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Bourdieu’s Concept of Field in the Anglo-Saxon Literature

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Empirical Investigations of Social Space

Part of the book series: Methodos Series ((METH,volume 15))

Abstract

The concept of field is being used globally more and more today. This chapter reviews Bourdieu’s understanding of the concept and key elaborations and applications found today in the Anglo-Saxon social scientific literature. The concept now appears in numerous substantive areas of investigation. While by no means an exhaustive review of all the work inspired by Bourdieu’s concept, this chapter offers illustrative references for a diverse range of substantive areas, such as culture, education, economics, intellectuals, media, organizations, politics, religion, social movements, stratification, and globalization. The chapter opens with a brief discussion of the origins and key characteristics of the concept. It then illustrates how Bourdieu and others have used and elaborated the concept of field in selected substantive areas of investigation. For each substantive area we identify those writings of Bourdieu that have been most relevant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    David L. Swartz

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  1. David L. Swartz
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Correspondence to David L. Swartz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Political Science & Sociology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Jörg Blasius

  2. Department of Social Sciences, Ecole normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, Cachan, France

    Frédéric Lebaron

  3. MAP5 - University Paris Descartes, Paris, France

    Brigitte Le Roux

  4. Institute of Political Science & Sociology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Andreas Schmitz

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Swartz, D.L. (2019). Bourdieu’s Concept of Field in the Anglo-Saxon Literature. In: Blasius, J., Lebaron, F., Le Roux, B., Schmitz, A. (eds) Empirical Investigations of Social Space. Methodos Series, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15387-8_11

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