Abstract

The project of creating a sociological approach integrating a "subjectivist" and an "objectivist" mode of knowledge is the explicit metatheory on which Bourdieu's sociology rests. This paper is a contribution to the debate on how successful Bourdieu has proved to be in carrying out his metatheoretical project and transcending the antinomy between subjectivism and objectivism in his social theory. In the first place, it examines the weakest points in the theoretical logic of his social theory. In particular, the paper sets out to demonstrate that Bourdieu's theoretical system considered synchronically contains multiple positions on agency, symbolism and the problem of social order, and that in each case the difference among the positions can be referred to the opposition between a subjectivist and an objectivist sociological approach. Then, it suggests that the contradictions of Bourdieu's theoretical logic can be explained by the evolution of Bourdieu's social thought from an objectivist to a subjectivist phase, the watershed between the two being the development, starting the Eighties, of field theory and the general theory of the economy of practices.