This paper explores how English language has gradually become a linguistic form of cultural capital in China’s zigzag journey to modernization. It situates English’s status in flux in historical context, with an analysis at both the international and intra-national level. It showcases the necessity to embed cultural capital within Bourdieu’s full framework, and evidences the arbitrary nature of this form of cultural capital for its intimate tie to power and politics. By revealing how English has been officially consecrated as a (...) global lingua franca and then socially recognized for material and symbolic benefits, this paper implicitly problematizes the officially validated cultural hierarchy, argues that the value of a cultural capital is context-dependent, politically and socially constructed, inseparable from the field where it is produced. The present-day English manifests its symbolic power in classification and social stratification, entrenching the already entrenched inequality within and without the national state. (shrink)

Palliative care philosophy is based on a holistic approach to patients, but research shows that possibilities for living up to this philosophy seem limited by historical and administrative structures. From the nurse perspective, this article aims to explore nursing practice in specialised palliative homecare, and how it is influenced by organisational and cultural structures. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews with nine nurses were conducted, inspired by Bourdieu. The findings showed that nurses consolidate the doxa of medicine, including medical-professional values that configure a (...) control-oriented, positivistic approach, supported by the organising policy for clinical practice. Hierarchically, nurses were positioned under doctors: medical rounds functioned as a structuring structure for their working day. They acted as medical assistants, and the prevailing medical logic seemed to make it difficult for nurses to meet their own humanistic ideals. Only short time slots allowed nurses to prioritise psychosocial needs of patients and relatives. Point-of-actions had high priority, added financial resources and ensured that budgets were allocated. Weekly visits made it possible for nurses to measure, control and govern patients’ drugs and symptoms which was a necessity for their function as medical assistants. The findings challenge nurses to take on an ethical point of view, partly to ensure that patients and their families receive good palliative care focusing on more than medical issues and logic, and partly to strengthen the nurses’ profession in the palliative field and help them implement palliative care philosophy in practice. (shrink)

This article takes issue with Zygmunt Bauman’s thesis that physical exclusion depends on the hindrance of cognitive associations, emotional quandaries, and moral inhibitions, hence victims and their lot remain out of sight. It is counterargued that conscious engagement in directly physical forms of exclusionary behaviour is possible insofar as victims are known in ways that provoke emotional disdain and moralise violence. Such knowledge consists in the relegation of others to the status of morally lesser human beings, and is produced via (...) prior symbolic mediations. To the extent that mediations operate according to the power differentials they both reflect and help to sustain, there is a need to shift analytical attention from exclusion to the ‘meta-category’ of domination. (shrink)

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and incorporating insights from feminist and critical race and legal scholarship on the creation of “subjugated knowledge,” this article investigates the dispositional production of perceptions of injustice, politics, and morality among differently situated members of a subordinated population. Based on ethnographic fieldwork within and across the West Bank and the Israeli city of Lod, I track how the political rhetoric that Lod Palestinians use to describe key issues in their lives—for example, drug use and (...) dealing, and poor formal education—differs from the moral judgments through which West Bank Palestinians, who have moved to the city and remain there precariously, interpret the same issues. This article traces this interpretive divergence to two dispositional formations: one that has emerged under protracted conditions of denigration, criminalization, and surveillance in Lod and the other that has been produced over time by military rule in the West Bank and imported to Lod by West Bank Palestinians who moved there. It concludes by calling attention to the role of dispositions in studies of identity-formation and boundary-work as well as issues of submission and resistance in contexts of subordination. (shrink)

This paper investigates the implications of Pierre Bourdieu’s recent reformulation of his social theory as a critique of ‘scholarly reason’. This reformulation is said to point towards a definition of social theory as a sociologically informed version of the Kantian concept of ‘critique’. It is argued that, by this means, Bourdieu is able to extend and develop the critique of ‘intellectualism’ in the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty and, furthermore, to ground this critique by showing how the intellectualist error arises (...) from a failure to reflect on the ‘social conditions of possibility’ of reason. The three forms of the critique of scholarly reason (pertaining to the theoretical, the moral-practical and the aesthetic forms of reason) are then briefly presented. In the final section, the critique of scholarly reason is shown to provide the basis for a convincing response to critiques of Bourdieu’s work from critical theorists drawing on Habermas’s conception of discursive rationality. In particular, it is argued that critical theorists influenced by Habermas typically confuse ‘practical reflexivity’ with ‘intellectual reflection’ - the standpoint of ‘scholarly reason’. Finally, it is shown that Bourdieu’s own account of the unity of theory and practice is nonetheless deficient, and must be supplanted with an account centred on the idea of existential clarification. Key Words: Bourdieu • critical theory • Habermas • intellectualism • reflexivity. (shrink)

This study responds to suggestions that business-school faculty are promoting distorted views of human nature and out-dated notions of ethics. Specifically, the paper examines in-depth interviews with a sample of 15 faculty centrally-positioned within the field’s symbolic market, namely, academics who completed their Ph.D. programs in the same institutional space as the editors of five top accounting journals. The paper finds that ethics are for the most part important to these individuals, but that the field’s general adherence to the neoclassical (...) economic model creates pressures that militate against a deeper concern for and more adequate treatment of the topic. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the notion of ‘rupture’ from the French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose studies of discourse and governmentality have become prominent within nursing research during the last 25 years. We argue that a rupture perspective can be helpful for identifying and maintaining a critical potential within nursing research. The paper begins by introducing rupture as an inheritance from the French epistemological tradition. It then describes how rupture appears in Foucault's works, as both an overall philosophical approach and (...) as an analytic tool in his historical studies. Two examples of analytical applications of rupture are elaborated. In the first example, rupture has inspired us to make an effort to seek alternatives to mainstream conceptions of the phenomenon under study. In the second example, inspired by Foucault's work on discontinuity, we construct a framework for historical epochs in nursing history. The paper concludes by discussing the potential of the notion of rupture as a response to the methodological concerns regarding the use of Foucault‐inspired discourse analysis within nursing research. We agree with the critique of Cheek that the critical potential of discourse analysis is at risk of being undermined by research that tends to convert the approach into a fixed method. (shrink)

Catholic priests who sexually abused minors were transferred to other parishes without disclosing the actual reason for their transfer. Based on reports from Ireland, Germany, and the USA, and relying on Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus, this article demonstrates that first, the practices of denying and withholding information even to fellow priests are consequences of the repression of sexuality within the Catholic Church. The Church has not provided a legitimate language for priests to be able to engage openly about (...) sexuality. Sexual repression as a field structure is incorporated into the priests’ habitus, resulting in self-censorship when it comes to articulating the issue of sexual abuse. Secondly, the article accounts for the change within the Catholic field and the priest’s habitus, which has resulted in the facility to verbally express sexual matters in order that the undisclosed practice of transferring abusive priests finally stopped. (shrink)

One of the most basic paradoxes of social life is that while we experience ourselves as individuals, we do so only in the context of the pre-existing social environment into which we were born. This environment existed before us and will exist after us . Given this, there are at least two logical ways to study the relationships between the social environment and the individual. On the one hand, you can start at the individual level and analyze how individuals become (...) aggregated to form a social group. But you can also proceed in the opposite direction by asking how the social group creates the individual. Both are valid approaches. The biological sciences .. (shrink)

This article is the result of a mutual interest in the radical philosophical dialogue discussed by Martin Buber. The radical dialogue is rooted in western European values of humanism, values that are challenged because they exclude women, people with disabilities, non-western, indigenous people and sexual minorities. With our basis in radical dialogue we are discussing flaws within the very concept of dialogue, how dialogue is challenged in encounters between people with severe disabilities and their helpers, and we are proposing a (...) new interpretation of dialogue in a posthuman area. To illuminate what might be at stake in relations where power is clearly imbalanced we use Pierre Bourdieus theory of the gift when asking ourselves: “How can we understand dialogue when there apparently is one dominant giver and one receiver unable to return the gift?” Discussing this question, we draw on Rosi Braidotti and her Posthuman Critical Theory to see if we can find new grounds to build dialogue on. (shrink)

‘The Strong Arm of the Law’ seeks to explain how the identification with military power that is produced through corporate mass mediated spectacles such as bodybuilding threatens democratic identifications. What is more, the militarized body aims at ever-greater control over the physical world yet results only in evergreater estrangement from it. The article begins by illustrating the martial dimensions of the bodybuilder’s body. Then, it reveals the extent to which the built body promises safety, security, and freedom while contributing to (...) the militarization of civil society – a process at odds with democratization. Next, it demonstrates the logic behind the bodybuilder’s identification and appeal as not merely soldier but weapon. The article concludes by raising the possibility of imagining the democratized body. (shrink)