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Bourdieu Comes to Town: Pertinence, Principles, Applications

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  • Loïc Wacquant

Abstract

This article frames the themes of the two†part Interventions section ‘Bourdieu Comes to Town’. I first establish the pertinence of Bourdieu's sociology for students of the city by revisiting his youthful work on power, space, and the diffusion of urban forms in provincial Béarn and colonial Algeria. In both cases, urbanization is the key vector of transformation, and the city, town, or camp the site anchoring the forces dissolving the social fabric of the French countryside and overturning French imperialism in North Africa. These early studies establish that all social and mental structures have spatial correlates and conditions of possibility; that social distance and power relations are both expressed in and reinforced by spatial distance; and that propinquity to the center of accumulation of capital (economic, military, or cultural) is a key determinant of the force and velocity of social change. Next, I discuss four principles that undergird Bourdieu's investigations and can profitably drive urban inquiry: the Bachelardian moment of epistemological rupture, the Weberian invitation to historicize the agent (habitus), the world (social space) and the categories of the analyst (epistemic reflexivity); the Leibnizian†Durkheimian imperative to deploy the topological mode of reasoning; and Cassirer's command to heed the constitutive efficacy of symbolic structures. The plasticity and productivity of his concepts suggest that Bourdieu can not only energize urban inquiry but also merge it into a broader analytic of the trialectic of symbolic division, social space, and the built environment. This paves a pathway for reconceptualizing the urban as the domain of accumulation, differentiation and contestation of manifold forms of capital, which makes the city a central ground, product, and prize of historical struggles.

Suggested Citation

  • Loïc Wacquant, 2018. "Bourdieu Comes to Town: Pertinence, Principles, Applications," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 90-105, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:42:y:2018:i:1:p:90-105
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12535
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    Cited by:

    1. Marton Demeter, 2022. "Development Studies in the World System of Global Knowledge Production: A Critical Empirical Analysis," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 22(3), pages 239-256, July.
    2. Pérez-Sindín, Xaquín S. & Van Assche, Kristof, 2021. "“Coal [from Colombia] is our life”. Bourdieu, the miners (after they are miners) and resistance in As Pontes," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    3. Remus Creţan & Petr Kupka & Ryan Powell & Václav Walach, 2022. "EVERYDAY ROMA STIGMATIZATION: Racialized Urban Encounters, Collective Histories and Fragmented Habitus," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 82-100, January.
    4. Caleb Gallemore & Kristian Roed Nielsen & Kristjan Jespersen, 2019. "The uneven geography of crowdfunding success: Spatial capital on Indiegogo," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(6), pages 1389-1406, September.
    5. Aidan Mosselson, 2020. "Habitus, spatial capital and making place: Housing developers and the spatial praxis of Johannesburg’s inner-city regeneration," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(2), pages 277-296, March.
    6. Tali Ziv, 2022. "THE PRACTICE OF INFORMALITY: Hustling, Anticipating and Refusing in the Postindustrial City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 807-821, September.
    7. Troels Schultz Larsen & Kristian Nagel Delica, 2021. "Territorial Destigmatization In An Era Of Policy Schizophrenia," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(3), pages 423-441, May.
    8. Mike Savage, 2021. "Bourdieu Comes to Town: Part II," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 150-153, January.

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