J P Roos: Arctic Bourdieu

J.P.Roos
The ‘Arctic Bourdieu’: Four theses from the Nordic countries

Johs. Hjellbrekke: Yard Work and Worker Memories. An analysis of fields and practices of remembering from a relationist standpoint. Department of Sociology, University of Bergen 1999 354 p
Olav Mjaatvedt: Trill rundt. Transport i hverdagslivet. Sosiologisk årsbok skriftserie,
Oslo 1999 340 p
Martin Munk: Livsbaner gennem et felt. En analyse af eliteidraetsutoveres sociale mobilitet og rekonversioner af kapital i det sociale rum. Lund Dissertations in Sociology 28,
Lund 1999 412 p
Keijo Rahkonen: Not Class But Struggle. Critical ouvertures to Pierre Bourdieu's Sociology. University of Helsinki, Department of Social Policy, Research Reports 1.1999 156 p

Introduction

   It is an interesting coincidence that precisely when Pierre Bourdieu as a person and the Bourdieuan approach came under intense criticism in France (and in the US, but not with same motives), his Nordic adepts published no less than four explicitly bourdieuan PhD theses, where the main problem is how to apply the framework to an area or problem where it has not been used (with the exception of Rahkonen's thesis which partly covers central ground but contains also an attempt to apply the bourdieuan approach to Bourdieu himself). All these theses refer also to the magnum opus of Donald Broady from 1990, a thesis which set as its goal to uncover all the theoretical roots from which the sepcifically bourdieusian theoretical concept grows. Unfortunately they ignore the very high quality thesis of Niilo Kauppi 1991 (again with the exception of Rahkonen) which applies the bourdieusian framework to Tel Quel and precedes the work by Louis Pinto (1992). This is incidentally one of the true disadvantages of periphery: if you come up with something really original and interesting, but cannot safeguard yourself (through public acknowledgement), your work may be exploited by those in the center, whose interest is precisely not to reveal where the ideas have come from.
There are quite a few additional bourdieusian theses in more marginal disciplines (education, cultural studies, nursing) published during the 80's and 90's, such as M'hammed Sabour's on the Arab Intellectuals (1988),   Erik Peurells on Jan Fridegard and a recent thesis on Homehelpers’ practices (by Marianne Hamann-Johnsen 1999). In Denmark, Callewaert has pointed out especially the following three theses: Karin Anna Petersens Sygeplejevidenskap - myte eller virkelighed (1998), Per Gecklers: Impacts of basic education reform in independent Namibia (2000) and Kristian Larsens observational study of nurses' practices (2000). Others who have aborded Bourdieu have been more established (Callewaert, Osterberg, Broady) and/or published mainly articles. Callewaerts Bourdieu-studier I-III may be mentioned as an example as well as a recent collection of important articles on the use of the bourdieuan field concept should be mentioned (Broady ed 1999). In all Nordic countries, there are several translations of Bourdieu's works, but here Sweden is definitely in the forefront with translations of several of Bourdieu's major works. In my own country Finland, we have translations of the essay collections or pamphlets only.
   All the theses are more or less parallel and independent of the critical surge in France, so that there is no direct discussion of the polemics. Let me mention here only the book by Jeanine Verdes-Leroux (1998) which helped unleash a ferocious media discussion on Bourdieu, and the book edited by Bernard Lahire (1999) which makes an attempt to present a critique which would still be debatable even by those who accept the bourdieuan framework. The book by Louis Pinto (1999) belongs to the category of rather uncritical exposés.

My “own” Bourdieu

   Let me present my own starting point: I have translated one book by Bourdieu into Finnish, I have reviewed several of his books, I have been instrumental in directing many students into using the bourdieuan framework, and I have used him in my own research (even in consulting marketing research, which shows that the bourdieuan approach can be put into very practical and even profitable uses - according to the marketing department which still uses the model ). On the other hand, my major interest being life stories, there have been several points of difference of opinion and the article by Bourdieu on the biographical fallacy was not a very convincing bourdieuan intervention in my own field. After Misere du Monde, which makes several claims about how to interview powerless and excluded people (showing some lack of knowledge by the master) and which on the other hand makes many mistakes criticised in the biographical fallacy article (especially taking the stories of the downtrodden at face value), my relationship to Bourdieu has become more critical but still definitely appreciative. I think that his contribution to sociology will be of permanent value and that he has introduced concepts which simply must be used, if we wish to discuss the social world adequately. He was one of the few who operates simultaneously between the fundamental aspects of structure, agency, space and gender. I’d say that only time escapes him, perhaps because of his partial blindness to the (life) historical dimension, notwithstanding some claims to the contrary (and the obvious potential of the habitus).
   And I fully agree with his present political views. To defend the welfare state in France in the present situation is not only courageous but necessary. And it seems that he has also an effect: without him the French politicians would have succeeded in dismantling the welfare state in an even more spectacular manner (and perhaps the disastrous policies of Alain Juppe would have received only a traditional trade union opposition). The difference between the "third way" and Jospin is real (even though, for polemical reasons, Bourdieu has precisely equated them): France has been the last outpost of the defence against the rampant neoliberalism and the religion of globalisation. There is a world of difference between even the defendants of the WTO millennium round in France and elsewhere (for instance Finland). Thus it is a pity that he burned his capital in futile fights, like his television critique, which cannot be said to be very much to the point (if Bourdieu could have decided how programs are to be produced, there would be only very few viewers left, which would be a good thing, but not an intended consequence, I think).
   In reviewing the theses, I will not in any way try to be a "gatekeeper" or a defender of bourdieuan orthodoxy, even though in some cases I will criticise the theses for not being faithful to certain central principles. I will look for precisely original and critical elements and require that the authors come up with something new and at least try to make an adaptation of the original “model”. This, all the books under review, fulfil without any problems. Let me also note that in three of the four theses discussed here, I have functioned as the academic opponent. I am not, however, just paraphrasing my evaluations to the appropriate universities (which have in two cases been made jointly with other colleagues).
     I will start on a few common points. For instance, in all the empirical theses, the bourdieuan strict requirement of relationalism (or contextualisation), is not fulfilled. Also, even though a new field is approached, the necessary empirical-theoretical construction of the new concepts is not undertaken. Thus the concept of field remains in all cases "underdeveloped", an abstract field. In fact, it is a legitimate question whether the field concept actually works only in the cultural field or then what are the actual limits of the concept (see also Broady (ed) 1998, which contains numerous studies about the cultural field).

Is Bourdieu a constructionist?

My first question addresses the point which is common to all of the theses under debate: there is an underlying assumption that Bourdieu is a social constructionist, and more precisely a constructionist structuralist or a structuralist constructionist (depending on what you want to emphasize as primary). I know well that Bourdieu hated all labels, but this is an important fundamental question, especially in France where a sort of covert constructionism is rampant (see Corcuff 1995). And we know that he liked to combine very different approaches, claiming that they must be treated simultaneously. My term for him would be critical sociological unificationist: a sociologist who believes in the necessity of unifying several seemingly irreconcilable approaches and concepts and who is actually quite eclectic in his theoretical work. But I definitely recuse the thesis that Bourdieu is a structural constructionist, at least if we understand by constructionism the principle that social reality must first of all be constructed, that it is not discovered or revealed, and that the different constructions are in principle equal, being just different interpretations and understandings of the infinitely malleable social “material”. In my view it is quite clear that Bourdieu adheres to the thesis that there is a social reality which we (the researchers) must discover (see especially Bourdieu 2001). It is very complex, and dependent of our own interests and habituses, but it is possible to eliminate all ideological weeds and point out the real structure underlying all the hype. The task of a social scientist is precisely to avoid the pitfalls lying in waiting for journalists, politicians, people who rely only upon the surface and its deceptive forms. Also, it is the task of the sociologist to show the relations between the various agents of the real world, that is construct a field in which they act and which makes their acts and intepretations understandable (and even predictable). So there is construction, but construction in a very different sense from social constructionism. A bourdieuan sociologist constructs his basic concepts and relationships so that they are most adequate in relation to the social reality, being aware of the inherent feedback and reflexivity of this reality. He would never say that this is just a construction amond others. Or that the construction is dependent on our freely formed interpretations of the social world. This would be anathema in the bourdieuan framework! Therefore, to put it crassly, most of the more constructionist Bourdieu-interpretations are simply misreadings or extreme interpretations of some quotations taken out of context.
So, for Rahkonen, (who is an extreme example, the other authors are here much more cautious) there is no social or physical reality as such but it is always construed by the social actors. Therefore it is nonsense to speak of a life, which a life story tries to depict. As far as I can see it, Bourdieu puts the question inversely: for him there is the "objective" reality of the society which we can only observe via the construction of adequate theoretical concepts (which are not arbitrary). Another thing is that for Bourdieu, "reality" comprises also the symbolic, reflexive, interested actions which result in the positions in the given field. But he would never say that reality does not count. Thus, Bourdieu would be closer to a position of "grounded theory" but certainly not that of social constructionism. There is a world of difference of trying to construct tools to understand and master the social space, or saying that the social space is an imaginary or textual construct.
It is easy to classify the theses in relation to this question: Rahkonen is an extreme constructionist who has to resort to very acrobatic tricks to fit Bourdieu into his framework, Mjaatvedt is a soft constructionist, while both Munk and Hjellbrekke are “orthodox” bourdieuans in this question.

Rahkonen

   "Not class but struggle" is a so-called article thesis: it consists of a collection of previously published articles with an introduction/summary written specifically for the book. Although it contains articles from as far back as 1985, it is not very extensive: in fact it is the shortest of the four theses.    Keijo Rahkonen is a close colleague (and friend) of mine, which is obvious from the fact that two of the articles have been coauthored by me. Consequently I shall not try to present a critical review, just to give an idea what the book is about and discuss some general problems. It should also be noted that one of the articles "Truth as fiction", is explicitly a critique of my position concerning the reality of life stories.
    Rahkonen's text presents attempts to apply the bourdieuan framework to the analysis of intellectuals and classes. One is actually a report of an attempt to let the intellectuals themselves define the field of intellectuals. The origin of the article was the critique presented by Pierre Bourdieu towards the report on intellectuals published by Lire magazine. Thus, it is highly questionable whether this is a good example of a bourdieuan analysis. In Finland, it is still remembered as being very unfair towards certain categories of intellectuals (women, non-literary intellectuals etc) . It has been repeated recently with a different group of respondents.
   A second article on the new middle class/yuppies of the end of the 80's was more bourdieuan in spirit and form, but even there is a attempt to place just one class in the social space.
   The discussion of the relationship of truth and fiction in the life stories is based on the famous article (L’illusion biographique) by Bourdieu himself, mentioned above: in which Bourdieu made several important points and a few unfair criticisms. The important points were those well known to most students of life stories: that biographies are contextual and that there is a tendency to see more coherence in one’s own life, thus creating a biographical illusion where in reality only a proper name connects the different life events. The unfair criticism were that these points are absolutely unknown and unrecognized by all involved, i.e both those who produce their own life stories and those who use them. This is simply not true. It is a different thing that people have an interest to attribute causal explanations to what has happened to them and see as causes their own actions (or non-actions). But they also are quite able to put their lives in context and see the general picture. They are not stupid, and when they start to reflect, they are in a better position to find an explanation than somebody looking at their lives from the outside.
   But the real quarrel between Bourdieu/Rahkonen and myself lies elsewhere. It is in the conclusions, in which I think Rahkonen goes further than the master would, considering Bourdieu’s extremely realist/pragmatic ontological position.
In the summary article, which purports to be a critique of Bourdieu from a bourdieuan point of view, the point of reflexivity is very superficially discussed: the bourdieuan non-reflexivity of the field strategies of his own adepts is left completely without discussion.

And it should be noted that Bourdieu is also a definitely "modernist" author, for whom the post-modern sociology is just plain rubbish. Even though he has had some common political actions with Derrida, this does not extend to theoretical field. A recent volume in Liber /Raisons d‘Agir by Jacques Bouveresse shows this well. It is a consecration of Sokal-Bricmont from a bourdieusian perspective. This is a difficult matter for Rahkonen, who is a convinced postmodernist/relativist. He has been obliged to do some acrobatics to create the illusion of being a true “bourdivin”. And sometimes he falls flat outside the net, especially so in the biography text. But not always: both his summary and the article on Nietzsche keep to common philosophical premises for Bourdieu and Rahkonen and do not venture outside the limits set by the Bourdieuan enterprise. Unfortunately this also means that the critique does not go very deep.

Mjaatvedt

Olav Mjaatvedts "Trill rundt" (Roll around) tries to apply Bourdieu to transportation, more precisely to the users of transportation and to the marketing of cars. I would describe it with some exaggeration as a "postmodernist" Bourdieu-development, which is a critical, not a positive comment. Why postmodernist? It seems to me that Mjaatvedt really constructs his own Bourdieu and his own field inversely to what Bourdieu himself has proposed. We get first a long treatment of the "historical epistemology" which is supposed to be the fundament of bourdieuan theory, then it is noted that actually field is a little too demanding concept here so Mjaatvedt will treat his subject as a discourse. Then a third concept, social space is introduced. It is said to be less demanding and restrictive than that of field. And finally, by way of introducing us to the field, a field of transportation is presented. This contains different class positions, consumption items, car models (from Mercedes to 2CV and Lada). It is not very clear what is the empirical basis of this tableau, which looks very similar to the social spaces in The Distinction. After this we move to discussion of car advertisements directed to different groups of consumers. This discussion is definitely the most concrete and as such quite interesting. But it could be easily done without any kind of bourdieuan framework. The problem is that this kind of differential car advertisement analysis should lead to something more general, and in this case conclusions about the field of transportation. In connection of Mjaatvedt, one cannot speak of “results”, as the discussion moves on a rather general level, which is somewhat irritating. Mjaatvedt seems never to get to the real point.
Finally Mjaatvedt discusses the problem suggested to him by the master himself: the relationship of the car and the body. I.e. the incorporations of certain car properties into one's own habitus. This is not found to be very fruitful. So Mjaatvedt is disappointing the reader’s expectations all the time, which are very high in the beginning.
I must confess that I am perhaps overly critical here. There is a Norvegian sosiological tradition which is highly essayistic and fragmentary but elegant ( e.g. Osterberg, Otnäs). Mjaatvedt's book is to me a rather good example of this tradition. But my claim is, that much of the Bourdieu is here superfluous or irrelevant The chapters on Bourdieu are not a bad advanced introduction to Bourdieu's work (even if the rely on much too few authors) but they are more or less ignored in the "empirical parts". As a collection of articles this would have functioned better than as a supposedly coherent book. But this is why I call it a postmodernist Bourdieu. In essence, it asserts and negates the master at the same time. And it treats reality as perfectly fragmentary and malleable. Thus Rahkonen and Mjaatvedt go well together. Rahkonen's theoretical part is much like Mjaatvedt's empirical part ...

Interestingly, Mjaadvedt responds also to criticism directed to his way of using the bourdieuan concepts in saying that they are analogous to the criticism that Bourdieu himself has encountered for concepts such as habitus or field being irrelevant to scientific endeavour. I think this is a slight exaggeration. It is true that Bourdieu has been criticized for a rather extensive use of concepts. But still I think that there is a difference between the loose and abstract discussion of the transport field and the way Bourdieu is simultaneously extremely strict and demanding, and extensive.

Here then, we have two very clear categories: Rahkonen and Mjaatvedt as the lighter, postmodernist Bourdieusian works (where they so to speak try to bend Bourdieu into positions with he himself does not take) and Hjellbrekke and Munk as convinced, empirically solid Bourdieuans for whom the essential questions are precisely those which occupy Bourdieu most: how to construct a field from a real social space. The point is that Bourdieu offers a possibility for both ways: he uses concepts loosely and broadly but is at the same time very demanding and strict. Often in a way which makes it difficult for others but easy for him.

. Hjellbrekke

Johs. Hjellbrekke’s Yard work and worker memories is an ambitious and impressive work. Johs. Hjellbrekke combines Bourdieu, Elias, Mannheim and Halbwachs in trying to analyse the field of yard workers in combination with generations. These are to some extent separate undertakings: the field positions of different skilled worker groups are clearly distinct from generational experiences.
The author sets out with three objects for study: collective memory, social class and work and working conditions. It is both theoretical and empirical in ambition: the attempt is made to develop combined theoretical approaches as well as carry out both intensive and extensive empirical research.
Hjellbrekke himself formulates his goal in the following way:
"How the dialectics between the field histories, the positional and autobiographical histories exert structuring power not only over social practices, but also over what Maurice Halbwachs once termed 'collective memory' and how 'collective memory' in turn exert structuring power over the ways the present structures are perceived". and continues: " what kind of relations can be found between the structures in the perceptions of the past ...and the social structures and how, and under what circumstances can the interpretation, classification and commemoration of historical processes, events, epochs, and persons become potential arenas of conflict" (p. 4).

THE problem is how to combine the vast theoretical ambitions to the relatively limited scope of the empirical research. In general, as Hjellbrekke notes himself, the concepts of Bourdieu are not directly empirically usable and therefore it requires a lot of specific work to apply them. The same applies, of course for Halbwachs and Mannheim, whose concepts have not been intended for direct empirical use.

   Following problems come immediately to mind:
- how to apply the field concept in a shipyard environment?
- what is the collective memory of shipyard workers and how can it be studied
- can one speak of different yard worker generations and if yes, in what sense
- why combine precisely collective memory, fields and generations?
( field might be especially superfluous here!)
Or more generally: do the theoretical approach and the empirical research overlap and support each other sufficiently.
    It is important to discuss the theoretical approach and its validity. But it is also necessary to assess the bridging of the theoretical and the empirical - and of course more generally the relationist ambition to bridge different individual-collective, object-subject oppositions.
   One major critical point is that he leaves out of the genuinely biographical approach: questions related to how the workers have come to be yard workers in the different periods of research, and thus how they really form different generations. Even though Hjellbrekke mentions these questions, he does not seem to have thought about this in conducting his empirical research. This question would be important as it is closely related to both the concepts of generations and collective memory, from a bourdieusian point of view. This is emphasised by Hjellbrekke's discussion of different types of memory.
Hjellbrekke discusses different related approaches to collective memory (Irwin-Zarecka, Nora, Connerton) before entering his own relational model. Still, what one would perhaps expect more is a discussion of how the “collective”, relational memory and the bourdieusian field approach are related and what is the rationale behind the, as Hjellbrekke admits himself, risky eclecticism.
    Undoubtedly the key methodological concept in the whole book is "relational". This is valid both for relations between the different concepts as also the fundamental idea of how the concepts should be understood in relation to "reality". Personally, I prefer context, but I believe the idea is the same: that the concepts used in sociology are not to be treated in isolation. Individuals belong to different groups, memories are related, agents have different positions in different structures. But there is also the important downside: no concepts are universal, not everything is related (which would make relationism uninteresting). So it is extremely important to discover the right context. This is the key to concrete analysis, and this is also the key question in Hjellbrekke's study. What aspects should be treated, what questions should be posed?

The empirical setup is quite dramatic: a Stavanger shipyard which used to be owned by a well known power figure in the city and which later was sold to Kvaerner (and has now been resold) and which simultaneously has made a transition from shipbuilding to oil platforms. Four groups of workers are distinguished: platers, plumbers, welders, mechanics/turners (p. 159). These groups are then discussed as a field where they have different positions and a certain hierarchy. They are also all in the skilled worker category so there is not a sufficient spread.
One fundamental rule of Bourdieusian sociology, albeit very difficult to follow, is that everything which is related should be included. In this case it would be absolutely minimum that all relevant groups of employees as well as the different owners should be included. This has not been possible. Also the question of sampling is posed usually very differently by Bourdieu (he favours very extensive total surveys ).
In chapter Three ( An alternative relational approach to memory) which is the key chapter from a theoretical point of view, bourdieuan theory is connected to Halbwachs’ collective memory. Unfortunately it does not fully succeed in creating a theory which would be applicable to the questions posed in the empirical part. Of course they should not be completely identical but there should be a correspondence so that all the different theoretical conceptualisations come to full use and the criticisms directed to alternative approaches can be avoided.
The empirical analysis reminds me at places very much of Misere du monde. (Comparison between generations, changes of positions) But some of the fundamental points of the Misere du monde (misere de position, small and big misery etc) are not used , which is regrettable. In my view they would be applicable to the changing situations of the different skilled worker categories.

One special aspect which should be noted is that both Hjellbrekke and Munk are very strong on correspondence analysis, a multivariate method which is not the easiest one to use and interpret, but which has been used almost exclusively by Bourdieu in his empirical analyses. Hjellbrekke has even published a book on the method and it seems that the most recent available versions are really practical and concrete (for instance when trying to understand a location of a point, the spread of all such points is immediately shown). So both these books are very good as presentations of the use of correspondence analysis, Hjellbrekke is perhaps even clearer and more instructive.

Munk

   Martin Munk’s    Livsbaner gjennem et felt. (Life courses through a field) discusses again a field on which I am not a specialist (the same goes, of course for transport or shipyards!), but in this case I happen to be a an amateur sports enthusiast with even a small inkling of competitive sports . But still Munk’s field is very far away: the Danish elite sports people and their social mobility is not exactly close. No cross country skiers or track and field athletes here! (the track and field star I know best is of course Kipketer, the Kenyan-Danish runner, whereas Munk discusses football, cycling, badminton etc.)
Munk’s research problem is very interesting: capital conversions in the social space, i.e, what happens to people when they become elite sportsmen and what happens when they stop.
    As in all these theses the basic theory of Bourdieu is presented here quite competently and with many variations. It is interesting that all these theses emphasize slightly different fundamental concepts: Rahkonen struggle and taste, Mjaatvedt field, Hjellbrekke capital and Munk capital reconversions and trajectories. And they try to connect to some concepts or empirical questions not used by Bourdieu. In Munk’s case, social mobility. It is astonishing that, with the exception of Daniel Bertaux, social mobility is normally not tackled from the point of view of life histories, even though this should be the central approach. In the bourdieuan framework this is, however, understandable as the time dimension is curiously hidden. Mobility is seen as movements on a field, conversions of capital, trajectories in space. Interestingly, Munk takes very seriously the mathematical-physical models evoked by Bourdieu to illustrate the field concept. He even speaks of constant energy, which has implications for reconversions, and he even recommends learning from physics. I very much doubt that these analogies are really useful, perhaps on the contrary.
The central discussions here are no doubt those connected with capital conversions and reconversions. Becoming an elite sportsman means that one invests very specific capital, physical prowess to an activity which has extremely broad ramifications. If the sportsman hits a jackpot, he becomes famous, rich, increases thus his social and economic capital enormously, whereas usually his cultural capital remains the same. His specific “sports” capital first increases and then at least levels off before he ends his career, but he can use this sports capital in very close activities (training, sports organizations etc.)
Munk shows that this is less possible in Denmark than in countries with large professional sports fields. His main interest is looking at what happens to athletes with different social backgrounds, as groups, not as specific individuals. On the other hand, as Munk emphasizes, the correspondence analysis offers a possibility to look at very small categories. Thus, he can show us that the original social position of an athlete influences strongly his capital reconversions. The higher the original social position and the more education the athlete has, the better are his prospects. Sports capital alone is of little help.

One clear problem in Munk’s discussions is a lack of life historical specificity: it would be very interesting to see how for example a given elite athlete actually has made these reconversions. The names I can think of, are mainly not Danish (but I’ve heard of Bjarne Riis!)
but they could be used as examples. At the time of the publishing of the thesis, Mika Myllylä made a comment about the business activities of Björn Dählie, which seemed to affect his results in the beginning of the season (later it developed that it was a medical problem): however a good example of the real conflicts between different capital development activities for a modern elite athlete (the subsequent Finnish cross-country ski doping scandal is a dramatic example of very quick unexpected loss of capital) .

Munk discusses the field of sports as a subfield of the field of power (which makes sports look more unidimensional than it really is), as well as a structurally homologous field of social space. His analysis is very ambitious; he does indeed develop very specific and contextualized ways of treating the field of sports. One interesting problem is as the fact that the position of sports in the field of power is very different in different countries. This kind of comparative aspect is very difficult to concretize. More generally, this is the problem of looking at social and cultural space in different countries, so that whereas in France, culture occupies as central position the same position is occupied by civil society in the nordic countries, or is in the process of being occupied by the media in countries like the US or UK. To select the field of sports in Denmark is to select a very weak field indeed, where perhaps the individual athletes do not form a field at all? Munk thinks also that the elite sports is becoming more autonomous; this is certainly true when looking at the field of sports as a whole, but on the other hand this autonomy, looked form another angle, becomes an almost total dependency of media, markets, globalization, i.e. a loss of autonomy. Especially in the Danish context, it becomes even more globalized and dependent of outside forces.
The main results are thus in a sense often more negative than positive: showing the lack of connections or the lack of specific sports effects on the social space.
For me one of the main interests in the book is its very generous and thorough discussion of the correspondence analysis. This it shares with Hjellbrekke. Some of the figures are, unfortunately, not very clear: this is also a specific problem of the analysis of correspondences.
The complaint I have been voicing is the lack of specificity, in many cases this could be a book about anything, any class and field-related phenomenon. But this is of course also an advantage : whoever wants to get the latest advances in bourdieuan field analysis and its connections with correspondence analysis, will be satisfied, regardless of his or her specific research interests.

To make a popular book of this work, much cutting of the empirical discussion would be needed, but also more concrete discussions which would make the discussions understandable outside the Bourdieu-oriented readership. For those who wish to use correspondence analysis, Munk’s book offers an additional bonus. Together with Hjellbrekke they are definitely the most advanced and competent discussions of this very exotic field of multivariate analysis.

General conclusions

These four books show first and foremost the true possibilities of bourdieuan approach:
everything, literally everything is possible to submit to this kind of framework. But on the other hand the end result depends very much on the personal ability, creativity and tenacity of the researcher. The bourdieuan approach itself is no magic wand which produces results just by waving it.
In my view, Hjellbrekke and Munk, the most faithfully bourdieuan texts, are precisely for this reason also the most interesting and excellent books on their own right. Whereas the more loosely bourdieuan versions of Mjaatvedt and Rahkonen are less interesting precisely because they are less stringent. As anybody who has read Rahkonen knows, this is also a self-critique (of my own contributions).

Literature

Pierre Bourdieu: Science de la science et reflexivite. Raisons d’agir, Paris 2001
Pierre Bourdieu: Propos sur le champ politique. Presses universitaires de Lyon, Lyon 2000
Pierre Bourdieu (sous la direction de): Misere du monde, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1993
Pierre Bourdieu avec Loic J.D. Wacquant: Reponses. Pour une anthropologie reflexive, Seuil, Paris 1992
Jacques Bouveresse: Prodiges et vertiges de l’analogie, Raisons d’agir, Paris 1999
Donald Broady: Sociologi och epistemologi. Om Pierre Bourdieus författarskap och den historiska epistemologin, HLS Förlag, Stockholm 1990
Donald Broady (ed): Kulturens fält. Daidalos, Göteborg1998
Staf Callewaert: Bourdieu studier I-III. Institut för filosofi, pedagogik och retorik,
Kobenhavns Universitet 1997
Philippe Corcuff: Les nouvelles sociologies , Nathan, Paris 1995
Per Geckler: Impacts of basic education reform in independent Namibia .
Department of Education, University of Copenhagen 2000.
Marianne Hamann-Johnsen: Hemmesykepleje praktikker Århus 1999
Niilo Kauppi: The making of an Avant-Garde. Tel Quel , Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York 1991
Bernard Lahire (ed): Le travail sociologique de Pierre Bourdieu. La decouverte, Paris 1999
Karin Anna Petersen: Sygeplejevidenskab - myte eller virkelighed.Om genese
og struktur af feltet af akademiske uddannelöser og forskning i sygepleje
Sygeplejeskolen, Viborg 1998
Erik Peurell: En författares väg. Jan Fridegård i det litterära fältet Gidlund, Stockholm 1998
Louis Pinto: Pierre Bourdieu et la theorie du monde social, Albin Michel, Paris 1998
M'hammed Sabour: Homo academicus arabicus. University of Joensuu, Joensuu 1988
Jeanine Verdes-Leroux: Le savant et la politique. Grasset, Paris 1998

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