Cambridge Journals Online

Research Article

Pierre Bourdieu, the ‘cultural turn’ and the practice of international history

PETER JACKSON*

Article author query jackson p

Abstract

The rise of the ‘cultural turn’ has breathed new life into the practice of international history over the past few decades. Cultural approaches have both broadened and deepened interpretations of the history of international relations. This article focuses on the use of culture as an explanatory methodology in the study of international history. It outlines the two central criticisms often made of this approach. The first is that it suffers from a lack of analytical rigour in both defining what culture is and understanding how it shapes individual and collective policy decisions. The second is that it too often leads to a tendency to exaggerate the importance of the cultural predispositions of individual or collective actors at the expense of the wider structures within which policymaking takes place. The article provides a brief outline of the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu – which focuses on the interaction between the cultural orientations of social actors and the structural environment that conditions their strategies and decisions. It then argues that Bourdieu’s conceptual framework can provide the basis for a more systematic approach to understanding the cultural roots of policymaking and that international historians would benefit from engagement with his approach.

Footnotes

* The author would like to thank Rod Kedward, Hidemi Suganami, John Ferris, Ian Clark, Jackie Clarke, Jan Ruzicka, Talbot Imlay, R. Gerald Hughes, Martin Thomas and Michael C. Williams for their helpful comments on various drafts of this essay.