ABSTRACT
This chapter refuses however to take either Bourdieu or his critics at their word. It argues that there is a theory of modernization and postmodernization implicit in Bourdieu's work. The aim of the chapter is to address both of modernism and postmodernism in the work of Bourdieu. Bourdieu has written on traditional societies and modern society, but does not at all on the face of it seem to have a theory of modernization. The chapter looks at the process of modernization in Bourdieu's work. It argues that Bourdieu's fields are very much like Weber's economic, aesthetic, political, and so on life orders. The chapter takes leave of Bourdieuan modernism to consider his accounts, explicit or implicit, of traditional and of postmodern society. It shows that in traditional society, power operates according to the principles of a sort of action theory, in which one social actor exercises power over another.
