Comparing Elias and Bourdieu as Relational Thinkers

Abstract

I have been fascinated by the texts of Elias since I first read What Is Sociology? The reading of this book was a refreshing discovery for an uncomfortable social scientist like me who felt that too many social scientists perceived their objects in the wrong way. Elias helped me to define what I wished to see in sociology: people making various processes such as couples, families, states, nations, global economies, genocides, political dominations, exploitations by transacting with each other. So, Elias was a great discovery. However, I did not become an “Eliasian.” I have no interest in the emergence of one Eliasian paradigm or central theory. In fact, this chapter should be seen as being part of a broader intellectual current made by people who are developing a relational sociology (Crossley 2010; Donati 2011; Emirbayer 1997; Dépelteau 2008a, 2008b). In fact, I am working on the construction of a transactional sociology where, in very brief, the social universe is made of complex and fluid fields of transactions involving various transactors (or interdependent actors). This is the main reason why I have been interested by the works of Bourdieu and Elias in the last years. Both of them have been associated with the emergence of relational sociology by many specialists such as Corcuff (2007), Dunning and Hughes (2013), Emirbayer (1997), Emirbayer and Goldberg (2005), and Emirbayer and Johnson (2008). By keeping this association in mind, I would like to compare the works of these two important sociologists. This comparison is founded on two general ideas:

• When we move beyond some apparent and somehow deceptive similarities, Elias appears to be more relational than Bourdieu, who is more deterministic or codeterministic.

• However, some aspects of Bourdieu’s work—especially his focus on social inequalities, domination, and symbolic violence—might help Elias’s approach to overcome some of its limits.