Introduction

Bourdieu argued that in order to understand interactions between people, or to explain an event or social phenomenon, it was insufficient to look at what was said, or what happened. It was necessary to examine the social space in which interactions, transactions and events occurred (Bourdieu 2005b [2000]: 148). According to Bourdieu, an analysis of social space meant not only locating the object of investigation in its specific historical and local/national/international and relational context, but also interrogating the ways in which previous knowledge about the object under investigation had been generated, by whom, and whose interests were served by those knowledge-generation practices (e.g. Bourdieu 1993a; 1994d [1987]; 2004 [2001]).

This chapter looks specifically at what Bourdieu meant by “social space”, or “field”, as he named it. After discussing how “field” can be understood and the work which the theorization of “field” was designed to accomplish, I consider specific “fields” using Bourdieu's own writings on these topics, as well as that of other social scientists who have adopted his methodological toolkit. I conclude by looking at some critiques made of the idea of “field” and its operationalization in research.

The idea of “field”

Bourdieu's first use of the concept of field was an article entitled “Champ intellectuel et projet créateur” (1971c [1966]; see also Boschetti 2006: 140), which discussed a difference in view between two French scholars, Barthes and Picard.