ABSTRACT
This chapter is entitled ‘The Practice of Theory’. It is concerned with what it is to use Bourdieu’s theory in practical research. However, its main preoccupation is not methodological technique but the theme of ‘reflexivity’. Bourdieu writes very often of the fundamental role of reflexivity in his work. The subtitles of the English versions of two of his books (1990a; 1992 with Wacquant) refer to ‘Reflexive Sociology’. The arguments he sets out for this again implicate the whole way we construct research, the role of theory in it, and how conclusions can be formulated. In brief, he is drawing attention to how we develop an understanding of a topic of research, and what the nature of the understanding might be. However, it is clear that what he has in mind is a very different concept of reflexivity than is conventional in western social sciences. Nowhere in his work will the reader find a chapter entitled ‘how to be a reflexive researcher’. Similarly, despite claiming a pivotal role for reflexivity in research, what he calls ‘objectification of the objectifying subject’, he rarely involves himself in the kind of personal researcher introspection which may be expected from such a phrase. Nevertheless, Chapter 3 discussed how, in a book such as Homo Academicus, Bourdieu does analyse his own professional milieu and his part in it. This is an example of objectifying the research field and the researcher. Derek Robbins also commented on the way Bourdieu’s own history shaped his practical and theoretical concerns. This chapter extends these issues to the researchers whose contributions make up Part II of this book.
