Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of transposing Bourdieu to France to other nations. It is claimed that such transpositions often are characterised by the adaptation of object to methodology rather than the other way around. Departing from the Danish experience, the paper takes the universal welfare state as a structure of social space very different from the setting of France. It is argued that engaging such a case may show new path of analysis fruitful to the Bourdieusian perspective. Three central themes in sociology of welfare states are identified. Welfare states are both perceived as structures of domination and expressions of emancipating modernisation. Welfare states are perceived as both structures of democratic redistribution and as power based resource appropriation. Finally welfare states are perceived as normative structures and institutions. Pierre Bourdieu's theory of material and symbolic stratification informs a reassessment of these themes in an attempt at integration of meaning and structure in the concept of social citizenship. It is claimed the Bourdieusian perspective must be reworked in order to engage the interplay between particular interests in reproduction of capital and the establishment of universality as normative standard of evaluation in the field of power as well as in social space as such.