Abstract
The chapter aims to investigate the way Bourdieu’s sociology of juridical field has defined itself through its relationship with Marx and the Marxism of Althusser and Thompson. Firstly, it shows Bourdieu’s relationship with Marx through a case of misinterpretation concerning practical obedience to law. Then it tries to highlight how Bourdieu develops certain features of his sociology in opposition to and in dialogue with Althusser and Thompson, proposing an epistemological model of radical critique aimed at politically problematizing law through the analysis of the relationship between the juridical field, the field of power and the habitus. This model is contradicted neither by the realpolitk of reason nor by the political positions taken by Bourdieu in the 1990s in favour of public service and Welfare State. Indeed, it shows a Marxian ancestry in the constant concern to link the analysis and critique of normativity to power relations and social struggles, as emerges from the confrontation between Bourdieu and the Durkheimian-derived juridical perspectives.
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Notes
- 1.
Bourdieu was familiar with Marxist studies in the juridical field thanks to S. Spitzer (1983). My analysis will not consider the specificities of Bourdieusian sociology outside of its relationship with Marx or Marxism, nor the Marxist authors who concerned themselves with law but whom Bourdieu does not discuss (e.g. Gramsci, Pashukanis, Poulantzas).
- 2.
Bourdieu (1987: 849): “the movement from statistical regularity to legal rule represents a true social modification.”
- 3.
Marx and Engels (1976: 31–32): “As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce.”
- 4.
As has been observed, on this point Bourdieu stands very close to the work of historians such as Robert W. Gordon. See Coombe (1989).
- 5.
Jean-Yves Caro was one of the first economists to deal with neoliberalism in France from a Bourdieusian perspective. See Caro (1981 and 1983). Yves Dezalay has analysed in numerous works the neoliberal transformations of law. See Dezalay (1992). Among his work with Brian Garth, see at least Dezalay and Garth (1998, 2021).
- 6.
On the other dimensions of political struggle (redefinition of the macroeconomic calculus, internationalism, etc.) that Laval recognizes in Bourdieu, see Laval (2018: 243–245).
- 7.
Bourdieu (1987: 844): “Alain Bancaud and Yves Dezalay have demonstrated that even the most heretical of dissident legal scholars in France, those who associate themselves with sociological or Marxist methodologies to advance the rights of specialists working in the most disadvantaged areas of the law (such as social welfare law, droit social),” continue to claim a monopoly of the science of jurisprudence. See Bancaud and Dezalay (1984).
- 8.
The quotation in this note belongs to Eugen Ehrlich, but the translator did not indicate this.
- 9.
For an appreciation of the pars destruens and a critique of the pars construens of Duguit’s work, see Chevallier (1979).
- 10.
On this point, I have tried to interpret Bourdieu’s and Foucault’s methodological innovations in the juridical field as an extension of the external history of law, in the direction of a critique of the articulation of legal practices with phenomena of heterogeneous social normativity (Brindisi 2019). On the relationship between Bourdieu and Foucault see Brindisi and Irrera (2017), Laval (2018).
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I’m grateful to Bridget Fowler for reading this paper and for her valuable suggestions.
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Brindisi, G. (2022). Bourdieu, Marxism and Law: Between Radical Criticism and Political Responsibility. In: Paolucci, G. (eds) Bourdieu and Marx. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06289-6_13
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