ABSTRACT
In this chapter I aim to show how I used Bourdieu’s theorising, and in particular the primacy he gave to ‘the logic of practice’, to examine and interpret the nature of the field of physical culture in my own university. In 2002-6 I undertook a research project that drew not only on Bourdieu’s well known concepts of field, habitus and capital but also his potentially more critical concepts of doxa, illusio, misrecognition and symbolic violence to reflect on the nature of my practices during a period of structural change. Armed with these concepts, I was able to gain a deeper appreciation of the sedimentation, domination and contestation of the field of physical culture in my institution. Initially, I was fluctuating between Giddens’ (1979) theory of structuration and Bourdieu’s (1977, 1980/1990, 1997/2000, 1998a) logic of practice, but it was Bourdieu who won the day because his ‘conceptual tools of analysis’ offered a language for my analysis. I used Bourdieu’s (1986) theoretical concepts not only because they offered a theory of social practice but also, in the way that Jenkins (2002) described them, as ‘thinking tools’ that enabled me to examine and reflect on the social dynamics of my everyday practices within my cultural field.
