Organization
        The critical journal of organization, theory and society



From his earliest work on the sociology of Algeria to his late academic and political publications,
the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu can be labeled as a sociology of domination. His theoretical
apparatus has served first and foremost the project of analyzing social hierarchies and to explain
how they are produced and reproduced. Meanwhile, in the past thirty years Bourdieu’s theory
and concepts have been gaining increasing currency in organization theory, if one judges by the
rate of citations in major journals in the organization and management field. Cites to the French
sociologist, in particular to his practice-based approach, are everywhere, from knowledge
management to strategic management. .

There is, however, a paradox in the intersections between Bourdieu’s work and the interests of
organizational researchers deploying it. Throughout his life’s work, Bourdieu’s theories had no
interest in serving organizations. His theoretical approach would consider organizations, at the
very least, as a screen that obfuscates real relations of domination. With this paradox in mind,
from our perspective, there is still much work missing in organization studies that encompasses
all of Bourdieu’s theoretical concerns and that tackles essential issues behind Bourdieu’s
intellectual endeavors. Among those, some of his works are remarkably explicit on issues of
domination, including social judgement, the reproduction of inequalities, the maintenance of
dominant elites or masculine domination. His intellectual engagement with neo-liberalism and
globalization or his involvement in campaigns in support of undocumented immigrants and the
unemployed are congruous with his enlightenment of domination mechanisms.

This special issue, therefore, intends to advance reflections on new insights that Bourdieu’s work
may bring to organizational analysis by taking on board the French sociologist’s endeavors to
uncover domination mechanisms and develop a critical sociology. We would therefore welcome
conceptual and empirical papers that use Bourdieu’s focus on domination to examine issues of
organizational life. Some possible themes to consider include, but are not restricted to:

- The naturalization of domination within and between organizations

• Why do/may agents repeatedly act against their interests?
• How does language become a means of domination?
• How does the organizational Doxa contribute to the naturalization of domination?

- The production and reproduction of domination structures

• How to account for the existence of dominant agents in a field?
• What are the mechanisms behind struggles around different forms of capital?
• How does the organizational illusio contribute to the reproduction of domination ?
• Could dominated agents improvise and get around dominant agents?

- The expression of symbolic violence

• How is the symbolic capital constructed and transformed into symbolic violence?
• What are the interplays between symbolic violence and symbolic capital in organizational fields regarding gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, and so on?

- The role of the macro-micro dynamic in the constitution of domination

• How do agents’ positions in a field constitute a dominant/dominated position and
determine their habitus and practices?
• How can dominated agents make evolve their positions in a field?
• How is the distribution of different forms of capital maintained in a field?

Submission: Papers must be sent electronically by 3rd March 2008 to organization@wbs.ac.uk
as Word attachments, indicating “Bourdieu And Domination Within And Between
Organizations” in the subject line of the email. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the
guidelines published in Organization and on the journal’s website:

www.sagepub.co.uk/journalmanuscript.a...

Papers should be about 8000 words, and will be blind reviewed following the journal’s standard
review process. For further information contact either Damon Golsorkhi
damon.golsorkhi@groupe-esc-rouen-fr, Bernard Leca Bernard.Leca@nottigham.ac.uk, Michael
Lounsbury michael.lounsbury@ualberta.ca, or Carlos Ramirez ramirezc@hec.fr