Bringing Sociology of Law Back into Pierre Bourdieu's Sociology: Elements of Bourdieu's Sociology of Law and Dispute Transformation
| Author | Annette Olesen,Ole Hammerslev |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639221115696 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Bringing Sociology of Law
Back into Pierre Bourdieu’s
Sociology: Elements of
Bourdieu’s Sociology of Law
and Dispute
Transformation
Annette Olesen
University of Aalborg, Denmark
Ole Hammerslev
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Abstract
The academic response to Bourdieu’s sociology of law has mainly followed his Weberian
focus on the role of legal professionals in state transformations. However, rereading
Bourdieu’s“The Force of Law”through the lens of its references and relating it to
the sociology of law “of the moment”(i.e. that of the 1980s), it becomes clear that
Bourdieu’s sociology of law is more sophisticated than has generally been acknowledged.
In this article, we reread Bourdieu’s article with a specific focus on the hitherto over-
looked parts that elucidate dispute transformation. We unpack one of Bourdieu’s
most central sources, Felstiner et al. (1981), by rereading it in the light of Bourdieu’s
sociological tools. Emphasizing Bourdieu’s implicit points about the pre-dispute phase
accentuates how habitual dispositions and forms of capital have an impact on the possi-
bilities available to citizens to transform a justiciable problem into a legal dispute.
Keywords
Bourdieu, the force of law, naming-blaming-claiming, Felstiner, Abel & Sarat, lawyers
Corresponding author:
Ole Hammerslev, professorof sociology of law, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense
M, Odense, 5230, Denmark.
Email: ohv@sam.sdu.dk
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2023, Vol. 32(2) 177–196
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/09646639221115696
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Nothing is less “natural”than the “need for the law”or, to put it differently, than the impres-
sion of an injustice which leads someone to appeal to the services of a professional.
(Bourdieu 1987: 833)
Introduction
Where Bourdieu’s contributions to legal consciousness studies and studies of legal insti-
tutions and elite lawyers are well-known the aim of this article is to discuss an implicit yet
hitherto overlooked breadth in his socio-legal research program. Although Bourdieu
never undertook systematic empirical studies of the legal field, he addressed law and
legal professionals in a range of texts, most notably in “La force du droit”(Bourdieu
1986), which outlined a research program for the law.
1
Bourdieu’s engagement with
the law has been considered a rather unfulfilled research program (Lenoir 2006;
Villegas 2004) and has not been cited as often as one might expect for a Bourdieu
article (Dezalay and Madsen 2012).
2
The main critical response to and reinterpretation of Bourdieusian sociology of law
has mainly followed what could be called “the constitutive turn”in Bourdieu’s
engagement with the law, i.e. Bourdieu’s late (even thought it was implied in “The
Force of Law”) focus on law and lawyers. The focus had a sort of Weberian emphasis
on how legal professionals took part in constructing and transforming states. Thus,
the dominant empirical use of the Bourdieusian tools as well as the theoretical
texts that have developed the Bourdieusian sociology of law have mainly focused
on how lawyers and legal professionals have taken part in transforming and construct-
ing national and transnational legal fields (see e.g. Hagan and Levi 2005; Dezalay and
Garth 1996; 2010; Cohen 2007; Cohen and Vauchez 2007; Vauchez 2011; 2010;
Madsen 2007; Hammerslev 2015; Dezalay 2020; Vauchez and France 2021). Such
readings are understandable, since this interpretation and reading of the
Bourdieusian sociology of law is in line with Bourdieu’s later work on the transform-
ation of the modern state (Bourdieu 1998; 2005a; 2005b; 2012; Arnholtz and
Hammerslev 2013), but may also be related to the impact of Yves Dezalay’s“consti-
tutive”use of Bourdieu. In fact, Bourdieu refers to Dezalay’sworkin“The Force of
Law”(1987). Dezalay was one of Bourdieu’s collaborators (Lenoir 2006;
Hammerslev and Arnholtz Hansen 2009) and, together with Bryant Garth, he devel-
oped groundbreaking work on transnationalisation of legal institutions and elite
lawyers (Dezalay and Garth 2011; 2002; 1996). This form of sociology of law
focuses, as do parts of Bourdieu’s (1987) Force of Law-article, on the role of
lawyers in the emergence of legal institutions and state transformations through
import-export mechanisms. It can be considered as a form of sociology of law from
above (Banakar 2014) or a sociology of elite lawyers (see also Moore 2001), with
its focus on the role of elite lawyers in state transformations and developments of
legal institutions, rather than a sociology of law that focuses on grievances, claims,
and disputes or—in short—law from below (Banakar 2014).
Focusing on the law from below, classic American legal consciousness studies
with their roots in The Amherst Seminar on Legal Processes and Ideology
178 Social & Legal Studies 32(2)
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