A Bourdieusian rebuttal to Bourdieu’s rebuttal: social network analysis, regression, and methodological breakthroughs

Abstract

Bourdieu carved out a distinctive analytical niche for his reflexive sociology. His epistemological tool of field analysis, sometimes coupled with statistical correspondence analysis, is particularly powerful when deciphering the matrix of objective structures and subjective structures within social spaces (field) where agents vie for positions (capital), strategise dispositions (habitus), and negotiate practices. When grappling with the inner workings of the social world and the logic of practice within the social world, Bourdieu favours his field theory over network theory and considers correspondence analysis to be superior to regression analysis. In this paper, I argue that Bourdieu’s canonical theory-laden analytical framework does not exclude other methodological approaches. Indeed, Bourdieu himself argues against ‘methodological monotheism’. I therefore make an attempt to develop a Bourdieusian approach to Social Network Analysis (SNA) and regression analysis, despite Bourdieu’s explicit rebuttal to these methodological schools. To this end, I first review Bourdieu’s rebuttal to network analysis and regression analysis. I then tentatively incorporate SNA and regression into Bourdieu’s analytical framework. This is followed by an example of using SNA and regression in Bourdieusian research conducted in a Chinese educational context. In this vein, I engage with a Bourdieusian rebuttal to Bourdieu’s rebuttal.

Keywords:

• Field of mediation
• regression
• relational sociology
• social network analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See an introduction to Blockmodels in Borgatti et al., (2018).

2 Floating children refer to those brought by their migrant parents from rural communities to urban sites. Without an urban household residency (hukou, 户口), these children are often faced with structural constraints when accessing urban social welfare, free public schooling in particular (see Mu, 2018, Mu, 2019; Mu et al., 2013; Mu & Hu, 2016; Mu & Jia, 2016).

3 See detailed introduction in Borgatti et al., (2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Australian Research Council under the grant ARC-DE180100107.

Notes on contributors

Guanglun Michael Mu

Dr Guanglun Michael Mu is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. His current project on resilience, culture, and class has received significant research grant from the Australian Research Council ($414,325.000). Michael is an author of five scholarly books. His publications straddle three areas of sociology of education, namely building resilience in multicultural, (im)migration contexts; negotiating Chineseness in diasporic contexts; and developing teacher professionalism in the Chinese inclusive education context. His methodological interests include quantitative research, mixed methods research, and Social Network Analysis.