The Genesis and Structure of the Political Field: A Neo-Bourdieusian Framework

• In Event: 20207 - Sociological Theory. Contemporary Developments of Classic Themes.

Abstract

The concept of the political field is arguably the least developed among Bourdieu’s field-types. Bourdieu developed full conceptions of the economic field, the cultural field, and the relationship between them (that is: the cultural field is the economic field “reversed”), as well as the modern bureaucratic state, but his conception of the political field was relatively under-specified. The political field appears in neither Bourdieu’s overall mapping of social space nor, within social space, in the field of power. In this paper we excavate and explore the concept of political field in Bourdieu’s writings; mobilize insights from Marx, Gramsci, and Goffman to fill it out; and put the resulting neo-Bourdieusian framework to work in a computational and historical analysis of the American political field between 1872 and 1924 that centers, within that period, on the rise and fall of William Jennings Bryan.

Authors

• Stephanie L. Mudge, University of California-Davis

• Shahar Zach, University of California-Davis