Bourdieu, International Relations and European Security
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Standard
Bourdieu, International Relations and European Security. / Berling, Trine Villumsen.
In: Theory and Society, Vol. 41, No. 5, 2012, p. 451-478.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Bourdieu, International Relations and European Security
AU - Berling, Trine Villumsen
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Despite promising attempts to apply the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu to International Relations (IR), the field could still profit from unexplored potential in his thinking for understanding pivotal theoretical and empirical puzzles. This article takes the failure to fully grasp the paradigmatic case of European security after the Cold War as an example of how IR would benefit from reformulating not only its empirical research questions but also several of its central conceptual building blocks with the aid of Bourdieusian sociology. The separation between theory and practice and the overemphasis on military power and state actors blind IR from seeing the power struggles that reshaped European security. Instead, a Bourdieusian reformulation adds new types of agency, focuses on the social production of forms of power, and stresses the processual rather than the substantive character of social reality.
AB - Despite promising attempts to apply the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu to International Relations (IR), the field could still profit from unexplored potential in his thinking for understanding pivotal theoretical and empirical puzzles. This article takes the failure to fully grasp the paradigmatic case of European security after the Cold War as an example of how IR would benefit from reformulating not only its empirical research questions but also several of its central conceptual building blocks with the aid of Bourdieusian sociology. The separation between theory and practice and the overemphasis on military power and state actors blind IR from seeing the power struggles that reshaped European security. Instead, a Bourdieusian reformulation adds new types of agency, focuses on the social production of forms of power, and stresses the processual rather than the substantive character of social reality.
U2 - 10.1007/s11186-012-9175-7
DO - 10.1007/s11186-012-9175-7
M3 - Journal article
VL - 41
SP - 451
EP - 478
JO - Theory and Society
JF - Theory and Society
SN - 0304-2421
IS - 5
ER -
ID: 33742467