{"id":670,"date":"2015-04-29T20:27:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T20:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/?p=670"},"modified":"2016-01-15T00:26:24","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T00:26:24","slug":"bourdieu-and-the-literature-on-think-tanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/bourdieu-and-the-literature-on-think-tanks\/","title":{"rendered":"Bourdieu and the literature on think tanks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pierre_Bourdieu\" target=\"_blank\">Pierre Bourdieu<\/a>\u00a0(1930-2002) is, without a doubt, amongst the most influential sociologists of the 20th century. His work spanned topics as diverse as education, academia, marginality, the formation of taste, media, television, masculine domination and economics. He is most known, however, for his theoretical and methodological contributions, particularly in the form of a \u2019toolkit\u2019 that continues to be applied across social phenomena. This comprises concepts such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>field<\/em>: Loosely speaking, relatively autonomous spheres wherein actors struggle for positions and dominance (e.g. media, politics, arts).<\/li>\n<li><em>capital<\/em>: i.e. resources that can be mobilised in struggles within fields (e.g. money, knowledge, prestige, contacts).<\/li>\n<li><em>habitus<\/em>: in a nutshell, a set of values and expectations acquired through early socialisation and everyday life that shape an actor\u2019s practices and dispositions and, in turn, others\u2019 perceptions towards said actor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hence, it is little wonder that Bourdieu has also transformed the current literature on think tanks. The most notorious instance of this is the work of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/tommedvetz.net\/\">Tom Medvetz<\/a>, which has already been covered in this\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/tag\/tom-medvetz\/\">blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/T\/bo13181062.html\">Medvetz<\/a>\u2019s main contributions lies within the issue of defining what think tanks are. He avoids a search for a precise definition of\u00a0<a title=\"What is a think tank? Defining the boundaries of the label\" href=\"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/2014\/10\/22\/what-is-a-think-tank-defining-the-boundaries-of-the-label\/\" target=\"_blank\">think tanks as a discrete category<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 which in most instances entail establishing strict typologies or tautological definitions, which often leave national contexts and outliers out of the picture.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he advances a model inspired by Bourdieu\u2019s fields and capitals. Think-tanks are understood as institutions with murky boundaries that \u2018juggle with\u2019 a diverse array of capitals pertaining to four fields (academia, politics, media and the economy), performing a \u2018balancing act\u2019 between heterogeneous aims and resources (e.g. academic credentials, political power, media presence, economic assets). Therefore, think tank are often somewhere between being a research centre, an advocacy group, a media agency and lobbyists, without ever becoming only one of those things in particular.<\/p>\n<p>Faithful to Bourdieusian sociology and inspired by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cast.ku.dk\/papers_security_expertise\/Eyal__2011_From_a_sociology_of_professions_to_a_sociology_of_expertise.pdf\/\">Gil Eyal\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0\u2018spaces between fields\u2019, think tanks are, for Medvetz, not a \u2018thing\u2019 that fits neatly into any specific sphere (be it politics or research) but\u00a0<a title=\"An alternative to the supply, demand and intermediary model: competencies for all\" href=\"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/2013\/01\/09\/an-alternative-to-the-supply-demand-and-intermediary-compartmentalisation-competencies\/\" target=\"_blank\">actors that move across fields and capitals<\/a>, thus rendering diffuse their boundaries.<\/p>\n<p>This has an interesting corollary. Conceivably, the efforts of an institution to garner a certain type of resource (e.g. economic) might weaken its ability to attain others (e.g. academic). Indeed, actors operating in fewer \u2018fields\u2019 tend to be weary of others \u2013\u00a0e.g. the strained relationship between academics and the business world. Hence, for Medvetz, the best strategy is most often to reach a middle ground, trying to remain somewhere between the four fields of academia, economics, politics and the media. As a way of illustration, in Medvetz\u2019s own examples, the Brookings Institute became more media-savvy as a response to the challenges of more vocal think tanks, while a new wave of think tanks on the right sought to garner ever more academic resources (e.g. employing PhDs, scholarly journals, \u2018Fellows\u2019) to increase their credibility.<\/p>\n<p>Model of US think tanks across fields. Available\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cairn.info\/revue-actes-de-la-recherche-en-sciences-sociales-2009-1-page-82.htm\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-7364\" src=\"https:\/\/onthinktanks.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/04\/mdvetz.png?w=613&amp;h=474\" alt=\"mdvetz\" width=\"613\" height=\"474\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Medvetz\u2019s is, undoubtedly, the most thorough and focused application of Bourdieusian concepts to the world of think tanks to date. But as the influence of Bourdieu expands within the English-speaking\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/S\/bo14365337.html\">social sciences<\/a>, and being Bourdieu himself such a \u2018relational\u2019 thinker \u2013 and think tanks such \u2018relational\u2019 entities \u2013 one can expect more research of this kind in the coming years.<\/p>\n<p>This possibility is especially salient when considering the work carried out around actors and fields adjacent to think tanks. For instance,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/eprints.lse.ac.uk\/17655\/1\/Couldry_Media_meta_capital_2003.pdf\">Nick Couldry<\/a>\u2019s media meta-capital \u2013 the possibility of one capital to affect other fields \u2013 or Gisele Sapiro\u2019s (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cairn.info\/revue-actes-de-la-recherche-en-sciences-sociales-2009-1-page-8.htm\">in French<\/a>) modalities of political interventions of intellectuals.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, such research is already being produced, for example in David Sapto Adi Guttormsen\u2019s recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/wrap.warwick.ac.uk\/66144\/\">PhD thesis<\/a>, which applies Bourdieu\u2019s theory of practice to the way China is constructed within US think tanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) is, without a doubt, amongst the most influential sociologists of the 20th century. His work spanned topics as diverse as education, academia, marginality, the formation of taste, media, television, masculine domination and economics. Marcos Gonzalez Hernando explains how his work has influenced the study of think tanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[217,298,181],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}