NYU, April 25-27, 2024
Paola Boué and Ohad Zeltzer-Zubida
The goal of this conference, hosted at NYU, was to extend Bourdieu’s research program by bridging the humanities and the social sciences, exploring new applications of his concepts and theory. More specifically, the aim was to propose ways of linking intellectual history and field theory by focusing not only on the relationships between fields but also considering a comparative and transnational approach.
The first day, chaired by Camille Robcis, served as an introduction to the various upcoming panels. Drawing on the key concepts of Bourdieu’s theory, Gisèle Sapiro, in her keynote, highlighted how each of them is valuable for contributing to the development of interdisciplinary studies. For instance, Sapiro considers symbolic violence as one of the most relevant concepts to connect humanities and social sciences, as symbolic power reveals itself in linguistic exchanges, thus fostering ordinary discrimination.
The second day of the conference began with a panel titled “Literary Theory and Bourdieusian Critical Approaches”, chaired by Emily Apter. John Guillory leveraged a reading of The Great Gatsby to discuss social capital, its relation with other forms of capital, and processes of capital conversion. Sylvaine Guyot synthesized textual and meta-textual analyses of the French literary field in the shadow of Bourdieu; mapping the dynamic influence of his ideas on the literary generation dubbed “The Children of Bourdieu”. Morgane Cadieu presented arguments from her most recent book: On Both Sides of the Tracks. Centering on literary depictions of class travel, Cadieu argued that upwards social mobility can be understood as a distinct literary form in contemporary French novels and autobiographies. Tristan Leperlier provided a quantitative analysis of the Algerian literary field, its translation and its reception in the United States, highlighting the role of translators in the process of literary circulation and shedding light on the particularities of plurilingual fields and what they can teach us about transnationality.
The second panel of the day, chaired by Frédéric Viguier, raised the question of the (in)flexibility of habitus in the context of individual mobilities. While Muriel Darmon took up the question of habitus flexibility generally, addressing the socio-genesis of dispositions and processes of continuous socialization, each of the three other panelists focused on a particular social category. Emmanuel Beaubatie reflected on movements across the social space of gender; Chantal Jaquet pushed us to move beyond the notion of class defection and introduced the conceptual potential of transclass; Mustafa Emirbayer focused on the possible transformations of racial habitus throughout the life-course.
Stefanos Geroulanos chaired the third and final panel of the day, which sought to bridge the gaps between historical sociology and intellectual history. Johan Heilbron did so by proposing a field approach to intellectual history, posing the distinctly sociological method as key to this endeavor. Stephanie Mudge, taking up this program, provided a transnational historical analysis of political consultancy as commodified democracy, dealing head on with the consequences of her findings for the concept of embeddedness. Last, Gil Eyal presented findings on trust methods among long Covid patients, framing trust as skilled action and discussing the implications for medical and scientific expertise.
The first panel of the second and final day, chaired by Gisèle Sapiro, addressed the subject of transnational fields and comparative approaches. While Rodney Benson presented the implications of the multiplicity of heteronomy for the generation of public service news in a moment of civic crisis, Larissa Buchholz shared insights from the global field of visual arts by re-theorizing the geographic dimensions of multiscalar global fields. The panel concluded with Jason Ferguson’s methodological push from social space to fields in a multiscalar global sociology.
The concluding panel of the conference, chaired by Thomas Dodman, took up the issue of postcolonialism and fields. George Steinmetz presented work on the history of post/de-colonial sociology, and Bourdieu’s part in it, while discussing his conceptualization of the colonial state as a social field. Madeline Bedecarré introduced the sociological turn in postcolonial literary studies, while emphasizing the case of Francophone African literature and circuits of reception in the transnational literary field. Finally, j. Siguru Wahutu discussed African journalists, arguing that they form a transnational field, extending Bourdieu’s theories into media studies and offering a novel case study.