Abstract
This chapter outlines Bourdieu’s theory of the state as a monopoly of physical and symbolic violence. It examines Bourdieu’s view that the state exists both outside and within social actors. It highlights the state’s power of naming, authority and processes of delegation through acts of state.
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Notes
- 1.
Bourdieu, Rethinking the State, p. 3.
- 2.
Thus, whilst discussing charisma and legitimation Weber discusses: ‘the need of social strata, privileged through existing political, social and economic orders, to have their social and economic positions ‘legitimized’. They wish to see their positions transformed from purely factual power relations into a cosmos of acquired rights, and to know they are thus sanctified’, Weber, Max. ‘The Meaning of Discipline’ in Hans Gerth and Charles Wright Mills (eds) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, London: Routledge: 2009, p. 262.
- 3.
On the State, p. 192.
- 4.
Durkheim, Émile. 1912. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: Newly Translated by Karen E. Fields. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
- 5.
Echoing Husserl, it is only through possessing shared logical categories that we can have dissensus and conflict: ‘The state is that which founds the logical conformity of the social world, and in this way, the fundamental consensus on the meaning of the social world that is the very precondition of conflict over the social world. In other words for conflict to be possible, a kind of agreement is needed on the grounds of disagreement and on their modes of expression. On the State. p. 4.
- 6.
Bourdieu, Rethinking, p. 13.
- 7.
Wacquant, Loic. ‘From Ruling Class to Field of Power: An Interview with Pierre Bourdieu on La Noblesse d’Etat’ Theory, Culture and Society, 10. 1993, pp. 34–35.
- 8.
Bourdieu, On the State, pp. 166–167.
- 9.
Bourdieu states: ‘Relations of force are inseparable from relations of meaning and communication, the dominated are also people who know and acknowledge…The act of obedience presupposes an act of knowledge, which is at the same time an act of acknowledgement…the person who submits, who obeys, bends to an order or discipline, performs a cognitive action…Acts of submission and obedience are cognitive acts, and as such they bring into play cognitive structures, categories of perception, patterns of perception, principles of vision and division, a whole series of things that the neo-Kantian tradition emphasizes’. On The State, p. 164.
- 10.
Bourdieu, Pierre. ‘Rites of Institution’ in Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity, pp. 117–126.
- 11.
Bourdieu, On the State, p. 183.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 121.
- 13.
Bourdieu, In Other Words, p. 136.
- 14.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market. New York: The New Press, 1999, p. 8.
- 15.
Wacquant, Loic. ‘From Ruling Class to Field of Power’, p. 40. He adds: ‘When you read the texts that Durkheim has produced on the state, you cannot shake off the strong impression that it is the state that is thinking itself through the state thinker, the civil servant sociologist (sociologue-functionnaire)’ Ibid.
- 16.
Bourdieu et al., The Craft, p. 1.
- 17.
On the State, p. 10.
- 18.
Abrams, ‘Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State’.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 30.
- 20.
Barnes, Power, p. 88.
- 21.
Barnes, Barry, Sociology, Vol 17. no. 4 1983 pp. 524–525.
- 22.
Bourdieu, On the State. pp. 122–3.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 61.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 12.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 11.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 34. See also Bourdieu, Pierre. ‘The Mystery of Ministry: From Particular Wills to the General Will’ in Wacquant (ed.) Pierre Bourdieu and Democratic Politics: The Mystery of Ministry. Cambridge: Polity, 2005, pp. 55–63.
- 27.
Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic, p. 106.
- 28.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Social Structures of the Economy. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
- 29.
On the State, p. 28.
- 30.
On the State, p. 36.
- 31.
‘Political Representation: Elements for a Theory of the Political Field’ in Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 171–202.
- 32.
Schinkel, Willem. ‘The Sociologists and the State: An Assessment of Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology’ British Journal of Sociology, 66 (2). 2015, pp. 222–223; Jessop, Bob. ‘The Central Bank of Symbolic Capital’ Radical Philosophy, 193. Sept/Oct. 2015, pp. 33–41.
- 33.
Bourdieu, Political Representation, p. 181.
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Loyal, S. (2017). Bourdieu’s Theory of the State. In: Bourdieu's Theory of the State. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58350-5_4
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