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Beate Krais Theory Culture Society 2006; 23; 119 DOI: 10.1177/0263276406069778 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/6/119
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Gender, Sociological Theory and Bourdieus Sociology of Practice
Beate Krais
Introduction EMINIST THEORY has progressed through ongoing and intense dialogue with critical positions in the social sciences. Until recently, however, one of modern sociologys most important voices of social critique and theoretical innovation has been left largely on the margins of the feminist debate: the voice of Pierre Bourdieu, whose work has consistently taken both men and women into consideration as social agents, from his early writings on Algeria up to Distinction (1984) and his research on higher education in France. With the essay Masculine Domination (2001 [1990a]) he deliberately joined the theoretical debate on gender. This essay, which was rst published in the Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (1990a), then revised and published in book form in 1998 (trans. 2001) has evoked controversial reactions. In my view, however, while some aspects of the text are clearly problematic, its irrefutable strengths largely outweigh its weaknesses. In the present article, I want to show that Bourdieus theoretical understanding of gender as a powerful principle of social differentiation opens up new analytical perspectives for feminist sociological theory. Furthermore, I will argue that the analytical tools used in Masculine Domination, specically Bourdieus idea of a sociology of practice and his concept of habitus, offer a theoretical framework for fundamentally reconstructing sociology to integrate gender as a central category. Already in 1975, Millman and Kanter pointed out that in order to successfully integrate the category of gender, it will be necessary to reassess the basic theories, paradigms, substantive concerns and methodologies of sociology (Millman and Kanter, 1975: viii). In the following, I would like to demonstrate that the concept of habitus overcomes the disciplines
Theory, Culture & Society 2006 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 23(6): 119134 DOI: 10.1177/0263276406069778
120 Theory, Culture & Society 23(6)
theoretical barriers to the integration of the category of gender on a central point: the concept of the social agent. My argument is built in three stages. First, I outline Bourdieus reasoning in Masculine Domination. Second, I discuss the critiques that have been directed at this work, in particular the objection that it presents an androcentric worldview and an ahistorical, unalterable model of masculine domination. Third, I discuss the concept of habitus, which forms the theoretical core of Masculine Domination, in the broader context of Bourdieus work. The critique focuses on the accusation that the concept of habitus is deterministic, and thus incapable of both taking into account the individuals reexivity and comprehending processes of social change (cf. e.g. Calhoun, 1993; Butler, 1999). Although it has been dealt with by a number of feminist authors in recent work (e.g., Fowler, 2000, 2003; Adkins, 2004; McNay, 2004), due to the persistence of this critique, it seems necessary to examine it again here. Bourdieus Position in Masculine Domination This title itself clearly reveals that Bourdieus object in this work is neither the principle of the gender dichotomy nor the many ways this principle is realized in social practice. Rather, his focus here as in all his sociological work is on domination, and in particular on gender as a relation of domination. The core concepts he uses to explain how masculine domination operates are: practice, habitus, and the symbolic order. Habitus and the Symbolic Order of Gender In the importance he grants to symbolic classication systems, Bourdieu clearly argues in line with Durkheim, who posited that humans bring order and meaning into the world by inventing and using classications. Bourdieu insists that social practice is a practice of classifying: it is a practice ordered and structured according to systems of classication. One of the most powerful classications is that of gender. To demonstrate its immense social power, Bourdieu draws on material from his early ethnographic research in Algeria among the Kabyles. He describes their traditional peasant society as one whose social and cosmic order is based on a fundamental division of all the worlds objects and activities according to the male/female dichotomy. Precisely this characteristic makes Kabylia, in Bourdieus eyes, a particularly well-suited case for the analysis of masculine domination: in it there exists practically no other social differentiation and no other symbolic order than that of gender, and the principles by which this symbolic order functions are particularly visible at least to the outside observer. Bourdieu emphasizes that gender is a construct that differentiates according to both antagonistic and complementary principles, and operates as a highly complex, differentiated and vital symbolic order. In the 1990 version of Masculine Domination, Bourdieu notes that the gender classication refers, in the last instance, to the division of sexual labour, both in the act of sex and in sexual reproduction.1 The symbolic order of gender
Krais Bourdieu and Gender Relationship 121
and the concomitant social practice of gender differentiation thus have their material point of reference in the human activities related to sexuality and the reproduction of human life. In these activities, the bodily differences between men and women play a central role, which in my view constitutes a crucial difference between the symbolic order of gender and other social classications such as class or nation. As with other symbolic orders, the gender classication, with its rigorous male/female dichotomy, comes to life via the habitus. The habitus is the practical operator, the principle that generates the regular improvization that Bourdieu terms social practice. All practice operates with the help of symbolic orders and mobilizes schemata that structure and organize both things and activities. The symbolic order of gender is embodied in the individuals habitus as a gendered view of the world. A gender-specic habitus thus means an identity that internalizes and literally embodies the division of labour between the genders. In this way, it takes a personal form, moulding each individual from the very beginning of his or her life. The gender-specicity of the habitus is among the fundamental elements of a persons identity. It touches the individual in an aspect of his/her self that is generally seen as pure nature: the body. What is more, the social division of labour between man and woman materializes in a fundamental sense in the bodies of individuals. Bourdieu takes great pains to show that it is the symbolic order of gender, this social programme of perception, which constructs the body as a biological reality that can be categorized according to the division into male and female. It is the social construction of masculinity and femininity that shapes the body, denes how the body is perceived, forms the bodys habits and possibilities for expression, and thus determines the individuals identity via the body as masculine or feminine. Masculine domination, according to Bourdieu, is nothing other than a somatization of the social relations of domination (Bourdieu, 2001: 23). Yet gender differentiation is perceived not as a cultural pattern, but entirely as a product of nature as natural. With this bodily reference, the social division of labour between the genders anchors itself in the habitus as deeply and rmly as possible. And, by pretending to be the natural order of the world, it like no other social structure makes us forget that it is itself a social structure, produced and reproduced by humans themselves. Masculine Domination and Symbolic Violence Masculine domination calls attention to a specic mode of exerting domination, namely, symbolic violence. The concept of symbolic domination, and of symbolic violence in particular, already appears in Bourdieus earlier writings (Bourdieu, 1977 [1972], 1990b, [1980]), but in Masculine Domination it fully unfolds its analytical potential. Symbolic violence manifests its power essentially in face-to-face interactions:2 it constitutes and reproduces domination in the immediate interactions between people:

Symbolic violence is exercised only through an act of knowledge and practical recognition which takes place below the level of the consciousness and will and which gives all its manifestations injunctions, suggestions, seduction, threats, reproaches, orders or calls to order their hypnotic power. (Bourdieu, 2001: 42)
And masculine domination is the paradigmatic form of a mode of domination operating essentially with symbolic violence. Symbolic violence is the acting out of a worldview and social order anchored deeply in the habitus of both dominants and dominated. It thus requires harmony between subjective structures the habitus and objective relations, and incorporation of the way things are supposed to be within each social agent. Symbolic domination then implies, in a certain sense, what may be termed complicity on the part of the dominated, as it can only be exerted on a person predisposed (in his habitus) to feel it, whereas others will ignore it (Bourdieu, 1991: 51). This complicity can thus only be achieved when both agents, dominants and dominated, have integrated into their habitus the symbolic order that generates the corresponding actions. It must be noted that a fundamental element of symbolic violence precedes the interactions in which it is manifested: it lies in the fact that by incorporating the established order, the oppressed, in this case women, cannot but identify themselves as inferior subjects. Domination also means that the dominated to a large extent share the worldview cast from the vantage point of the dominants and form a self-image correspondingly. Thus, mens view of women, their positing of the masculine as the universal and the feminine as the particular, and the dichotomies and classication schemes that emerge out of this view also provide the basis for womens ways of thinking and perceiving. The Controversy Surrounding Masculine Domination Bourdieus Androcentric View When Bourdieu rst published Masculine Domination in 1990, there was almost no reaction from feminist sociologists. Only some years later, when the book version was published, Bourdieus analysis was noticed, but immediately met with harsh critique (for a comprehensive review of the debate in France cf. Thbaud, 2005). One point of critique was that the living conditions, practices, views and struggles of women today are not reected at all in Bourdieus text, which instead paints the picture of a gender order so completely doxic and closed that it seems almost totalitarian. The central point of the critique, however, has to be seen in the objection that Bourdieu had produced an essay that was itself a document of masculine domination. Anne Witz, for example, charges Bourdieu with the use of a dubious anthropology of gender (Witz, 2004: 211). Discussing the notions of an anamnesis of hidden constants and a collective androcentric
unconscious that guide Bourdieus analysis in Masculine Domination, she argues that the collective androcentric unconscious compromises not only this work but his entire sociology with its centrepiece, habitus (2004: 212). Bourdieu was clearly aware that his contribution to the feminist debate might remain at least partially entrapped in a masculine viewpoint, as evidenced by the revisions of the original 1990 article that may well have been intended to take this potential critique into account. Considering Bourdieus awareness of the necessity for epistemological control, it is surprising that his essay on masculine domination proves vulnerable to the criticisms outlined previously. Bourdieu, more than almost any other social scientist, has consistently emphasized that scientic objectication can only succeed when the sociologist integrates careful reection upon his or her own position in the social world into the analysis.3 To establish the necessary objectifying distance between himself/herself and the object of his/her analysis, the social scientist must examine his/her position in relation to others, that is, to the agents concerned by the object of research. This means nothing other than reconstructing the standpoints of the others, and in so doing, making visible the particularities of his/her own position (cf. the detailed discussion in Bourdieu, 2000). In Masculine Domination, however, Bourdieu was only partially successful in this endeavour. To reconstruct the standpoints of others in this case, of women Bourdieu would have had to do a thorough reading of the feminist research,4 which would have meant recognizing his feminist colleagues as equal players in the intellectual eld. Instead, he limited himself to his two extreme cases: his old material from Kabylia, and Virginia Woolfs description of a bourgeois British family at the beginning of the 20th century (in her novel To The Lighthouse, 1927), arguing that this approach could overcome the familiarity of the gender order and achieve the objectifying distance needed for the analysis. The choice of Kabylia a society with a gender order at once exotic and very close to us (Bourdieu, 2001: 5) seems fruitful only at rst glance, however. The social order of gender here not only appears in a magnied image, as Bourdieu says; it also seems hermetic and indestructible, as though constituting a closed and perfectly ordered universe. The same is true of the Ramsays world in Woolfs novel: it seems to be a wholly self-enclosed microcosm, with the gender-specic division of labour in wonderfully wellattuned balance and with each of the dramatis personae displaying a habitus perfectly suited to his or her place within it. Modern society, however, is far from being in a state of pre-established harmony (Bourdieu, 2000: 143), with perfectly orchestrated practices, where the actions of the individual agents mediated through their habitus mesh together smoothly like the tines of a well-tuned machine. Rather, modern society has to be described as a social world with complex structures and divergent life-worlds, employing heterogeneous criteria of social differentiation and undergoing simultaneous processes of stagnation and of social change. A central characteristic of the modern gender order is that it constitutes a eld of open political struggle. In this struggle, women exist
not only as objects but also as social subjects, agents who act in their own rights and in defence of their own interests. It is difcult to understand why Bourdieu who in his other works emphasizes the importance of symbolic conict and struggle pays only cursory attention to the symbolic struggles over the gender order. The reference to elds of conict in the French intellectual landscape, also in the debate on feminist positions (cf. Garcia, 1994; Fowler, 2003), may offer a psychological explanation. In view of the otherwise marked epistemological vigilance of Bourdieu (Bourdieu et al., 1991) the decits of Masculine Domination remain problematic nonetheless. Apparently it is difcult even for critical male social scientists to reect upon their own masculine position. On the other hand, critical female scientists often seem to share a similar blind spot as regards their own position, and a similar hesitance to accept the contributions of male colleagues who dare enter their territory particularly those who represent strong analytical positions like Bourdieu. Feminist Sociology and the Concept of Habitus The concept of habitus forms the core of Bourdieus analysis of masculine domination. Through the habitus, the gender classication is integrated into individual action, forms of social practice, and worldviews. But it is also above all through the habitus that the gender classication, like every other social institution, is kept alive. It is often forgotten that the habitus should not be seen as an isolated thing, but in its social context: one must always look at habitus and institution, habitus and history, habitus and the social order together. There are two forms, says Bourdieu, in which history is objectied: in institutions, and in the human organism in the habitus. Only the existence and functioning of this simultaneously structured and structuring structure within the agent make it possible for institutions to make sense to the agents and to retain their relevance for social practice but at the cost of undergoing constant change:
the habitus . . . is what makes it possible to inhabit institutions, to appropriate them practically, and so to keep them in activity, continuously pulling them from the state of dead letters, reviving the sense deposited in them, but at the same time imposing the revisions and transformations that reactivation entails. (Bourdieu, 1990b: 57)
This brings us to the problem of social change, and in particular, to the two central and controversial aspects of the debate: on the one hand, the constant of gender as a construct operating with a binary classication, and on the other, the enormous wealth of variation and the constantly shifting boundaries between all that which a society deems masculine and feminine. In Masculine Domination, Bourdieu focused on an examination of the doxa of the gender order, and in fact, if we want to explain how masculine domination has succeeded in maintaining itself through history, we must rst analyse its doxa (cf. Fowler, 2003). This does not mean, however,
that Bourdieus theory rules out social change, and particularly change of a more radical nature. Fundamental social change the forced modernization of economic and social relations in Kabylia provided the impetus for him to develop the concept of habitus. Later studies as well, such as those on the French educational system and the situation of the farmers in Barn, focus on social change and the concomitant changes in how individuals act in and look at the world (cf. Bourdieu, 1962, 1977, 1984, 1988). Before approaching this problem and the objection of determinism in Bourdieus theory, I rst have to discuss the traditional sociological construction of the socialized individual. The accusation of determinism lodged at Bourdieus theory is based, in my view, on a specic idea of the socialized individual, and this idea in turn has its roots in idealist thought. The Construct of the Social Role and its Problems To this day, the most inuential social construct that allows us to understand the individual as socialized is the concept of the social role as that which mediates between the individual and society and transforms the concrete individual into the homo sociologicus, the social actor. Since the intense role theory discussions of the 1960s and early 1970s, the problems and decits in this concept as well as the structural and functional context out of which it had been developed have been largely forgotten, but the concept itself remains very much alive. As a quasi-natural sociological category, the construct of the social role seems to have risen to a status beyond question; it is in common use in the social sciences and even in everyday life, fundamentally shaping our understanding of the relation between the individual and society. The construct of the social role is, as is apparent in the use of the term actor, a specically sociological variant of the paradigm of rules and norms as the mechanisms that transform individual action into social action. The role concept thus shares a basic assumption with this paradigm, and this is the rst point that has to be noted here: it is based on a fundamental opposition between the individual and society, in which the individual is initially thought of as an asocial subject upon whom specic rules and norms are imposed from outside, that is, by society. Like a role in a play that is written not by the actor for himself but by another person (the playwright), the social role that an individual adopts is always preexistent, written for him beforehand by society. This also means that the individual must necessarily experience these norms, values, and roles as shackles, as an externally imposed and conning identity, which Butler (1999), for example, calls the normative gender identity. From this point of view, the power for social change comes not from society but from within the subject, who is able, through his or her own inner forces, to break the shackles imposed by society. This brings the question of the subjects possibility for reexivity to the fore, as the essential condition required for social change. What potentials enable the individual to engage in socially critical thought? A constitutive element of the social role is, second, that it refers to a
specic context of interaction a specic social situation. The role concept unfolds its analytical potential precisely in that it gives access to situationspecic social action. It takes account of the fact that people play numerous social roles, each of which becomes relevant only in a specic situation where all the other roles become irrelevant. In this respect, it touches on a phenomenon which, mainly in the novel since the late 19th century, has been seen as a characteristic of modernity: the fragmentation of the subject. Feminist sociologists have long criticized the classic construct of the social role on the basis that it is inadequate to capture the effect of gender. As Lopata and Thorne (1978) emphasize, the construct of the social role here the role of the woman or the role of the man refers to a specic context of interaction and a specic social situation. In this theoretical context, the gender role (or sex role in older texts) is something that actually becomes relevant in relationships or in the family, but above all in sexual interactions. Feminist research has convincingly demonstrated, however, that the fundamental characteristic of gender is not its presence in specic social situations, but rather its omnipresence in all social situations (cf. West and Zimmermann, 1987). The construct of the social role is utterly incapable of comprehending either the omnipresence of gender or the processual nature of doing gender. The problem with a sociology grounded in this paradigm can be stated even more pointedly: it is incapable of integrating gender as a structural category of sociological thought. By discussing gender only in terms of the particular within a cluster of role expectations that are relevant to a very limited number of social situations not only does it miss the processual element, the aspect of the construction of gender through interaction; it also banishes an extraordinarily powerful social principle to the margins of the social world. Third, the social role is conceived of as a set of behavioural expectations. This connection to expectations, which can in turn be traced back to overarching values and norms, keeps the social role at the level of a mental, immaterial substratum. The social actor is basically conceived of as a bodiless being. The concept of the social role is rooted in a longstanding gure of Western thought: the mind-body dualism, which is not only constructed as a polar opposition but also implies the symbolic subordination of the body to the mind. From this perspective, the individual is seen as inuenced, formed, socialized and controlled by society in a multitude of ways; but its main characteristic is that it thinks the world and constructs mental representations of the world. Human action is seen on a level of abstraction where social practice is reduced to norms, rules, laws, expectations, roles and rational calculations. The specic bodily nature of human action which always means social action is thus lost entirely to sociology, along with the physical dimension of human genderedness.
Overcoming Sociologys Barriers to the Integration of the Category of Gender With the concept of habitus, Bourdieu has developed an alternative to the role concept that nevertheless focuses on the same question: How can the individual be conceived of as a social agent? Bourdieus alternative is not, however, a more developed or varied conception of the social actor based on norms, rules and roles; it is a fundamentally different paradigm (cf. Taylor, 1993; Krais and Gebauer, 2002). First it must be noted that Bourdieus concept of habitus focuses the sociologists attention on the body. As Bourdieu writes, the habitus is the social made body (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 127). This is more than a metaphor. As the agents incorporated experience with the social world, the habitus expresses itself in gestures, posture, and in the way the body is used. While this idea of the body as a medium for the expression of moods and feelings, even of social status is rather common, Bourdieu goes further: the body itself, as a repository for social experience, constitutes an essential part of the habitus. Bodily experience is profoundly inuenced by gender, and yet the workings of this process are veiled entirely from view. Even if genderspecic bodily experience reaches far beyond the aspects of reproduction and sexuality, these aspects are nevertheless crucial: the capacity to father a child is experienced differently than the capacity to conceive and bear a child with ones own body; and the changes in the individuals body over the course of a lifetime are connected to a variety of specic feelings of desire, sensuality, worry, and fear. These differing bodily potentialities exert powerful forces in shaping the individuals self-conception and position in the social world even if the potentiality to bear or father a child is never realized. Male potency, for example or its failure is a body experience that exerts its power far beyond the sexual act. The individuals experience of his or her genderedness is always a matter of both body and mind, that is, it is a product of socially formed notions of bodily processes and activities and of the corresponding classication schemes and mythic transformations. Barbara Dudens historical research on the experience of the bodys interior (1987), Mary OBriens work on The Politics of Reproduction (1981) as well as Thomas Laqueurs (1990) study on the perception of the genitals from the ancient Greeks to the modern period (to name only a few) demonstrate overwhelmingly that there is no experience of sexuality and reproductive functions that is strictly limited to biology. Rather, the ideas of functions, processes, and sensations of the body and thus also the concepts valid in a particular society for perceiving and experiencing ones own body are determined by the comprehensive symbolic order of gender. Much more than simply being related to sexuality and reproduction on an immediate level, bodily experience is shaped by the symbolic order of gender: by body ideals, images of the perfect body, ideas of physical weakness and strength, a sense of ones place in a societys patterns of subordination and
domination, a sense of honour and shame, ways of presenting the body in terms of what is revealed and what is hidden, and so on. All these aspects of the symbolic order of gender are intimately connected to ideas about either the masculine body or the feminine body. Just as body and gender belong to the social world, so too do our ideas about this world and its order. A new interest for the body has been emerging in the social sciences and humanities for some time, in large part through the inuence of gender studies, and this has brought forth important empirical and theoretical work (e.g. Scarry, 1985; Featherstone et al., 1991; Shilling, 1993; Turner, 1996; Gebauer and Wulf, 1998; Hahn and Meuser, 2002; Schmidt, 2002; Gebauer et al., 2004). The basic paradigms of the social sciences, however, have shown extraordinary resistance to these studies. They remain trapped in the conceptualization of the social in terms of norms and roles, and thus push the wide-ranging and innovative research on the social meaning of the body onto the sidelines as a specialized discipline. Only with the aid of a systematic, analytical approach to the fundamental bodiliness of human action, which Bourdieus concept of habitus provides, can their ndings be applied fruitfully to overcoming the mindbody dualism. Second, the concept of habitus brings into focus the elements of process and interaction, as well as the omnipresence of gender in all social situations. It is through the habitus that what West and Zimmermann (1987) described as doing gender takes place. Doing gender does not mean the same thing to everyone everywhere; it does not even mean the same thing to every individual in a single society. Rather, as has been pointed out repeatedly in the feminist debate, the gender order consists of variations on a theme, such that the gender practice of the German working class, for instance, is different from that of the German bourgeoisie. Moreover, this gender practice is updated, varied and also changed through the countless interactions of everyday life. In an interview given on the occasion of the German translation of Masculine Domination (1990 version), Bourdieu used a pertinent metaphor to characterize the omnipresence of gender: gender is an absolutely fundamental dimension of the habitus that, like the sharps and the clefs in music, modies all the social qualities that are connected to the fundamental social factors (Bourdieu, 1997: 222, my translation). This also makes clear that gender does not constitute a specic social eld as is sometimes assumed, but enters into the game of the different social elds in ways specic to each eld (cf. the discussion in Adkins, 2004: 6). The third point in which the socialized individual is constructed completely differently within the habitus concept than within the social role lies in the fundamentally different understanding of the relation between individual and society on which this construct is founded. Bourdieus notion of habitus is not based on an opposition between the individual and society, but on a concept of the social agent constructed in very radical terms as a fundamentally socialized being, and here he is very close to George Herbert Meads development of the self. Through its physical being-in-the-world, the
individual has always been in society, and moreover, always lives in a specic society, localized in a particular place and time. Being-in-the-world is not to be understood merely as passive being, it means action: actively participating in and grappling with the social world. As Bourdieu said, society and individuals create each other (cf. the previous quotation regarding the double objectication of history in habitus and institutions). This formulation from The Logic of Practice emphasizes, rst of all, that Bourdieus work is guided in a very strict sense by the basic sociological assumption of society, institutions, and social structures being artefacts produced by human action. The core of his theory of practice thus consists not of structures but of agents real individuals (wirkliche Individuen as they are called in Deutsche Ideologie, Marx and Engels 1969 [1848]). It comes as no surprise, then, that Bourdieu had great respect for the analyses of Goffman that made visible, in the actions and interactions of real individuals, the structures of social relationships. This is precisely what the concept of habitus is designed to make possible: to account for the uid, open-ended and incomplete nature of social action. However, in contrast to ethno-methodological approaches, a specic social practice observed in a concrete interaction is not thought of as starting from zero. For Bourdieu, every individual is a socialized individual, within whose habitus there exists fundamental dimensions of the social, that is, of the historical society in which he or she lives, and every person acts within the horizon of possibilities delimited by this context. The individuals born into a particular historical society incorporate that society into their habitus through their practice with the social world in which they live, think and act. Everything that is passed down and incorporated within them, they carry on, change and vary; and sometimes they even revolutionize elements of their world. This understanding of the immediate sociality of the individual is also the basis for Bourdieus argument that the habitus is creative and that it approaches new situations differently from old ones. The habitus can thus in no case be conceived of as a programme of action in the sense of an internalized, nite number of xed rules or values. Bourdieu often uses the metaphor of the game to show the spontaneity and creativity that are characteristic of how the habitus works: someone who has mastered the game of football, for example, and has played it for many years does not need to stop and think when the ball comes from a new angle or in a new constellation of players. Without knowing consciously, he/she knows intuitively, and knows intuitively what to do. Social Change and Determinism in the Concept of Habitus The game metaphor also makes it possible to conceive of the social worlds functioning in a fundamentally different way than as a mechanical structure consisting of interlinked gears and spokes that t together because they were designed and built to do so. Rather, in Bourdieus understanding, society functions more like a game: it is uid, exible, unbelievably varied, and is handmade in the sense that it is constructed by human beings. This
means also that the game goes on even when not all its elements are perfectly attuned an idea that seems much more realistic to me than social constructs that are based on norms and roles, and assume an enormous degree of normative conformity. It is one of the great strengths of Bourdieus sociology that he conceives of real individuals as the subjects of history: not as great creator-individuals modelled after the gure of God in the Christian tradition, who design the world in their minds, but as historical subjects who create the world through collective action, both with and against many other individuals. Reexivity is not a question, then, of the subjects potentials, but of the social conditions under which the individual will renounce his or her doxic attitude toward the world, or better, toward specic elements or dimensions of the social order. In the context of Bourdieus sociology, reexivity is above all an essential human quality. We are able to think about our world, to interpret it, to bring order into the world through classications, myths and storytelling. To this capacity we owe the exquisite tales that have been told throughout history explaining the world for example, the myths of the ancient Greeks, but also the (less exquisite) modern myths of rational action and the rationality of the market (cf. Krais, 2004). And although our classications, myths, ideologies in short, our entire symbolic orders are linked to our social practice and thus to the specic material conditions in which we live, they are still, Bourdieu argues, relatively autonomous. There is always room for dislodging doxic attitudes toward the world, for engaging in symbolic struggle and thus also for taking political action (cf. Bourdieu, 2000: 234). Bourdieu saw a dynamic at work, above all in crises and conicts, which can raise the doxa into consciousness. This point is central to his studies on the French secondary school system and the changes it has undergone (cf. e.g. Bourdieu, 1988). Bourdieus construction of habitus also leaves room for increasing consciousness of doxa: given that the habitus is the embodiment of the agents life history and given the contradictions in the agents experiences with the social world the habitus should be seen as a place where conicting experiences and classications come together. In his autobiographical writings, Bourdieu (2003) spoke of his own habitus as a habitus cliv, a split habitus. He was referring, on the one hand, to the humble social conditions of his childhood in the rural region of Barn, but on the other, to his meteoric social ascent through the school system, in particular through the cole Normale Suprieure, whose members are regarded as part of the French elite. Both experiences inscribed themselves deeply, as he writes, in his habitus. To the split habitus that resulted from these experiences he attributes his critical view of French society, and his acute awareness of its injustices and of the mechanisms of domination transmitted through its educational system. Womens revolt against masculine domination in modern society may be understood in similar terms: as rooted in deeply conicting experiences. In contrast to traditional societies such as the Kabyle, modern society is
marked by the complexity of its structures, criteria and social differentiations. Thus it essentially precludes the emergence of a pre-established harmony between habitus and the social order. Hence, the perfect balance between individual action and the gender order suggested by Bourdieus argumentation in Masculine Domination is rather unrealistic. In our society, the experiences of individuals in general and women in particular are heterogeneous and contradictory, encompassing not only practices of subordination to masculine domination, but also practices in which women assert independence and receive recognition for their work. The potential conicts between different concepts of order and ways of behaving generate for the female agent questions as to the naturalness of established practices. In these experiences of conict, doxa will either be transformed into orthodoxy or yield to rebellion and conscious confrontation. It is here that social practice allows space for resistance and change. However, the individuals conscious awareness of the doxa of the gender order does not by itself lead to fundamental social change. Bourdieu argued vehemently against the intellectualist illusion and in particular the position of Judith Butler that simply writing against the gender order, and also performing individual acts of deviant behaviour, would be enough to overthrow it. His position has received support from feminist authors, who have pointed out that many changes that are perceived as a detraditionalization of the gender order should be seen less as a dissolution of masculine domination and more as a refashioning of gender in the dominant classes (cf. Fowler, 2003; Adkins, 2004; McRobbie, 2004). Above all, however, when arguing in the framework of Bourdieus social theory, profound social change results not from a revolt of the great individual, but from the political action of many individuals: from social movements. One can draw a connection here, as Lovell (2004) has done, to Bourdieus reections about class formation, which focus on the role of symbolic struggle, political organization and political representation in helping social groups to achieve recognition and assert their interests. There is no doubt that the important limits already set on masculine domination for example, the achievement of womens right to vote, equality in family law and civil law, equal access to educational institutions, and equal wages for equal work in some sectors have been achieved above all through the womens movement and the courage of its leaders. Translated by Deborah Anne Bowen
Notes 1. He writes: Ce sont des catgories de perception construites autour doppositions renvoyant, en dernire analyse, la division du travail sexuel (Bourdieu, 1990a: 14, emphasis added). The Logic of Practice contains analogous expressions, e.g.: The division of sexual labour, transgured in a particular form of the sexual division of labour, is the basis of the di-vision of the world . . . Grounded rst

in biological differences, in particular those that concern the division of the work of procreation and reproduction . . . . (Bourdieu, 1990b: 146) In the book version, the notion of a division du travail sexuel is seldom mentioned, and Bourdieu carefully avoids connecting it to the symbolic order of gender. 2. In Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977), Bourdieu develops his notion of symbolic violence in the context of a discussion about domination in societies without objectied forms of appropriation and domination, such as the institutions of the state and its bureaucracy, of the self-regulated market, of literacy, and of an educational system. Such a society is obliged to resort to elementary forms of domination, that is, to those that are made, unmade and remade in and by the interactions between persons (Bourdieu, 1977: 184). Whereas this would suggest a relatively narrow use of the notion of symbolic violence for only those acts of violence carried out in direct personal interactions, Bourdieu occasionally uses this notion in a broader sense, often synonymously with the more general concept of symbolic domination. To preserve the distinctions among our analytical categories, I think it would be advantageous to use a more restricted use of symbolic violence. 3. The rst systematic epistemological reections after Bourdieus empirical work in Algeria are published in The Craft of Sociology (Bourdieu et al., 1991 [1968]). In an interview on the occasion of the English translation he says: The fact of not understanding oneself as a scientist, of not knowing what is implied in the situation of the observer, the analyst, generates errors (p. 250). 4. Bourdieu was familiar with much of this research, and he published important contributions to it in his Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. In Masculine Domination, however, he uses feminist work as a quarry, drawing from it only where it is useful to his argumentation. References Adkins, Lisa (2004) Introduction: Feminism, Bourdieu and After, in Lisa Adkins and Beverley Skeggs (eds) Feminism after Bourdieu, pp. 318. Oxford: Blackwell. Bourdieu, Pierre (1977 [1972]) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bourdieu, Pierre (1990a) La domination masculine, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 84: 231. Bourdieu, Pierre (1990b [1980]) The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1994) Social Space and Symbolic Power, in Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words, pp. 12239. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1997) Eine sanfte Gewalt. Pierre Bourdieu im Gesprch mit Irene Dlling und Margareta Steinrcke, in Irene Dlling and Beate Krais (eds) Ein alltgliches Spiel. Geschlechterkonstruktion in der sozialen Praxis, pp. 21830. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Bourdieu, Pierre (2000) Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (2001) Masculine Domination. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (2002) Ein soziologischer Selbstversuch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Bourdieu, Pierre, Jean-Claude Chamboredon and Jean-Claude Passeron (1991 [1968]) The Craft of Sociology. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Butler, Judith (1999) Performativitys Social Magic, in Richard Shusterman (ed.) Bourdieu: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Calhoun, Craig (1993) Habitus, Field and Capital: The Question of Historical Specicity, in Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds) Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, pp. 61888. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Duden, Barbara (1987) Geschichte unter der Haut. Ein Eisenacher Arzt und seine Patientinnen um 1730. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Durkheim, Emile and Marcel Mauss (1963 [1901/1902]) Primitive Classication. London: Cohen and West. Featherstone, Mike, Mike Hepworth and Bryan S. Turner (eds) (1991) The Body. Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage. Fowler, Bridget (ed.) (2000) Reading Bourdieu on Society and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Fowler, Bridget (2003) Reading Pierre Bourdieus Masculine Domination: Notes Towards an Intersectional Analysis of Gender, Culture and Class, Cultural Studies 17(3/4): 46894. Garcia, Sandrine (1994) Project for a Symbolic Revolution: The Rise and Fall of the Womens Movement in France, South Atlantic Quarterly 93(4): 82570. Gebauer, Gunter and Christoph Wulf (1998) Spiel Ritual Geste. Das Mimetische in der sozialen Welt. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Gebauer, Gunter et al. (2004) Treue zum Stil. Die aufgefhrte Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript. Hahn, Kornelia and Michael Meuser (eds) (2002) Krperreprsentationen. Die Ordnung des Sozialen und der Krper. Konstanz: UVK. Krais, Beate (1993) Gender and Symbolic Violence: Female Oppression in the Light of Pierre Bourdieus Theory of Social Practice, in Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds) Bourdieu. Critical Perspectives, pp. 15677. Cambridge: Polity Press. Krais, Beate (2004) Die soziale Welt der Moderne und die Metamorphosen der Ideologie, Sozialismus 31(12): 506. Krais, Beate and Gunter Gebauer (2002) Habitus. Bielefeld: Transcript. Laqueur, Thomas (1990) Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lopata, Helena Z. and Barrie Thorne (1978) On the Term Sex Roles, Signs 4(1): 71821. Lovell, Terry (2004) Bourdieu, Class and Gender: The Return of the Living Dead? in Lisa Adkins and Beverley Skeggs (eds) Feminism after Bourdieu, pp. 3756. Oxford: Blackwell. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1969 [1848]) Die deutsche Ideologie, vol. 3. Berlin: Marx-Engels-Werke. McNay, Lois (2004) Agency and Experience: Gender as a Lived Relation, in Lisa Adkins and Beverley Skeggs (eds) Feminism after Bourdieu, pp. 17590. Oxford: Blackwell. McRobbie, Angela (2004) Notes on What Not To Wear and Post-Feminist

Symbolic Violence, in Lisa Adkins and Beverley Skeggs (eds) Feminism after Bourdieu, pp. 99109. Oxford: Blackwell. Millman, Marcia and Rosabeth Kanter (1975) Editorial Introduction, in Marcia Millman and Rosabeth Kanter (eds) Another Voice: Feminist Perspectives on Social Life and Social Sciences. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday. OBrien, Mary (1981) The Politics of Reproduction. London: Routledge. Parsons, Talcott (1942) Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States, American Sociological Review 7: 60416. Scarry, Elaine (1985) The Body in Pain. The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford Press. Schmidt, Robert (2002) Pop Sport Kultur. Praxisformen krperlicher Auffhrungen. Konstanz: UVK. Shilling, Chris (1993) The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage. Taylor, Charles (1993) To Follow A Rule . . ., in Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds) Bourdieu. Critical Perspectives, pp. 4560. Cambridge: Polity Press. Turner, Bryan S. (1996) The Body and Society. Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage. West, Candace and Don Zimmerman (1987) Doing Gender, Gender and Society 1: 12551. Witz, Anne (2004) Anamnesis and Amnesis in Bourdieus Work: The Case for a Feminist Anamnesis, in Lisa Adkins and Beverley Skeggs (eds) Feminism after Bourdieu, pp. 21123. Oxford: Blackwell.
Beate Krais is a university lecturer and research assistant at Free University of Berlin and is Senior Scientist at Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education. Since 1995 she has also been a full professor at Darmstadt University. Areas of interest in research and teaching are sociological theory, especially the theory of Pierre Bourdieu; sociology of education; higher education and science cultures; sociology of gender.

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