Struggle and solidarity: civic republican elementsin Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology

Chad Alan Goldberg

Published online: 28 May 2013# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract Pierre Bourdieu developed a theory of democratic politics that is at least asindebted to civic republicanism as to Marxism. He was familiar with the civicrepublican tradition, and it increasingly influenced both his political interventionsand sociological work, especially late in his career. Bourdieu drew above all onNiccolò Machiavelli’s version of republicanism, though the French republican tradi-tion also influenced him via Durkheimian social theory. Three elements of Bourdieu’swork in particular—his concept of field autonomy, his view of interests and univer-salism, and his understanding of how solidarity is generated and sustained—may beunderstood, at least in part, as sociological reformulations of republican ideas. Bydrawing attention to these republican influences, the article aims to show that theconceptual resources which some critics, including Jeffrey C. Alexander, considerindispensable to an adequate theory of democracy are not entirely absent inBourdieu’s work. On the basis of this reassessment, the article concludes thatBourdieu and Alexander are not as opposed in their thinking about democraticpolitics as it might first appear.

Keywords Civil society.Democracy.Gift . Intellectuals . Public sphere .Universalism

Notwithstanding Pierre Bourdieu’s own vigorous engagement in public affairs(Swartz 2003; Poupeau and Discepolo 2005), which became increasingly visibletoward the end of his career, his political sociology is frequently regarded asinhospitable soil for the theory and practice of democracy. Most notably, JeffreyAlexander (1995, 2006) has argued that Bourdieu’s sociological work lacked threeindispensable elements for an adequate theory of democratic politics: a conception ofcivil society or the public sphere, moral universalism, and solidarity. As Alexander

Theor Soc (2013) 42:369–394DOI 10.1007/s11186-013-9194-z

C. A. Goldberg (*)Department of Sociology, 8128 Sewell Social Sciences Building, University of Wisconsin,1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706-1393, USAe-mail: cgoldber@ssc.wisc.edu

sees it, Bourdieu was “the most impressive living embodiment of a neo-Marxisttradition” that, however much Bourdieu reconstructed it, remains incapable of fullygrasping the workings of democracy (Alexander 1995, p. 128). While Alexanderformulated the most forceful and sustained version of this critique, to which Itherefore devote special attention in the pages that follow, similar assessments havecome from others as well.1

In this article, I seek to reassess the usefulness and uses of Bourdieu’s politicalsociology for democratic theory and practice. I begin by reviewing in greater detailthe major criticisms made of his conception of democratic politics. Next, I qualifythese criticisms, showing that a careful reading of Bourdieu’s work reveals a theory ofdemocratic politics that is at least as indebted to civic republicanism as to Marxism.Bourdieu, of course, did not separate democratic theory and empirical research. Hismajor concepts stemmed from empirical investigations, including major studies ofsocial exclusion (Bourdieu et al. [1993] 1999) and housing policy (Bourdieu [2000]2005) that revealed the threat of neoliberalism to democracy. Conversely, his empir-ical research was shaped by questions and assumptions derived from existing theo-retical traditions in the social sciences. I demonstrate that Bourdieu was wellacquainted with the civic republican tradition and that it increasingly influenced bothhis political interventions and sociological work, especially late in his career. TheFrench republican tradition influenced Bourdieu via Durkheimian social theory, but hedrew above all on Niccolò Machiavelli’s protective version of republicanism. By this,I do not mean the ruthless power-politics with which Machiavelli’s name has becomeassociated, typically in connection with The Prince (Machiavelli 1965, pp. 5–96), butrather the theory of republican liberty he developed in The Discourses (Machiavelli1965, pp. 175–529). To be more precise, I argue that three important elements ofBourdieu’s work—his concept of field autonomy, his view of interests and universal-ism, and his understanding of how solidarity is generated and sustained—may beunderstood, at least in part, as sociological reformulations of republican ideas. Bydrawing attention to the development of these republican elements in Bourdieu’spolitical sociology, I aim to show that the conceptual resources that Alexander andother critics consider indispensable to an adequate theory of democracy and lacking inBourdieu’s work may in fact be found there. On the basis of this reassessment, I arguein the article’s conclusion that Alexander and Bourdieu are not as opposed in theirthinking about democratic politics as it might first appear.

Critical perspectives on Bourdieu’s political sociology

Does Bourdieu’s political sociology provide the basis for a satisfactory understandingof democratic politics? A number of critics and commentators have responded to thisquestion with deep skepticism, the reasons for which generally fall under threeheadings. First, Bourdieu has been faulted for having no conception of civil society

1 Alexander’s work has received criticism as well, particularly in regard to how he conceives the symboliccodes that constitute the discourse of civil society and how he addresses questions of power and economicinequality. These criticisms and Alexander’s rebuttals are beyond the scope of this article. For discussion ofAlexander (2006), see the symposium in the Fall 2007 issue of Sociological Quarterly, Emirbayer (2008),and Sciortino and Kivisto (forthcoming).

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and the public sphere, understood as “an arena of discourse, responsiveness, narra-tion, and interaction… composed by institutions that center on opinion and that are toone degree or another independent vis-à-vis the demands of other spheres”(Alexander 1995, p. 191, see also p. 187). The autonomy or independence of thissphere is the crucial point here, for when Bourdieu did write about public opinion,Alexander suggests, it was primarily as an expression of social hierarchies andvertical power relations. For instance, Bourdieu ([1971] 1993) argued that politicalcompetence is unequally distributed, opinions have unequal social weight dependingon whether and which social forces carry or back them, and public opinion pollsreflect in their very questions the interests of power holders who merely use polls toorganize their political action more effectively. Emirbayer (2010, p. 403), invokingBourdieu’s own declaration that “it is not easy to determine concretely where the stateends and ‘civil society’ begins” (Bourdieu [2000] 2005, p. 163), offers a similarassessment: Bourdieu, he notes, avoided “the idea (and discourse) of civil society....Rarely if ever did he speak in a sustained and systematic way of the civil sphere or ofdemocracy” (see also p. 409, n.26). Although Emirbayer and Schneiderhan (2013)find commonalities in the thinking of Bourdieu and the American pragmatist JohnDewey, and they argue that Bourdieu’s perspective at least tacitly presupposed apublic sphere (p. 155), they too acknowledge that Bourdieu rejected the idea of civilsociety and failed to work out a full-fledged theory of the public sphere as anaccompaniment to the field of power (pp. 153–154). “Focusing on powers,” theyconclude, “he spoke hardly at all of publics” (p. 155).

In Alexander’s view, Bourdieu’s failure to develop an adequate conception of thepublic sphere is closely connected to a second flaw: an absence of moral universalismin his work. No conception of the public sphere is possible unless social agents havethe capacity for moral universalism (Alexander 1995, p. 191). However, according toAlexander, Bourdieu’s sociology takes the form of a relentless hermeneutics ofsuspicion that simply does not allow for a genuine universalism.2 “Writing fromwithin the tradition of ideology-critique, Bourdieu consistently portrays moral uni-versalism as a false and misleading cover for self-interest” (Alexander 2006, pp. 561–562, n.21). Alexander finds, for instance, that “democratic ideas” are exposed inBourdieu’s work as a “means of pursuing strategic ends” (Alexander 2006, p. 40),“social codes” are discredited as “hegemonic vehicles for domination that issue from,and lead back to, the interest of the powerful” (Alexander 2006, pp. 561–562, n.21),and “public struggles on behalf of ‘the people’” are dismissed as “symbolic strategiesdesigned only to profit social movement leaders themselves” (Alexander 1995, p.192; see Bourdieu 1990, pp. 150–155). Unable to recognize the nonstrategic elementsin social life, he argues, Bourdieu lacks the conceptual means to explain how a goodsociety could emerge (Alexander 1995, p. 193).

Alexander is not alone in questioning whether a democratic commitment to thepublic good is possible on the basis of Bourdieu’s theory of social action. Honneth(1995), for instance, concurs that “Bourdieu … remains a Marxist” (p. 184) with adecidedly utilitarian conception of action, albeit one in which the calculus of utility

2 The hermeneutics of suspicion refers to a mode of interpretation that aims to uncover disguised or hiddenmeanings, including in its Marxian version the concealment of self-interest in the guise of the universal orgeneral interest (Ricoeur [1969] 1974).

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operates on an unconscious level: “Bourdieu … analytically puts symbolic practiceson the same level as economic practices, so that the former can be interpreted asstrategies in the competition for prestige or standing in the social hierarchy” (p. 186).As a result of this utilitarian framework, Honneth contends, Bourdieu erroneouslyreduces all types of social conflict—even struggles for recognition, which follow adifferent logic—to struggles over distribution (p. 200). More recently, Emirbayer andSchneiderhan (2013) have suggested that Bourdieu’s sociology rests not so much on autilitarian model of action as a habitual model that emphasizes the “iterationalmoment of agency” oriented toward the past (pp. 150–151; see also Emirbayer andMische 1998). They suggest that a greater emphasis on the projective moment ofagency—the capacity to envision and pursue “alternative possible futures”(p. 151)—would bring the “emancipatory and democratic possibilities” of socialaction into sharper focus (p. 150). In this way, they aim to restore an essential componentof democratic citizenship that Alexander and other critics contend is largely missing inBourdieu’s political sociology: the pragmatist mobilization of collective intelligence andcommunity resources to solve problems and to collaboratively produce public goods or,to put it differently, power in the Parsonsian sense of a capacity to mobilize the resourcesof a society for the attainment of collective goals.3

Third and finally, Alexander argues that Bourdieu’s unrelenting emphasis onstruggles for domination and competition for material and symbolic profits leaveslittle room for cross-class or “trans-sectional” civil solidarity (Alexander 2006, pp.38, 187, 561–562, n.21). Bourdieu, he maintains, focuses almost entirely on verticalsocial ties and appears to discount the possibility of social ties that bind agentstogether in a horizontal manner (Alexander 2006, p. 40). Likewise, Emirbayer andSchneiderhan (2013, p. 141) find that Bourdieu “said little about the alternativemodes of civil association through which societal or institutional power might becontested.” Instead, his sociological work seems to emphasize the difficulties ofdoing so: the continued hereditary transmission of social privilege and the reproduc-tion of class domination even in purportedly democratic and meritocratic societies(Bourdieu and Passeron [1964] 1979, [1970] 1977; Bourdieu [1989] 1996); thedepoliticizing effects and power of the mass media and journalism (Bourdieu[1996] 1998, 2010, pp. 1–81); and the twin risks to social agents of demobilizationby the atomistic and aggregative mode of producing public opinion or dispossessionby the corporatist mode that operates through delegation (Bourdieu 1991a, [2001]2005, [2002] 2008, pp. 57–59; Champagne 2005; Poupeau and Discepolo 2005,pp. 69–72; Wacquant 2005, pp. 14, 16). In the end, Alexander (1995, p. 187)concludes, we are left with “an image of a vertical society, of society equated withstratification, with struggles dictated by scarcity and regulated by the egoism ofsupply and demand” (Alexander 1995, p. 187). Without horizontal solidary bonds,Alexander insists, democracy, possibilities for civil repair, and opportunities forsocial inclusion are inconceivable.

3 Although Emirbayer and Schneiderhan (2013) find that Bourdieu’s conception of social action is toolimited, this limitation does not in their view preclude the possibility of social action with universalisticconsequences: “The dynamic [Bourdieu] identified, one he might well have termed … the universalitymechanism, was one in which actors in various fields all invoke disinterestedness and universalistic idealsas part of their own strategies for advancement” (p. 154). In this respect, their criticism of Bourdieu is not asfar-reaching as Alexander’s. See below on the universality mechanism.

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Even when theorists have turned to Bourdieu’s work to address weaknesses incontemporary democratic theory, they have suggested that it fails to articulate dem-ocratic solutions to the problems it identifies and therefore must itself besupplemented by democratic theory drawn from other sources (Lee 1998).Emirbayer and Schneiderhan (2013, p. 133) point out that others, going further, seein Bourdieu’s work not only a dearth of democratic solutions but “a gloomy com-pendium of all the forces and dynamics that make democracy impossible.” Evensome of Bourdieu’s staunchest promoters echo this assessment. Topper (2001), forinstance, suggests that the value of Bourdieu’s political sociology lies precisely in itsillumination of “vexing problems of democratic theory and practice” (p. 31) by which“democratic ideals of equal opportunity, access and participation are deeplyundermined” (p. 48). Similarly, Champagne (2005, p. 111) contends that that ratherthan serving as a “naive defender” of democracy, Bourdieu was intent on “uncoveringthe… social obstacles to its accomplishment.” By reducing sociology to this impulseto debunk, Alexander (2006, p. 39) argues, Bourdieu placed himself squarely in the“tradition of Thrasymachus,” the notorious champion of power politics in Plato’sRepublic who maintained that justice is the interest of the stronger (see Plato 2000,pp. 13–36). According to this tradition, democracy is merely “the product of a trucebetween conflict groups that have achieved relative but temporary parity” (Alexander2006, pp. 39–40). While acknowledging that the tradition of Thrasymachus providesan important corrective to ideological naïveté and simplistic theorizing, Alexanderrightly argues that it is insufficient to fully understand democratic politics.

Republican elements in Bourdieu’s political sociology

As the previous discussion makes clear, Alexander is by no means alone in readingBourdieu as a sociologist of domination, discord, and self-interest. However, suchreadings miss the extent to which Bourdieu’s political sociology was indebted to andincreasingly informed by the political vision of civic republicanism. This traditionemphasized popular sovereignty and self-governance over heteronomy, an ethos ofcivic virtue over self-interest, and the priority of the common or public good over whatis good for a faction of the political community or for the individual (Smith 1999, pp.507–508, n.5; see also Held 2006, pp. 29–55). Over time, the republican traditiondeveloped two distinct strands: a protective version, exemplified by the work ofMachiavelli and Montesquieu, which stressed the instrumental importance of citizens’political participation for their own protection, and a developmental version, exempli-fied by the work of Rousseau, which stressed the intrinsic value of political participationfor citizens’ self-development (Held 2006, pp. 35–36). Although Bourdieu was closer tothe protective version, his references to Machiavelli (see below), Montesquieu (e.g.,Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 103; Bourdieu [2002] 2008, pp. 60, 230, 381), and Rousseau(e.g., Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 66; Bourdieu [2001] 2005, p. 60) show that he wasfamiliar with both strands of the republican tradition. In addition, Bourdieu was familiarwith Émile Durkheim’s treatment of Montesquieu and Rousseau as precursors ofsociology (Durkheim 1960; cited in Bourdieu [1972] 1977, p. 237, n.45).

Bourdieu was not only well versed in the intellectual history of civic republicanismand its links to Durkheimian sociology; he also repeatedly invoked republican ideals

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in his speeches, interviews, and other public interventions, particularly from the mid-1990s onward (Bourdieu 1998, [2001] 2003). These works are replete with republi-can language, including references to the “public interest [l’intérêt public]” (Bourdieu1998, pp. 2, 6, 8), “civic virtue [la vertu civile]” (Bourdieu 1998, p. 4; Bourdieu1991b, p. 661; Bourdieu [2002] 2008, pp. 188–90), and solidarity (Bourdieu 1998,pp. 27, 67, 98; Bourdieu [2002] 2008, passim). He decried, for example, thesubstitution of the consumer for the citizen in contemporary French society, and helamented that the “state nobility… has made the public good a private good, has madethe ‘public thing,’ res publica, the Republic, its own thing” (Bourdieu 1998, p. 25).4

Civic corruption notwithstanding, Bourdieu frequently characterized the state in thesewritings not as a structure of domination or an instrument of class interest but inrepublican terms as the “official guarantor” of “everything that pertains to the order ofthe universal—that is, to the general interest” (Bourdieu and Haacke [1994] 1995, p. 72)and the “the repository of all the universal ideas associated with the idea of the public”(Bourdieu 1998, p. 102, emphasis in the original). He castigated neoliberalism forundermining and eroding this “Hegelian-Durkheimian view of the state as a collectiveauthority with a responsibility to act as the collective will and consciousness, and a dutyto make decisions in keeping with the general interest and contribute to promotinggreater solidarity” (Bourdieu [2000] 2005, p. 11). Elsewhere he associated these sameuniversalistic ideas with the intellectual field, which he referred to as “the republic ofartists, writers, and scientists” (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 661; see also Gartman 2007, pp.405–410). While these republican ideals seem to lack a single fixed locus in Bourdieu’swriting, his commitment to them nevertheless seems clear.5

Of course, as Alexander (1995, p. 190) points out, it is one thing to embodyuniversalistic ideals in practice and another to account for them theoretically. CanBourdieu’s scholarly work explain in a sociological way how his own politicalcommitments are possible? While his political interventions unabashedly invokedrepublican ideals, he adopted a more complicated stance toward the republican

4 State nobility is Bourdieu’s term for the corps of public officials that contributed historically to theformation of the modern state and, as part of that process, its own formation as the holder of a legitimatemonopoly on state power. The authority and legitimacy of this corps rests on the academic qualifications(and thus the cultural capital) of its members (Bourdieu [1989] 1996).5 Bourdieu (2010, p. 111) came to view the state as an “ambiguous reality.” On the one hand, the state “canbe described and treated as a relay, no doubt a relatively autonomous one, of economic and political powerswhich have little interest in universal interests” (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 127). As such, he acknowledged,the state itself is a potential threat to the autonomy of cultural production. It would be interesting to compareBourdieu on this point to Alexis de Tocqueville, who regarded both the state and the market as potentialthreats to political society. On the other hand, the state can also be treated as “a neutral body which, becauseit conserves, within its very structure, the traces of previous struggles, the gains of which it records andguarantees, is capable of acting as a kind of umpire, no doubt always somewhat biased, but ultimately lessunfavorable to the interests of the dominated, and to what can be called justice, than what is exalted, underthe false colours of liberty and liberalism, by the advocates of ‘laissez-faire,’ in other words the brutal andtyrannical exercise of economic force” (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 127). As such, the state can provideresources that furnish cultural producers (and the working class) with greater autonomy from the market.Perhaps because Bourdieu regarded the state as less dangerous than the market at this historical juncture, heseemed to envision a sort of alliance of the state (or at least certain parts of it) with cultural producers,popular movements, and trade unions against the market. But ultimately, Bourdieu suggested, “it is only byreinforcing both state assistance [for cultural production] and [producers’] controls on the uses of thatassistance… that we can practically escape the alternative of statism and liberalism” (Bourdieu and Haacke[1994] 1995, p. 73).

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tradition in his scholarship. On the one hand, he was critical of republicanism(particularly its French variant) in certain respects. For instance, he spoke unfavor-ably about “the brutally integrative vision of the republican tradition” (Bourdieu[1994] 1998, p. 46), and he challenged what he called the “republican cult of the‘school as liberating force’” (Bourdieu [1989] 1996, p. 373) by uncovering the role ofthe educational system in class reproduction. On the other hand, a growing body ofscholarship has shown that republicanism influenced his sociological work, especial-ly the work he produced toward the end of his career, no less than his practical andpolitical work. Vincent (2004, p. 135) finds that Bourdieu’s “‘pessimistic’ conceptionof the social world … reveals a contrapuntal ideal of liberty in the republic.”Similarly, Yair (2009, p. 48) argues that Bourdieu’s “vehement critique of modernsociety as the re-incarnation of the ancien régime reflects his allegiance to therepublican values of the Revolution.” Likewise, Lane (1999, p. 459) suggests that“the tendency to locate Bourdieu’s work… within a Marxist or marxisant tradition…has overlooked the central importance of Durkheimian social theory and, by exten-sion, of a classically French republican political vision to Bourdieu’s thinking,”especially as it pertains to education (see also Lane 2006, pp. 11–35, 87–88). Thisaspect of Bourdieu’s thinking, while especially prominent in his later work andpolitical interventions, is not a return to ideals and institutions that his earlier workshad previously debunked and rejected (Lane 1999, p. 458). Rather, his earlier workson education both invoked and disavowed republican thinking at the same time (Lane1999, p. 467). Bourdieu’s relationship to republicanism became less equivocal fromthe late 1980s onwards, a development that Lane (1999, pp. 468–469) views “as asort of ‘return of the repressed’; the disavowed or repressed core of republicanism,which had run through all of Bourdieu’s work, has now returned to the surface as adefence against … ‘l'invasion néo-libérale.’”6

Building upon and extending these assessments, I argue that Bourdieu’s occasionalcriticisms of republicanism did not prevent him from drawing upon republicaninsights into the social bases of civic liberty, universalism, and solidarity. To be moreprecise, his accounts of how field autonomy limits the “reign of the market,” howsocial agents can acquire an interest in the universal, and how gift exchange andcommon threats can generate solidarity may be understood as sociologicalreformulations of republican ideas. In this manner, Bourdieu did indeed provide atheoretical account of his political commitments. As with other theoretical traditionsthat Bourdieu encountered, he took from republicanism what was most useful for hispurposes without being rigidly bound by the tradition as a whole.

Field autonomy as civic liberty

Bourdieu’s theory of fields rests on the premise that the social world becomes progres-sively differentiated over time: “The evolution of societies tends to make universes(which I call fields) emerge which are autonomous and have their own laws … whichevaluate what is done in them, the stakes at play, according to principles and criteria that

6 This reading of Bourdieu is also indebted to Weintraub’s (1990, chap. 2, p. 32) thesis that the impact ofthe republican virtue tradition on sociology has been “profound and fundamental” but “not fullyrecognized.”

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are irreducible to those of other universes” (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, pp. 83–84). In otherwords, field autonomy implies the separation of art, literature, science, and otheractivities from economic and political power, and the ability of agents within thosefields of activity to establish their own distinctive norms and standards (Bourdieu 1998,p. 76; Bourdieu [2001] 2003, pp. 66–67). Artists, for example, are autonomous insofaras they orient their work to standards of aesthetic excellence that are specific to theartistic field rather than standards of value imposed from outside. In his historical studyof the French literary field, Bourdieu ([1992] 1996, pp. 47–173) showed how GustaveFlaubert and others asserted this kind of autonomy when they championed “art for art’ssake,” admitting no other judgment than that of their peers, in opposition to demandsthat literature fulfil a commercial or political function. Bourdieu (1991b, p. 662) stressedthat such autonomy is difficult to establish, an ideal that one can only “hope toapproach,” especially as one moves “from those fields, such as mathematics and purepoetry, in which no directly social ‘interests’ are at stake,” to “such fields as the socialsciences, where matters of great social importance are at stake.” Nevertheless, it is clearthat he saw autonomy in the field of cultural production as a valuable ideal that iscapable of being at least partially realized.

Given this characterization of fields as realms of activity whose autonomy is avaluable but fragile achievement, it is perhaps not too much of a stretch to comparethem to the republican city-states or corporate bodies of an earlier era which wrestedthe right to manage their own affairs without external interference. Indeed,Bourdieu’s (1991b, p. 661) references to the field of cultural production as the“republic of artists, writers, and scientists” lend credibility to this comparison. Ifthe intellectual field can indeed be seen as a little republic, then its autonomy isanalogous to the civic liberty that the republican tradition prized so highly, under-stood (borrowing Rousseau’s formulation) as obedience to a law that we prescribe toourselves (Rousseau 1997, p. 54). From this perspective, a free people is subject to itsown laws rather than to external servitude.7

This analogy can be developed further on the basis of Bourdieu’s explicit refer-ences to Machiavelli. By the early 1990s, Bourdieu conceived the role of modernintellectuals in terms of what he called a transposition of the “Machiavellian vision”(Bourdieu 1991b, p. 661). While Bourdieu specifically had in mind Machiavelli’sunderstanding of the relationship between virtue and interests—a theme to which Iturn below—it is evident that Bourdieu transposed other elements of Machiavelli’s

7 Cf. Durkheim ([1893] 1984, p. 320): “liberty itself is the product of regulation.” In his view, theunregulated market did not bring liberty for all, but what he called “the law of the strongest,” thedomination of the weak by the powerful (pp. xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxix), and the only alternative was a systemof social and moral regulation that came from society as a whole (not a particular class or faction), wasbinding on everyone, and was accepted by everyone in part because it had a rational basis. This may be readas a sociological reformulation of the republican notion that civic or political liberty is indispensable forpersonal or individual liberty (Skinner 2002, pp. 186–212). Neoliberalism, in contrast, tends to defineliberty exclusively in personal or individual terms. Bourdieu’s fear about the loss of autonomy for culturalproducers today brings to mind Alexis de Tocqueville’s lament about the fate of corporate bodies twocenturies earlier: “there was in France no township, borough, village, or hamlet, however small, no hospital,factory, convent, or college which had a right to manage its own affairs as it thought fit or to administer itspossessions without interference. Then, as today, the central power held all Frenchmen in tutelage”(Tocqueville [1856] 1955, p. 51).

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vision as well, including his linkage of civic liberty to popular mobilization andcollective struggle.

Machiavelli, like Bourdieu, considered struggle, competition, and stratification tobe inevitable and endemic in the social world, even in republics. However, in contrastto many of his contemporaries, he did not assume that such discord was necessarilyfatal to civic liberty (Skinner 1981, p. 66). On the contrary, he understood civicliberty to be the product of struggle against internal and external threats. Withinrepublics, social agents invariably arose who promoted heteronomy. Machiavelli(1965, pp. 235–236) noted, for instance, the threat posed to Rome by the “sons ofBrutus” who, because they had “profited from the tyrannical government” over-thrown by their father, were subsequently “led to conspire against their native city.”8

In light of these considerations, Machiavelli considered conflict within a republic tobe potentially beneficial because it was a means whereby a republic could safeguardits liberty and even improve its institutions (Skinner 1981, pp. 65–67; Skinner 2002,pp. 179–180; Weintraub 1990, chap. 4, p. 28). Machiavelli pointed to the Romanrepublic as an instance of this dynamic: its social conflicts, though intense andturbulent, produced “laws and institutions conducive to public liberty” (Machiavelli1965, p. 203; see also pp. 195–201, 202–4; Weintraub 1990, chap. 4, p. 26).

Bourdieu understood field autonomy in a similar fashion as the product ofstruggle. Within fields, as in republics, agents struggle and compete to accumulateand monopolize different kinds of resources, which Bourdieu termed capital.Especially pertinent in this context is the competition that arises within the field ofcultural production between the most autonomous agents, who are oriented to thefield’s internal criteria and standards, and heteronomous intellectuals, who draw onoutside alliances and resources (book sales, media publicity, etc.) to compensate fortheir “inferiority from the point of view of the rules of the field” (Bourdieu 1991b, pp.662–663; see also Bourdieu and Haacke [1994] 1995). Like Julius Caesar and otherambitious citizens who used their military commands or personal wealth to acquirepersonal power at the expense of their city’s freedom (Skinner 1981, pp. 57, 67–73;Skinner 2002, pp. 175–176), these heteronomous agents seek to overturn for personalprofit the power relations inside the field of cultural production. “The struggle forautonomy is thus, first of all, a struggle against the institutions and agents which,inside the field, introduce dependence upon external economic, political, or religiouspowers…. It is through them that the law (nomos) of another field displaces thespecific law of the field of cultural production” (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 663). For thisreason, Bourdieu (1998, p. 76) described heteronomous intellectuals as “entering intocomplicity and collaboration with the forces which threaten to destroy the very basesof their existence and their freedom.”9

8 Machiavelli’s reference is to Lucius Junius Brutus, founder of the Roman republic, not the better knownMarcus Junius Brutus, who participated in the assassination of Julius Caesar.9 For a discussion of field autonomy, the market, and the public sphere that is more critical of Bourdieu, seeLane (2006, pp. 120–140). For another perspective on the formation of publics, see Mische (2007). Her worksuggests the possibility that field bridgers are not simply a threat to the autonomy of the field and the purity of itsinternal logic, as Bourdieu’s work might lead one to conclude, but also a source of new insight and ideas,organizational innovation and hybridization, and transectoral coalition-building. An extended discussion of thisquestion is beyond the scope of this article; I will merely suggest here that it may be possible and useful todistinguish field bridging from the imposition of commercial and political standards of value.

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As these remarks suggest, a republic must be prepared to defend its autonomyfrom external as well as internal threats. Assuming that all republics and principalitiesexist in a state of hostile competition, Machiavelli concluded that the best defenseagainst external threats was an aggressive offense: by means of an expansionistpolicy, one’s own city-state “can both defend herself from those who assail her andcrush whoever opposes himself to her greatness” (Machiavelli 1965, p. 194; see alsoSkinner 1981, p. 73). In other words, if a republic wishes to preserve its liberty, itmust be able to conquer other polities instead of being subjugated by them; its“virtue”—the quality that allows it to actively control and shape its own destinyrather than being subject to the domination of others—is thus at odds with theirs(Weintraub 1990, chap. 4, p. 22).

Like the autonomy of self-governing cities, the autonomy of intellectual life is alsothreatened by external powers—most notably, in the present, by the state and the market.Through censorship or Zhdanovism, on the one hand, or the substitution of commercialcriteria for all others, on the other hand, state and market alike can jeopardize the capacityof cultural producers to evaluate themselves according to their own criteria. The result is aloss of liberty: “tyranny”may be understood, Bourdieu ([1989] 1996, p. 389) suggested,“after themanner of Pascal, as the infringement of one order upon the rights of another, ormore precisely, as the intrusion of the forms of power associated with one field in thefunctioning of the other” (see also Bourdieu [1997] 2000, pp. 103–104). In the contem-porary context of neoliberalism, it is the “world of money” that Bourdieu (1991b, p. 663)found to be the greater danger to the autonomy of cultural producers. Their “conquests offreedom,” he warned, are threatened “not only by colonels, dictators andmafias,” but “bymore insidious forces, those of the market” (Bourdieu 1998, p. 76). The “hard-wonindependence of cultural production and circulation from the necessities of the economyis being threatened, in its very principle, by the intrusion of commercial logic at everystage of the production and circulation of goods” (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, pp. 66–67; cf.Bourdieu 1998, p. 76; Bourdieu and Haacke [1994] 1995).

In the face of this renewed threat from neoliberalism to the autonomy of culturalproducers, Bourdieu (1998, p. 37) viewed “the battles and sacrifices of writers, artistsand scientists” as a continuing necessity. Moreover, he insisted in Machiavellianfashion that the best defense is a good offense. Intellectuals must strive not merely toprotect the autonomy of their own field, but to extend “the logic of intellectual life,that of argument and refutation, … to public life”; this would amount to a reversal ofthe present state of affairs in which political logic intrudes into intellectual life(Bourdieu 1998, p. 9). Indeed, Bourdieu (1991b) eventually came to define the roleof modern intellectuals in terms of this twofold task of protecting the republic ofartists, writers, and scientists and extending its influence. During the Dreyfus Affair,when modern intellectuals emerged as such for the first time, they were “not contentwith merely renouncing mercenary and commercial ends within the limits of theirown upside-down world”; they also struggled to “disperse throughout the wholesocial world,” including the political world, the “anti-values” of “ethical and scien-tific universalism” that prevailed in their own world (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 658; seealso Bourdieu [1992] 1996, pp. 129–131; Bourdieu 2010, pp. 71–72). Of course,Bourdieu was not under the delusion that an empire of intellectuals might conquer therest of the social world, but his insistence that intellectuals must extend their influencein order to protect their own autonomy clearly follows Machiavelli’s line of

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reasoning. Only by projecting their values abroad, Bourdieu insisted, can intellectualseffectively secure them at home.

I have focused on Bourdieu’s republic of artists, writers, and scientists to uncover theMachiavellian themes in his thinking because this is where his concerns about civicliberty are most clearly apparent. However, it would be a mistake to assume thatBourdieu was concerned with the autonomy of cultural producers alone. Rather, hisanalysis of field autonomy provides a way of thinking about the dangers that neoliber-alism poses to civic liberty more broadly. Other fields of social activity—including thepolitical field itself (Bourdieu 2010, pp. 57, 73)—are also capable of achieving a degreeof autonomy that is similarly endangered by the imposition of market logic. WhatBourdieu found objectionable about the “reign of the market” is not merely its tendencyto corrupt social agents (a longstanding motif in republican thought), or even the classdomination and exploitation that invariably follow in its train, but the way it “forbidsresponsibility and mobilization by canceling out politics and imposing a whole set ofunquestioned ends—maximum growth, competitiveness, productivity” (Bourdieu1998, p. 50, emphasis added; cf. Bourdieu 1998, p. 68; Bourdieu [2001] 2003,pp. 38–52; Bourdieu [2002] 2008, p. 379). Market pressures thus forestall “the demo-cratic expression of enlightened collective opinion or public rationality” (Bourdieu2010, pp. 60–61). Clearly politics in this context means (or at least can mean) somethingmore than domination and conflict. Instead, politics seems to mean the capacity ofcitizens to choose their own ends and control their own lives collectively, to master theseemingly uncontrollable and unpredictable forces that threaten them instead of beingmastered by those forces. This is a republican conception of politics that Machiavelliwould have readily understood.

Of course, even if field autonomy makes possible something like politics in therepublican sense of the term, it might still be objected that social agents do not allpossess to the same degree the dispositions and resources (cultural as well aseconomic) needed to participate actively in politics. Bourdieu did indeed emphasizethe unequal distribution of political competence—the competence, social as well astechnical, to form political opinions and engage in political expression in the publicsphere—and he explicitly criticized theories of the public sphere for presupposingthis competence among citizens while ignoring unequal access to the economic andsocial conditions on which it depends (Bourdieu [1971] 1993, [1979] 1984, pp. 397–465; Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 136; Bourdieu [1997] 2000, pp. 65–73; Bourdieu[2001] 2005; Champagne 2005, pp. 112–16; Poupeau and Discepolo 2005, pp. 69–72; Wacquant 2005, pp. 14, 19–20). To shut one’s eyes to how social inequalityprevents the dominated from reaching their full potential, he pointed out, is to affirm“everyone’s equal right to personal opinion without giving everyone the real means ofrealizing this formally universal right” (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 69). But this point,far from dismissing the possibility of civic or political liberty in the public sphere, issquarely in line with centuries of republican political thought. In contrast to liberalism(and later neoliberalism), for which politics is a relatively minimal affair, republican-ism always demanded a more active citizenry, and it was therefore more concernedabout the qualities (habits or mores) that citizens needed to participate in self-rule,who had them, and how they could be acquired or lost. The republican traditionlinked these qualities, in turn, to social and economic conditions, including occupa-tion: work that was repetitive, trivial, and directed by another degraded the worker’s

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physical, mental, and civic virtues and thus made him unfit for citizenship, whileconversely individuals who were economically independent (typically by virtue ofowning some small property of their own), directed their own labor, exercisedindependent judgment, and shared a rough equality of economic condition madethe best citizens (Sinyai 2006, pp. 2–8).

This aspect of the republican tradition always had ambiguous implications: it couldbe invoked to justify either restriction of citizenship to those who were socially andeconomically qualified or a wider distribution of property (or its functional equiva-lent) to qualify more people for citizenship. Bourdieu clearly rejected the firstalternative in favor of the second: his point was not that inequality makes universalparticipation in politics impossible, but that democracy requires an “ethical orpolitical program” to “universalize the conditions of access to universality”(Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 137, emphasis in the original; cf. Bourdieu [1997] 2000,p. 80). Envisioning and advocating such a program took Bourdieu beyond the one-sided hermeneutics of suspicion that is so often attributed to him and from which hetook pains late in his career to distinguish himself: “One has to make the same refusal,both to the advocates of an abstract universalism which ignores the conditions ofaccess to the universal … and to the advocates of a cynical, disenchanted relativism”(Bourdieu [1997] 2000, pp. 70–71). While criticizing abstract universalism forlegitimizing, despite the best of intentions, “the prevailing distribution of powersand privileges,” Bourdieu also rejected the dismissive “relativism which regards alluniversalistic manifestos as pharisaical tricks intended to perpetuate a hegemony” as“another way,” despite its seeming radicalism, “of accepting things as they are”(Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 71). Thus, his rejection of abstract universalism did notmean that he embraced relativism. Instead, he insisted, a third way is possible: “Thereis… no contradiction in fighting at the same time against the mystificatory hypocrisyof abstract universalism and for universal access to the conditions of access to theuniversal” (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 71, emphasis in the original).10

A Machiavellian vision of moral universalism

The affinity between Machiavelli and Bourdieu goes further, for the two of themfaced a similar problem. The defense of civic liberty appears to depend upon thesubordination of private ambition to the common good, not only because self-interestmay lead agents to promote heteronomy, but also because effective defense againstexternal threats would seem to require collective effort (see below for a discussion ofsolidarity). But in a social world constituted by competitive struggle among self-interested agents, how do such agents avoid putting the bases of their freedom injeopardy? To put it differently, if the entire social world looks like civil society in theMarxian sense of the term, how can one ever expect the bourgeois to act like acitoyen? This raises the problem of the relationship between interest and virtue.

10 Bourdieu’s references in this context to the “anthropological possibilities” or “capabilities” possessed byall human beings might seem to suggest a foundation for solidarity and universalism in human nature(Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 136). However, Bourdieu ([1997] 2000, p. 126) explicitly rejected this inference:“reason is not rooted in an ahistorical nature.” Anthropological potentialities depend on definite social,economic, and historical conditions for their realization (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 136; Bourdieu [1997]2000, p. 126). Accordingly, Bourdieu concentrated on those conditions. This article follows suit.

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Historically, there have been three main responses to this problem in Western politicalthought (Weintraub 1979, p. 158): The first response holds that no transformation ofthe bourgeois into citoyen is necessary because interest can substitute for virtue; in itsmost uncompromising form, this position denies the existence of a common good,leaving only the possibility of the mutual adjustment and balancing of particularinterests. A second and opposing position is that virtue must be based on somethingother than interest, such as civil religion. Lastly, according to a third position, it ispossible to transform interest into virtue. Following Machiavelli, Bourdieu adopts thelast solution.11

Machiavelli’s own formulation of this solution is laid out in The Discourses.Unwilling to abandon either his pessimistic assumptions about human nature or thenotion that virtue is indispensable for liberty, Machiavelli argued that citizens can besocially organized in such a way as to channel their self-interest and private vices towardpublic ends (Skinner 1981, p. 61). As Quentin Skinner (2002, pp. 177–178) puts it, “thelaw can be used to coerce and direct us in such a way that even if we continue to actsolely out of a corrupt desire to further our own individual or factional advantage, ourmotivations may be capable of being harnessed to serve the common good....”

Machiavelli assumes that we shall retain our selfish patterns of motivation andin consequence our self-destructive proclivities. All that happens is that, al-though our reasons for action remain self-interested, our actions have conse-quences which, although not intended, are such as to promote the publicinterest. We are thereby enabled, by means of the coercive powers of the law,to attain the freedom we actually desire and to avoid the conditions of domi-nation and servitude that our unconstrained behaviour would otherwiseproduce.

Machiavelli provides, as an example of this phenomenon, the mixed constitutionof the Roman republic, which channeled the self-interest of opposing social classestoward the promotion of public liberty and the public interest (Machiavelli 1965, pp.195–201, 202–4; Skinner 1981, p. 66; Skinner 2002, pp. 179–180). Another exampleadduced by Machiavelli is the use of religious oaths by Scipio Africanus during thesecond Punic War, which harnessed a self-interested fear of divine punishment to thedefense of civic liberty (Machiavelli 1965, p. 224; Skinner 1981, pp. 62–63; Skinner2002, pp. 180–184). The key to achieving this transmutation of interest into virtue isthe creation of “a context in which personal ambition and desire for distinction—taken for granted by Machiavelli—are directed toward winning fame and glory in thepublic service and thus become useful rather than harmful to the public good”(Weintraub 1990, chap. 4, p. 17).

11 I am indebted to Vincent (2004, p. 137) for this point, which I enlarge upon here. Machiavelli actuallyrelied on a combination of the second and third positions, for he also emphasized the role of civil religion inmaintaining liberty (Machiavelli 1965, pp. 223–34; Skinner 1981, pp. 61–64; Skinner 2002, pp. 172–173;Weintraub 1990, chap. 4, pp. 18–19). Civil religion is an element of the Machiavellian vision that Bourdieu,despite occasional references to it (e.g., Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 125), did not transpose into his politicalsociology. Bourdieu increasingly used the terms illusio or libido instead of interest to signal that self-interested behavior presupposed tacit agreement about the worth of the game (the field of struggle) and itsstakes. In this way, he sought to distance himself from the utilitarianism that critics ascribed to him.However, this kind of tacit agreement does not ensure virtuous behavior; to explain the latter, Bourdieu(like Machiavelli) had to postulate the historical development of an interest in the universal.

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Bourdieu developed a conception of the relationship between interest and virtueexplicitly modeled on Machiavelli’s conception. “Machiavelli says that the republic isa universe in which citizens have an interest in virtue,” he noted (Bourdieu [1994]1998, p. 89). In the same manner, fields may be structured in such a way that theagents within them have an “interest in the universal” and satisfy their particularinterests when they contribute to “producing the universal” (Bourdieu 1990, p. 31;see also Bourdieu [1989] 1996, p. 389; Bourdieu [1997] 2000, pp. 93–127; Bourdieu[1994] 1998, pp. 138–145; Bourdieu [2002] 2008, p. 203; Poupeau and Discepolo2005, pp. 74–75; Wacquant 2005, p. 17; Gartman 2007, pp. 401–410).12 As a result,virtuous behavior is practiced widely and with some degree of regularity, not byexceptionally virtuous individuals who are somehow able to rise above unfavorablecircumstances (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, pp. 87–88). Viewed from this perspective,reason and the forms of communication through which truth is produced are them-selves products of historical conditions that must be continually defended andmaintained (Bourdieu 1990, pp. 31–32). “Transposing the Machiavellian vision,”Bourdieu (1991b, p. 661) explains, “one has to work incessantly … at establishing arepublic of artists and scientists, the members of which would have an interest inreason, in disinterestedness, in truth.” To the degree that the scientific field isautonomous, it is a case in point. Scientists, like other social agents, engage instruggles for domination, but they must use reason in order to prevail within theirfield. “Without producing or requiring supermen inspired by motivations radicallydifferent from those of ordinary people, it produces and encourages, by its own logic,and outside any normative imposition, particular forms of communication, such ascompetitive discussion, critical dialogue and so on, which tend in fact to favour theaccumulation and control of knowledge” (Bourdieu 1990, p. 32, emphasis added). Itis in this sense that the scientific field is a space of “regulated competition” (Bourdieu[1997] 2000, p. 126) or “regulated struggle” (Bourdieu [2001] 2004, pp. 62–71). Ofcourse, fields that thus reward the universal also make possible the domination ofthose who most successfully align themselves with it; in this way, they enabledomination and create a basis for it (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, pp. 88–91).Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to see the universalism of these fields as a merefig leaf for self-interest and domination. To do so is to misunderstand theMachiavellian vision that Bourdieu sought to transpose, for these fields simultaneous-ly constrain power insofar as domination accrues from and depends upon agents’dispositions for and practice of disinterested universalism.

As in the previous discussion of field autonomy, I have again focused on the worldof cultural production to uncover the republican and, more precisely, Machiavellianthemes in Bourdieu’s thinking because this is where they are most explicit. However,it is important to add that Bourdieu did not intend to confine the possibility of moraluniversalism to the field of cultural production. Agents can develop an interest in the

12 This thesis brings to mind not only Machiavelli, but also Marx’s notion of the proletariat as a universalclass (a concept derived, in turn, from Hegel, who had applied it to civil servants). However, in Bourdieu’sformulation an interest in the universal is not the property of a specific class; rather, it is a property of fields,or, more precisely, of the immanent logic and social mechanisms of the field that compel its participants tosublimate their drives. Intellectuals “are not representatives of universality, still less a ‘universal class,’ butit does happen that, for historical reasons, they are often interested in universality” (Bourdieu [2002] 2008,pp. 131–32). For a critical discussion of Bourdieu’s universalism, see Lane (2006, pp. 141–161).

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universal outside of the intellectual field in the broader social world as well. Forexample, one also finds an interest in the universal within the bureaucratic andjuridical fields, which, notwithstanding discrepancies between official norms andactual practice, exerts “very real effects” upon state functionaries (Bourdieu 1994,p. 17). This class propagated the “the idea of the ‘public,’ ‘common welfare,’ and‘public service’” in order to prevail in their historical struggles with other groups, but“they cannot make use of the state they claim to serve unless they also serve, howeverslightly, the universal values with which they identify it” (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, pp.23–24; see also Bourdieu [1989] 1996, pp. 371–389; Bourdieu [1997] 2005). In otherwords, the state nobility obtains a “monopoly of the universal” only “at the cost of asubmission … to the universal” (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 59).13 In addition to thestate nobility—particularly the petite state nobility associated with the state’s “lefthand”14—Bourdieu (1998, p. 104) pointed to trade unions as social forces that,“under the appearance of simply defending a vanishing order and the corresponding‘privileges’ (which is what they will be accused of), will in fact, to withstand thepressure [of neo-liberalism], have to work to invent and construct a social orderwhich is not governed solely by the pursuit of selfish interest and individual profit,and which makes room for collectives oriented towards the rational pursuit ofcollectively defined and approved ends” (cf. Bourdieu [1994] 1998, pp. 29–30).Likewise, because globalization favors the dominant (Bourdieu [2000] 2005,p. 224), it may foster in dialectical fashion the emergence of global political forceswith an interest in establishing “transnational bodies with a remit to control the dominanteconomic forces and subordinate them to genuinely universal ends” (p. 232). WhenBourdieu’s Machiavellian vision is properly understood, these instances of universalismappear no more mysterious than those in the scientific field. Indeed, Bourdieu ([1997]2000, p. 126) suggests that “one might… treat the realistic description of the scientificfield as a kind of reasonable utopia of what a political field conforming to democraticreason might be like; or, more precisely, as a model which, by comparison with theobserved reality, would indicate the principles of action aimed at promoting the equiv-alent, within the political field, of what is observed in the scientific field in its mostautonomous forms, that is to say, a regulated competition, which would control itself…by its own immanent logic, through social mechanisms capable of forcing agents tobehave ‘rationally’ and to sublimate their drives.” His analysis of moral universalism in

13 Bourdieu ([1994] 1998, p. 59) initially claims that the state nobility’s submission to the universal is “onlyin appearance,” but he immediately adds: “Those who—like Marx—invert the official image that thebureaucracy likes to give of itself, and describe bureaucrats as usurpers of the universal who act as privateproprietors of public resources, ignore the very real effects of the obligatory reference to the values ofneutrality and disinterested loyalty to the public good. Such values impose themselves with increasing forceon the functionaries of the state” (p. 59, emphasis added). Bourdieu ([1994] 1998, pp. 59–60) concludes:“The sociological vision cannot ignore the discrepancy between the official norm … and the reality ofbureaucratic practice, with all its violations of the obligation of disinterestedness.... Yet sociology cannot forall that remain blind to the effects of this norm … or … to the effects of the interest attached todisinterestedness” (emphasis added; cf. Bourdieu and Haacke [1994] 1995, p. 62; Bourdieu [1997] 2000,pp. 124–125). This is an explicit repudiation of the vulgar Marxism sometimes attributed to him andperhaps, partly in response to such criticisms, an unacknowledged refinement of his earlier thinking (Silber2009).14 Bourdieu distinguished the state’s left hand, comprised of its social spending and perhaps regulatoryfunctions, from its right hand, which includes the ministries of finance and budget as well as the means ofrepression (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, pp. 34–35; Bourdieu 2010, pp. 86–87).

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the world of cultural production thus provides a way to think about the conditions ofmoral universalism more generally.

Solidarity forever (or at least under threat)

There is at least one other aspect of the republican political vision that Bourdieutransposed to the contemporary social world: a theory of solidarity. Bourdieu’s frequentemphasis on struggle, competition, and domination would appear to leave little room forsolidarity even within, let alone across, social classes. However, it is noteworthy thatautonomy and universalism, in addition to being products of struggle, are achievedcollectively (Bourdieu [2002] 2008, p. 216; Vincent 2004, pp. 135–136). The notion ofcollective struggle—manifested, for example, in Bourdieu’s calls for the formation of a“collective intellectual” and a European social movement (see below)—presupposes, inturn, some conception of solidarity. But how is solidarity possible in the kind of socialworld that Bourdieu describes? To explain in a sociological and theoretical way howsolidarity is generated and sustained, he turns to two sources, one Durkheimian and theother Machiavellian, both linked to the republican political tradition.

Although Bourdieu saw social agents as locked in struggles for dominationthrough the accumulation and deployment of distinctive types of capital, he cameto understand that solidarity is as much a part of the social world as struggle.Consider, for instance, the field of power. On the one hand, it is a space of internalconflict. Within the field of power, agents who possess sufficient capital to dominatetheir respective fields struggle for power over the state and, through it, influence overthe relative value of and exchange rate between different types of capital. Moreover,cultural producers (located in dominated positions in the field of power) may formsubversive alliances with the dominated in these struggles, based on their homolo-gous positions in social space, to challenge the present state of power relations. Onthe other hand, following Durkheim ([1893] 1984), Bourdieu ([1989] 1996) suggeststhat the multiplication of autonomous fields and the corresponding diversification ofthe field of power make possible an “organic solidarity in the division of the labor ofdomination” (p. 187) which unites “an entire set of fields and forms of power”(p. 386, my emphasis; see also pp. 142, 263; Bourdieu [1997] 2000, pp. 102–106).Cultural producers, for instance, may perform the symbolic work of legitimation forpolitical power holders in exchange for the autonomy of their own field. Althoughthis autonomy creates the possibility of subversive alliances, it is also necessary tomake their legitimizing work effective. The field of power is thus defined by“unification” as well as “division,” “exchanges that enable the development of two-way relations of obligation and recognition … as well as constant struggles for thepower to impose the dominant principle of domination” (Bourdieu [1989] 1996,p. 388, emphasis added). “The existence of a number of partially independent principlesof hierarchization,” Bourdieu ([1989] 1996, p. 187) concludes, “places a limit on thestruggle of every man for himself within the field of power and encourages a form ofcomplementarity in the competition.... The antagonism between spiritual power holdersand temporal power holders, which is the source of the polarization of the field of power,does not rule out a functional solidarity.”

Bourdieu viewed organic solidarity among dominants as one expression of a moregeneral basis of solidarity identified by Mauss ([1925] 1990): gift exchange. While

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Bourdieu’s earlier work emphasized how gift exchange legitimizes and obscuresrelations of power and domination, his later writings—beginning in the late 1980sand especially from the mid-1990s—suggest a more complicated view (Silber 2009).Just as he came to acknowledge that the strategy of universalization, by means ofwhich agents hide self-interest in the guise of universal values, “really does contributeto the progress of the universal” (Bourdieu and Haacke [1994] 1995, p. 62), so too heincreasingly suggested that gift exchange generates real solidarity that is imbricatedwith rather than merely a disguise for power.15 For example, it is through the“ordinary and continuous exchanges of … gifts, service, assistance, visits, attention,kindnesses,” as well as the “extraordinary and solemn exchanges of family occa-sions,” all of which is typically accomplished by women, that “family feeling” iscreated and inculcated (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 68). Significantly, Bourdieu ([1994]1998, p. 100) acknowledged that gift exchange is capable of fostering solidarity notonly among equals, but also between actually or potentially unequal agents.Solidarity enables the family to “assert itself as a body,” to act as “a kind of ‘collectivesubject’ … and not as a simple aggregate of individuals,” even though it still remainsat the same time “a field, with its physical, economic and, above all, symbolic powerrelations (linked, for example, to the volume and structure of the capital possessed byeach member), and its struggles to hold on to and transform these power relations”(Bourdieu [1994] 1998, pp. 68–70). The “forces of fusion” do not eliminate theindividual interests of unequal family members, but they do limit “the functioning ofthe domestic unit as a field” (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 70). Since the family is thearchetypal model for other social bodies (Bourdieu [1994] 1998, p. 67; see also p.107), it follows that the same mechanism of symbolic exchange can bind socialagents together in solidaristic movements to defend and extend the social achieve-ments of past struggles—which, like social insurance, frequently embody the veryprinciple of social reciprocity that generates solidarity in the first place (Mauss [1925]1990, pp. 65–71) and that such movements seek to preserve and expand.

Machiavelli, whose conception of the social world was similar to the dismalview so frequently attributed to Bourdieu, also faced the question of howsolidarity is possible in such a world. His solution—different from but notincompatible with the Durkheimian answer—was to rely on social necessity.Just as necessity can make men virtuous, in Machiavelli’s estimation, so toocan it bind them together. In particular, he emphasized the role of externalthreats in necessitating collective action and habits of “disciplined cooperation”:citizens develop solidary bonds, he suggested, by continually struggling togeth-er against common enemies (Weintraub 1990, chap. 4, pp. 15, 24; cf. Simmel[1908] 1955, pp. 87–93; Coser 1956, pp. 87–95). This idea is most fullydeveloped in Machiavelli’s discussions of popular mobilization and collectivestruggle for military purposes. He placed great importance on war, not onlybecause it was necessary for the defense of the republic, but also because it

15 Linking his accounts of solidarity and moral universalism, Bourdieu ([1997] 2000, pp. 201–202) calledfor the creation of fields in which, “as in gift economies, agents have an interest in disinterestedness andgenerosity,” and he urged “collective investment in the institutions that … cause the civic virtues ofdisinterestedness and devotion—a gift to the group—to be encouraged and rewarded by the group”(emphasis added). Silber (2009) rightly points out that the gift played a central and enduring role inBourdieu’s conception of the social world.

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imposed solidarity on classes within the republic. Through experience in battle,men learned that “discipline, collective effort, and altruism” were necessary forsuccess, while a self-interested attitude of sauve qui peut was potentiallydisastrous, individually and collectively; in this way, collective struggle againsta common threat served as “a crucial process of civic education” (Weintraub1990, chap. 4, pp. 20–21). That said, solidarity against common enemies didnot bring an end to internal struggles within the political field, a prospect thatMachiavelli would surely have regarded as utopian and unrealistic: “The ‘unity’of the republic is indeed crucial to liberty; but … such unity does notnecessarily involve an entirely static or inert unanimity” (Weintraub 1990, chap.4, p. 26). Rather, what Machiavelli seems to have envisioned was somecombination of conflict and community. While internal struggles were inevita-ble, external threats could generate a framework of fundamental solidarity thatwould moderate them, at least for certain purposes.

Bourdieu similarly stressed the need for solidarity within the republic of artists,writers, and scientists, and—complementing his Durkheimian analysis with aMachiavellian one—he provided an analogous account of how that solidarity mightbe generated. As previously noted, his point of departure was the need for collectivestruggle to protect the autonomy of the field. In particular, Bourdieu called for theformation of a “collective intellectual capable of defining by itself the topics and endsof its reflection and action” (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, p. 20; see also Bourdieu [2002]2008, pp. 243–268; Wacquant 2005, p. 19; Poupeau and Discepolo 2005, pp. 75–78).In this manner, autonomous agents within the field of cultural production couldeffectively oppose themselves to the “reactionary think tanks” that produce anddisseminate the “neoliberal ideology” of their patrons (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, p.20). He contrasted this model of political engagement to Jean-Paul Sartre’s totalintellectual, on the one hand, who takes positions “on all the problems of his time,with no other warrant than the force of his own intelligence,” and Michel Foucault’sspecific intellectual, on the other hand, “who limits his intervention to a particulardomain of knowledge and experience” (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 667). In contrast to theseindividualistic alternatives, the collective intellectual would combine the qualifica-tions, competencies, and talents of specific intellectuals and harness them to commonends (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 667).16

But how can such disciplined cooperation be achieved among agents engaged in aconstant struggle for the material and symbolic profits of their fields and the socialdistinction that accompanies such profits? As the previous discussion of organicsolidarity and gift exchange makes clear, this is a one-sided conception of fields thatBourdieu took pains to correct later in his career. He suggested that solidarity is notentirely foreign to the scientific field, for instance, but is already there, entrenchedwithin it: “The notion of the field … destroys all kinds of common oppositions,starting with the one between consensus and conflict, and, while it sweeps away thenaively idealist view of the scientific world as a community of solidarity or a

16 Because of its self-conscious orientation to the autonomy and interests of intellectuals themselves, the“collective intellectual” also differs from the Gramscian organic intellectual, who in Bourdieu’s eyes isreduced to the role of a “fellow traveler” of the proletariat (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 668) or a “symbolic warrant… cynically exploited by the parties” (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, p. 13).

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‘kingdom of ends’ (in the Kantian sense), it is also opposed to the no less partial viewof scientific life as a ‘war of all against all’” (Bourdieu [2001] 2004, p. 46, emphasisadded). Just as a minimal level of solidarity in the form of doxa—a shared belief inthe game and its stakes, a tacit agreement that it is worth playing—is a prerequisite forstruggles within the scientific field, conversely those struggles bind antagoniststogether insofar as they establish relations among them and give rise to a universal-istic logic that governs the conduct of their struggles (cf. Simmel [1908] 1955, pp.25–28, 34–35; Coser 1956, pp. 121–128). In this way, as we have seen, the scientificfield becomes a space of “regulated struggle” (Bourdieu [2001] 2004, pp. 62–71) or“regulated competition” (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 126)—a phrase that brings tomind Durkheim’s ([1893] 1984, p. 302) point that “the role of solidarity is not toabolish competition but to moderate it.”17 Finally, the logic of the scientific fieldinvolves reciprocity. Like the field of power, it is partly integrated through giftexchange: each researcher gives to others the new information she has discoveredin order to receive their recognition (Bourdieu [2001] 2004, p. 53).

Even so, Bourdieu was aware of the formidable obstacles to disciplined cooper-ation for common ends, and he acknowledged them forthrightly: “Nothing is moredifficult than to make intellectuals understand that their struggles, even those forpurely corporate ends and aiming only at defending autonomy, have to be collectivebecause so many of the powers to which they are subject … succeed as well as theydo only because the opposition to them is scattered and divided against itself”(Bourdieu 1991b, p. 667). While their “common interests” in the autonomy of theintellectual field make collective struggle possible, it is hindered by the “logic ofcompetition” and the field’s “propensity to division and particularism” (Bourdieu1991b, pp. 667–668). This propensity can be overcome, he suggested, by directthreats to those common interests (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 668; Bourdieu and Haacke[1994] 1995, pp. 12–13).18 Thus, for Bourdieu, as for Machiavelli, outside threats arean important basis for solidarity. Such threats make concerted action possible even ifthey do not entirely eliminate the field’s internal struggles.

Although I have once again focused on the world of cultural production tohighlight the republican aspects of Bourdieu’s thinking, it would be a mistake toconclude that he meant to confine the possibility of solidarity to the intellectual field.In his political writings, Bourdieu ([2001] 2003, pp. 36–37) called for the unificationand integration of “all the critical social forces” in Europe into a European socialmovement that would overcome a host of divisions between and within nations,including divisions between workers and the unemployed, men and women, youngand old, and immigrants and the native-born. Such a movement would also overcomeattempts through “social dumping” to pit workers in one country against workers in

17 Following Durkheim, Bourdieu ([2002] 2008, pp. 234, 290, 381) referred repeatedly in hispolitical interventions to anomie, and he described unregulated capitalism in terms of the “law ofthe strongest” (p. 288; cf. Durkheim [1893] 1984, pp. xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxix).18 Cf. Bourdieu ([1972] 1977, p. 65): “Insecurity provides a negative principle of cohesion capable ofmaking up for the deficiency of positive principles.” Admittedly, however, the “negative, forced solidaritycreated by a shared vulnerability” is less stable than the positive solidarity created by gift exchange: it “lastsno longer than the power relations capable of holding individual interests together” (Bourdieu [1972] 1977,p. 65). This analysis presumably does not apply to the “heteronomous” intellectuals within the field—thosewho draw on “external alliances” and “external … powers” to “overturn the power relations inside thefield” (Bourdieu 1991b, p. 663)—since they do not share the common interest in the field’s autonomy.

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other countries (Bourdieu 1998, p. 64); the division between movements and tradeunions (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, p. 45); and the division between researchers andactivists (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, pp. 14, 46).19 Bourdieu counterposed this broad andexpansive civil solidarity to the pursuit of short-term group or sectoral interests(Bourdieu [2001] 2003, p. 62). The French protest movement of 1995, he noted,“received strong public support, because it was seen as a defense of the socialadvances, not of one particular category—even if one category was at the forefront,because it was particularly under attack—but of a whole society, and even of a set ofsocieties” (Bourdieu 1998, pp. 52–53). Hence, in Bourdieu’s view, the broad civilsolidarity for which he repeatedly called was already implicit in some of the socialforces he sought to unite. Ultimately, he suggested, this solidarity might even extendbeyond the boundaries of Europe, making possible a new internationalism or trans-continental solidarity. The members of the European social movement he envisioneddid not “defend an insular, isolated Europe, but through Europe they defend a certaintype of social management of the economy that clearly must be achieved byestablishing a liaison with other countries” (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, p. 42).

How is such broad solidarity to be achieved in a social world no less riven than theintellectual field by struggle and competition? The collective intellectual plays a keyrole in Bourdieu’s answer. For starters, he envisioned the collective intellectual as apotential midwife for this kind of solidarity: one of its functions, Bourdieu ([2001]2003, pp. 43–44) suggested, “could (ideally) be to play the role of organizationaladvisors to the social movements by helping the various groups to overcome theirdisagreements.” In addition, and more fundamentally, the collective intellectual pro-vides a model for how solidarity might be produced. As in the intellectual field, so tooin the broader social world, common threats are a key mechanism by which solidarityis generated: “Generalized precariousness, which is the basis of a new form of socialdiscipline generated by job insecurity and the fear of unemployment, which nowaffect even the best-placed workers, can be the basis of solidarities of a new kind,both in scope and in principle…. The new trade unionism will have to learn to rely onnew solidarities among the victims of the policy of job insecurity, who today arefound almost as often among occupations requiring a high level of cultural capital,such as teaching, the health care professions, and communications (as with journal-ists), as among clerks and blue-collar workers” (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, pp. 61–62).Thus, Bourdieu relied on the same Machiavellian logic to account for the possibilityof solidarity among intellectuals and in the broader social world.

Conclusion

In summary, I have reviewed the main criticisms that have been made by Alexanderand others of Bourdieu’s conception of democratic politics, and I have suggested onepossible and, in my view, constructive line of response. This response is not intended

19 In seeking to overcome the division between researchers and activists, Bourdieu presumably did notmean to insert the latter into the production of scientific knowledge, which would introduce heteronomyinto the field, but to forge an alliance between agents in different fields who were similarly threatened byand therefore had a shared interest in opposing neoliberalism.

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to refute alternative theories of democratic politics, nor is it meant to suggest thatBourdieu’s perspective is necessarily preferable or superior. Rather, the aim of thisresponse was twofold. First, by drawing attention to the republican (and especiallyMachiavellian) aspects of Bourdieu’s thinking, I have attempted to show that theelements that Bourdieu’s critics deem indispensable to an adequate theory of democ-racy are not entirely absent in Bourdieu’s work. To the criticism that Bourdieu lackeda conception of an independent public sphere or civil society, I have attempted toshow that his analysis of field autonomy (in particular, the autonomy of the intellec-tual field) played a comparable or equivalent role. To the criticism that Bourdieu’sconflict sociology reduced all universalism to self-interest, I have tried to show thathe held a Machiavellian perspective according to which interest can be transformed,under certain social and historical conditions, into virtue. Finally, to the criticism thatBourdieu’s emphasis on struggle, competition, and domination left no basis for trans-sectional solidarity, I have argued that Bourdieu drew on Durkheimian social theoryand Machiavellian ideas to explain how solidarity might be achieved in such a world.Whether Bourdieu’s mostly Machiavellian vision provides the best foundation fordemocratic theory and practice is debatable and beyond the scope of this article. But,as I have tried to demonstrate here, it would be a mistake to think that Bourdieuprovided no sociological or theoretical account of independent public deliberation,universalism, or solidarity.

A secondary aim of this article builds upon the first. Once we discern the republicanelements that became increasingly pronounced in Bourdieu’s sociology toward the endof his career, we can see that Alexander and Bourdieu are less opposed in their thinkingabout democratic politics than they might at first appear. Indeed, their scholarly andpolitical concerns arguably began to converge. By the late 1990s, Bourdieu had becomethe most prominent public intellectual from the social sciences to play a leading role inthe anti-globalization movement in Western Europe (Swartz 2003; Poupeau andDiscepolo 2005). As we have seen, he made frequent appeals to solidarity (Bourdieu1998, pp. 27, 67, 98) while decrying the destruction of “collective responsibility” andthe “return of individualism” (p. 7). Likewise, on the other side of the Atlantic,Alexander (2006) was developing a new theory of democracy at about the same timethat also stressed the importance of social solidarity, defined in universalistic terms, andthe critical role of social movements in defining and reconstructing it. Regrettably, theseconverging concerns did not result in a productive dialogue: Bourdieu did not engagewith the insights of Alexander’s work, and Alexander remained sharply critical ofBourdieu’s work and did not acknowledge possible commonalities (in part, perhaps,because they were less apparent when Alexander made his initial criticism in 1995).Nevertheless, even in the absence of such engagement, it is apparent that the twosociologists reached some of the same points coming from different directions.

Like Bourdieu, Alexander conceives of the social world as differentiated into dis-tinctive fields or (in Alexander’s terminology) spheres, each operating according to itsown internal logic; civil society is thus “only one sphere among others within a broadersocial system,” each of which “produced different kinds of goods and organized theirsocial relations according to different ideals and constraints” (Alexander 2006, p. 404).This pluralistic premise has important implications; in particular, it means that neitherAlexander nor Bourdieu envisions totalizing the logic of democratic citizenship to all ofsocial life. In this respect, they both fall squarely within what Weintraub (1979) calls the

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partial branch of the republican virtue tradition and outside of its totalizing branch. Thepartial branch recognizes that there are domains of social life such as the market “inwhich human beings relate to each other as something other than citizens,” and it acceptsthat these realms “cannot be brought into the sphere of willed community”; it thusinvolves a compromise or accommodation with these non-civil areas of social life andlimits itself to a partial application of the logic of citizenship (Weintraub 1979, pp. 157,174, 177).20 In contrast, the totalizing branch of the republican tradition has alwaysinsisted on rejecting, transcending, or abolishing these non-civil realms and applying thelogic of citizenship in a more far-reaching and comprehensive manner. This branch wasperhaps most strikingly exemplified by Karl Marx, who insisted that the logic ofcitizenship was necessarily subordinated to the logic of the capitalist market economyand therefore illusory so long as the latter existed (Weintraub 1979, pp. 182–190). Thepluralistic conception of the social world shared by Alexander and Bourdieu militatesagainst this kind of radical effort to abolish the logic of non-civil spheres and create athoroughly civil social world. Although Alexander has sought to distinguish himselffrom Bourdieu by emphasizing the Marxian roots of Bourdieu’s sociology, Bourdieu(particularly in his later work) appears closer to Alexander than to Marx in this respect.

While neither Alexander nor Bourdieu considers it feasible or realistic to totalizethe logic of citizenship to all of social life, they have expressed similar concerns aboutthe opposite tendency to totalize non-civil criteria and standards (including those ofthe market), even in realms of social life where they are inappropriate. The problem,as Alexander (2006, pp. 203–209, 402–406) puts it, is “destructive intrusions” intothe civil sphere by its non-civil counterparts. As the non-civil spheres penetrate andinvade civil society, “the qualities, relationships, and goods highly valued in theseother spheres became translated into restrictive and exclusionary prerequisites forparticipation in civil society itself” (Alexander 2006, pp. 404–405). At the same time,a different kind of intrusion results from the conflation of civil competence with theascribed or “primordial” qualities of a society’s core group, a process that Bourdieu([1997] 2000, pp. 71–72) describes as the “universalization” of the “dominant way ofbeing.” Alexander argues that various kinds of out-groups (workers, women, racialand ethnic minorities, and so forth) have in this way been stigmatized as carriers ofanti-civil traits and excluded from participation. Marx pointed to both kinds ofintrusion in his 1843 essay “On the Jewish Question,” where he noted that partici-pation in European civil societies was historically confined to property owners andChristians. This diagnosis drives Alexander to the same conclusion as Bourdieu: theintrusion of non-civil criteria and standards must be opposed if the logic of citizenshipis to be preserved.21

Finally, both Alexander and Bourdieu conclude that in order to defend the logic ofcitizenship, it is necessary to infuse some of that logic into the non-civil fields or

20 Weintraub (1979, p. 6) uses the term willed community to refer to “a dynamic, self-governing communitycharacterized by tight solidarity and fundamental—though usually not absolute—equality. This solidaritydoes not proceed primarily from personal ties, particularly ties of personal dependence, but from commonparticipation in an active community which forms a moral whole.”21 To translate into Bourdieu’s terminology, Alexander (2006) seeks to defend civil autonomy. Civilcompetence or “civil power” can be understood as a kind of capital that is specific to the civil sphere,while reliance on money, ascribed characteristics, or other non-specific forms of capital (what Alexandercalls “social power” as opposed to civil power) introduces heteronomy into the field.

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spheres that threaten it. This strategy is not as radical as the totalizing approachendorsed by Marx, which aimed to abolish the capitalist market economy altogether.In Bourdieu’s terms, the capitalist market economy will not cease to be a field ofstruggles and domination in contemporary societies, but, like other fields, it can bestructured so as to limit and to regulate struggle and domination. This approach isclose to the social republicanism of Durkheim and Jean Jaurès, which aimed to curbthe power of the dominant class, reduce the inequalities that arose from the hereditarytransmission of wealth, provide greater justice, and put within the reach of moreindividuals “all possible means of developing their faculties without hindrance”(Durkheim [1898] 1973, p. 56; see also Durkheim [1893] 1984, pp. xxxi-lix, 291–322). This approach is also consistent with the social-democratic perspective of T. H.Marshall ([1949] 1964), who suggested that the principles of citizenship can beintroduced into the capitalist market economy via the welfare state and trade union-ism. These institutions do not supplant the market, but—to the extent that theyguarantee access to essential goods like education, housing, and health care as amatter of right—they render differences in income and market position less importantfor determining life chances. For the partial version of republicanism, robust demo-cratic citizenship requires the preservation and strengthening of these countervailinginstitutions. Like Bourdieu, Alexander sees social movements as crucial to theseefforts; they can defend the civil sphere from destructive intrusions and extend itsinfluence to the non-civil spheres (Alexander 2006, pp. 34, 194, 208). In addition,social movements serve as the primary vehicle for the civil incorporation of out-groups. Alexander does not deny that these efforts involve conflict and struggle, andlike Bourdieu he emphasizes the symbolic and classificatory dimension of thesestruggles. However, in opposition to the tradition of Thrasymachus with which heassociates Bourdieu, he insists that the expansion of civil solidarity is both a neces-sary condition for the success of these struggles and their ultimate end. But even inthis respect, Alexander and Bourdieu may not be as different as they initially appear.By insisting on the need to “protect or reconstruct through collective and organizedaction the solidarities threatened by the play of economic forces,” Bourdieu alsomakes clear that solidarity is an end as well as a necessary means of collectivestruggle (Bourdieu [2001] 2003, p. 5; cf. p. 42).

In summary, when the civic republican elements in Bourdieu’s critique of neolib-eralism are revealed, some unexpected commonalities with Alexander’s Civil Sphereemerge: a pluralistic conception of the social world that leads them to reject thetotalizing branch of the republican virtue tradition, deep concerns that the intrusion ofnon-civil criteria into all realms of social life is threatening the logic of citizenship, andthe recognition that it is necessary to extend the logic of citizenship (though not in atotalizing way) in order to preserve it. I do not mean to suggest that these commonalitiesamount to a theoretical synthesis or that there are no significant differences betweenthem, nor do I wish to overstate the extent of their convergence. But I have shown thatthere are enough shared aims and assumptions to make a dialogue among theproponents of their ideas possible and worthwhile. Such a dialogue can onlyenrich and improve democratic theory and practice.

Acknowledgments Earlier versions of this article were presented at meetings of the Council for Euro-pean Studies in 2010, the European Sociological Association in 2011, and at the Eastern Sociological

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Society meeting and the New School for Social Research in 2012. I am grateful to Marcos Ancelovici forthe initial stimulus to write it. Although I did not incorporate all suggestions for improvement, I thankeveryone who offered them, including Ann Mische, Anna Paretskaya, Lynette Spillman, Gilles Verpraet,and the Editors and reviewers for Theory and Society, including David Swartz. I am also indebted to thePrinceton Institute for Advanced Study for the Martin L. and Sarah F. Leibowitz Membership, whichgenerously supported my work in 2011–2012. I dedicate the article to Wisconsin’s union members andorganizers, including my friends and colleagues Kevin Gibbons, Alex Hanna, Norm Holsinger, BryanKennedy, Jim Molenda, Adrienne Pagac, Anna Paretskaya, Peter Rickman, Julie Schmid, Karen Tuerk, andmany others too numerous to mention, who, faced with a radical assault on workers’ rights in February2011 under the pretense of budget balancing, mounted an extraordinary and historic defense of intellectualautonomy, the public interest, and social solidarity. La lutte continue.

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Chad Alan Goldberg is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the authorof Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to Workfare (University ofChicago Press, 2007), and he is a contributor to Bourdieu and Historical Analysis (Duke University Press,2013) and Solidarity, Justice, and Incorporation: Thinking through the Civil Sphere (Oxford UniversityPress, forthcoming). He is working on a forthcoming book about modernity and the Jews in French,German, and American social theory.

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