Download Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu. 1998. “Is a Disinterested Act Possible?” Pp. 75-91 in Practical Reason: On
the Theory of Action. Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press.
Dominance is not solely a consequence of people’s economic activities. People may become
dominant within any of society’s (bureaucratic, artistic, scientific, etc.) social fields. Yet each
field comprises a game that they may or may not take seriously. For example, outsiders may be
totally indifferent to a game despite possibly having extensive knowledge about it. At the other
extreme, however, those born into a social field will tend to accept its mental structures as
obvious and thus beyond question. Their interest in (i.e., their illusio within) the game is
absolute. More importantly, the practical skills (or habitus) gained by those socialized into the
field will increase the likelihood of their dominance within it. Actions taken on behalf of one’s
social field (for example, legitimated with “business is business”) are not genuinely disinterested
insofar as they were intended to gain symbolic capital for one’s “selfless” contributions to the
field. If sociologists lack sufficiently disinterested habitus, they too may partake in such
cynically disinterested acts—thereby promoting illusio rather than (in genuinely disinterested
acts) analyzing social fields’ rationalized forms of domination.