets for commodities, labor, and capital?canexist without a propertied bourgeoisie. Thiscan stillbe considered capitalism if wedefinethe bourgeoisie not 'structurally,' by its posi?tion in the relations of production, but 'histor?ically,' as the class whose historical project istomodernize society" (Eyal et al. 1999, p. 60).

This "forms of capital" approach to stratifica?tion systems provides a more flexible classi?fication schema that accommodates differenttypes ofmodernity aswell as different varietiesof capitalism.Making CapitalismWithout Capitalists ex?tends Bourdieu's theory by applying hisconceptual framework to a new historical con?text, and in so doing develops a novel ty?pology for the comparative study of capi?talism.Eyal et al. (1999) apply Bourdieu'sconcept of trajectory adjustment, originallydeveloped to account for social mobility inmore stable societies, to show how his con?ceptual apparatus can be applied to the studyof transformation (see Eyal 2003 for a moreextended development of this idea).The fo?cus on Eastern Europe also reveals a novel po?tential for cultural capital to predominate inthefieldofpower, a possibilitynot consideredbyBourdieu (1984 [1979],p. 291),who char?acterized cultural capital as "the dominatedprinciple of domination." Nevertheless, Eyalet al. conclude that the current ascendanceof cultural capital in Central Europe is un?likely to last long. Like charismatic authority,rule by cultural capital must be recognized tobe effective. Regime stability depends on theoften transitory recognition by other actorsof the "the validity of their truth claims, orthe usefulness of their knowledge" (Eyal et al.1999, p. 68). In the case of postcommunism,those claims support the eventual transitionto a class society inwhich economic capital isascendant.

Fields and Economic SociologyTheArchitectureof arkets isFligstein's (2002)attempt to outline a conceptual apparatus foreconomic sociology. The first part of the bookdelineates his main concepts, themost impor?tant of which for our purposes is the idea oforganizational fields.Fligstein's (2002, p. 29)"theory of fields assumes that actors try to pro?duce a 'local' stable world where the dominantactors produce meanings that allow them toreproduce their advantage." Economic fieldsspecifically are stabilized through four sets ofrules: propertyrights definingwho may le?gitimately be a player; governance structuresspecifying the rules these actors must obey;rules of exchange of various resources; andconceptions of control, essentially the commonsense strategies of field actors. The sec?ond part of the book then uses the field con?cept to illuminate several empirical topics:

why countries differ in their dominant em?ployment systems, the evolution of corporatemanagement styles in the United States, andthe dynamics of globalization.

How does Fligstein's use of the field con?cept advance current debates on the organi?zation of capitalist economies? First, it avoidsthe pitfalls associated with rational-choiceaccounts, which "use interests as the mainexplanatory variable" for understanding eco?nomic action (Fligstein2002, p. 30). Such in?terests are typically taken to be universal: the

maximization of a set of preferences such ashappiness or, in the context of firms, profits.Yet field theoryproblematizes thenotion ofinvariant interests instead inquiring how ac?tors conceptualize their interests in the firstplace (Guillen 2003,Martin 2003). Nor isfield theory congruent with attempts to res?cue rational choice theory through accountsof bounded rationality or managerial satisficing Simon 1957), through hich variations indecision making are explained through infor?mation constraints. Fligstein (1990) insteadtraces managers' conceptions of control totheir trainings and career trajectories. Actionin the economic field, in short, is reasonable



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rather than rational (Bourdieu 2005 [2000],p. 2).

Second, the field concept avoids the mis?take of treating markets as either dynamicand constantly in flux or stable and durable.

On one hand, both economic and Marxistperspectives portray the ideal-typical capi?talist economy as a competitive free marketin which firms struggle to maximize prof?its. In such accounts, the strategies throughwhich firms compete?e.g., by suppressingworkers' wages or undercutting competitors'prices?undermine stability and cause regu?lar episodes of market destruction. The eco?nomic sociology of fields argues "in contra?diction to theories of competitive markets,[that] many markets have complex and stablesocial structures" (Fligstein 2002, p. 7; empha?sis added). Rather than an anarchic market, aneconomic field is characterized by implicit un?derstandings about how competition is han?dled, what roles various firms have in themar?ket, and the general hierarchy of firms (Carroll& Swaminathan 2000,White 2002).

On the other hand, some have argued thatthefieldconcept as it isused byFligstein andBourdieu overstates the durability of marketarrangements, thus losing sight of the conflictand dynamism that do occur in the economy(Roy 2004). Others point out, however, thatfield theory specifies both the conditions un?der which market structures become open totransformation, as well as the strategies usedby actors at these moments to reshape thesestructures(Krippner 2001). Although stablefields are vertically stratified, they are alsoopen to revolutions from below inwhich sub?ordinate firms or actors from outside the fieldchallenge the existent hierarchy of producers.At these moments the prevailing governancestructures and conceptions of control are ren?dered problematic. During such field crises,what is at stake isnot simply the distribution ofresources, but the very rules by which the fieldwill operate. And although Fligstein (2002,pp. 76-77) does not use Bourdieu's terminol?ogy exactly, he does specify the various formsof capital?coalitions, framing strategies, po

litical opportunities?mobilized by actors inincipient or transitional economic fields.The thirdway inwhich the field conceptcontributes to economic sociology is by deep?ening accepted understandings of globaliza?tion, most notably by theorizing the politi?cal dimension of the process. Both Bourdieuand Fligstein argue that states are essentialfor making and maintaining market fields.In Bourdieu's (2005 [2000], p. 223) only ex?tended treatise on the economic field, SocialStructures of theEconomy, he argues that, "his?torically, the economic field was constructed

within the framework of the national state."Fligstein (2002, p. 8), drawing on Polanyi(1957), also emphasizes the false antimony be?tween free markets and state regulation thatneoliberal economics takes for granted. Bybringingthe stateback in,field theoryrefutesthose who posit an inevitable move toward theAmerican model of minimal state regulation,maximum corporate flexibility, and a share?holder value conception of control (Strange1996). Hence we see a convergence in theiraccounts of globalization:

The "global market" is a political cre?ation_[W]hat isuniversally proposed andimposed as thenorm of all rational economicpractices is, in reality, the universalizationof the particular characteristics of an econ?omy embedded in a particular history andsocial structure?those of theUnited States(Bourdieu 2005 [2000], pp. 225-26).[Globalization and shareholder value havebecome united_ [Shareholder valuemeans that firms should maximize profits forowners, and governments should just stayout of it.This ideology is a generalizationabout the American experience (Fligstein2002, p. 221).

The dynamics of the incipient global eco?nomic field, in both of these accounts, de?rive less from inherent efficiencies of U.S.style capitalism than from the deploymentby American firms and right-leaning politi?cians of their material and symbolic capital to

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construct field rules that cement their stand?ing as dominant actors.

To conclude we consider two importantways in which Fligstein's and Bourdieu's ac?counts diverge: regarding consumers and in?stitutions. Fligstein (2002) excises consumersfrom his story, concerned as he is to refute eco?nomic theories of market demand as structur?ing production fields. Producer identities, nmost economic sociology accounts, derive pri?

marily from horizontal ties with other produc?ers.Bourdieu (2005 [2000],p. 19; 1984 [1979];1990c [1965]), however, argues that the "par?ticular characteristic of the product," espe?cially its symbolic meaning for consumers,exerts an independent effect on the struc?tureof suppliers. he field ofhouse buildersin France is thus characterized by a dividebetween producers of traditional craftsmenhouses and producers of prefabricated mod?ern houses. Itwould in our opinion be an in?teresting line of research to discern whetherthe field formation projects that Fligsteintreats as generic do in fact vary across indus?trial sectors, depending on themeaning of theproduct to consumers themselves.

The second point of divergence relates tothegreaterweight given byFligstein (2002,p. 39) to the institutional context or policydomain inwhich field struggles take place.For instance, even in state systems inwhichdominant firms have captured the executiveand legislative branches, field challengers canmount attacks within the legal domain. Some,however, have argued that in Bourdieu's writ?ings we often find a lacuna between abstractfield struggles and concrete practices withinfields (Swartz 1997, p. 293; Lareau 2003,p. 277). A notable exception is the aforemen?tioned study of housing policy, inwhich we seehow policy decisions were made by bureau?crats and legitimated via a formally indepen?dent commission of inquiry. Paying attentionto how action plays out in concrete institu?tional locations such as policy domains canbut give flesh to the conceptual foundationsoffield theory Sallaz 2006).

Symbolic Power and CulturalSociologyInMoney, Morals andManners, Lamont (1994)asks how upper-middle-class white men inthe United States and France draw "sym?bolic boundaries" to define themselves andclassify others. A follow-up book, The Dig?nity ofWorking Men, extends the study toworking-class and nonwhite men in bothcountries (Lamont 2000). Symbolic bound?aries, she argues, support stratification sys?tems to the extent that they facilitate exclusionand hierarchy.Lamont (1994, p. 5) devel?ops this concept through an extended engage?ment with Bourdieu?in her own words, thestudy "builds directly on Bourdieu's appara?tus. Indeed, it adopts the Bourdieuian viewthat shared cultural style contributes to classreproduction."Lamont (1994) identifies threemodes ofsymbolic exclusion in her respondents' dis?courses: cultural boundaries drawn on the ba?sis of education and refined tastes; socioeconomic boundaries rooted in wealth, power,occupation, and race; and moral boundariesvaluing qualities such as integrity, work ethic,and egalitarianism. Lamont classifies her re?spondents according to the salience of thesethree types of boundaries and finds that cul?tural boundaries are much less salient thansocioeconomic and moral boundaries in the

United States, whereas the opposite holds forFrance. This difference is attributed to varia?tion in both structural conditions (i.e., educa?tion and welfare systems, job security, and mo?bility patterns) and cultural repertoires (e.g.,intellectual traditions of individualism versushumanism).

Prior to Lamont, Bourdieu-influencedcultural sociology consisted mostly of surveyresearch on the association between culturalcapital and highbrow taste to test whetherBourdieu's findingsforFrance hold true forthe United States (e.g., DiMaggio 1982,Peterson & Kern 1996, Bryson 1996; seeHolt 1997 for a review). Lamont (1994) ar?gues that survey researchers predefine what



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counts as status markers through the closedformat of their questions. She turns toqualitative methods?specifically to in-depthinterviews?to inquire inductively into howpeople actually draw symbolic boundaries. Inthe process, she discovers new types of bound?ary work (Lamont 1994, p. 3). Class distinc?tions in theUnited States, she finds, are drawnprimarily by moral discourses, as opposed tothe cultural boundary work that predominatesin France. Bourdieu (1984 [1979], pp. 41,48) viewed such moral opprobrium as pre?dominant among the working classes, whosetastes refer "explicitly to norms ofmorality oragreeableness in all of their judgments" (cf.Lamont 1994,p. 277). In findingthat theup?per classes also employ explicitly moral dis?courses in drawing boundaries, Lamont hasinspired greater attention to morality in re?cent studies of culture and inequality (e.g.,Southerton 2002).

Just as Lamont brings a renewed focuson class into the study of culture, she alsobrings culture into the study of stratifica?tion by providing qualitative evidence on the"lived experience of class" (Thompson 1963).Although ethnographershave long studied

working-class culture from the perspective ofthe shop floor, relatively few qualitative stud?ies explore the cultural experience of class inother settings [Halle's (1993) studyof homeinteriors nd Lareau's (2003) studyof childrearing practices are exceptions]. Lamont's(1994, 2000) twovolumes followBourdieu indrawing attention to the symbolic dimensionof class inequality and reproduction.This work also demonstrates the analyticalutility of cross-national comparisons, whichremain rare in sociological studies of cul?ture. Lamont may not have noticed moral andsocioeconomic boundaries in France with?out first studying them in the United States,where they are more apparent. These com?parative findings lead her to question and ul?timately reject Bourdieu's research program.In her view, the concept of cultural capital isflawed because it leads analysts to focus exclu?sively on one type of symbolic boundary. She

thus proposes to replace Bourdieu's forms ofcapitalwith her typology f symbolicbound?aries. Similarly, she dispenses with the conceptof field as suggesting a zero-sum game withfixedrules (Lamont 1994,p. 183). Boundarywork only leads to class reproduction to theextent that a social consensus exists on the sig?nals of high status, a state of affairs that ana?lysts should investigate rather than presume(Lamont 1994,pp. 177-78).

Rather than extending Bourdieu, Lam?ont (1994, 2000) moves beyond him andultimately leaves him behind (he is scarcelymentioned inThe Dignity ofWorkingMen).Thus sociologists appear to be faced with achoice of theories for relating culture andinequality: Lamont's symbolic boundariesversus Bourdieu's forms of capital. How?ever, we think the two frameworks canbe synthesized by returning to Bourdieu'sconcept of symbolic power, which Lamontdoes not discuss. Bourdieu (1991 [1982],p. 105) defines symbolic power as controlover "the perception which social agentshave of the social world." We view symbolicboundarywork as a bid fora form f symbolicpower, the power to define the "criteriawhich are used to evaluate status," whichLamont (1994, p. 5) defines as the purposeof boundary work. Although Bourdieu's workon class culture focuses empirically on thelegitimation of cultural capital, the theory canaccommodate other types of boundary work.The effects of boundary work on legitimationare an empirical question, and Lamont (1994,p. 179) calls formore observational studies toillustrate how boundary work is "translatedinto social profits," which is difficult to assess

from interviews alone. Future scholars couldprofitablyextend both herwork and that ofBourdieu through ethnographic research onboundary work in practice.

Habitus and Urban EthnographyIn Body and Soul, Wacquant (2004) uses par?ticipant observation data collected while hewas a graduate student at the University of

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Chicago to describe daily life in anAfricanAmerican boxing gym situated in the city'simpoverishedsouthside.AlthoughWacquant(2004) arguesboth that theprocess ofbecom?ing a boxer entails learning how to manageone's "bodily capital" (p. 127) and that thelarger world of prizefighting can be concep?tualized as a "pugilistic field" (p. 141), thebulk of his ethnographic data ismobilizedtoward describing the genesis and function?ingof thehabitus of thissportingworld.Thepugilistichabitus isthat f "avirtualpunching

machine, but an intelligent and creative ma?chine capable of self-regulation while inno?vating within a fixed and relatively restrictedpanoply of moves as an instantaneous func?tion of the actions of the opponent" (Wac?quant 2004, p. 95). The book itselffollows

Wacquant's own acquisition of the pugilistichabitus, culminating with an appearance inthe Chicago Golden Gloves tournament. In?sofar as the habitus concept proves useful fordescribing and explaining the corporal dimen?sion of experience, Body and Soul becomes anobject lesson forbringing thebody into soci?ological research.How doesWacquant's (2004) study ad?vance the subfieldof urban sociology?Thebook isfirmly mbeddedwithin the traditionof urban sociology as practiced by the first andsecondChicago schools (Abbott 1999). Likeclassic studies of the city, it avoids the tempta?tion to treat the urban ghetto as a disorganizedsocial world, instead elucidating the underly?ing principles that produce regularity and or?der.And like theChicago school's symbolicinteractionist tradition, Body and Soul takes se?riously the point of view of its subjects, es?pecially how theymake sense of theirdailylifeworlds(Hughes 1971).Yet by putting touse the concept of habitus, Wacquant is ableto move beyond the Chicago school in threeways.

First, Body and Soul situates the worldviewof the urban dweller within the larger so?cial structure. In classic accounts, the urbanslum occupied a transition zone within thecity Park& Burgess 1925).These natural ar

eas were products of processes beyond any?one's control, and their inhabitants were typ?ically immigrants unsocialized into the moresofAmerican society (Dowries & Rock 1998,p. 71). Habitus, however, serves as a prophy?lactic against such apolitical accounts. For in?sofar as the habitus consists of dispositionsthat are in essence internalized social struc?tures, it can never be analyzed as cut off fromthe outside world. Nor can shifts in the largerenvironment be attributed to natural forces.

Wacquant (2004) thusmoves out from thegym and its boxers to document the work?ings of the surrounding ghetto. He describesat length the political-economic processes?the disappearance of work, the city's failedurban renewal projects, the militarization ofstreet gangs?precipitating in these other?wise formidable young men a sense of "claustrophilia" (Wacquant 2004, p. 26) that bothdraws them into and ties them to the gym.

Second, habitus restores a picture of thesocial actor as embedded in history. TheChicago school of ethnography, especially asrepresented by the symbolic interactionist tra?dition, remained mired in an eternal present(Bourdieu 1989, p. 21). It treated local interac?tion orders as worlds unto themselves whosedynamics could be analyzed without regardto participants' life trajectories or the "biog?raphy of the occasion" (Drew & Wootton1988, p. 4). In contrast, Wacquant's (2004)analysis reveals how the past lives on in thepresent. He demonstrates that it isyoung menwith roots in the stable working class whocan most readily adopt the pugilistic habitus(Wacquant 2004, pp. 44-46). For them therigor and discipline required of the craft n?voke memories of an affluent black Chicago inwhich theirfathers eld blue-collar jobs. hisanalysis, we may note, mirrors that of Bour?dieu's (1979 [1977]) own study f colonial Al?geria. Bourdieu documented the struggles ofpeasants, equipped with a traditional habitusforged in a precapitalist economy of symbolichonor, thrust into amarket society. Wacquantdescribes the converse: the travails of an ur?ban proletariat cast out of the modern labor



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market. The dispositions necessary to survivetheFordist factory iveon in theprogeny ofthe industrial proletariat, even as they navi?gate a deindustrialized urban wasteland.

Third, the habitus concept transcends thepolarization typical of current scholarly andmedia accounts depicting the urban poor as ei?ther a depraved underclass trapped in a cultureofpoverty (Jones& Luo 1999) ornoble crea?tures struggling to "live in accordance withstandards of 'moral' worth" (Duneier 1999,p. 341). By studying oxers,Wacquant (2004)is able tomake this point quite clearly. Like theghetto itself, heboxing ring isequated in thepopular imagination with fury and chaos; it is aspace where punches and blood flywildly. Butthe gym for its denizens is actually quite pro?saic, an "island of order and virtue" within theghetto (Wacquant 2004, p. 17; see also Geurts2005). Here they engage in camaraderie withfellow boxers, learn valuable life lessons fromthe beloved coach DeeDee, and inject ex?citement into an otherwise dreary existence.Indeed, the pugilistic habitus is a complexof physical dispositions resonant with othervalue spheres. The gym provides a surrogatefamily; putting one's time inmimics the timecycle of industrial work, whereas the devotionrequired of the craft (e.g., resisting the temp?tations of sex and sweets) mirrors that of areligious discipline.

How could Wacquant's (2004) study ex?tend Bourdieu's research program? Body andSoul remains faithful to Bourdieu's conceptsand ideas; we see the major contribution asthat of deploying the concept of habitus as a

methodological tool forproducing field data.Though he pronounced a "kinship and a sol?idarity" with those who "put their noses tothe ground" (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992),Bourdieu's writings expressed grave doubtabout ethnography. He labeled it a "primitiveparticipation," a fallacy of scholastic reasoning(Bourdieu 1990b [1980], p. 14). Researchers,he claimed, can never truly see theworld fromtheir subjects' point of view, insofar as theycannot overcome their skhole, the aloofnesscreated by their distance from practical neces

sity.Wacquant, as Bourdieu's student, was un?doubtedly aware of his mentor's admonitions.

He goes to great lengths to demonstrate boththat he was reflexive about his position as a re?searcher and that he was able to overcome thisposition?through rigorous apprenticeship?to gain acceptance from other boxers. In?deed, Wacquant claims to have been so se?duced by the taste and ache of action thathe contemplated leaving the academy to pur?sue a boxing career. While it is debatablewhether Wacquant did overcome the socialand economic gulfs separatinghim from hissubjects, especially those for whom the ringrepresented the one and only chance to escapepoverty (Fine 2004, Krueger & SaintOnge2005), the book stands as an exemplar of howconcepts such as field, habitus, and capital canbe put to use in ethnographic research.

CONCLUSIONTo document the influence of Bourdieu onthe practice of research in American sociol?ogy over the past two-and-a-half decades, wehave deployedmethods both quantitative (anempirical study of citation trends inmajor so?ciology journals) and qualitative (focused ex?egesis of four monographs). To conclude thisreview article, we offer three general observa?tions to conjoin the preceding two sections.In the process, we suggest future directions inBourdieu-inspired research.

First, our study of citation patterns in jour?nal articles shows conclusively that the recentsurge of interest in Bourdieu's work is not

merely a fad, nor is it a short-lived homagefollowinghispassing in2002.Today over 10%of all articlespublished inthe fourleading so?ciology journals cite Bourdieu. Although ourdata do not permit us tomake direct compar?isons of the relative popularity of Bourdieuvis-?-vis other social theorists over this timeperiod, they do demonstrate a steady increasein the influence of Bourdieu's theory since atleast 1980.

We decided to focus on the four mostinfluential sociology journals insofar as they

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could serve as barometers with which to gaugethe increasing presence of Bourdieu in the

mainstream or core of the discipline. Al?thoughwell-suited forthepurpose of a briefreview article, this dataset does not permitinsight into the mechanisms of diffusion ofBourdieu's theory into U.S. sociology con?ceptualized as a Bourdieuian field. This sortof projectwould entail documentingnot justcitation patterns but also the institutional lo?cations and biographical trajectories of cit?ing authors. Bourdieu's (1988 [1984]) ownstudyof French sociology and its place inthe larger academic field, Homo Academicus,

would suggest as a preliminary hypothesisthat early adopters were scholars seeking tochallenge the prevailing status hierarchy ofthe field. We would here expect to find ear?lier and more frequent citations in periph?eral journals, similarly, with articles utilizingperipheral methods (participant observation,feminist methods, etc.). An alternative hy?pothesis is that agents rich in academic cap?ital (i.e., those with PhDs from high-statusdepartments or universities) were most pre?disposed to attempt the risky tactic of cit?ing the then-outsider Bourdieu. Adjudicationbetween these two hypotheses must awaita future, more thorough study of Americansociology as a Bourdieuian field. Such aproject could also inform the new sociology ofideas, which examines the concrete processesby which ideas diffuse across boundaries?national, disciplinary, and otherwise (Camic& Gross 2001,Vaughan 2006).

Second, as shown by both our quantita?tive analysis of citation patterns and our casestudies of books, Bourdieu's writings are notbeing cited in a strictly ceremonious man?ner. On the contrary, Bourdieu's core the?oretical concepts are increasingly used todesign empirical research and to advance de?bates in core sociological subfields. Besidesthe four fields discussed herein (sociologyof culture, economic sociology, urban soci?ology, and political sociology), recent workhas used Bourdieu's concepts to advance de?bates in the sociology of ethnicity and na

tionalism (e.g., Brubaker 2004), media stud?ies (e.g., Benson & Neveu 2005), education(Carter 2005), thefamily Lareau 2003), stateformation (Loveman 2005), and many otherfields. We would, however, like to point outa relative dearth of work from a Bourdieuianperspective in the sociology of gender (how?ever,seeFodor 2003,Adkins & Skeggs 2004,Martin 2005,Lizardo 2006).All thebooks re?viewed for this article, for instance, focusedmainly on the experiences of men [Wacquant(2004) on urban boxers, Lamont (1994) onboundary work by French and American men,Eyal et al. (1999) and Fligstein (2002) onmostly male political and economic elites].Considering thatBourdieu (2001 [1998])heldgender inequality to be the most intractableand pernicious form of domination, this rep?resents a subfield in which new researchcould farther advance a Bourdieuian researchprogram.

Third, the works reviewed herein demon?strate the dynamism of Bourdieu's theory.

While many have argued that Bourdieu'sconcepts and findings?especially regard?ing the importance of cultural capital anddistinction?are applicable only to contem?porary French society, we have shown thatthey are in fact transposable to the Americancase and other countries aswell. The reviewed

works, by applying Bourdieu's concept to dy?namic worlds of social change, also put to restthe accusation that he is simply a reproductiontheorist cf.Gorski 2006). Eyal et al. (1999),for example, use the notion of capital port?folios to understand the transition from so?cialismtocapitalism,whereas Fligstein (2002)theorizes the conditions under which fieldscan be transformed. Finally, we have shownthat Bourdieu's conceptual oeuvre has notbeen importedunreflexively nto theUnitedStates, but rather has been treated as a pro?gressive research program. In other words,researchers have aggressively applied his con?cepts to new empirical domains, generatinganomalies that can only be resolved by refin?ing these concepts and enriching social sci?ence generally.



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ACKNOWLEDGMENTSFor assistance with data collection we thank Danielle Hedegard and Jennifer Schultz. Usefulcomments and conversation were offered by Ron Breiger and Tom Medvetz, as well as theparticipants in the2006 Summer Institute f theCenter for dvanced Study intheBehavioralSciences.

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