Bourdieu, Marxism and Law: Between Radical Criticism and Political Responsibility

The chapter aims to investigate the way Bourdieu’s sociology of juridical field has defined itself through its relationship with Marx and the Marxism of Althusser and Thompson. Firstly, it shows Bourdieu’s relationship with Marx through a case of misinterpretation concerning practical obedience to law. Then it tries to highlight how Bourdieu develops certain features of his sociology in opposition to and in dialogue with Althusser and Thompson, proposing an epistemological model of radical critique aimed at politically problematizing law through the analysis of the relationship between the juridical field, the field of power and the habitus. This model is contradicted neither by the realpolitk of reason nor by the political positions taken by Bourdieu in the 1990s in favour of public service and Welfare State. Indeed, it shows a Marxian ancestry in the constant concern to link the analysis and critique of normativity to power relations and social struggles, as emerges from the confrontation between Bourdieu and the Durkheimian-derived juridical perspectives.