ABSTRACT

This book rethinks the key concepts of International Relations by drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu.

The last few years have seen a genuine wave of publications promoting sociology in international relations. Scholars have suggested that Bourdieu’s vocabulary can be applied to study security, diplomacy, migration and global environmental politics. Yet we still lack a systematic and accessible analysis of what Bourdieu-inspired IR might look like. This book provides the answer. It offers an introduction to Bourdieu’s thinking to a wider IR audience, challenges key assumptions, which currently structure IR scholarship – and provides an original, theoretical restatement of some of the core concepts in the field. The book brings together a select group of leading IR scholars who draw on both theoretical and empirical insights from Bourdieu. Each chapter covers one central concept in IR: Methodology, Knowledge, Power, Strategy, Security, Culture, Gender, Norms, Sovereignty and Integration. The chapters demonstrate how these concepts can be reinterpreted and used in new ways when exposed to Bourdieusian logic.

Challenging key pillars of IR scholarship, Bourdieu in International Relations will be of interest to critical theorists, and scholars of IR theory.

chapter |23 pages

Introduction

Bourdieu and International Relations theory

chapter |21 pages

Bourdieu's concepts

Political sociology in international relations

chapter |14 pages

Methodology

Putting practice theory into practice

chapter |15 pages

Power 1

Bourdieu's field analysis of relational capital, misrecognition and domination

chapter |21 pages

Strategy

Strategizing about strategy

chapter |17 pages

Security

Analysing transnational professionals of (in)security in Europe

chapter |17 pages

Culture

Elements toward an understanding of charisma in international relations

chapter |17 pages

Gender

Bourdieu, gender, and the international

chapter |14 pages

Norms

Bourdieu's nomos, or the structural power of norms

chapter |14 pages

Sovereignty

The state's symbolic power and transnational fields

chapter |14 pages

Integration

Elements for a structural constructivist perspective 1

chapter |13 pages

Citizenship

Bourdieu, migration and the international