Doing organizational studies with Bourdieu
Posted by dnetz on May 16, 2008
In an important paper published recently in Theory and Society, Mustafa Emirbayer and Victoria Johnson argue for a more comprehensive usage of Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field in organizational analysis. So far, most authors have been using them selectively and one at a time, whereas Bourdieu’s mode of thought really only rises to its full strength when all three of these key concepts are combined, they argue.
There’s a post on this at orgtheory.net, in which brayden states:
Emirbayer and Johnson provide a good overview of how Bourdieuian concepts might be more fully utilized in organizational research. The paper is well worth reading.
and provides some highlights.
Ziggy said
The Emirbayer and Johnson paper has opened up a new direction for me in my research on universities. I have used their study of organizations for the institutional study of the university. It extends the concept of field very practically, it is therefore conceptually easier, using,PB’s conceptual framework as adapted by Emirbayer and Johnson to speak of both the university field and the university-as-field as objects of study. In their adaptation, PB’s concepts as ‘thinking tools’ are made to perform the kind of tasks that I think PB himself intended, particularly with respect to finding practical solutions to social problem.