"The real is relational": An epistemological analysis of Pierre Bourdieu'sgenerative structuralism

An internal reconstruction and an immanent critique of Bourdieu's generativ e structuralism is presented. Rather than starting with the concept of "hab itus," as is usually done, the article tries to systematically reconstruct Bourdieu's theory by an analysis of the relational logic that permeates his whole work. Tracing the debt Bourdieu's approach owes to Bachelard's ratio nalism and Cassirer's relationalism, the article examines Bourdieu's episte mological writings of the 1960s and 70s. It tries to make the case that Bou rdieu's sociological metascience represents a rationalist version of Bhaska r's critical realism, and enjoins Bourdieu to give heed to the realist turn in the philosophy of the natural and the social sciences. The article show s how Bourdieu's epistemological assumptions are reflected in his primary t heoretical constructs of "habitus " and "field." To concretize their discus sion, it analyzes Bourdieu's reinterpretation of Weber in his theory of the field of religion and of the young Mannheim in his theory of the scientifi c field.