Bourdieu, Foucault and the politics of precarity
Masquelier, C
Date: 7 December 2018
Journal
Distinktion
Publisher
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Precarity is widely regarded as a defining condition of advanced capitalist societies. Given its
existentially troubling character and a range of movements condemning its social consequences,
several contemporary analysts have sought to diagnose the prospects for liberating society from its
rule. Many of those accounts have been ...
Precarity is widely regarded as a defining condition of advanced capitalist societies. Given its
existentially troubling character and a range of movements condemning its social consequences,
several contemporary analysts have sought to diagnose the prospects for liberating society from its
rule. Many of those accounts have been inspired by the post-structuralism of Michel Foucault. It is
nevertheless argued here that Pierre Bourdieu offers more suitable conceptual tools for diagnosing
precarity-induced domination and making sense of resistance in the contemporary age of precarity.
With a focus on Foucault’s neoliberal ‘art of government’ and Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic power,’
this article exposes the differences between each theorist’s account of precarity. While doing so will
help grasp the complex and singular character of the operations of power today, it will also serve to
highlight the merits of Bourdieu’s work for capturing the limits of, and cracks within, precarity-induced
domination. Realising the full potential of his own approach for conceptualising resistance, however,
rests on supplementing it with insights drawn from intersectionality theory.
Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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