ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that a Bourdieusian practice approach that focuses on the field-capital-agency-doxa nexus can serve as a framework for understanding the changes in European security and the under-explored connection between theory and practice in European security in the 1990s. It discusses how social scientific types of capital became valued in the European security field alongside other types of capital. The chapter emphasizes the practice element of Bourdieu's work for demonstrating how the paradigmatic case of European security in the 1990s was a case of power struggles involving hitherto overlooked agency and forms of power that came to change the very basic features of what European social reality consisted of. In classical international relations (IR) theory, the international system has been taken to be dominated by military and economic capabilities and balance of power practices. Bourdieusian sociology thus holds the promise of significantly challenging IR in ways that will lead to new knowledge about the international.
