Reviewing the Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Practice: Implication on Inequality & Migrant Workers

Overall Review on Pierre Bourdieu’s Concepts

A French theorist Pierre Bourdieu, for me, can be known as an integrative sociological theorist who chooses not to fall into a trap of deterministic explanations of social phenomena (Ritzer & Stepnisky, 2014). In this sense, what I mean is that Bourdieu, with his attempt of developing the theory of practice, gives a new sociological platform in which modern sociologists veer further beyond subjectivism-objectivism dichotomy. Not much interesting in examining causality, Bourdieu uses his theory of practice to imply his focus on visible social world of human action—a man has his reason or strategies to construct an action/practice which is not determined by customary rules and structure and whatever.

With rejection of structuralism (i.e. Claude Levi Strauss), theory of practice makes a theoretical move from rules to strategies; an actor produces a certain practice due to the fact that he has goals and interests defined by Bourdieu as “practical sense or practical logic”. This can be well explained by his study in Kabyle marriage system. Practice is located in space and in time; it can be observed in three dimensions: temporality, tempo (time), and interaction between time and space. Interestingly, to Bourdieu practice is not wholly consciously organized and determined. It is neither random nor accidental, but when one action happens, another action follows (Jenkins, 2002). That is all how I could understand about overall description of theory of practice. Next, I will discuss some Bourdieu’s concepts in a little more details, including habitus, fields, capital, symbolic violence, and power.

Habitus were defined differently over periods of time. However, one thing that we cannot forget is that habitus is situated in human mind. Habitus is quite related to embodiment and disposition which help Bourdieu to convey it meanings. Despite evolution of his conceptual terminology, a statement which well defines habitus is, “habitus generates perceptions, aspirations, and practices that correspond to the structuring properties of earlier socialization.” (Swartz, Habitus: A Cultural Theory of Action, 1997). In other word, habitus is internalization of society, mental structure of society, or internality of externality. It is the process in which external existing conditions of a society influences how a man perceive who they are. For instance, a rural poor farmer sees that the existing poor conditions in his neighborhood give him no other chance but being waged labor. Interestingly, Friedmann (2005) suggests that a man is mobile in the sense that he or she can escape from one habitus to another through certain ways like marriage or changing the way of thinking. For an instance, a man who was born to a working class can become someone else after he gets married in different class or after he changes his former taste. This is what Bourdieu calls “second birth” (Friedmann, 2005).

Another concept necessary for this paper is field which Bourdieu understands as network of relations among objective positions within it. Field is an arena where actors struggle to get ahead. Fields are relations external to individual consciousness and will. In this sense, struggling for power within a field makes a man unaware of external inequality. Society is composed of various fields—economic field, religious field, medical field, artistic field and etc. Fields are larger than institutions. When you come to the field, you are objectified with regulation and rules given by external forces which you cannot control. For example, you enter literature field, so you have to write articles to publish in a magazine and get judged by the external judge with particular rules and regulation for the judgment. A field covers more than one institution, and each field has its own logic and its own doxa—for example, the doxa in medical field is to save life (Swartz, Habitus: A Cultural Theory of Action, 1997).

David Swartz (1945) further writes that cultural practice is about communication and domination accepted by actors. The process in which actors accept domination as legitimate is what Bourdieu calls “symbolic violence”. Symbolic violence exists when you accept the domination as legislation in accordance with symbolic capital or in other word denied capital. It is called denied capital because the state, for an example, refuses it as violence or force but as development discourse. For an instance, Northern Thai people are labeled by Thai government as forest destroyers by shifting cultivation. For certain reasons, they may accept it as legitimation, yet they may also not or fight back against the state.

The last concept I want to talk about is power as capital. Extending his definition of capital further than Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu understands capitals as a means leading to power. Forms of power can be material, symbolic, cultural and social. Actors draw upon material (economic), cultural, social and symbolic capitals to enhance their position in a field. Economic capital or power is received materials like money, land and other property, while cultural capital or power is achieved by cultural goods such as educational credentials. Social capital is obtained by connections and social networking, and symbolic capital is powered by recognition and legitimization. All forms of capital are conversable (Swartz, Bourdieu's Political Economy of Symbolic Power, 1997). Labors are embodied with all forms of capital. In order to get a job in factory, a labor uses social capital from his networks with as friend or relatives, and then after introduced to the management the labor can be selected due to any of his skills or credentials recognized. Earning much money from the wage, the labor can build up a new house to let other people know his success and recognize him as the successful actor. This is just my own example of interrelations of those forms of capital.

Acceptance of Domination and Invisible Inequality

In this section I aim to relate migrant workers’ acceptance of state domination in addition wit invisibility of class inequality. In order word, it seeks to address a question of how Bourdieu explains the process in which the state puts domination over migrant workers by ‘symbolic violence’, and how he use to concept of habitus and forms of capital to interpret the process of making inequality invisible.

The Symbolic Violence over Migration of Workers

Before we go down to the core discussion of symbolic violence, it is better to understand why the state uses violence. Actually this paraphrase deals with the process in which the state pushes the natural farmers into factory, which is synonymous with a process called “proletarianization”. In a little bit more specify context, Nevins and Peluso point that commoditization in Southeast Asia is seen in two forms of old commodities and new commodities—the first refers to things we use, and the second refers to the realm of life made into market. The transition from old to new form of commodities is possible due to the rise of neoliberalism and globalization in Southeast Asia. Human commoditization would be impossible without being backed by the state which ,in most cases, uses either legislation (law) or violence to put enclosure or primitive accumulation to the people (Nevins & Peluso, 2008).

According to Nevins and Peluso, what motivates the state to turn human beings to commodities (waged labor) is the trend of neoliberalism—neoliberal market indeed; their strategies are in forms of law and violence. However, taking up Bourdieu’s symbolic violence I will argue against Nevins and Peluso that it is unnecessary to distinguish the two forms of enclosure—law and violence, because Bourdieu sees the two as one. It is just violence in legitimate mask. The following paragraph discusses more about how symbolic violence is applied in this context of labor commoditization where the nature human beings accept to be dominated.

“The key to symbolic power is thus that it is a legitimating form of power which involves the consent or active complicity of both dominant and dominated actors. Dominated actors are not passive bodies to whom power is applied, but rather people who believe in both the legitimacy of the power and the legitimacy of those who wield it. Bourdieu (1987) regards symbolic power as ‘worldmaking power’ due to its capacity to impose a legitimized vision of the social world.”

(Hillier & Rooksby, 2005. p 25)

Bourdieu sees that actors in a field1 are struggling for what they think the most valuable or the most valued capital. In order to get that capital, actors have to struggle for legitimation of consent. In the case I am going to talk about is related to how state uses regulatory rights to reach their goal of having workers in factories. The goal of proletarianization is reached through their discursive claim that working in factories helps people increase income for their family. The state is legitimate to introduce some laws such as labor laws as governmentality technique to keep workers at particular principle. The some states realize its Millennium Developmental Goals through commercialization and industrialization projects because these are believed to bring more money to the poor.

Hence, the state is bias for scientific knowledge which has power to claim that subsistence economy is traditional and should be replaced by commercialization and proletarianization as scientific knowledge to bring modernity. Without being forced violently, farmers have to to leave their farmland to work as waged labors in the city because investments and industries are settled down in towns and cities.

All in all, I would draw a conclusion that these tactics are legitimation claimed by the state to put domination over the poor farmers. It is quite related to Foucault’s discourse theory and governmentality. Though it is not in form of the violence, farmers are willing with false consciousness to accept the state’s domination and accept proletarianization. Regulatory legitimacy is used as a means to put control over workers from opposing against the structure. By and large, this section only covers the roles of one type of authority—the state or what Weber calls “legal-relational” authority. The next section will further look at another authority (religious or traditional authorities) and his role in making inequalities invisible. Yet, I am not going to use Weber’s term but Bourdieu’s.

2. Religious Doctrines as Symbolic Violence?

In relation to what I have mentioned, I would like to point another term coined by Pierre Bourdieu in defining the characteristics of an intellectual that is able to transform power relations to natural order i.e. migration. In other word, this actor produces a significant rationality to influent worker’s habitus. A term to define this actor is known as “symbolic labor” or “symbolic producer” (see Swartz 1997, p. 93) understood by Bourdieu as religious leadership or religious labor based up on Marx Weber’s ideology. Within Bourdieu’s context, there is a deterministic actor known as symbolic producer/labor who shapes particular ways of religious understanding of social conditions existing around a group of people (Swartz, Bourdieu's Political Economy of Symbolic Power, 1997).

Charles F. Keyes did a study in Isan villages in Thailand and found that Buddhism plays a key role in influencing on how people enhance their economic actions due to certain Buddhist doctrines such as dhama, kamma and merit making and so on. For an instance of rule of kamma, Buddhist world view conduces to a passive fatalism, so that villagers do accept that previous kamma constrains their ability to act, but they all undertake acts that presume control over their religious destiny. Kamma thus refers to moral responsibility as well as to cosmic determination (pg. 856). For those successful entrepreneurs, they are viewed to have good fortune as a result of their previous life’s good fortune. Rule of kamma explains that each individuals born into the world is different, inherent inequalities among humans are natural (Keyes, 1983).

Taking up Keyes and Bourdieu’s arguments, I would like to dedicate that another symbolic violence is in the form of religious discourse which disallows workers to see class inequalities. Instead, workers nod at consent on power domination. They would believe the existing poor condition is a result of their kamma in previous life, so they could do nothing else but getting to work in the city as factory workers.

3. Habitus and Social Change in Migration of Workers

This section gives another supportive argument for acceptance of domination and inequalities invisibility in the context of worker migration. In other word, this answers why class inequalities appear invisible in proletarian society where workers are subjective to go to the cities for work. I would like to pinpoint an argument by John Friedmann (see Hiller & Emma Rooksby 2005) who migration is a result of social change in terms of escaping from former habitus to a new habitus.

In a section called Escaping the habitus, Friedmann wrote “Many people in modern class society are socially mobile, usually upward, but occasionally also in the other direction. You are born in a working class family, but because of education and/or marriage, you gradually move out of your class background into a new field where different rules prevail. You change your speech patterns, your eating habits, your clothing, your way of looking at the world. You prefer not to be reminded of the field you have left behind as you have moved on and disappeared into a new world. Perhaps this is what Bourdieu meant by ‘second birth’.” Friedmann (2005) further suggests that urbanites are more literate, more alert to change, more open to changes in fashion—not only in clothing but also in preferences for food, speech patterns, religious cults, popular culture (see Hillier & Rooksby, 2005. p 320).

In this post-modern world people are mobile moving into different directions; they are able to escape from one field and habitus they used to live in and move on a new field and habitus where they absorb new behavior, new ways of thinking (Friedmann, 2005). For an instance, rural working class people, after coming to the city, are able to learn new ways of thinking and new skills which allow them to acquire new capitals so that they can jump up into a new habitus and get ready for struggle for power in a new field. The following paragraph gives certain examples to justify my argument that workers migrate in order to seek a ‘second birth, which disallow them to ignore class inequalities.

I may link my argument to Mary Beth Mills’ study on young female migrant workers in Thailand consumed for modernity in Bangkok in order to transform their worker’s identity to become ‘than samai’ people. Female migrant workers spend their time in modern coffee shop and wear fashionable clothes, which masks their identities of migrant workers. It is different from her habitus in the rural and that in the city (Mills M. B., 1997). A similar case happened in China since 1980s during its economic transformation. While most young workers enjoy modernity consumption, I think they also need skills for transforming themselves to a better job in better future.

For an instance, young Chinese female workers work for factories in the city because they need to save money for acquiring other skills like English language which can help them find a better job. The reason behind migration of female workers is that they want to change their old status of subordination to be a new life (Lee, 1997). All in one word, let me summarize my supportive argument that migrant workers are seeking a new definition of ‘self’ and seeking a second life, so they will not see the dominations power over their practice. It is line with Bourdieu’s explanation ‘a field is an arena where actors struggle to get ahead, which disallows them to be aware of class inequalities”.

Conclusions

Pierre Bourdieu is very helpful in understanding migration of workers in the sense that his theory of practice is applicable to various aspects of migration and its casualty. For an instance, just a little bit overlapping with Michel Foucault’s discourse, Bourdieu would understand the state’s motivation pushing farmers to workers as symbolic violence—it is called symbolic because of legitimation that the state has rights to claim.

If following Bourdieu’s idea, Nevins and Peluso would not see any difference between law and violence used by most Southeast Asian countries in primitive accumulation over resource commoditization. In addition to legal-relational authority (i.e. the state), Bourdieu unmasks another actor in contributing to the acceptance of domination amongst workers. This actor is termed as symbolic labor or symbolic producer, for a reason that he uses religious doctrines to force the poor or workers to accept the domination especially by kamma lesson. Also, struggling amongst actors for getting power ahead makes them unaware of being unequal in society. Then they reach consent of domination acceptance.

Despite domination acceptance, workers and management still have some sorts of space for negotiation. The space of negotiation is given within field of power where two important forms of capital are used to rationalize their claims. Workers have cultural capital in hand in change of economic capital given by the employers. Indeed we cannot ignore interrelations between skill and technique and money in reaching social agreement amongst players.

In fact Bourdieu’s field of power helps me understand how I see worker-employees relationship is a kind of investment combining two capitals together. In addition to this, Bourdieu still provide comprehensive ideals for analyzing the connectivity of workers and their families at home. In other word, workers juggle between former habitus they internalized in the early life and new habitus they are being internalized in the city. The compromise of these two helps workers feel secure from not being excluded by the community at home.

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