Table Of ContentBourdieu in the City
Building on three decades of comparative research on marginality, ethnicity,
and penality in the postindustrial metropolis, Loïc Wacquant offers a novel
interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu as urban theorist. He invites us to explore
the city through what he christens the trialectic of symbolic space (the mental
categories through which we perceive and organize the world), social space (the
distribution of capital in its different forms), and physical space (the built envi-
ronment). On this reading, Bourdieu’s topological sociology gives us the tools,
not just to energize, but to challenge the canon of urban studies and to redraw
their theoretical landscape.
Wacquant proposes to rethink “the urban” as the domain of the accumula-
tion, diversification, and contestation of capitals (in the plural) and the ground
for the commingling and collision of variegated habitus, which makes the city a
central site and stake of historical struggles. He shows that the city is a paradox-
ical absent presence at the heart of Bourdieu’s sociology and that “urbanizing”
his thought strengthens his theory of fields but unsettles his account of action.
At every step in the formulation of his neo-B ourdieusian program for the
social study of the metropolis, which foregrounds the role of symbolic power
and the state, Wacquant confronts the objections and responds to the criticisms
that his arguments have evoked across disciplinary and national boundaries.
This gives unusual force and special clarity to a book that aims to change the
way its readers understand Bourdieu and view the metropolis.
Compact and incisive, Bourdieu in the City will be of interest to students and
scholars in sociology, anthropology, geography, urban studies, urban planning,
architecture, and social theory, as well as to anyone in the social sciences and
humanities interested in the work of Bourdieu and its relevance to their own
concerns.
Loïc Wacquant is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley,
and Research associate at the Centre de sociologie européenne, Paris. His books
are translated into 20 languages and include Urban Outcasts (2008) and The
Invention of the “Underclass” (2022), both also published by Polity Press.
Bourdieu in the City
Challenging Urban Theory
Loïc Wacquant
polity
Copyright © Loïc Wacquant 2023
The right of Loïc Wacquant to be identified as Author of this Work has been
asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2023 by Polity Press
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À Délou, Jaja, Mumusse et à leurs familles
Contents
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Figures ix
Taking Bourdieu to Town xi
Prologue 1
Finding an entry into a field in flux 2
Bourdieu’s trialectic 6
Practice and symbolic power in the city 11
1. Bourdieu in the Urban Crucible 18
Bourdieu’s urban pertinence: A youthful excursus 21
Transversal principles for putting Bourdieu to work 32
Habitus and field in the urban crucible 48
Topos, space, and place in Bourdieu: A response to my
German commentators 53
2. The Bitter Taste of Territorial Taint 61
Bourdieu meets Goffman in the city 63
Historical specificities of spatial stain at century’s turn 71
A topology of territorial taint 81
The bitter taste of spatial stigma 91
Dispossession and dishonor in the dual metropolis:
Reactions and recommendations 98
3. Marginality, Ethnicity, and Penality in the Neoliberal
Metropolis 111
Triangulating urban inequality 115
Deploying and extending Bourdieu’s concepts 126
viii Contents
The jail as core urban institution 137
For transversality 143
Precariat, punishment, politics: A reply to my critics 147
Epilogue: Bourdieu in the City, the City in Bourdieu 161
Bourdieu in the city 163
Capital accumulation, diversification, contestation 167
The variegation of habitus in the urban vortex 175
Acknowledgments 185
References 187
Index 222
Figures
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Figure 1. The trialectic of symbolic, social, and physical space 52
Figure 2. A topology of the production and impact of territorial
taint 82
Figure 3. The fatal triangle of the urban precariat 118
Figure 4. The underlying theoretical architecture of the trilogy 127
Figure 5. The main concepts developed in the trilogy 131
Figure 6. Spatial seclusion in the shaping of habitus 162
