The spatial logics of intellectual strategies: The case of the reception of Rawlsian and post-Rawlsian theories of justice in France

Abstract

This article takes the reception of Rawlsian and post-Rawlsian theories of justice in France as a case study for exploring empirically the connection between French intellectuals’ political and intellectual strategies and their position in the field of cultural production. The diversity of the uses made of Rawls, the agents involved, and their particular engagements all make the French reception of Anglophone political philosophy fertile ground for observing how the constraints associated with various positions in the intellectual field orient the strategies of agents. It draws on a prosopographic research on 115 of the main importers of Rawlsian and post-Rawlsian theories of justice developed in English-speaking countries into France, with semi-structured interviews for 52 of them. Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) is used to reveal the main oppositions structuring the space of the reception in France of this political philosophy. The article next shows how the many uses of these theories of justice and the forms of engagement in which they were enrolled are related to agents’ structural position in this space. Then the article proceeds to reconstruct in greater detail some of the trajectories of these mediators, including their perceptions of the space of ‘possibles’ available to them and how they orient themselves within that space. It thus sheds light on how intellectual strategies are developed, and the mechanisms through which these bring forth homologies between structural positions, intellectual position-takings, and models of political engagement.

Keywords

field theory France intellectual strategies multiple correspondence analysis Rawls reception sociology of ideas sociology of intellectuals

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