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Politeia's place in our practical life: Pierre Bourdieu on the modern state

Abstract:Pierre Bourdieu's account of the modern state's emergence has affinities with the analyses of legal systems offered by Herbert Hart and Hans Kelsen. Bourdieu, Hart, and Kelsen each describe normative spaces within which practical life unfolds. While Bourdieu's account of the state as 'a space of spaces' is less systematic than the analyses of Hart and Kelsen, he augments their contributions in important ways. He conveys a more definite sense of the texture of lived experience within the space he describes than either Hart or Kelsen on the modern state. Bourdieu's analysis also affords a basis on which to draw out the significance of institutions that rarely feature in jurisprudential works on the state or legal systems. This article illustrates this point by reference to the public inquiry. It also finds at work within On the State an ideal that gives expression to an egalitarian philosophy of government. This is the ideal of politeia, which, on the view offered here, identifies legal, political, and economic institutions and practices as constituents of 'community.'