Abstract:

The debate on Bourdieu's relationship with neoclassical economic theory has become more apparent especially with the advancement of the neoliberalization process. In this debate, the question was whether the conceptual framework developed by Bourdieu (which is based on the notions of “habitus”, “field” and “different types of capital”) consisted of a simple extension of the neo-classical economic theory in social theory or rather a radical critique of it. Thus, some saw him as one of the representatives of “economic imperialism” in the discipline of sociology; while others considered his work as a “counterhegemonic project” against the neoclassical theory. Unlike the majority of favorable and unfavorable parts of the debate, in this article, it is proposed to consider the same issue by situating it in its historical and social context. In order to do this, we refer mainly to the Bourdieu's anthropological field studies on Algeria and on “the bank and its customers” in the late 1950s and early 1960s and also to his empirical exploration about the commercialization of individual house market during the 1980s. As a result, we would like to present that Bourdieu's approach not only shares its epistemological framework with neoclassical theory, but that this affinity in no way decreases its capacity of criticism, but rather, enhances it.

Keywords: