Sensuality of Fields: Sensations and Signals, Anchors of Valence, and Field Positions and Relations

• In Event: 557 - Theory Section Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Identity, Agency, and Field Theory

Abstract

The potential of field frameworks has yet to be fully explored. While Bourdieusian and neoinsti-tutional approaches reveal important extra-institutional dynamics of social action, including prop-ositions about how alignment is compelled, they also remain incomplete. In particular, the nature of what a field is, and how fields intersect and interact with real actors, requires further devel-opment. In this paper I argue that realizing a more useful field framework requires adding two related dimensions: sensuality (sensuousness) and texture of field-actor relations. I propose one way to do so is to reformulate fields as, in part at least, structured signals and information. Fur-ther, I suggest that fields and actors’ orientations in fields are structured by relations between actors and anchors, entities of significant valence in fields, which link actors’ habitus and sense of self not only to external entities outside the self, but also in this way to the broader signals of meanings and practices that make up fields. Finally, I suggest that senses of self and status result-ing from the actor-anchor-field complex contributes to the reproduction of fields, which I briefly discuss in a set of concluding empirical vignettes.

Author

• Jeffrey Hass, 1) University of Richmond, 2) St. Petersburg State University