Outline of a Theory of Practice

Citation

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, 16.)

Chapter Summary

The English text is a translation, with revisions, of Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, précédée de trois études d'ethnologie kabyle (Librairie Droz, 1972). It consists of a short translator's foreword, four chapters and a long block of endnotes, and its argument is carried by those four chapters. The length of the chapters is itself informative: the first runs to about seventy pages, the second to only about twenty-five, the third to about sixty, and the fourth to about forty, with some forty further pages of notes.

Translator's Foreword

Richard Nice's foreword is short (pages vii–viii) and precedes the argument; it is the translator's introduction to this English version of the French text.

Chapter 1: The Objective Limits of Objectivism

The longest chapter is a critique of the stance of the detached observer. The publisher describes the whole book as "simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood", and this chapter carries the first half of that description. Anthony Shelton's contemporary review quotes from this chapter (page 25) the claim that how a message is received depends largely on the objective positions of the agents who interact. The chapter also draws on the Kabyle fieldwork from Algeria that the publisher says illustrates the theoretical propositions.

Chapter 2: Structures and the Habitus

The shortest chapter introduces the concept for which the book is best known. According to the publisher, habitus is "the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices", which allows Bourdieu to move beyond the dichotomies that have shaped thinking about the social world. This is the chapter to read twice.

Chapter 3: Generative Schemes and Practical Logic: Invention within Limits

The third chapter turns to the practical side of the argument. The publisher's description points to Bourdieu's detailed study of matrimonial strategies and of the role of rite and myth, and to the dialectical process by which structures are incorporated into persons and habitus is then objectified in action, so that social formations tend to reproduce themselves. Shelton quotes passages from this chapter (pages 96 and 109) on objectivism's view of the social world as a spectacle for an observer, and on the practical coherence of symbolic systems, which arises from practices governed by principles that are "convenient" as well as coherent.

Chapter 4: Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power

The final chapter moves from reproduction to domination. The publisher describes a "rigorous consistent materialist approach" that lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2

• Objectivism: the standpoint that treats social life as a spectacle for an outside observer, which the title of Chapter 1 puts under limits.
• Habitus: in the publisher's wording, the principle that mediates between objective structures and practices.

Chapters 3–4

• Practical logic / generative schemes: named in the title of Chapter 3, which also stresses "invention within limits".
• Symbolic capital and symbolic power: the concepts that, per the publisher, the closing materialist analysis of domination is meant to ground.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A theory built against a concrete ethnographic case. The publisher stresses that the theoretical propositions are illustrated from Bourdieu's fieldwork in Kabylia, including marriage strategies and the roles of rite and myth, so the abstract vocabulary is tied to material.
• A reflexive critique of anthropological method. Shelton's review reads the book as a critique of Saussurean structuralism and of the way the anthropologist who elicits genealogies or builds a "synoptic calendar" from informants turns interested practice into a closed system. He judged the book a significant contribution to the critique of anthropological practice and compared its likely effect on the discipline to that of Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma; he praised its elegance and unity while noting a distinctly French style.
• Compact scope. Four chapters, with the habitus introduced early in the second, give a reader a clear route into practice theory.

Limitations

• Demanding prose and terminology. Shelton found the style at points verbose, and objected that the book does not entirely free itself from the structuralist jargon it criticises.
• Questions about the central concept. The same review found "habitus" unclear on first reading, wondered whether it merely redraws the boundary of closed-system analysis, and suggested that it implies an almost static, self-regulating system with little room for change. Readers may want to test these objections for themselves.
• Theory about practice rather than a study of practice. Shelton's verdict is that the book offers an abstracted theory of practice rather than a picture of the practice of anthropology, and that some of its generalisations are sweeping.
• Prior knowledge assumed. The argument is conducted with structuralism, phenomenology and Saussurean linguistics as its opponents, so it is much easier to follow for a reader who has met them.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the anthropological theory course, Bourdieu's book is a primary text rather than an overview. The histories of the discipline (Erickson and Murphy's A History of Anthropological Theory, Eriksen and Nielsen's A History of Anthropology, and Moberg's Engaging Anthropological Theory) are the natural first reading: they supply the disciplinary background against which a theory text is easier to place. Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures is the other major primary text on the list and a useful contrast, since it proposes understanding culture as webs of meaning while Bourdieu insists on the objective conditions behind that meaning. Marcus and Fischer's Anthropology as Cultural Critique (1986) continues the self-critical line of argument about anthropological method.

Readers who continue into the anthropology of ritual will meet practice theory again: Catherine Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice announces in its introduction a discussion of the difficulties of "practice theory" in transcending the thought–action dichotomy.

How to Use This Book

It suits graduate students and advanced undergraduates in anthropology or sociology who already know the structuralist tradition and want a core text on agency and structure. The publisher presents it as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology.

A practical order is: read the translator's foreword; read Chapter 2 on its own to meet the habitus in its shortest form; then read Chapter 1 to see what the concept is set against; then Chapters 3 and 4, where the Kabyle material and the theory of symbolic power are developed. Note how each key term is defined where it first appears. The endnotes are long and worth consulting selectively, particularly where the Kabyle material is discussed.

Pair the reading with a primary ethnographic source on the area in question if one is available, and with Shelton's review or another published critique to test the book's central concepts against objections.