Organization
The critical journal of organization, theory and society

Call for Papers

Special Issue on

BOURDIEU AND DOMINATION WITHIN AND BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONS

Guest Editors:

Damon Golsorkhi, Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Rouen, France
Bernard Leca, Nottingham University Business School, UK
Michael Lounsbury, University of Alberta School of Business, Canada
Carlos Ramirez, HEC, France

Deadline for submissions: 3rd March 2008

 From his earliest work on the sociology of Algeria to his late  
academic and political publications, the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu  
can be labeled as a sociology of domination. His theoretical  
apparatus has served first and foremost the project of analyzing  
social hierarchies and to explain how they are produced and  
reproduced. Meanwhile, in the past thirty years Bourdieu’s theory and  
concepts have been gaining increasing currency in organization  
theory, if one judges by the rate of citations in major journals in  
the organization and management field. Cites to the French  
sociologist, in particular to his practice-based approach, are  
everywhere, from knowledge management to strategic management.  .

There is, however, a paradox in the intersections between Bourdieu’s  
work and the interests of organizational researchers deploying it.  
Throughout his life’s work, Bourdieu’s theories had no interest in  
serving organizations. His theoretical approach would consider  
organizations, at the very least, as a screen that obfuscates real  
relations of domination. With this paradox in mind, from our  
perspective, there is still much work missing in organization studies  
that encompasses all of Bourdieu’s theoretical concerns and that  
tackles essential issues behind Bourdieu’s intellectual endeavors.  
Among those, some of his works are remarkably explicit on issues of  
domination, including social judgement, the reproduction of  
inequalities, the maintenance of dominant elites or masculine  
domination. His intellectual engagement with neo-liberalism and  
globalization or his involvement in campaigns in support of  
undocumented immigrants and the unemployed are congruous with his  
enlightenment of domination mechanisms.

This special issue, therefore, intends to advance reflections on new  
insights that Bourdieu’s work may bring to organizational analysis by  
taking on board the French sociologist’s endeavors to uncover  
domination mechanisms and develop a critical sociology. We would  
therefore welcome conceptual and empirical papers that use Bourdieu’s  
focus on domination to examine issues of organizational life. Some  
possible themes to consider include, but are not restricted to:

- The naturalization of domination within and between organizations

• Why do/may agents repeatedly act against their interests?
• How does language become a means of domination?
• How does the organizational Doxa contribute to the naturalization  
of domination?

- The production and reproduction of domination structures

• How to account for the existence of dominant agents in a field?
• What are the mechanisms behind struggles around different forms of  
capital?
• How does the organizational illusio contribute to the reproduction  
of domination ?
• Could dominated agents improvise and get around dominant agents?

- The expression of symbolic violence

• How is the symbolic capital constructed and transformed into  
symbolic violence?
• What are the interplays between symbolic violence and symbolic  
capital in organizational fields regarding gender, race, sexual  
orientation, religion, and so on?

- The role of the macro-micro dynamic in the constitution of domination

• How do agents’ positions in a field constitute a dominant/dominated  
position and determine their habitus and practices?
• How can dominated agents make evolve their positions in a field?
• How is the distribution of different forms of capital maintained in  
a field?

Submission: Papers must be sent electronically by 3rd March 2008 to  
[log in to unmask] as Word attachments, indicating “Bourdieu And  
Domination Within And Between Organizations” in the subject line of  
the email. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines  
published in Organization and on the journal’s website: http:// 
www.sagepub.co.uk/journalmanuscript.aspx?pid=105723&sc=1
Papers should be about 8000 words, and will be blind reviewed  
following the journal’s standard review process. For further  
information contact either Damon Golsorkhi damon.golsorkhi@groupe-esc- 
rouen-fr, Bernard Leca [log in to unmask], Michael  
Lounsbury [log in to unmask], or Carlos Ramirez  
[log in to unmask]