Exam cd

Maria Lauridsen Jensen: 20116208 December 2014

AU: Central Debates in Anthropology

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Contents

Structure, Agency and Power: A Comparison of Bourdieu and Foucault ....................... 1

Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1

Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism ...................................................................... 2

Foucault and Bourdieu .................................................................................................. 3

Structure ........................................................................................................................ 5

Symbolic Violence :: Governmentality ........................................................................ 6

Freedom for agency ...................................................................................................... 8

Case: Central American Migration ............................................................................... 9

Foucault on the Case ............................................................................................... 10

Bourdieu on the Case .............................................................................................. 12

Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 14

References ................................................................................................................... 16



1

Structure, Agency and Power: A Comparison of Bourdieu and

Foucault

Introduction

Human beings and human diversity is the main interest of anthropology. Whether this

object of research should be understood as focusing on individuals or on groups of

individuals is, however, contested throughout the history of anthropology.

Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of the discipline, argued for a focus on the

collective aspects of human life. Indeed he equaled society with God, suggesting that

society determined all human action, and he pointed out that all phenomena connected

to people could be reduced to social facts. To Durkheim the social provided people with

agency; agency in his view was thereby external to human beings (cf. Barnard 2000:64;

Bourdieu 2000:156; Høiris 2010:452-458; Kuklick 2012).

Though Durkheim's theory is the founding pillar of anthropology, it is no longer

fully accepted. In a time of free will, speech and acts, it is indeed depressing if all of our

thoughts and acts are produced by society.

The question of structure (the pre-given causes for how to behave, underlying a

society) and agency (conscious choices of behavior made by the individual) is import to

reflect upon within anthropology. Branding ourselves for paying attention to human

diversity, it would be ironic to reduce human agency to boxes of theory based on

structure. On the other hand, we would not be able to grasp the behavior of other human

beings if nothing connects us at all.

In this text I will address this riddle through the work of Michel Foucault and Pierre

Bourdieu. I find it particularly interesting to discuss the question through their work,

because they share a background of being French intellectuals of the late 20th

to early

21th centuries. I will argue that although they have many similarities, their views differ.

My problem statement goes as follows:

I will throughout these pages account for Pierre Bourdieu’s and Michel Foucault’s

approaches to structure and agency. I will discuss similarities and differences and

illustrate with a concrete ethnographic example about migration from Mexico to the

United States of America.



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Both Bourdieu and Foucault have been very productive writers, and I cannot

account for the research question in regards to their entire bodies of work. Therefore

this text is limited to concentrate on chosen chapters from Foucault’s The History of

Sexuality (1980), and Foucault’s lectures and an interview with Foucault in The

Foucault Effect (1991). In regards to Bourdieu, the chosen texts are “A Magnified

Image” in Masculine Domination (2001) and the book Pascalian Meditations (2000).

Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism

For a start, I will situate the concerning part of the structure-agency debate as well as

the two theorists within the tendency of post-structuralism. Post-structuralism is part of

the broader post-modernism within humanities, which thrived in the 1970s and 1980s.

Post-modernism is a reaction against the grand narratives of modernism that each

claimed to give the true account of the world. This was the time when anthropologist

became aware of and critical towards their own historical and colonial heritage, and

started to question whether or not they could give an objective, scientific and

representative description of a culture or a group of people; these were the questions

that formed the crisis of representation (Marcus and Fischer 1986:7-16).

In spite of the crisis, anthropology has remained an academic discipline. The crisis

of representation has, however, led to an increased awareness of and reflection on the

anthropologist’s role in the formation of truths. Moreover, since there is no longer a

universal truth to be found, anthropologists have turned towards a focus on lived life

with all of the details that formerly did not fit into the theoretical schemes (Marcus and

Fischer 1986:7-16).

Structuralism, which is mainly connected to the French anthropologist Claude

Lévi-Strauss, is one of the grand narratives of modernity; post-structuralism, which

mainly flourished in France, is a critique of that narrative. Post-structuralists do not

fully abandon structuralism, indeed both Foucault and Bourdieu has been greatly

inspired by it. Rather, post-structuralists seek beyond structuralism. Post-structuralism

adds to the former structuralism the post-modern tendency of highlighting the

positioned anthropologist, a perspective on power, and an attempt to combine structure

and agency (Barnard 2000:139-157).



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Another grand narrative of modernity is linked to Max Weber. In a language of

economy, Weber promoted an action-centered approach with a focus on how the

rational individual calculates choices of action (Barnard 2000:82; Sayer 1991:97-98).

Never the less, his view is rather pessimistic. Although he focuses on rationality, he

points out that the individual is not ultimately free to rationalize; rationality is bound up

in capitalism, bureaucracy and religion. To Weber modern subjects are driven to act in

goal oriented ways, but they have forgotten the reason why they do so (Sayer 1991:134-

155). I mention Weber’s work here to point out that both Bourdieu and Foucault make

use of it in their theories, thereby mixing the grand narratives of modernity. Bourdieu

(2000:176-178) carries on the focus on how action is constantly generated, whereas

Foucault (1980:5; cf. Mahmood 2005:17) continues the view, that a person cannot think

thoughts that are outside the structure of which that person is part.

Though neither Bourdieu nor Foucault is content of labels, and though both can be

referred to as what Barnard (2000) terms ‘mavericks’, I will in the following chapter

account for how they can be seen as post-structuralists and post-modernists.

Foucault and Bourdieu

Michel Foucault is a French philosopher and social historian who has inspired social

scientists across disciplinary lines. His work is widely read within anthropology (cf.

Barnard 2000:140; Mattingly 2012:163). Having said that, according to Marcus and

Fischer (1986:15), the strength of the anthropologist is the ability to see the world

through a jeweler’s eye – an eye for petite details. The jeweler’s eye is not a quality that

characterizes Foucault’s work. In explaining rationality as a product of universal rules

of behavior on the one hand, and a historically constructed rationality on the other,

Foucault indeed seems to use the opposite strategy; he focuses on connections between

phenomena over an enormous time span. Foucault thereby continues the focus on social

structures; yet, he does not seek a universal structure, as Lévi-Strauss did – neither does

Bourdieu (cf. Foucault 1988:148; Barnard 2000:120).

Pierre Bourdieu, who is also French, is trained in anthropology, sociology and

philosophy. Bourdieu is closer to applying the jeweler’s eye than Foucault, which might



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be a result of his anthropological training. However, he does not go all the way to

capture the subjective histories in the part of his work I deal with here. Finding

inspiration both in structuralism and in the tradition of Weber, but satisfied with neither,

Bourdieu creates a theory to bridge: Practice theory, a theory of acting agents (cf.

Bourdieu 2000:150-151; Bourdieu 2001:44).

Practice theory is based on the metaphor of a game. Each player has his or her

interest in acting in particular ways to reach a desired future. The rules of the game

changes in different social situations, which Bourdieu (2000:183) calls ‘fields’, but

socially defined qualities of an agent, which he (2000:20) calls ‘capital’, can if managed

right be transferred between different fields. Bourdieu (2000:11) uses the term ‘Illusio’

to describe the personal investment in the game, and though it is guided by habitus,

which I will explain in the next chapter, it is perhaps the closest Bourdieu gets to

agency. When investing, the agent takes the dispositions in hand, and thereby activates

them (Bourdieu 2000:151).

The introduction of Bourdieu’s practice theory in the late 1970s carried a move

within anthropology from macroanalysis to microanalysis (Ortner 1984:145). As

mentioned in the previous chapter, the focus on lived life is a feature of post-

modernism. Furthermore, practice theory is a post-structural theory because it is a move

beyond structuralism in regards to its attempt to bridge theoretical perspectives.

As Foucault (1980,1991; Foucault et al. 1988:148), Bourdieu argues that all human

beings are historically structured agents, and both Bourdieu (2000:176) and Foucault

(1980) notices that by living in the world people are also involved in structuring the

world back. Hence, by breaking with explaining agency solely on the basis of one

underlying structure of society, and by including a reflection on their own partaking in

the production of truths, Bourdieu and Foucault can be called post-structuralists.

The difference between them is that Foucault focuses on the historical processes

that have produced a certain mode of thinking, whereas Bourdieu focuses on how a

certain mode of thinking is generated in a particular social context. In his book

Pascalian Meditation (2000:176-178), Bourdieu criticizes Lévi-Strauss and Foucault for

focusing on processes that has been carried out, thereby ignoring the active dimension

of symbolic production. Bourdieu (2000:176-178), inspired by Weber, is interested in



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the interaction, negotiation, conflict, interest, motivation and competition that produces

or reproduces structure.

Moreover Bourdieu (2001:6-7) criticizes Foucault for taking a point of departure in

Plato in his History of Sexuality (1980), thereby lacking the history of sexuality that

formed Plato’s point of view. Bourdieu points out that historical analyses run a high risk

of misinterpretation, because they are interpretations of the interpretations of other

authors. Bourdieu instead argues for a direct study of acting agents. Nevertheless, what

the two authors have in common is the perspective of social constructivism (cf.

Foucault 1980:11,87; Foucault et al. 1988:17-18). The awareness of that a phenomenon

has been socially constructed is characteristic of post-modernism.

Structure

Having outlined the debate, I will now move on to discuss similarities and differences

between the work of Bourdieu and Foucault in regards to structure.

‘Habitus’ is a central term in the work of Bourdieu, and it conveys the essence of

his view on structure. Bourdieu (2000:148) describes habitus as practical knowledge

which is a product of its agent’s history. Habitus is a structure which is structured by the

experiences in the social life of the person it belongs to, and furthermore habitus

structures the field in which the person moves. In other words, habitus is the dialectic

relation between structure and agent. According to Bourdieu (2000:211) the dialectic

between habitus and the probabilities of a social space forms the basis for acts and

thoughts. He points out, ‘one should not say that a historical event determined a

behavior but that it had this determining effect because a habitus capable of being

affected by that event conferred that power upon it’ (Bourdieu 2000:149). Hence

structure does not ultimately determine behavior.

Foucault (Foucault et al. 1988:22) and Bourdieu (2000:217; 2001:49-53) agree that

it is in the relationship with other human beings that rules and norms for behavior and

speech are formed. Moreover, through the concept of habitus Bourdieu moves away

from the classic understanding that the dispositions for behavior lies in the social, as for

example seen in the work of Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss and Weber, to a focus on bodily

dispositions (cf. Barnard 2000:142; Bourdieu 2000:160). The move towards embodied

structure is a point Bourdieu shares with Foucault (1980:11; 1988:16-19).



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There is an interesting parallel between the Stoic techniques of askesis through

meditation, which Foucault (Foucault et al. 1988: 35-36), in his quest for how human

beings understand themselves, describes as an example of an ancient technique of self,

and Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. The Stoic meditation is a technique for the subject to

imagine outcomes of an event by using ‘the discourses with which he is armed’

(Foucault et al. 1988:35); for Bourdieu that kind of knowledge is internalized in the

body. To Bourdieu (2000:148) action is neither purely impulsive nor purely

rationalized, thus it is a combination of structure and individual consciousness; to

Foucault (1980:5; cf. Mahmood 2005:17) the subject is the result of power and

discourse, thus solely structure.

Bourdieu (2000:151) writes that illusio, the social investment, only is an illusion

from people standing outside the game, whereby the players do not perceive they are

part of a game. Notwithstanding, Bourdieu (2000:157-158) explains that agents take

part in various fields; in each field people with different sets of habitus meet.

Furthermore, a field most often has at least one agent whose habitus does not

correspond to the field. Discrepancy between habitus and field in one or more of the

players opens a window for questioning the nature of the field. Bourdieu points out that

this is more likely to happen at the limits of fields than in the most regulated social

structures.

In the work of Foucault (1980:8-13) it seems as if only the social scientist can

observe the social world from the outside (Foucault et al. 1988:10; cf. Mattingly

2012:175). This is perhaps because the fields Foucault operates with are on societal

basis, whereas Bourdieu looks at niches within a society.

A common critique of post-structuralists is that they undermine how individuals are

confronted with several discourses (cf. Mattingly 2012:179; Navaro-Yashin 2012:98).

Because of Bourdieu’s point about agents that move between fields and thereby at times

causes discrepancies within the fields, I will exclude Bourdieu from the critique.

Symbolic Violence :: Governmentality

In this section I will argue that there is correspondence between Bourdieu’s term

‘symbolic violence’ and Foucault’s term ‘governmentality’, but that Foucault and

Bourdieu, never the less, differ in their views of how people can react to domination.



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Bourdieu (2001:1-2,8) operates with the term ‘Symbolic power’ or ‘symbolic

violence’, which is a form of power unnoticed by the people subjected to it, because it

has become doxa. Doxa is the state when the socially constructed is perceived as the

natural order and therefore accepted; it is when categories are perceived as being ‘in the

order of things’. Here we see an interesting parallel to the work of Foucault on

governmentality.

Foucault (1991:90-93) traces the word ‘government’ back to the Italian theorist

Machiavelli’s The Prince from the 16th

century, in which the prince governs for the sake

of his own position without consideration for his population. Foucault then turns to

some of the first anti-Machiavelli literature, where he finds Guillaume de La Perrière’s

definition of government: ‘the right disposition of things’. Notice how the definition

reflects Bourdieu’s description of doxa. Foucault (1991:92,102-103) sees La Perrière’s

definition as the beginning of a movement from government as the exercise of

sovereign power, towards disciplinary power through surveillance and control, to

becoming mainly governmentality. Even though governmentality is the most applied

form in the last period of time Foucault identifies, elements of the two former styles of

governing are still incorporated in the new style.

Governmentality is about creating welfare for the population by employing tactics,

patience, wisdom and diligence, whereas sovereignty is about employing laws by force

and violence if necessary. The goal of sovereignty is to make people obey. Through

governmentality the population is made instruments of government without their full

awareness; thus governmentality corresponds to Bourdieu’s notion ‘Symbolic violence’

(Foucault 1991:94-100).

Accordingly, the connections between ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘governmentality’

are evident. Never the less, Foucault and Bourdieu differ in their views of how people

can act on being exposed to power. To Bourdieu (2001:38), symbolic violence works as

a trigger of the dispositions of possibilities within a person’s habitus. Therefore, to

Bourdieu the structure, is not solely responsible for a person’s acts, nor is a certain

event. To Foucault (1980:24; Foucault et al. 1988:148), on the contrary, people think

and act on the basis of universal rules of behavior on the one hand, and a historical

rationality on the other. Thereby both of Foucault’s bases for acts and thought derive

solely from structure.



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So far I have discussed the similarities as well as differences in Bourdieu’s and

Foucault’s views on structure. In the following I will discuss their views on freedom

and agency.

Freedom for agency

Assuming an agent is confronted with the symbolic violence or governmentality

described in the previous chapter, I will now discuss how, respectively, Bourdieu and

Foucault views the agent’s possibilities to break free.

Bourdieu (2000:221-224) explains that if a person over a long period of time

experiences to be powerless, the luciones, chances, to acquire power are likely to vanish

from the person’s habitus. This causes that the person is unlikely to find illusio, reason

to invest, in the game of power over own life. However, Bourdieu notices that people

without a future are likely to behave in ways that contradict their discourse. They often

break with the knowledge of the world obtained in their habitus, and enter the world of

dreams, fantasies and hopes in order not to surrender. Even though Bourdieu (2000:221)

points out that in reality these people are limited by the power that controls their forth-

coming, he acknowledges that doxa can be acted upon, and that domination (starting off

mentally) can be overcome.

Drawing on Pascal, Bourdieu (2000:239-240) concludes that human beings are

mortal, and the only way they can legitimate their existence is through the social game.

It is the chase for personal goals which provides life with meaning. Hence, all lives are

to some extended imagined. What makes some lives more verified than others is social

capital, social recognition. Defining an (imaginative) reason to live can thereby be seen

as agency to define one’s own life.

Moreover, when the holders of symbolic power create the discourse that constitutes

their powers, they create room for interpretation of the discourse. This is especially the

case with structures that are yet not well established (Bourdieu 2000:236). Bourdieu

2000:234-35, Bourdieu 2001:13-14) terms the multivocality ‘margin of freedom’,

because it opens the possibility for turning the symbols to the benefit of the dominated.

He writes, ‘The belief that this or that future, either desired or feared, is possible,

probable or inevitable can, in some historical conditions, mobilize a group around it and

so help favour or prevent the coming of that future’ (Bourdieu 2000:235). Bourdieu



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thereby opens up for two possible directions of a discourse. Also, we must not forget the

point mentioned earlier that a field is open for questioning and thereby change, when an

agent with a discrepant habitus enters.

Foucault on the other hand leaves no room for thought outside discourse. Giving an

example of this, Foucault (1980) explains that whether the agent speaks up or silences

on the topic of sexuality, the discourse of sexuality is reproduced. It is not that Foucault

believes that changes are impossible, rather he only see the possibility for change

through major structural changes in the given society such as war, economic crisis, and

transgression of laws or rebellion (cf. Foucault 1980:5; 1991:97). Even the Stoic thinker

described earlier, can only think with the discourses he is embedded in.

Indeed Foucault’s project (1980:11,33-35) is to trace down the discursive fact,

which is how something is put into discourse, and those techniques of power or webs of

discourses that evade society and thereby control the behavior of individuals.

Bourdieu’s project is the opposite; it takes a point of departure in the behavior of

individuals to explain structure.

Case: Central American Migration

A large number of people from the Central American countries are currently pursuing

The American Dream – a positive imagination of the United States of America. Poverty

as well as violence, threats, extortion and victimization (often connected to drug gangs)

is more norm than exception in the Central American region, and factors like these are

causing the wave of migration to the USA. The journey, however, is not a piece of cake.

The dangers continue. The persecutions do not end. Due to poverty, a great number of

people board the roof of La Bestia (meaning ‘The Beast’; a nickname of the infamous

freight trains); many fall of the trains due to physical fatigue, and if they survive it is

most likely with fewer limbs. Rape, organ trafficking and attracts by gangs is also

common (cf. Vogt 2013).

Anthropologist Wendy Vogt has done fieldwork in Mexico's Southern border area,

where she has interviewed migrants in shelters, which mainly are run by a pastoral

organization and receive no direct state support. The shelters function as places where

the migrants temporarily can eat and sleep as they wait to jump on a train (Vogt



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2013:766). I will use her study as a case through which I can illustrate Foucault’s and

Bourdieu’s contributions to the structure-agency debate.

Based on the case of Central American migration, I will now raise the

anthropological questions of why so many Central Americans go on the promising, but

notorious journey to the USA. I will use the perspective of Foucault on the one hand

and Bourdieu on the other, in an attempt to explain the question.

Foucault on the Case

The work of Michel Foucault requires a great deal of historical digging into discourses

that I am not equipped to do here. Instead I will primarily use his work to raise

questions for thought.

First of all Foucault would ask how certain knowledge of the world has come into

being. He would identify the discursive fact (cf. Foucault 1880:11,33-35). It would in

this regard be relevant to view the term ‘migrant’ as a social construction. How has

migration been put into discourse? And how has the term ‘La Bestia’ become part of

that discourse? In identifying a web of discourses it could be relevant to question why

migrants are identified as ‘illegal transitory intruders’ (cf. Vogt 2013:776); and targets

for gangs (cf. Vogt 2013:774); why the US and Mexican states see migrants as

problems that should be controlled and kept out (cf. Vogt 2013:771); and why migrants

themselves see migration as the road to a happier life (cf. Vogt 2013:769).

If, as Foucault (1980:11) suggests, a web of discourses is a technique of power that

penetrates society all the way into the bodies of individuals, it is relevant to see how the

opposing discourses within the web reinforce each other, and to what end. Since social

insecurity is a common reason for migration, I assume it is a big part of the structure in

question.

Vogt (2013:768,770) suggests that the Central American heritage of civil war is a

factor that makes social insecurity thrive, and she points towards the implementation of

neo-liberalism as another. Furthermore, she describes migrants as being embedded in

the structure of global capitalism. Following Foucault, I suggest that these aspects have

the same source, and I suggest they all spring from Western colonialism. Proving this



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would entail a historical investigation of North American and European interests in the

region with a focus on social struggles and social changes.

Capitalism might after all be a good place to start the analysis: The neo-liberal state

requires lowered governmental expenses, for example through a drawback on

government employees in the public; this in turn creates space for gangs to impose fear

and violence – in other words social insecurity. Exposed to social insecurity at home,

and stories of the good life in North America, migration seems beneficial. Thereby the

American Dream is what Foucault (1988:148) calls a historical rationality; migration

has become a naturalized response to the social insecurities in Central America.

Migration, as both Vogt (2013:770-771) and philosopher Thomas Nail (2013)

points out, keeps the economy going. Migration is the economic vehicle for human

smugglers, organ traffickers, drug smugglers, extortion, and the sex industry. The

state’s presence at the border (for example in the form of employees, border posts and a

wall) is a power showoff; it is a disciplinary form of government. Moreover, when

hindering migrants in crossing the border sovereign power is enacted. Furthermore, the

state legitimizes its presence at the border through the notion of securing the citizens

and thereby creating welfare for the people, which according to Foucault is what

legitimizes governmentality. Still governments might have an interest in letting people

slip by their gazes, since the possibility for migrants to do so, ensures the necessity of

the guards and jailers, and thereby their paychecks. Furthermore, Central American

migrants provide the US with a cheap labor force motivated to work hard in order to

send home remittances. The conflicting discourses can thereby be seen as a technique of

government mainly through the mode of governmentality. Migrants are instruments of

the state to earn money, and they are scarcely aware of it (cf. Foucault 1991:94-100;

Nail 2013).

Drawing this Foucault inspired analysis together I conclude that the migrants are

left with no agency for breaking the structure of which they are part. The alternative,

staying home, reaffirms the power of the gangs to control lives. Hence, these people are

domed to stay dominated unless the entire structure of capitalism and insecurities

changes.



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Bourdieu on the Case

I will now apply Bourdieu to the analysis, to illustrate that he ascribes more agency to

the migrants than Foucault does.

As a point of departure I will follow up on the instrumental use of migrants to earn

money as I described in connection to Foucault, and point out that it is what Bourdieu

(2000:1-2,8) calls symbolic violence. According to Vogt (2013:765), the migrants see

the violence experienced on the journey as a continuation of the violence they have

always experienced. The violence and hardship has to some extend become doxa, a

naturalized part of life in Central America. Yet, the nature of living with physical

violence is questioned by the migrants in their attempts to escape it; therefore migrants

only perceive violence as doxa in connection to their home region. When seen as a

discursive construction of the opposition between social insecurity in Central America

versus social stability in the USA, the violence is symbolic. In the following I will move

to the level of lived life, as Bourdieu (2000:176-178) argues for.

Legitimizing Existence

Ordinary life changes, from the moment a person is threated by a gang member. From

that point on the luciones, chances, of working to create the life the person wishes for is

strongly weakened, because the luciones of being violated, raped, kidnapped or killed

have become very real. Thereby the present is taken away from the person’s own grasp.

The person becomes what Bourdieu (2000:211) describes as a person without future –

this should be understood as without a future of own choice that can be worked towards.

Seen from the view of the analyst there are three possible reactions to threats: to keep

being dominated at home; acting against domination at home; or migrating.

Threats are acts that potentially can trigger habitus, a person’s embodied structural

dispositions. Earlier experiences with fatal consequences of threats, increases the

likelihood to either obey or migrate. Capital also triggers the dispositions: Having

money or a social network that can help facilitate migration, increases the likelihood of

a successful migration, in other words it increases the luciones. Such factors are

differently distributed in individuals, causing different sets of combinations between



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event and structure, and thereby different reactions to the same event (cf. Bourdieu

2000:220).

Furthermore, in being without a future, a person is likely to enter the world of

imagination in order to have a mission with life that can make life meaningful (cf.

Bourdieu 2000:221). To act against domination or to migrate are both acts that can be

compared to gambling. Faced with the discourse of the ‘American Dream’ on the one

hand, and ‘La Bestia’ on the other, migrants enter a game of life or death. According to

Bourdieu (2000:222-223) gambling and death-defying games, for the time being, can

provide a sense of escape, existence and expectation. As a consequence of having

nothing to lose, the habitus can be suspended, and agency can take over and define life.

I argue that the suspension of habitus is the first move towards structural change.

Migration entails a vision that life is greener on the other side. Migration is illusio;

it is a project with a goal that gives meaning to existence; it is the vision of life without

violence or poverty. Staying to obey is a way of becoming the instrument of gangs,

confirming their dominance, and reproducing the social structure. By obeying the only

thing gained is life, but a life without agency and a personal purpose. Migration, on the

other hand, can be viewed as a personal project. It is the first step in the project of

defining one’s own life. Though running away to some extend confirms the power of

the dominators, it is a move away from domination. Ultimately, if migration increases,

there will be no one left to dominate, and what dominator would want that? Migration is

an investment in the game of life, and no investment comes without risks.

On the move

Vogt (2013:765-766) describes migrants as people in liminal spaces, thereby pointing

out that they are in-between having decided to migrate and arriving, and that they are

physically mobile. In Bourdieu’s terms, the migrants have left the fields that so far have

structured their habituses, and they are moving through new social fields. However as

the migrants are moving towards the USA, there is no need to engage deeply with any

of the fields on the way, and they thereby spend most of their time on the limits of

fields.



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It is then relevant to ask if migrants can have a feel for the game. Through the use

of Bourdieu’s theory I suggest that the migrants cannot have a strongly adjusted feel for

the game in all the fields they enter into on their journey. I do, on the other hand,

suggest that there is a field composed by migrants. Throughout migration, the migrants

learn to navigate in the field of migration. Furthermore, as in any other field, it is also

possible to accumulate capital while migrating, which perhaps can be made use of in

other fields as well. Nail (2013:125) for example suggests that the ability to overcome

hardship is valued in the North American labor market.

If the migrant succeeds and is able to create a correspondence between habitus and

the fields that make up the new home, luciones to gain in the game of power increases,

and thus the luciones of a heightened degree of agency. The luciones forms the

foundation of illusio. Whereas the initial illusio broke free from habitus, the illusio of a

migrant who has succeeded can be more grounded in reality. In other words, if the

migrant experiences a bit of success, his or her hope for a brighter future will rise, and

thereby the motivation to work towards that future. Migration is taking a chance based

on a vision, and if it succeeds new visions can be made and worked towards. The

succeeded migrant is likely to base the new visions on knowledge accumulated from

experiences.

Throughout this analysis based on Bourdieu, I have shown that people have

different habituses and therefore their reactions to the event of a threat or to the process

of migration will differ. I have illustrated that migration, in breaking with the luciones

defined by habitus, is the first step of agency. I have pointed out that migration is a way

to legitimize an existence, and last but not least I have suggested that migration can be a

means to gain luciones, and thereby a reason to invest anew in one’s personal forth-

coming.

Conclusion

Throughout this work I have compared the work of Michel Foucault and Pierre

Bourdieu in regards to the structure-agency debate. I argue that although they have

many similarities, their views differ in a number of ways.



15

Even though neither Foucault nor Bourdieu is a pure anthropologist, their immense

impact on the discipline of anthropology makes it important for anthropologists to take

their work seriously. I have found it particularly interesting to look at Foucault and

Bourdieu in relation to the structure-agency debate, because they, in spite of their

disciplinary differences, share the French post-modern and post structural intellectual

context; they both seek beyond the modern models of structure and agency.

By comparing Foucault and Bourdieu I have reached an insight into how Foucault

traces the history of how structures evolve and affect people, and how Bourdieu turns

the object of study around, and focuses on how people’s engagement in different social

fields forms the structure of the fields that again form the agents back.

I have argued that there is correspondence between Bourdieu’s term ‘symbolic

violence’ and Foucault’s term ‘governmentality’, but that Foucault and Bourdieu, never

the less, differ in their views of the degree to which people can act against power and

structure. Foucault is more pessimistic than Bourdieu, because to him, acting against

dominance, reaffirms the dominance. Furthermore, the structural changes Foucault

refers to are epochal; they do not refer to individuals that challenge the discourse in

their daily lives, but rather changes of a whole society. Bourdieu, on the other hand,

pays attention to the agents, and how they form and rearticulate structure through

negotiation, whereby the structure to some extent always is changing.

To illustrate the theory with a concrete ethnographic example, I have asked why a

great number of Central Americans migrate to the USA, when the journey is known to

be unsafe. In the Foucault inspired part of the analysis I show a network of structural

lines that makes it seem as if the individuals are caught in a network of structure.

Migration is explained as an effect of structure, and capitalism is suggested to be the

main catalyst. In the Bourdieu inspired part of the analysis I illustrate how personal

experiences form the life of an individual, and thereby cause different people to respond

in different ways to the same event. I argue that when a migrant breaks with habitus and

perceive migration as profitable, migration is agency. Through Bourdieu, I have pointed

out that migration is a way to legitimize an existence. It is a step that can increase the

chances of creating the life one desires, and it thereby nourishes the imagination that

facilitates agency.



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I find that an analysis that solely draws on Foucault moves too far away from living

people to be anthropological. Including Foucault can, nevertheless, raise some

important questions about the nature of structural forces, that Bourdieu mentions, but

does not go deeper into. Hence the combination of Bourdieu and Foucault can give a

more nuanced analysis.

Lastly, I would like to draw attention towards the rising anthropological focus on

doubt, and point out that in order to doubt one cannot be fully controlled by structure or

blinded by discourse (cf. Louw 2014; Pelkmans 2013). This is an aspect of the

structure-agency debate that would be interesting to investigate in extension to my work

here.

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