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Thread on Giddens and Bourdieu: One thing that puzzled me was how Giddens would write essays on almost any major figure or strand in social theory — from Durkheim to Habermas via Goffman; even Frank Parkin, André Gorz and Ulf Himmelstrand — but almost nothing on Bourdieu.
In the first instance, this is strange because they had a theoretical ambition in common, of overcoming the objectivism-subjectivism divide. And despite their striking and important differences, there are some similarities in their “solution”
It’s even more strange because Giddens was clearly aware of Bourdieu’s work, as he himself translated a paper by B in 1974, ahead of G’s flurry of books and essays.
The one central instance in which Giddens does refer to Bourdieu is in a footnote towards the end of Central Problems in Social Theory, in which he remarked that the approach G is trying to develop is in fact very close to Bourdieu’s Outline...
And then there’s Giddens’ brilliant review of Distinction in 1986 (virtually unknown, despite being blurbed on the US edition) in which he demonstrates a solid understanding of the work — much unlike so many prominent Anglophone commentators.
In the review, Giddens makes what might be an interesting concession, when he says that no one has done more to overcoming the objectivism-subjectivism divide than Bourdieu. Should this be taken to mean that Giddens had come to see Bourdieu as beating him “in his own game”?
Might be a weak interpretation on my part, but it would seem consistent with the fact that, by 1986, Giddens had basically abandoned structuration theory, which he would later dismiss as mere “youthful indiscretion”. (What a way to refer to your own claim to fame!)
And moreover, Giddens noted in the 1986 review that Distinction was an attempt by Bourdieu to give his theoretical ideas a “thoroughgoing empirical application”. That, of course, is precisely what Giddens never did.
Indeed, the chapter on empirical applications in The Constitution of Society was a bit embarrassing, as the key examples referred to work (Paul Willis, Gambetta) done without any guidance by structuration theory, which made the theory seem a bit redundant.
And to top it off, The Constitution of Society appeared the same year as the English translation of Distinction was published
