Bourdieu and urban politics: Conceptualizing a Bourdieusian relational framework for urban politics research

Abstract

This study purposes to build a generic theoretical framework of urban politics, drawing on Bourdieu’s relational sociology and theory of practice. Through a Bourdieusian relational mode of analysis, the study has conceptualized subfields of urban politics and the possible dimensions of politics among stakeholders in different subfields. In addition, the two conceptual spaces of positions and position-takings in the field of urban politics were hypothetically constructed with a methodological suggestion of Galois lattice analysis. The concepts of capital and habitus have also been related to develop the theoretical framework.

Keywords

Galois lattice analysis Pierre Bourdieu urban planning urban politics

Urban affairs, in many cases, involve struggles and dynamics among numerous people and organizations with different interests, values, and norms (Bluestone et al., 2008; Corburn, 2009; Lineberry and Sharkansky, 1974; Stedman, 1975; Wolman and Goldsmith, 1992). Even the urban planning field, which seems predominantly technical and administrative, often consists of “a system of social positions defined by the struggle between different actors in the development process” (Howe and Langdon, 2002: 221). Sometimes, planners take political roles by actively engaging in decision-making processes with other stakeholders (Albrechts, 2003). As our societies become more pluralistic and multicultural, conflict is inevitable and natural to planning (Pløger, 2004). We can witness such politics in land-use planning (Rakodi, 2001) and even in the contemporary resilient planning process (Davoudi, 2012).

Consequently, researchers have suggested that planning should focus on governance arrangements, management, and politics, rather than on allocating resources for quality urban spatial planning or administrative processes (Devas and Rakodi, 1993; Rakodi, 2001). In particular, given the emergence of globalized societies, planners are asked to come up with more inclusive and equitable planning models because contemporary urbanism is shaped by distorted sociospatial relationships (Shatkin, 2011). In addition, the need for more strategic planning has been emphasized for Third World countries because they have experienced the failure of the comprehensive urban planning (Farhoodi et al., 2009) advocated by the rational comprehensive planning model (RCPM) in Europe and North America (see Harper and Stein, 2006). Therefore, planning scholars discuss the normative roles of urban planners and planning scholars in affecting social changes (see Campbell, 2012; Wu and Brooks, 2012).

In this vein, urban planning processes and outcomes can be rendered as political products beyond technical, professional solutions for public needs and community problems because they often impel various stakeholders to make “a choice between different courses of action” (Bachrach and Baratz, 1970: 39) through struggles and/or negotiations. Such a political perspective on urban affairs has motivated many researchers to inquire into urban planning and policymaking processes and outcomes using diverse conceptual frameworks (see Dahl, 1961; Domhoff, 2006; Elkin, 2010; Forester, 1982; Friedland et al., 2007; Gunder and Hillier, 2004; Harper and Stein, 2006; Howe and Langdon, 2002; Hunter, 1953; Molotch, 1976; Rabinovitz, 1969; Shin, 2008, 2009; Stone, 1976). In particular, social scholars have addressed many urban issues through the concept of urban politics, which is primarily concerned with the power struggles of stakeholders and the impact of their actions on urban affairs, including urban planning (Shin, 2009).

Although scholars have applied diverse disciplinary theories to the concept of urban politics (Ward et al., 2011), few have found it necessary to define it substantively, perhaps because politics take place in almost every aspect of human social life. Hence, the definition of urban politics becomes a matter of convenience (Savage and Warde, 1993), “defined by what is studied, by practice rather than by a sharp definitional boundary” (Stoker, 1998: 120). We can address local community issues from an urban politics perspective if those issues entail conflicts, struggles, or negotiation among any community members, and if the decision making is supposed to affect community members’ well-being. This less rigorous definition of urban politics grants us leeway to envision a generic model of urban politics through a foundational social theory, if the theory enables us to deeply probe into the politics at play in a local context.

Thus, this study attempts to conceptualize urban politics using Pierre Bourdieu’s theories and relational sociology, arguing that this application enables us to uncover the deeper logic behind stakeholders’ choices of action in urban politics. Many have attempted to apply Bourdieu’s theories for urban research—including planning—but few have sufficiently addressed the relational logic in his theories, and therefore, have not provided a systematic comprehensive theoretical and methodological framework. A critical review of this research will situate this study’s proposed urban politics framework, which purposes to localize Bourdieu’s theories and concepts and systematically arrange them in the Bourdieusian relational sociology, attuning the conceptual framework to the analytic methodology.

Furthermore, this study will discuss the practicality of using the Bourdieusian urban politics framework to help planners strategically participate in urban planning and politics. In particular, from a normative stance, it will address how to organize coalition network(s) consisting of stakeholders with potential to challenge dominant undemocratic forces in urban politics. By identifying the stakeholders who have alternative logics of practice (habitus) and interests (capitals) across diverse social sectors, planners might be better able to effectively mobilize a reform coalition that can exert an impact on the social sector the stakeholders belong to. Hence, this article aims to develop a theoretical justification for recommending that urban planners develop a comprehensive urban politics monitoring system, creating a database on community elites’ and leaders’ primary resources, issues, and activities, and mapping their possible coalition networks.

Bourdieusian urban planning research in critical urban theories and research

In the field of urban planning, post-RCPM or postpositivist theories based on various critical social theories developed in counterresponse to the modernists’ instrumentally rational positivistic planning (Allmendinger, 2002; Forester, 1989, 2007; Innes, 1995a). However, while RCPM planning can be effective and economical with quantitative, empirical, and technical expertise, it in turn essentially excludes ordinary citizens from the planning process, and therefore produces plans that do not reflect citizens’ values and cultures. For instance, certain citizen groups were victimized in the name of effective control and use of urban spaces in the US urban renewal program of the 1960s and 1970s.

Postmodernist planning theories have been derived from postmodernist scholars such as Michel Foucault (Allen, 1996; Gunder and Mouat, 2002; Richardson, 1996), Jacques Lacan (Gunder and Hillier, 2004; Hillier and Gunder, 2005), and Gilles Deleuze (Wood, 2009), while another stream has drawn on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action for deliberative participatory planning (see Fischer, 1999; Forester, 1993; Harper and Stein, 2006; Healey, 1992; Hillier, 2000; Innes, 1995b; Sager, 1994). While Habermasian planning theories emphasize rational, democratic participation in planning processes through communication activities, postmodern planning theorists have maintained that these theories—which are inherited from the Frankfurt School—fail to address the issue of power disparity in the planning process and that planning theories should be able to reveal distorted power relations and challenge dominant powers. Indeed, the tension between these two streams of scholarship reflects the more fundamental epistemological conflict between the two realms of critical social theory.

In contrast to the intellectual divide between the postmodernist cultural, symbolic tradition and the Habermasian material-conscious, structural scholarship, Bourdieu’s epistemological distinction lies in his antidualistic, synthetic, and agnostic intellectual stance (Wacquant, 1998). His theory and research embrace both subjectivist and objectivist modes of theory building and also both symbolic and material aspects of society (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Hence, his project has been to uncover and define socialized subjectivity and the repetitive, core logic of dynamics in both micro and macro social life, without dismissing historically constructed peculiarities in each social domain.

A growing number of urban studies scholars have applied Bourdieusian theories and concepts such as field, habitus, capitals, distinction, symbolic violence, and reflexivity in their research. Nevertheless, many tend to merely cite or, in a fragmented fashion, apply a select few of these theories, which hinders them from showing the interdependency and totality of Bourdieu’s concepts. Few studies explain the organic linkage among Bourdieu’s concepts and provide a systematic Bourdieusian research framework for urban politics. We will critically review previous urban studies through Bourdieu’s concepts in brief and then attend to a Bourdieusian relational mode of social research applicable to urban political studies.

Studies such as those of Putnam and Coleman on social capital for community development research projects rely heavily on Bourdieu’s concept of social capital (c.f. Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1993). In those studies, social capital is treated as a social connection or network that can help community members organize their skills and resources to solve community problems in collective ways (see Hibbitt et al., 2001; Hoyman and Faricy, 2008; Semenza et al., 2007; Semenza and March, 2009). However, Bourdieu’s concept of social capital differs from others in that Bourdieu was fundamentally concerned with addressing social stratification and the reproduction of social classes through different forms of social capital (Bourdieu, 1996, 1998/2001). Therefore, researchers might more effectively use Bourdieu’s concept for delving into how social capital can contribute to maintaining the status quo of the hierarchical structure of urban social classes.

In addition to social capital, Bourdieu’s societal analyses of taste and aesthetic experience—the primary theme of Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984)—and symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 2001) have also been employed to probe how lifestyles, urban designs, and residential geographic locations are differentiated and chosen by different urban social classes (Baviskar, 2003; Gunder and Mouat, 2002; Mattila, 2002; Scheiner and Kasper, 2003). Based on Bourdieu’s critique of Kantian aesthetics, which is embedded in the disinterested, universal notion of aesthetic experiencing, they maintain that urban lifestyles and aesthetic dispositions toward built environments are socially constructed and unwittingly taken for granted, which eventually contributes to reinforcing the upper class’s dominance. For instance, working-class misconceptions of social structure—in other words, symbolic violence—are reflected in their choices of urban environments and lifestyles. Although this idea inspires us to carry it into empirical urban research, it fails to systematically explain that such different urban dispositions are developed because a certain disposition becomes recognized and tangible only in its relationship with other dispositions, according to a Bourdieusian approach to social research (Bourdieu, 1984, 1994/1998).

This relational perspective on attribute or trait resonates with some urban researchers’ applications of Bourdieu’s concept of field (which, in brief, refers to a social arena where people struggle with one another to obtain desired resources and power) because the field framework encourages us to study research targets within their overall relationships with other entities. For instance, Edman (2001) assessed the field of urban planning in Sweden by showing how the professional structure of urban planners affects the field of urban planning in accordance with social change over time. In addition, Gopakumar (2009) applies the field notion to urban politics in India, examining how diverse stakeholders compete or collaborate with one another to spur infrastructure development in two different cities. However, this study is also limited to the extent that it merely reinterprets urban phenomena through Bourdieu’s concept of field and is unable to demonstrate how other relating concepts help complete our understanding of the urban politics. In a similar vein, Huxley (2002) uses a series of Bourdieu’s concepts to analyze the urban politics in an Australian suburb. In spite of this study’s extensive use of Bourdieu’s theories, it also ends up merely interpreting the politics in depth; it fails to create a systemic Bourdieusian research framework for urban politics from the case study.

However, Prieto and Wang (2010) use Bourdieu’s theory of practice to create an analytic framework for politics by conceptualizing participants’ strategies based on their habitus and capitals in their relevant fields during China’s socioeconomic reform process. Prieto and Wang (2010) underscore “constitutive complexity” and “diversity” in humans’ strategic actions as a means of coping with the epistemological conflict between structural- and rational-choice perspectives in strategy studies by using Bourdieu’s theory of practice: an implicit practical logic shaped by repeated experiences and patterned actions with given social position and resources within involving social boundaries over time (p. 300). Theirs is the most comprehensive application of Bourdieu’s theories for reconstructing national politics by explaining key actors’ political strategies operating within and between various fields in a Bourdieusian theoretical framework.

Such a constructive approach bears some resemblance to social constructivism in social theories. In particular, social constructivists have employed actor–network theory (ANT) for urban issues, including planning (see Comber et al., 2003; Graham and Marvin, 2001; Holifield, 2009; Martin, 2000). ANT, which was influenced by postmodernist scholars, such as Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze and Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism, was developed by Michel Callon (1999), Bruno Latour (2005), and John Law (Law and Hassard, 1999). In brief, ANT explicates how actors’ identities and qualities are constructed during their interactions with social events (either material or nonmaterial) over time, while avoiding essentialist explanations of either human or event. Therefore, it is crucial to identify the entire pool of human agents and nonhuman agents and the evolving network of relations between them in order to entirely understand a social phenomenon. But despite the similarity between this and the Bourdieusian framework of reconstructing a social domain (a field), there exists an ontological discrepancy. Since ANT does not presume an a priori social order (Latour, 2005), it tends to disregard existing hierarchical social structures, which affect actors’ level and scope of participation in interactions with social events. However, because Bourdieu’s theory of practice is essentially concerned with human agents’ social positions and socialized subjectivities, the Bourdieusian framework can account for the operating logics of social interaction or transaction between human agents and nonhuman agents in depth. Therefore, a Bourdieusian approach to urban research could complement ANT with a deeper explanation of the actor–network formation and its evolution.

Another thorough application of Bourdieu’s theories for urban studies comes from urban planning theory. Planning theorists Howe and Langdon (2002) developed a conceptual framework for value-conscious urban planning by drawing on Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology. This can be classified as an effort to overcome the limitations of RCPM theory. The Bourdieusian reflexive planning theory distinguishes itself from others by providing a conceptual framework to shed light on embedded inclinations in engaging actors, including urban planners, by assessing the actors’ positions and their standpoints on specific planning issues in an objective manner. This reflexive planning theory ultimately shares the same view on urban planning process as urban politics theory because it conceives urban planning as political strategy by which “different actors fit together, interpret and negotiate their way through the social practices that constitute planning” (Howe and Langdon, 2002: 221).

In sum, Bourdieu’s theories and concepts are increasingly being cited and used for urban research; furthermore, it is encouraging to observe that more urban scholars are providing comprehensive urban research frameworks by organically linking Bourdieu’s core theories and concepts. Nonetheless, no systematic empirical research guide for urban studies with a Bourdieusian theoretical framework is yet fully fledged, probably owing to the fact that Bourdieu’s relational mode of social research, which is his crucial epistemological distinction, has not yet come to urban scholars’ attention.

In Bourdieu’s relational sociology, his theories and concepts are arranged such that systematic empirical research can be envisioned (Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008). This study intends to explain Bourdieusian relational sociology with its implications in the social sciences. After that, it will develop a Bourdieusian urban politics research framework, referring to Emirbayer and Johnson’s relational research model for organizational analysis.

Bourdieu and relational sociology

Although Bourdieu (1994/1998) did not use the term “relational sociology,” his relational epistemology is epitomized in the passage, “the real is relational” (p. 3). In other words,

a certain quality of bearing and manners, most often considered innate (one speaks of distinction naturelle, “natural refinement”), is nothing other than difference, a gap, a distinctive feature, in short, a relational property existing only in and through its relation with other properties. (Bourdieu, 1994/1998: 6)

For instance, in his most renowned work, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Bourdieu (1984) underlines that different tastes or aesthetic dispositions across social classes obtain their meanings, which have no innate qualities, because each taste or disposition verifies its existence only in its relation to others.

Figure 1 illustrates an abstract example of urban politics from the relational epistemology. Each actor or stakeholder has his or her own individual habitus and capitals. Their habitus and capitals are only identified in relation with other actors’ habitus and capitals in the same subfield. Actors in the same subfield share the same subfield habitus and capitals, which are also verified in relation to the habitus and capitals shared by actors in other subfields. All actors in the urban politics also share the same field habitus and capitals because they are all engaged in the politics of the same local community. Therefore, the field habitus and capitals are regionally created, according to one region’s distinction from other regions.

Figure 1.

Relational logic in urban politics.

Indeed, Bourdieu’s relational mode of social scientific research is also embedded in his theoretical and methodological orientation. Criticizing positivists’ epistemology, Bourdieu argues that a theory is “a temporary construct which takes shape for and by empirical work,” not “a sort of prophetic or programmatic discourse which originates by dissection or by amalgamation of other theories for the sole purpose of confronting other such pure theoreticist theories” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 161). Likewise, “concepts have no definition other than systemic ones, and are designed to be put to work empirically in systematic fashion” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 96). The use of “open concept” is “a way of rejecting positivism” and promoting “a mode of construction that has to be rethought anew every time” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 95–110). In short, a theoretical concept is distinguishably constructed in its relation with other relevant concepts, and it functions as a tentative research framework, which provides systematic guides to discover the operating logics of the research target.

This relational mode of theory building corresponds to Bourdieu’s methodological inclination. While he is eclectic in terms of research methods, using both ethnographic qualitative and statistical quantitative analyses, his major theory building for field, capital, and habitus depends on a relational mode of quantitative analysis, or correspondence analysis, which is a multivariate statistical technique for presenting a set of data in a two-dimensional graphical way (see Greenacre, 1983) because it is “a relational technique of data analysis whose philosophy corresponds exactly to what, in [his] view, the reality of the social world is” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 96). Bourdieu has shown the correspondences between the space of positions in fields and spaces of position-taking, regarding cultural taste, higher education, housing in the French society, and so on (Bourdieu, 1984, 1984/1988, 1996, 2005b). Hence, building a Bourdieusian relational research framework involves constructing the structure of positions among agents and their chosen actions or their own properties by taking the full gamut of the agents and the possible actions or properties into account.

In the next section, I attempt to theorize urban politics in a Bourdieusian mode of relational social research. Viewing urban politics as an urban social organization, I refer to a Bourdieusian organizational research framework in order to conceptualize urban politics.

Theorizing urban politics with Bourdieu’s relational sociology

Organization is an indispensable, crucial dimension of human social life (Etzioni, 1964). The term organization does not refer simply to either a building or a legal entity; it means an evolving entity that people create through continuous human actions and interactions (Monge et al., 2008). Therefore, organization is in a constant process of organizing (Weick, 1979). Understanding organization as an organizing process presents the significant implication that urban politics can be understood as an urban social organization because it engages various people in struggles and competitions on a shared urban issue. Particularly, urban politics is a highly complicated organizing process in which various participants from diverse organizations participate with different stakes, positions, and operating logics. In a nutshell, urban politics is a conflictual, multidimensional urban social organization in which people and organizational entities interplay with one another to dominate certain urban issues through conflict, struggle, collaboration, and/or negotiation.

Urban politics as field

In organizational research, a Bourdieusian relational framework for intra- and interorganizational analyses has been conceptualized by integrating core concepts such as field, capital, and habitus. For intra-organizational research, organizations are analyzed as fields themselves, in which each organization affects individual members’ actions in the organization with its own rules and interest, while their interactions with other organizations are assessed in terms of interorganizational relations (Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008). In other words, an organization is treated as a field where we can inquire into the struggles and competitions among the members in the organization (DiMaggio, 1983, 1986, 1991). However, a cluster of organizations can also be considered as a field, where the field influences the transactions among the organizations with its own distinctive operating logics and stakes. The conceptualization of organizational fields confirms the relational logic in Bourdieu’s theory, as he maintains that “to think in terms of field is to think relationally” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 96).

In the above conceptualization for organizational research, the concept of field is noticeably not a fixed and ready-made term but a loosened and open concept (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). In other words, the notion of field is a relaxed and flexible research concept or perspective used to assess a certain inquiry domain by considering its historical particularity and also looking for a universal pattern or rule over various social domains, which is constrained by its existing social conditions (Bourdieu, 1985; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Initially, Bourdieu coined the concept of field while reading the later Wittgenstein, as he was intrigued by the metaphor of the game—as he understood it, a serious struggle among individuals over stakes to which they are deeply committed (Bourdieu, 1985; Calhoun, 2000). Consequently, he introduced the concept of field, which, abstractly, refers to the social domains where people maneuver and struggle for desired resources and power. Field is composed of “a structure of objective relations between positions of force” so that it “undergirds and guides the strategies whereby the occupants of these positions seek, individually or collectively, to safeguard or improve their position and to impose the principle of hierarchization most favorable to their own products” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 101). Bourdieu employed the field theory and verified the operating logic in the field by investigating various fields such as a literacy field (Bourdieu, 1992/1997), a religious field (Bourdieu, 1991), a field of cultural production (Bourdieu, 1992/1997), a political field, a science field, a journalistic field (Bourdieu, 2005a), a field of housing economy (Bourdieu, 2005b), and so on.

Hence, drawing on the Bourdieusian conceptualization of organization, we can claim that urban politics, as a political urban social organization, is also a field in which people and organizational entities struggle and compete to carry through their goals for specific urban affairs and eventually dominate the field. Furthermore, since urban politics is strategized by diverse agents from various social domains, the field of urban politics needs to take multiple levels of politics into account (Painter, 1997; Prieto and Wang, 2010).

Thus, as shown in Figure 2, a field of urban politics consists of multiple subfields, which are differentiated across social domains. Moreover, urban politics take place in three dimensions: (1) politics between subfields, (2) politics among stakeholders within the same subfield, and (3) politics among stakeholders across different subfields, mostly in the form of coalition (Shin, 2009). With the concepts of subfields and dimensions of urban politics in consideration, we can draw a preliminary analysis framework, which functions as a tentative baseline for constructing a field of urban politics.

Figure 2.

Three dimensions of urban politics and the field of urban politics as the space of positions.

Constructing subfields of urban politics

In modern societies, human beings are subject to living in differentiated social spaces, or spheres of life, such as art, science, religion, economy, politics, and so on, which are driven by division of labor and social function (see Durkheim, 1933/1893). Those social spaces are conceived as fields that create specific small worlds, with their own rules, regularities, and forms of authority (Bourdieu, 1985). The formations of diverse fields go through “the process of differentiation and autonomization” of the social world (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 103). Hence, the concept of field enables us to assess a local urban politics where groups of stakeholders live in a social hierarchy in terms of their social status and power. Initially, we can tentatively conceptualize a local community as a social space for the local subfields, or social realms, which are in general composed of the local polity, local interest groups, and local civic groups by referring to locally differentiated social labors, or the division of labor in a local community. The subfields compete or cooperate with one another for survival and reproduction. This is conceptualized as the between-subfields politics.

The subfields also historically set up their own rules and regularities, upon which stakeholders within each field act. Therefore, stakeholders’ practices as local social agents in their own fields are determined by their social relations with others, rather than rational self-interests (Bourdieu, 1980/1990). Indeed, a field is not produced by a deliberate act of formation; rather, it operates according to its own rules or regularities, which are implicit and uncodified (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). In detail, each field (e.g. religious field, artistic field, scientific field, juridical field, journalistic field, etc.) develops specific stakes (enjeux), specific investments in the game (illusio), and specific beliefs (doxa) (Bourdieu, 1992/1997; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Therefore, we can expect that stakeholders in each subfield in urban politics share a common stake, their own rules, and a particular belief, which are differentiated by each subfield’s relationship with others.

At a microlevel, the field principle also allows us to look into the struggles among individual stakeholders within each subfield participating in urban politics. Therefore, the within-field politics are conceived as the struggles among stakeholders within each subfield. As each subfield exists relationally with other subfields, which are semi-autonomous and increasingly specialized spheres of actions (Bourdieu, 1994/1998), individual stakeholders in each subfield exist in their relations to other stakeholders in the same subfield. That is, individual human beings act in order to differentiate themselves from others in an ongoing process, which is unconsciously enacted without strategic intention. In other words, social survival depends on social recognition and distinction. Indeed, for Bourdieu, social existence means difference, which implies hierarchy because he thinks that human beings’ ultimate logic of practices is grounded on the desire for dignity, rather than a conscious strategy to accumulate wealth, status, or power in utilitarian theory (Bourdieu, 1980/1990; Wacquant, 1998).

However, in the real world, the interactions and transactions among stakeholders are complicatedly intertwined in the way that individual stakeholders from the same subfield also compete or cooperate with other stakeholders from other subfields for desired resources and power. Hence, the between-individual stakeholders’ politics across different subfields are also identified, as the struggles among stakeholders across all subfields. In short, the complex relations among stakeholders are analytically separated into three dimensions of urban politics: the between-subfields, the within-subfield, and the between-individual stakeholders’ politics across different subfields. Therefore, the basic, preliminary framework of urban politics can give us a starting point for constructing urban politics based on an empirical study through which unique subfields of urban politics can be identified and conceived.

Space of position-takings in the field of urban politics

In reality, the field of urban politics becomes organized and salient only when a certain issue occurs in a local community. However, the subfields of urban politics are relatively permanent because they are the fields of position or power. For this reason, the field of urban politics entails a space for position-takings on specific urban issues. In short, the field of urban politics is composed of a space of social positions, which are located on accumulated capitals, and concomitantly a space of position-takings, which are clustered based on the choices of symbolic actions for a certain urban issue.

In his sociocultural stratification analysis, Bourdieu (1994/1998) defines position-takings as “the choices made by the social agents in the most diverse domains of practices, in food or sport, music or politics, and so forth” (p. 6). The space of position-takings indirectly indicates the agents’ dispositions or habitus by signaling their activities, which have symbolic meanings for distinction from other agents. For example, an upper middle–class person’s country club membership implies his or her socioeconomic habitus in the space of position-takings with regard to leisure, as different social classes tend to prefer different political parties in the space of political position-takings.

In organizational research, organization as a field is also conceptualized both as a space of objective positions, arranged by intra-organizational entities such as people and agencies based on different amounts or types of capital, and a space of position-takings, which is composed of different discourses or actions in semiotic or cultural aspect (Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008). While individual actors in an organization distinguish themselves from others by taking symbolically meaningful positions through opinions, services, actions, works, or products in terms of an intra-organizational field, economic corporations differentiate their products or services from other competitors by using symbolic differences such as branding in terms of an interorganizational field (Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008). In sum, as Bourdieusian field analysis requires constructing two spaces of social structure—one of positions and one of position-takings—urban politics research must identify and investigate the space of positions and the space of position-takings on a specific urban issue. Particularly, since the field of urban politics consists of diverse subfields, it needs to assess the spaces of positions and position-takings within each subfield and also the entire space of position-takings that take place regarding a certain urban affair.

From an analytic standpoint, constructing the two spaces of positions and position-takings leads us to assess a field by analyzing the networks among stakeholders within and between each subfield in urban politics. Bourdieu also defines a field as

a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions. These positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc.). (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 97)

For this reason, network analysis might be an appropriate research tool to identify the configuration of stakeholders’ connections and the power hierarchy. In particular, actor-by-actor one-mode network analysis is effective for showing network centrality and cohesive subgroups (see Moody and White, 2003; Wasserman, 1994; Watts et al., 2002). However, as Bourdieu (2005b) points out, it is not sufficient to assess the field impact on the social relations because an actor-by-actor one-mode network can only show “the effect of the conscious and calculated anticipation each agent may have of the effects of its actions on the other agents” (p. 198). As a result, it fails to grasp the overarching forces behind hierarchical organization through the network analysis.

In order to deal with the bidimensional issue of social relations among actors in the spaces of positions and position-takings, Bourdieu employs correspondence analysis because this method enables us to map a two-dimensional representation of the relations among actors. For instance, the actors’ social positions are calculated and located based on their sought-after capital, and their position-takings are mapped with their social positions over certain social phenomena. As a statistical visualization method for presenting the connections between two categorical variables, correspondence analysis became Bourdieu’s favorite research method particularly for constructing fields in a relational mode.

In addition to correspondence analysis, Emirbayer and Johnson (2008) suggest Galois lattices analysis for Bourdieusian relational organizational research because it can also show a duality in the spaces of positions and position-takings in a field. The bipartite network analysis method shows this duality in an organization in the way that a corporation’s donation of money to some charitable cause can be understood in its meaning only with references to the corporation’s position and trajectory in its organizational field (Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008). This analysis method has been employed in various social science areas (see Breiger, 2000; Emirbayer and Williams, 2005; Kang, 2000; Mische, 2008; Mische and Pattison, 2000; Mohr and Duquenne, 1997; Shin, 2009).

Through a diagram, a Galois lattice enables us to identify specific linkages among stakeholders, the associations between stakeholders and their position-takings, and, finally, the connections among position-takings. Hence, the Galois lattice can serve as an effective method for urban politics research because it helps us identify specific associations rather than broadly clustered relations, as in correspondence analysis. Moreover, while correspondence analysis provides an excellent mapping tool to show a comprehensive hierarchical structure of a research domain by locating actors on a map based on their social positions and position-takings, it is often very hard to gain research data from community leaders and high-ranking decision makers in urban politics. Data such as capitals, associations, and activities are often too private to be revealed to the public. In contrast, we can relatively easily gather necessary data for Galois lattice analysis by analyzing public documents or mass media contents since those materials can be treated as a public history repository from which researchers can cull key actors and events. For instance, Shin (2009) gathered and analyzed 5 years of local news media reports on low-income housing policy in a midsized urban US community and used these data to reconstruct the urban politics through Galois lattice analysis.

The use of Galois lattices, often called formal concept analysis, is a method of data analysis that identifies hierarchical conceptual structures among data sets (Priss, 2006; Wolff, 1993). The concept is named after French mathematician Évariste Galois, the founding father of Galois theory, a major branch of abstract algebra (Duquenne, 1991; Freeman and White, 1993). This two-mode, or bipartite, network analysis can show the structural duality of: (1) the actor-by-event structure, (2) the actor-by-actor structure, and (3) the event-by-event structure, by analyzing a two-mode network and representing the network configuration simultaneously (Freeman and White, 1993).

Formal concept analysis understands concepts in a context composed of the relationships between objects and attributes (Wolff, 1993). The cluster of objects is a set of all objects sharing a common subset of attributes, and the cluster of attributes is a set of all attributes shared by the cluster of objects. Indeed, from a philosophical viewpoint, a concept is a unit of thoughts composed of two parts, the extension and the intension (see Frege, 1949). The extension consists of all objects belonging to a concept, and the intension is composed of all attributes valid for all those objects. Hence, the interactions between objects and attributes within a context make multiple hierarchical relations, such as superconcepts and subconcepts among all concepts, according to containment relations on the sets of objects and attributes (Wolff, 1993).

As shown in a simple example in Table 1, the extension comprises four objects, and the intension is composed of four attributes. In a hypothetical context of urban politics, four objects are assumed and four attributes are represented. Politicians are associated with policymaking. Both interest groups and civic groups are linked with lobbying and demonstration, but interest groups are not connected with volunteering. The public is linked with volunteering and demonstrating, as well as with lobbying. On the one hand, in the extension, the object—the civic group—becomes the superconcept because it is related to the largest number of attributes. On the other hand, in the intension, demonstration is treated as the superconcept since it is associated with most of the objects (excepting politicians).

Table 1.

Formal concept analysis: a context of urban politics.

Object	Attribute
Object	Policymaking	Lobbying	Volunteering	Demonstration
Politicians	1	0	0	0
Interest Group	0	1	0	1
Civic Group	0	1	1	1
Public	0	0	1	1

The digit 1 signifies the existence of a relation between extent and intent. The digit 0 means that there is no relation between extent and intent.

The whole conceptual hierarchy of all concepts of the context is presented in a line diagram, which is composed of lines and nodes, and the names of all objects and all attributes, based on formal concept analysis as below (see Figure 3). Lines show the linkages between intents and extents, and nodes refer to concepts. If a node is filled with a color on the upper semicircle, it means that an attribute is attached to the concept. If a node is filled with color on the lower semicircle, it means that an object is attached to the concept. Reading this diagram follows a simple rule: an object O has an attribute A if and only if there is an upward-leading path from the circle named by O to the node named by A. Vice versa, an attribute A has an object O if and only if there is an downward-leading path from the circle named by A to the node named by O. From Figure 3, we can read that the object Civic Group, based on the upward-leading path, has attributes Volunteering, Lobbying, and Demonstration. In addition, we can identify that the attribute Demonstration, based on the downward-leading path, has objects Public, Interest Group, and Civic Group.

Figure 3.

A line diagram of position-takings in a hypothetical field of urban politics.

In sum, these latticed connections refer to a particular correspondence between two partially ordered sets and show detailed representations of the duality of the affiliated relationship—for example, between actors and actions that the actors are engaged in (see Breiger, 1974). Therefore, this method eventually overcomes the limitation of one-mode network analysis such as actor-by-actor network (Freeman and White, 1993). This bipartite network analysis method enables us to solve some complex two-mode, actor-by-action configurations in urban politics by using Galois lattice software programs such as Conlmp, Diagram, General Lattice Analysis and Design (GLAD), or Concept Explorer.

Therefore, using Galois lattice analysis, we can construct a field of urban politics. Specifically, the lattice method enables us to identify specific associations among stakeholders’ positions and their position-takings. Although we can identify an overall configuration of urban politics with the field theory and Galois lattice analysis, we must further our investigation of the operating logics in the formation of urban politics. For this, we will refer to two important concepts in Bourdieu’s theory of practice—capitals and habitus.

Capital and habitus in the field of urban politics

Both capital, which is multidimensional, and habitus, which is the unconscious schema for perception and practice, are inseparable from the concept of field since a field is a social space of relations of force among individuals or among groups that possess the same capitals necessary to hold the dominant positions (Bourdieu, 1992/1997). In this vein, capital does not simply refer to economic resources. Rather, it is embodied in three principal forms: economic, cultural, and social. Economic capital refers to material and financial assets, so that it is immediately and directly fungible into money and is to be institutionalized in the form of property rights (Bourdieu, 1986). Cultural capital, consisting of scarce symbolic goods, skills, titles, and so on is fungible into economic capital under certain circumstances and is to be institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications (Bourdieu, 1986). Social capital, composed of social obligation or connection, refers to resources accumulated by virtue of membership in a group, which is also fungible into economic capital under certain conditions and is to be institutionalized in the form of a title of nobility (Bourdieu, 1986).

It is crucial to notice that all three forms of capital can exert effects only when they are perceived as such by people (Bourdieu, 1986). As Bourdieu emphasizes that “a capital does not exist and function except in relation to a field” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 101), we postulate that the capitals that the stakeholders in urban politics seek and struggle to possess vary across subfields. In other words, the stakeholders are likely to act and to be located on their own subfields, according to the capitals they seek to possess. For instance, while the stakeholders in the subfield of local interest groups are more likely to seek economic capital, local politicians might be more interested in obtaining nonmaterial capital, such as political power. This relational nature of capital opposes a substantialist notion of capital as a substantial property (Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008).

Nevertheless, the notion of capital cannot explain the deeper logic of stakeholders’ different practices in urban politics. In other words, we need an answer for the question: why do some actors seek different capitals and different courses of action even in the same subfield? For this, we incorporate Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and more precisely the concept of habitus, because habitus, or “bodily knowledge,” which is inscribed in social agents’ bodies by past experience (Bourdieu, 1994/1998: 135), works as the foundational logic of practice even for the calculative, rational activity of seeking capitals in urban politics. Therefore, habitus enables social agents

to perform acts of practical knowledge, based on the identification and recognition of conditional, conventional stimuli to which they are predisposed to react; and, without any explicit definition of ends or rational calculation of means, to generate appropriate and endlessly renewed strategies, but within the limits of the structural constraints of which they are the product and which define them. (Bourdieu, 1994/1998: 138)

Hence, those stakeholders who have different habitus end up choosing different capitals and different political position-takings than other stakeholders in the same subfield of urban politics.

In other words, habitus are “generative principles of distinct and distinctive practices,” “classificatory schemes,” “principles of classification,” “principles of vision and division,” and “different tastes” (Bourdieu, 1994/1998: 8). Therefore, while a field provides objective rules, habitus brings out the actors’ subjective gut feelings for and reaction to the rules in certain ways (Bourdieu, 1994/1998). Dominant stakeholders are more likely to maintain dominant ideas or rules that operate as the foundations for their own subfield, while peripheral stakeholders might have more potential to challenge and reform the field of urban politics. In this vein, the stakeholders, who have acquired different habitus from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds over time, unconsciously choose different capitals and different courses of political actions in the same subfield of urban politics. Hence, we can postulate that the stakeholders who have alternative habitus are more likely to work as challengers or reformers in a subfield of urban politics. In sum, the notion of habitus also helps us identify potential challengers or reformers in each subfield of urban politics. They are expected to seek to introduce alternative standards into the field against those who defend autonomous principles of extant judgment in the arena of a continuing collision in the field (Bourdieu, 1992/1997; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992).

Conclusion: constructing a field of urban politics and the implications

As Bourdieu (1996) points out, constructing a field is a most arduous process, in which initial insights about the principles of relational divisions in fields must be empirically tested and gradually refined until an objective space is built. Researchers are required to track back and forth between the construction of a field and the production of relevant data, always thinking and practicing relationally by using every possible research method from social network analysis to inferential statistical analyses and ethnography (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992).

In addition, it is always advisable that constructing a field entails considering the historical particularity of its research domain (Bourdieu, 1985; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Based on the relevant historical knowledge and its historical particularity, we are able to identify the organizing principles of a field in the history of the field and in its relations to the larger fields to which it belongs (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992; Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008).

This current study has attempted to build a generic theoretical framework of urban politics, drawing on Bourdieu’s relational sociology and theory of practice. It purposes to serve as the initial research guidelines for constructing urban politics. The framework is only useful when we can obtain the insights to identify the logics of urban politics in a community and construct the unique structure of urban politics considering the community’s own historical path. In other words, we can expect to discover different capitals and contours of subfields of urban politics across space and time as we refine the field of urban politics through the interaction between theory and research. For example, Shin (2009) reconstructed an urban politics of low-income housing policy in a midsized midwestern US community through various research methods, such as network analysis, local business database analysis, media content analysis, public document analysis, and in-depth interviews with key local leaders. The in-depth interviews in particular revealed how various community leaders had developed different political habitus through their life trajectories and held different primary capitals for their politics.

From a normative perspective, we need to utilize an analytic framework such as a practice model for urban planners’ strategic participation in urban planning and politics. Such analysis importantly illuminates reform potential in the field theory because it conceives a field as “the locus of relations of force—and not only of meaning—and of struggles aimed at transforming it, and therefore of endless change” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 103). In other words, while there are central players in a field who try to uphold orthodox principles of actions, there are also marginal players who have heretical values and interests and thereby own the potential to become the innovators in the field (Bourdieu, 2004). Through a Bourdieusian analytical framework, we might identify the stakeholders who have alternative principles in urban politics and the impact they have on the subfield they belong to, and collaborate with them to develop effective coalition networks for urban politics.

It is for this purpose that this study suggests the value of developing a comprehensive urban politics monitoring system through which urban planners can trace and predict the possible coalitions in the field of urban politics and also strategically collaborate with certain stakeholders through networked, ad hoc civic politics over specific community issues. In the private sector, corporate managers use such stakeholder mapping strategies—identifying stakeholders’ interests and power levels and predicting possible coalitions by using mapping tools—in order to effectively respond to stakeholders’ needs and crises (Boutilier, 2009; Mitchell et al., 1997). Likewise, an urban politics monitoring system can be actualized by creating a database of core community stakeholders’ subfields (professions), capitals (interests or stakes), and position-takings (activities regarding community affairs). Then this database, gathered in the form of a matrix and analyzed through Galois lattice analysis, would be able to show the associations of stakeholders based on their position-takings (see Duquenne, 1991; Freeman and White, 1993). Urban planners would be able to use this urban politics monitoring system to identify possible coalition networks according to specific urban issues and seek cooperation with relevant stakeholders.

To this end, urban planners can employ community informatics, an interdisciplinary approach to information and communication technology, since it focuses on its input for system design on the basis of social and community elements such as users, their needs, and the skills and capacities of the community members (see Gurstein, 2007). Therefore, urban planners are encouraged to collaborate with community informatics researchers to develop an urban politics monitoring system and utilize it for strategically participating in urban planning and politics.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is very grateful for the guidance and encouragement from Dr. Lewis A. Friedland in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. And, the author also appreciates three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions in the revision of this article.

Funding

This project is supported by the Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant (H-21538SG) from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the James Carey Urban Communication Award from both the International Communication Association and the Urban Communication Foundation.

Author biography

Yongjun Shin is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University, USA. He has a PhD in urban communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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