Political+Representation+Elements+for+a+Theory+of+the+Political+Field

** Summary by Namalie ** Bourdieu’s analysis of political representation focuses on how citizens have delegated their power to politicians, trusting the politicians to represent their interests in the political game. However, politicians, by virtue of the power invested in them by the population, can impose their ideas over those that they are supposed to represent. ** Major Points ** __ Political Field – Competition for Power __ · The political field is where “political products” are formed, through the competition between political agents in creating political ideas, programs and concepts. The citizen then has to choose among these products, reducing the status of the citizen to that of a “consumer”. · The existence of the political field limits the “universe of political discourse, and thereby the universe of what is politically thinkable” (172). · Additionally, the “distribution of opinions in a given population depends on the state of the instruments of perception and expression available and on the access that different groups have to these instruments” (172). · The political professionals then monopolize the production of these tools of perception and expression.
 * Pierre Bourdieu, “Political Representation: Elements for a Theory of the Political Field" (pp. 171-202) from Language and Symbolic Power (Harvard University Press, 1991) (pp. 203-219). **

__ Political Parties __ · Political parties are permanent organizations whose aim is to win power (173). · However, regarding adherence to political parties, citizens are in the danger of being dispossessed; meaning that by the people delegating their choice to their party, they give over their power and lose control over the political apparatus (174). · The party wishes to gain power and expand its base. In order to do so, the party is willing to compromise the “purity” of its ideals and “play more or less consciously on the ambiguities of its program” (189). This leads to a struggle between two groups within the party – those that wish to remain exclusive and return to the original position, and those that want to strengthen and broaden the base of the party. · As Bourdieu notes, the “production of ideas about the social world is always in fact subordinated to the logic of the conquest of power, which is the logic of the mobilization of the greatest number” (182). So it seems that number of bodies is more important than the ideas themselves.

__ Political Leaders __ · As the political leaders (meaning that they dominate their party) gain power over the apparatus and monopolize “the production and imposition of instituted political interests,” they find that they can impose their own beliefs instead of those of the people they are supposedly representing (175). · So while the “politician derives his political power from the trust that a group places in him,” he nonetheless does not necessarily need to heed the wishes of the group if they come into conflict with his own (192)

__ Political Game __ · The political game requires absolute commitment; one must believe that this game is worth playing and adhere completely to the game itself. · Political judgments are formed within a symbolic framework and can only be created in understanding “one’s relation to a given state of the political game and, more precisely, of the universe of the techniques of action and expression it offers at any given moment” (173).

__ Political Speech __ · The point of politics is to convince people that what you say is what you will do. · Political speech is an act of commitment between the spokesperson and those s/he is speaking to. According to Bourdieu, it “commits its author completely because it constitutes a commitment to action which is truly political only if it is the commitment of an agent or group of agents who are politically responsible” (190). · Such speech and ideas are “unfalsifiable” – meaning that the spokesperson has the power to ensure that the actions they are talking about will come to be in the future (191). However, the power of the speech depends on “the force (the number) of the group that he helps to produce as such by the act of symbolization or representation” (191).

** Discussion Questions ** · What do you think of Bourdieu’s ideas around the power of political speech? Do you believe that “it is enough for ideas to be professed by **//political leaders//** in order to become mobilizing ideas capable of making themselves believed” (191)? How should we relate this to Obama’s platform of hope and change, for example? · Do you think Bourdieu’s analysis of how political parties wish to expand their base at the expense of their ideals is true? Does this mean that political parties are more alike in terms of message?