International Political Sociology (2011) 5, 219–224

Introduction to Symposium
‘‘A Different Reading of the International’’:
Pierre Bourdieu and International Studies
Didier Bigo
Sciences Po ⁄ CERI and King’s College London
and
Mikael R. Madsen
University of Copenhagen

This special issue of International Political Sociology consists of a symposium of

papers that demonstrate the possibilities applying the political sociology of Pierre
Bourdieu to international studies, both theoretically and empirically. The papers
are all derived from a panel entitled ‘‘A Different Reading of the International’’
organized at the 2010 ISA Annual Conference in New Orleans. Correspondingly,
the main claim of this special issue is that the sociology of Bourdieu provides a
different look at the international, one that is highly productive for further trans-
forming international studies. Our interest in developing this specific symposium
has moreover been spurred by the general momentum which Bourdieusian soci-
ology currently is experiencing with respect to both international and European
studies (for references, please see the individual chapters). In this growing litera-
ture, one can now distinguish between a grouping of more sociologically
informed studies and an emergent body of political science research which draws
on Bourdieusian concepts.
This symposium has a more sociological orientation than is usual in interna-
tional studies, which is still very much dominated by political science reasoning.
It also insists on the need to conduct empirical research using a specific set of
thinking tools derived from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology as a means for provid-
ing a new reading of the international. Our goal is, however, not to provide a
history of Bourdieiusian ideas or to celebrate Pierre Bourdieu as yet another
rising star in the pantheon of fashionable French thinkers for the IR market.
We also resist treating Bourdieu as a philosopher cutoff from his empirical
research on ‘‘examples’’ that seem irrelevant for IR specialists, or presenting a
ready-made and condensed version of Bourdieu for an IR audience in search
of minor adjustments in the division of labor between soft constructivism and
mainstream realism.
We have closely worked together to put Bourdieusian concepts to ‘‘work,’’
breaking them and re-molding them when research on international questions
requires. We have questioned his thinking tools reflexively on the basis of our
own research and also through debate arising from the exchange of preliminary
versions of our texts. Far from a consensus on one reading of Bourdieu, provid-
ing a definitive toolbox of concepts to apply to practically any possible ‘‘field,’’
each text deepens the discussion about the basic reasoning of IR by questioning
the relevance of a number of core debates, especially about the structure-agency
opposition; the traditional distinctions between theory, methods and empirical

doi: 10.1111/j.1749-5687.2011.00131.x
 2011 International Studies Association
220 A Different Reading of the International

research; the (in)adequacy of the division between inside and outside and
‘‘levels’’ rising from man, to state and to the international system; war and
the ambiguous logics of ethics and humanity; the dualism of public and private;
conceptions of hegemony and of a global order that may be replacing the
international state system; the idea that international organizations are different
from national ones; the idea of Europe as an object of IR; and the understand-
ing of the evaluation of the work of academics by new tools of management. We
thus hope with this special issue to provide not only a framework for a different
reading of the international through a political and sociological lens, but also a
different set of empirical studies of the international as well as some discussion
of the basic assumptions of IR as an academic discipline.
Certainly, Bourdieu was himself not particularly oriented toward international
studies, so his direct legacy to IR is limited. With few exceptions, his major works
concerned French society and a questioning of society which was quintessentially
sociological. This does not mean that his sociological practice and tools are not
applicable outside France and the discipline of sociology. The success of his work
in the global community of sociology only underlines how well his work travelled
to other culturally different national or local locations. In sociology, this has
allowed for a vast body of research that provides a comparative look at contem-
porary global problems. Toward the end of his life, Bourdieu was also actively
engaged in a number of global issues, both academically and politically (for his
political writings, see for instance the studies by Bourdieu 1998, 2001), but always
with certain reluctance in regard to the grand notions of globalization, interna-
tionalization, international community, and so on. Instead of taking these
notions for granted or as the premise for research, he perpetually emphasized
the need to sociologically reconstruct these categories in light of their particular
trajectories and histories. For example, in his analysis of neo-liberalism, he
sought to deconstruct its doxa by pointing to the ‘‘novlangue’’ of economic
globalization and its concealed symbolic structures of domination (Bourdieu and
Wacquant 2000). And more generally, he argued that since the international
tends to be studied through a specific language and corresponding forms of
knowledge, which is generally freed from such terms as capitalism, class, exploita-
tion, domination, inequality (as if they are already antiquated or simply irrele-
vant), it needs to escape this symbolic imperialism and find its sociological roots
(see Bourdieu 1996). As will be demonstrated in a number of the papers of this
symposium, this calls for what Bourdieu termed ‘‘reflexive sociology.’’
In addition to the central importance of the notion of reflexivity in the Bour-
dieusian research practice (see particularly Madsen in this symposium), another
key feature of the Bourdieusian encounter with the international is the place of
the national (Dezalay and Madsen 2006, 2009). By insisting on sociologically
reconstructing the symbolic categories of transnational fields, the importance of
the national modes of production vis-à-vis the production of a so-called interna-
tional becomes central in this approach (cf. Vauchez and Cohen in the forum
discussion). Bourdieu makes the simple point that these battles over categoriza-
tion largely take place nationally as most agents, even the most international
ones, make most parts of their careers nationally as they are educated nationally.
More specifically, strategies of internationalization most often correspond with
national social hierarchies to the extent that such strategies are aiming for a
revalorization of the capitals of a national but cosmopolitan elite as a way of
reproducing itself. Thus, the international is influenced by, among others, such
a ‘‘system of reproduction’’ since it offers a way of securing a position or a
conversion to a new one in a continuously evolving class-structure that extends
to the international (cf. Kauppi and Madsen forthcoming 2011).
The Bourdieusian encounter with the international does not only provide a
different reading of the international by a dosage of basic sociology but also by
 Didier Bigo and Mikael R. Madsen 221

providing tools for visualizing—or mapping—the international in terms of unique

fields (Bigo 2007). International, or better transnational, fields have obvious
homologies to more national-specific fields, one of them being that they develop
into a matrix of objective relations between positions. They are not captured as
simple epistemic communities or the like, but as social structures evolving around
particular battles over domination. As argued in a number of the articles (see
especially the one by Didier Bigo), international fields are the outcome of these
struggles and are to be determined through empirical research. One of the goals
of a Bourdieusian encounter with the international is therefore to map the inter-
national, that is, to provide an empirical visualization of the international.

Outline of This Special Issue

In addition to this introduction, this special issue consists of five papers and a
forum discussion of inter- and transnational field(s) of power. The symposium’s
first paper is written by Didier Bigo, who argues that a Boudieusian approach
might generate to a different way of practicing research in International Rela-
tions. Bigo explores why IR theorists have generally not included the work of a
major sociologist like Pierre Bourdieu in the first place as well as the conceptual
misreadings common among many IR theorists when they do discuss his work as
part of a broader package of ‘‘French Theory,’’ whether as a constructivist or,
conversely, a realist. These misreadings especially ignore Bourdieu’s central claim
about the entangled relationship between social theory and the practice of social
science. Against this background, the article explores the alternatives opened by
Bourdieu in terms of a logic of practice and practical sense that rejects the false
oppositions between general theory and empirical research as well as between
structure and agency. Political sociology deploying a relational approach differs
from traditional accounts of IR grounded in political science and its various
forms of idealism and essentialism. As neither a structuralist nor an ethnometh-
odologist, Bourdieu destabilizes the idea that history generates structural con-
straints transforming individuals into puppets as well as the political ideology of
free will that ethnomethodologists want to preserve through the idea of inventivi-
ty. Instead of opposing society and individuals, Bourdieu proposes, like Norbert
Elias, a relational version of a society of individuals through which it is possible
to understand the collective character of individual agents and the individual
dimension of change and uncertainty of the fields incorporated into a split habi-
tus. This relational approach suggests a research agenda on the practices of
transnational activities which avoids simplistic boundaries between domestic and
international arenas and examines the historical trajectories through which some
social universes extend their circuit of legitimization of authorities and expertise
in the world. The article concludes by presenting some results of collective work
that shows in practice what it means to pursue an international political sociol-
ogy in this way, as well as what future possibilities there may be for developing
reflexively a research agenda that might help us to better understand the diver-
sity and heterogeneity of transnational practices and the emergence of multiple
fields of power.
The second article, by Mikael Rask Madsen, focuses on the notion of sociologi-
cal reflexivity in the sociologist’s encounter with the international. Madsen
argues that most contemporary Bourdieusian-inspired international studies give
very little space to what in many ways was the cardinal point of Bourdieu’s work:
his attempt to devise a reflexive sociology. Using the case of studies of
international human rights, the article’s basic claim is that the most significant
contribution Bourdieusian sociology can make to international (and European)
studies is not an adaptation or transplantation of key concepts like field or
habitus to a set of research objects that remain largely pre-defined by other
222 A Different Reading of the International

disciplines or agendas; it is by deploying the underlying sociological practice of

Bourdieusian sociology to international objects in terms of conducting a reflex-
ive sociology of the international. The article makes three more specific argu-
ments. It argues for the need for ‘‘objectivizing’’ the research object in terms of
a ‘‘double reflexivity’’ with respect to both object and researcher. It then argues
that key Bourdieusian notions are precisely tools for this scientific operation by
providing a relational and integrative approach. Lastly, to underline the different
reading provided, the propounded approach is compared to a cross-section of
research on international human rights ranging from transnational advocacy net-
works to political philosophy.
The third article, by Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, is centered on the market
for the import and export of state-governing expertise by economist and lawyers,
and the subsequent professional rivalries and hegemonic battles coming from
these fights for the definition of the legitimate principle of domination. The
construction of a transnational space of expertise in governance generating
imports, exports, and the hybridization of models is inseparable from the promo-
tion of national models, and Dezalay and Garth insist that the agents are always
‘‘double agents.’’ The transnational is not isolated. It exists because ‘‘going inter-
national’’ generates a variety of benefits nationally and because the importers
also have something to win. The agents occupying the dominant positions in
national and transnational spaces are often if not the same people then very sim-
ilar agents, drawing on a multiplicity of capital. Traditional IR accounts on
‘‘imported state building’’ neglects this central element and naively opposes
importers and exporters. For a Bourdieusian analysis, this double agency con-
structs a double circulation of power that is highlighted by a diachronic analysis
insisting on the genesis of the practices and their subsequent transformations.
Strategies of re-importation from the laboratories of the periphery are frequent,
and they contribute to the validation of these technologies. The internationaliza-
tion of career trajectories leads to professional reconversions becoming highly
profitable nationally. Hegemonic battles are mediated by these specific operators
who live (well) from their positions and continue their work of promotion. The
competition for what is internationally important is therefore always connected
with the long historical struggles between national modes of production concern-
ing the symbolic categories of the international, the global, and its agents. It is
only by understanding the social logic at work in this symbolic categorization
that competitions for transnational power can be understood.
The fourth article, by Anna Leander, concerns the promises, potentials, and
problems of a Bourdieusian reading of IR. Contrary to the critique that
Bourdieu has received from the sociological pragmatic school coming from
Bruno Latour, Michel de Certeau, and others, Leander insists on the potential
of a nonstructuralist use of Bourdieusian approaches. She pleads for IR debates
to take this discussion into account when applying Bourdieu’s thinking tools to
IR areas of study and to develop a heterodox position for the ‘‘staging’’ of IR.
From this point of departure, and thus in some contrast with some of the other
papers in this symposium, Leander acknowledges that Bourdieu’s thinking is
often read as implying too much rigidity and fixity. Against this backdrop, she
presents a version of Bourdieu as open to change, technology, feelings, and per-
formativity and hence also as dealing with the critique coming from pragmatists
in IR and elsewhere. She shows that Bourdieu is not in the last instance a struc-
turalist and engages in a nonstructuralist reading of Bourdieu as a way to give
back to the agents their capacity to improvise, to have a plurality of revisable
scripts, and to think in terms of assemblages and networks. For Leander, Bour-
dieu’s concepts of field and habitus leave room for freedom and tactics for indi-
viduals as well as for the permanent ambiguity and uncertainty of their actions.
In this regard, Leander draws in part on the critique of Bourdieu launched by
 Didier Bigo and Mikael R. Madsen 223

Bruno Latour concerning the fully fledged role of the actants and insists on the
role of images, objects, and technologies. Thereby Leander points to a crucial
question about the application of Bourdieusian approaches concerning the econ-
omy of freedom of the agents.
In the final paper of this symposium, Niilo Kauppi and Tero Erkkilä propose a
reflexive return to this discussion through a concrete case-study concerning aca-
demic life and everyday preoccupations of all practicing in the field of universi-
ties and higher education, even if the pressures differ highly from one country
to another one. They examine the evaluation of academic works, their rankings,
and the emergence of a global ranking of the universities, which implies the
struggle of many actors and institutions over the definition of the criteria of this
evaluation internationally. Contrary to the expectations of an international politi-
cal economy, they show that the heart of such struggles concerns the symbolic
classifications of what counts as an efficient education and the alternative worlds
produced by the varying criteria of excellence. They demonstrate how a certain
form of classification has imposed itself as ‘‘natural’’ and privileges a reading
favoring an elitist higher education that is blind to equality and to the general
conditions of success. They insist on the symbolic violence that these instruments
produce and the difficulty of proposing alternatives. Thereby new forms of pub-
lic management have imposed an ordinal order using the well-known techniques
of surveillance, monitoring and benchmarking to obtain a single list at the world
level. The competition around the best single list, and the best criteria to elabo-
rate it, is reinforcing the idea that universities and academics can be ranked in
this way; the multiplicity of talents, the adequacy to local conditions and logics
of equality are being erased as hindrances to the simplified but powerful image
of the list of the best universities in the world.
We thought that it was impossible to have an issue on Bourdieu and interna-
tional relations without asking more people their views on one of the key prob-
lems identified in practically all articles included, namely the existence and
usefulness of the notion of fields of power to analyze world politics today.
Rebecca Adler-Niessen takes us on a field trip with Bourdieu to understand
how can be practice reflexively diplomacy today. She considers that diplomacy
has changed over time and has become a metafield that escapes traditional pro-
fessionals of politics and increasingly involves more agents and changes the struc-
ture of capital needed to be a diplomat. She takes the example of the European
External Action Service and analyzes how a competition about the rules of the
game of diplomacy is at work.1
In contrast, Antoine Vauchez is much cautious concerning the existence of a
transnational field of power. For him, ‘‘field-theory’’ is deeply embedded in a
general narrative of State-building processes, and it is difficult to use it for
describing transnational activities as most fields in fact owe much of their auton-
omous settlement to their being grounded in the State’s jurisdiction through
nation-wide and State-sanctioned professional monopoly over specific types
of activities (university certification; professional licensing). Nevertheless, the
European Union may be considered a weak field, which has not succeeded to
de-nationalize the diverse social field but some agents occupy interstitial posi-
tions and they establish constellation of elites.
Didier Georgakakis warns us not to throw the Brussels baby out with the bath-
water and insists on the existence of a specific social group, a class of Eurocrats,
1
Adler-Niessen had initially proposed a full article mapping the ‘‘homo academicus internationalensis’’ and
what is at stake in struggles between scholars in the discipline, their self-perceptions of these struggles, their narra-
tives about ‘‘schools of thoughts’’ and ‘‘great debates’’ as well as the relation with their objective positions. Unfortu-
nately for us, but not for diplomacy, Rebecca also works for the ministry of Foreign Affairs in Denmark and has
been absorbed by the paper storm examining the Arab revolutions. This explains both the brevity of her interven-
tion here and the extended length of Didier Bigo’s contribution.
224 A Different Reading of the International

who are the key agents of an institutionalization of a European bureaucratic field

opposing agents with permanent positions to others who are there for a shorter
period. The field of delegation of the EU institutions works through a tension
with the national fields of power, and key decisions are taken by persons who
are not permanently involved in the field but who have strong resources. Conse-
quently, the field is quite heteronomous but requires that many agents play a
certain game, to be engaged in a certain stake that they cannot escape. A sym-
bolic capital made of the intimate knowledge of the arcane ways of Brussels and
its social life beyond the institutions is a key for being successful. Nevertheless,
Georgakakis considers that the notion of a European field of power replacing
the national states fields of power as the place for conversion rate of different
capitals is misleading. If a field makes sense, it is a bureaucratic field, which has
not to be equated with a field of power or a political field.
Antonin Cohen frames the question a little bit differently. For him, a Euro-
pean field of power defined as a struggle over the dominant principle of domi-
nation has emerged from now a significant period of time. He insists on the
longue durée process of the shaping of a field with specific stake. He reminds us
of the unprecedented mobilization of transnational elites after World War II,
and of the creation of a European Assembly where professionals of politics
opposed economic, lawyers, and military elites on the principle of representative-
ness and competences creating an initial clash over the dominant principle of
domination and the legitimate principle of legitimization. The idea of a Europe
of Law and the participation of Lawyers to this limitation of the sovereignist deci-
sionism of governments has clearly set up logics of opposition and has generated
inventiveness about rules mediating the two opposite principles. But as he
explains, to use the notion of a European field of power is not saying that one
transnational ruling class is emerging. The European field of power is heterono-
mous and deeply embedded into the national fields of power. Therefore, it is
not a European field of politics, but it plays a role as one of the places where
the conversion rates of capital and principle of domination are challenged.

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