The status of Pierre Bourdieu against the macro and micro social theories

This study is essentially about exploring the position of Bourdieu vis-à-vis macro and micro social theories. It seeks to determine and discuss the contributions and shortcomings of Bourdieu's attempts to overcome the prolonged debates in social theory, namely macro/micro and structure/action dualisms. It can be argued that at the late 1960s and early 1970s social theory the trust in macro social theories were deeply shaken and a flood of micro theories begun to target social theory at large. As a result, one of the fundamental debates in social theory, namely the question of whether it is the structure that determines the actions of actors or it is the conscious actions of the actors determine the structures have emerged. Pierre Bourdieu is one of the social scientists that attempted to find a middle ground within the war among macro and micro social theories. However, it would be misleading to think that Pierre Bourdieu has only addressed the dichotomy between macro and micro social theories. For this reason, this study argues that we cannot scrutinize macro/micro dualism while overlooking the dualism of objectivism/subjectivism. Hence, in the first part of this thesis, while macro and micro social theories are reviewed in their general features, related dualisms of objectivism/subjectivism and structure/agency will also be examined. For this reason after discussing macro and micro social theories and the dualisms associated with these theories, the next section needs to examine what meanings Bourdieu attributes to these concepts. Finally, macro and micro social theories will be examined in more detail and this will be followed by main session where the discussion of the position of Bourdieu vis-à-vis macro and micro social theories will take place. KEY WORDS: Pierre Bourdieu, Social Theory, Macro Social Theory, Micro Social Theory, Structure, Action, Agency, Habitus, Field, Types of Capital, Practice, Objectivism, Subjectivism.