ABSTRACT
‘Practice’ has become a key organising concept in many strands of international relations scholarship. The task of this chapter is to introduce and discuss Pierre Bourdieu’s thinking on practice, symbolic power, and his related conceptual toolkit, particularly the concepts of ‘field’, ‘capitals’, ‘dispositions’, and (‘mis’)‘recognition’. In the book’s subsequent chapters, the conceptual groundings presented here inform a rethinking of the problem of economic informality’s resilience in post-conflict Kosovo. The chapter begins by discussing some general aspects of practice, before it turns to introduce the generic features of the Bourdieusian concepts, contrasting these to conventional approaches in the study of informal economies. Of particular interest in the chapter is how a Bourdieu-inspired rethinking of informality can prove equally attentive to reproduction as to change, as well as how the particular setting in which the Bourdieusian tools are put into play may also open up for an adaptation and modification of them.
