On pierre bourdieu's legal thought;Commentaires sur pierre bourdieu et le droit

Droit et Societe

Volumn 56-57, Issue 1-2, 2004, Pages 57-71

  Villegas, Mauricio García ^a  

^a UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE COLOMBIA   (Colombia)

Author keywords

Comparative sociology of law; Disciplinary debates; Law and politics; Legal history; Pierre bourdieu; Socio legal theory

Indexed keywords

EID: 33744768447     PISSN: 07693362     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (63)

1. Above all in those that take a cultural approach : this is the case of Legal Consciousness Studies (on this see Mauricio GARCÍA VILLEGAS, « Symbolic Power Without Symbolic Violence ? », Florida Law Review, 55 (1), 2003, p. 157-189
2. Id., « Symbolic Power Without Symbolic Violence ?, Critical Comments on Legal Consciousness Studies in USA », Droit et Société, 53, 2003, p. 137-161). It is significant, for instance, that in the 2004 Law and Society Association annual meetings, not one paper was presented on Bourdieu's legal thought out of more than seven hundred papers read.
3. In the United States, Patricia EWICK and Susan SILBEY, The Common Place of Law : Stories from Everyday Life, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998. In theoretical studies of sociology of law, Bourdieu is frequently cited to justify a theoretical framework (see for instance : Ruth Margaret BUCHANAN, « Context, Continuity, and Difference in Poverty Law Scholarship », University of Miami Law Review, 48, 1994, p. 999-1062
4. Michael W. MCCANN, Rights at Work : Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994
5. Sally Engle MERRY, Getting Justice and Getting Even : Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990). For a general assessment see Mauricio GARCÍA VILLEGAS, « Symbolic Power Without Symbolic Violence ? », op. cit. In France, perhaps the best known repository of the ideas of Bourdieu on the legal field is Dezalay (Yves DEZALAY, Austin SARAT and Susan SILBEY, « D'une démarche contestataire à un savoir méritocratique. Élément pour une histoire sociale de la sociologie juridique américaine », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 78, 1989, p. 79-90
6. Yves DEZALAY and David TRUBEK, « La reestructuración global y el derecho », Pensamiento Jurídico, 1, 1997 p. 5-41)
7. other authors in France who have shown an interest in Bourdieu's work include : Alain BANCAUD and Yves DEZALAY, « La sociologie juridique comme enjeu social et professionnel », Revue interdisciplinaire d'études juridiques, 12, 1984, p. 1- 29
8. Alain BANCAUD, « Une "constante mobile" : la haute magistrature », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 76/77, 1989, p. 30-48
9. Alain BANCAUD, La haute magistrature entre politique et sacerdoce, Paris, LGDJ, 1993
10. Fréderic OCQUETEAU and Francine SOUBIRAN- PAILLET, « Champ juridique, juristes et règle de droit : une sociologie entre disqualification et paradoxe », Droit et Société, 32, 1996, p. 9-26
11. Francine SOUBIRAN-PAILLET, « Quelles voix (es) pour la sociologie du droit en France aujourd'hui ? », Genèses, 15, 1994, p. 142-153.
12. According to Swartz, interpreting Bourdieu : « If his theory of practices extends the idea of interest to culture, then his theory of symbolic power extends culture to the realm of interest with the claim that all forms of power require legitimation » (David SWARTZ, Culture and Power : The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 89).
13. Pierre BOURDIEU, La noblesse d'État. Grandes écoles et esprit de corps, Paris, Minuit, 1989, p. 7.
14. The cognitive structures which social agents implement in their practical knowledge of the social world are internalized « embodied » social structures (see Pierre BOURDIEU, La distinction : critique sociale du jugement, Paris, Minuit, 1979).
15. Pierre BOURDIEU, « The Force of Law : Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field », Hastings Law Journal, 38 (5), 1986, p. 814-853 (p. 817-818)
16. French original : « La force du droit. Éléments pour une sociologie du champ juridique », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 64, 1986.
17. Ibid., p. 839.
18. This idea of symbolic power is also usefully explored by Georges BALANDIER, Le pouvoir sur scènes, Paris, Balland, 1992
19. and Harry PROSS, Violencia social de los simbolos, Barcelona, Anthropos, 1989.
20. Pierre BOURDIEU, « The Force of Law : Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field », op. cit., p. 841.
21. Ibid., p. 816.
22. So, for example, the legal delimitation of the right to property is also a response to poverty and social marginality.
23. Pierre BOURDIEU, « La force du droit. Élé ments pour une sociologie du champ juridique », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 64, 1986, p. 13
24. English version, p. 839.
25. Evgeny PASHUKANIS, Law and Marxism : A General Theory, London, Ink Links, 1978.
26. Pierre BOURDIEU, « La force du droit », op. cit., p. 3-4
27. English version, p. 816.
28. See note 12.
29. Above all in some chapters contained in Pierre BOURDIEU, Choses dites, Paris, Minuit, 1987, especially : « De la règle aux stratégies », « La codification » and « Espace social et pouvoir symbolique »
30. Pierre BOURDIEU, « Habitus, code et codification », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 64, 1986, p. 40-44
31. and Id., « Les juristes, gardiens de l'hypocrisie collective », in François CHAZEL and Jacques COMMAILLE (sous la dir.), Normes juridiques et régulation sociale, Paris, LDGJ, 1991, p. 95-99.
32. In the sociology of law it is important to distinguish between at least two types of approaches. Some authors attempt to integrate law as one aspect of the general explication of the workings of society. This view was adopted by the classical sociological theorists and may be termed sociology of law. The second approach sets itself the task of explicating the law from a sociological perspective. The authors who are mining this vein generally consider themselves to be working in a current that is critical of formalist legal dogma. This second approach can be called sociolegal theory. On this see the classic distinction made by Renato Treves between « sociology in law » and « sociology on law » (Renato TREVES, « Two Sociologies of Law », European Yearbook in Law and Society, 1977)
33. see also Jacques COMMAILLE, « Sociologie juridique », in Denis ALLAND and Stéphane Rials (sous la dir.), Dictionnaire de la culture juridique, Paris, PUF, 2003.
34. See Pierre BOURDIEU, « La force du droit », op. cit., p. 14, footnote 36
35. English version p. 84.
36. Speaking of an article of Bourdieu (Pierre BOURDIEU, « Les juristes, gardiens de l'hypocrisie collective », op. cit.).
37. Pierre BOURDIEU, Choses dites, op. cit., p. 81.
38. Pierre BOURDIEU, Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, précédé de Trois études d'ethnologie kabyle, Genève, Droz, 1972, p. 171.
39. Pierre BOURDIEU, Outline of a Theory of Practice, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
40. According to Ocqueteau and Soubiran-Paillet, in this debate Bourdieu attempts to differentiate his position from those of Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski. For Radcliffe-Brown norms are what ensures order in society, and Malinowski's interest lay in individual choices and the way individuals act to achieve their own interests (Frédéric OCQUETEAU and Francine SOUBIRAN-PAILLET, « Champ juridique, juristes et règle de droit : une sociologie entre disqualification et paradoxe », op. cit.; chapters published in English in Outline of a Theory of Practice).
41. Pierre BOURDIEU, Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, op. cit., p. 175.
42. Jacques BOUVERESSE, « Rules, Dispositions, and the Habitus », in Richard SHUSTERMAN (ed.), Bourdieu : A Critical Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, p. 53.
43. Pierre BOURDIEU, Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, op. cit., p. 25.
44. This of course is particularly clear in those societies in which there is no developed legal order, such as, for example, among the Kabyle people.
45. Pierre BOURDIEU, Choses dites, op. cit., p. 96.
46. Ibid., p. 103.
47. Ibid.
48. Pierre BOURDIEU, « La force du droit », op. cit., p. 3
49. English version p. 816.
50. See Michael MCCANN and Tracy MARCH, « Law and Everyday Forms of Resistance : A Socio- Political Assessment », in Austin SARAT and Susan SILBEY (eds.), Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, London, JAI Press, 1995
51. Michael MCCANN, « Resistance, Reconstruction, and Romance in Legal Scholarship », Law and Society Review, 26 (4), 1992, p. 733-749
52. Boaventura de SOUSA SANTOS, « Oppositional Postmodernism and Globalization », Law and Social Inquiry, 23 (1), 1998, p. 121- 139.
53. On this point, see for instance Jean VAN HOUTTE, « La sociologie du droit ou les limites d'une science », Droit et Société, 3, 1986, p. 171-186.
54. André-Jean ARNAUD, Le droit trahi par la sociologie, Paris, LGDJ, coll. « Droit et Société. Recherches et travaux », 1998
55. Jacques COMMAILLE, « La sociologie du droit en France. Les ambiguïtés d'une spécialisation », Sociologia del diritto, 16 (2), 1989, p. 19-42.
56. R. C. vAN CAENEGEM, Judges, Legislators and Professors : Chapters in European Legal History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 94.
57. Perry ANDERSON, El Estado Absolutista, Madrid, Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1979.
58. A different development took place in America over the course of the 19th century, with the consolidation of the idea that judges make a significant portion of the law. The explanation of this trend had to do with the history of judges in America and their relation to political power. On this point see R. C. van CAENEGEM, Judges, Legislators and Professors, op. cit.
59. On the concept of theoretical presupposition see Jeffrey ALEXANDER, Twenty Lectures, New York, Columbia University Press, 1987.
60. Jacques COMMAILLE, « The Law and Science : Dialectics Between the Prince and the Maidservant », Law and Policy, 10 (2/3), 1983, p. 253-265.
61. See Pierre LASCOUMES, « Le droit comme science sociale. La place de E. Durkheim dans les dé- bats entre juristes et sociologues à la charnière des deux derniers siècles (1870-1914) », in Fran- çois CHAZEL and Jacques COMMAILLE (sous la dir.), Normes juridiques et régulation sociale, Paris, LGDJ, 1991, p. 39-49
62. also Évelyne SERVERIN, Sociologie du droit, Paris, La Découverte, 2000, p. 46, and Michael POLLAK, « La place de Max Weber dans le champ intellectuel français », Droit et Socié- té, 9, 1988, p. 189-203. In the French context the underestimation of Weber's sociology of law lies also in the political opposition between two French sociologists : Raymond Aron - defending Weber's ideas - and Georges Gurvitch drawing upon Durkheimian social theory (Michael POLLAK, « La place de Max Weber dans le champ intellectuel français », op. cit.), the latter being the most important representative of French sociology of law in the mid-twentieth century.
63. I would like to thank Director Jacques Commaille for his invitation to participate in this discussion on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and its implications for the study of law.