Bourdieu and the Quest for Intercultural Transformations

Abstract

Building and expanding on Bourdieu’s notions of cultural capital, habitus, and field, this conceptual article aims to contribute to a better understanding of intercultural transformations. Distancing itself from essentialist reductionism in the analysis of cultures, it associates intercultural transformations with habitus crises through “culture shock,” with the realization of intercultural capital, and with changes in the scope and configuration of cultural pluriformity. In going beyond Bourdieu without abandoning him along the way, the approach outlined in the course of this article combines a range of conceptual tools which may prove to be useful in sustaining struggles for social justice in educational institutions and in society at large.

Introduction

Our quest for intercultural transformations contrasts with both Bennett’s (1986, 1993) famous “Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity” and Oberg’s (1954, 1960) equally well-known idea of “culture shock.” To recall, the former entails a step-by-step progress from the mental state of “ethnocentrism”—followed by the intermediate stages of “denial,” “defense,” “minimization,” “acceptance,” “adaptation,” and “integration”—to eventually reach the mental state of “ethnorelativism.” The latter holds four successive phases of individually experienced “culture shock”—proceeding from “honeymoon” to “negotiation,” from “negotiation” to “adjustment”—before ultimately reaching the stage of “adaptation.”

Going beyond the horizon of such models of “sequential mindset development,” and inspired by Bourdieu’s (1986) forms of cultural capital, this article locates intercultural transformations not only at the level of embodiment, but also at the levels of objectification and institutionalization. We first consider habitus crises through “culture shock.” The subsequent section presents the notion of intercultural capital, with a particular interest in its more or less (dis)comforting realization. We then turn to the notion of cultural pluriformity and how it differs from the apparently similar concepts of cultural diversity and hybridity. The ensuing discussion section lays emphasis on social justice implications and research perspectives.

Habitus Crises through “Culture Shock”

Bourdieu has “many times pointed to the existence of cleft, tormented habitus bearing in the form of tensions and contradictions the mark of the contradictory conditions of formation of which they are the product” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 64). Tellingly, he laments “a habitus divided against itself, in constant negotiation with itself and with its ambivalence, and therefore doomed to a kind of duplication, to a double perception of self, to successive allegiances and multiple identities” (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 511). Such problematizations of “cleft habitus” are particularly tangible in Bourdieu’s Sketch for a Self-Analysis (Bourdieu, 2007), but also feature prominently in the work of other researchers’ investigations into the psychological and psychosocial consequences of upward social mobility (Curl et al., 2018; Franceschelli et al., 2016; Friedman, 2014; Reay et al., 2009).

Instead of pathologizing habitus divisions and the respective dispositional cleavages, the notion of habitus crises employed in this article explicitly values the “internal plurality of the actor” (Lahire, 2011, p. 43), acknowledging “that traces of different, and sometimes contradictory socialising experience[s], can in/co-habit the same body; that mental and behavioural dispositions [. . .] can manifest themselves or be put on standby at different moments in social life” (Lahire, 2008, p. 186). Due to its plural dispositional composition, habitus remains open to amplifications and modifications over time and space. In fact, Bourdieu himself concedes that, as “a product of history, that is of social experience and education, it may be changed by history, that is by new experiences, education or training” (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 45, original emphasis).

Habitus stands “in constant dynamic interaction with the social fields it encounters, and this leaves the habitus open to change, which usually occurs through a slow process of evolution rather than radical transformation” (Ingram, 2018, p. 61). The respective fields form “structured spaces that organize around specific types of capitals or combinations of capital [. . .] [and where] actors strategize and struggle over [. . .] the definitions of just what are the most valued capitals” (Swartz, 2016, p. 1). A field constitutes not only “a network, or configuration, of objective relations between positions” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 97), but also “a frame for interpersonal and social relations” (Pöllmann, 2016, p. 5). Importantly, “in all the cases where dispositions encounter conditions [. . .] different from those in which they were constructed and assembled, there is a dialectical confrontation between habitus as structured structure, and objective structures” (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 46, original emphasis). A lack of such dialectical confrontations—for example when students who are favorably positioned within one country temporarily move to another country where their existing (inter)cultural resources are valued in quasi-identical ways—renders habitus crises through “culture shock” unlikely.

As Doerr (2019) illustrates in her recent contribution to the critical scrutiny of study abroad programs, the educational opportunities which arise from engagement with unfamiliar field conditions “at home” are greatly underexplored, ignored, or negatively contrasted with processes of immersion in other countries. Equally noteworthy in this context are her reflections on the commercial interests behind promotions of international study and living experiences and how these tend to build on essentializing notions of cultural homogeneity. Her often captivating auto-biographically framed insights into the (re)production of idealized and stereotyping portrays of the respective “host societies,” “host families,” and “native speakers” almost inevitably bring Holliday’s (2006) seminal critique of “native-speakerism” to mind. Doerr’s thoughtful observations also remind us that even if cross-cultural mobility may coincide with cross-national mobility, it should not be confused with, or exclusively linked to, the latter. As a matter of empirical fact, people can be cross-culturally mobile without crossing any national border or boundary. Even within the confines of the nation-state most closely familiar to them, they can perfectly well encounter thus far unknown or newly-emerging (inter)cultural forms.

If we were to imagine individual-level processes of transformation as detached from pertinent fields, we might perhaps be tempted to overestimate the parallels of the present notion of habitus crises through “culture shock” with central elements of Mezirow’s (1981, 2000) transformative learning theory which, as Mitchell and Paras (2018) note, “often refers to the experience of dissonance, discomfort or disorientation as a crucial component of experiential learning in study abroad” (p. 322). However, transformative learning theory’s “focus on the “what” of student learning has [not only] led to a neglect of the “how”” (Mitchell & Paras, 2018, p. 322), but also to decontextualized ideas of intercultural transformation and, by implication, to a neglect of the “who,” the “under which circumstances,” the “in relation to whom and what,” the “in the benefit of whom,” and the “in whose interest.”

At the time and in the aftermath of Oberg’s (1954, 1960) original conceptualization, “culture shock” has often been associated with individual adaptational stress and personal misfortunes (Furnham, 1993; Lombard, 2014; Pedersen, 1995). However, other voices have long pointed out that experiences of “culture shock” also offer transformational opportunities (Kallio & Westerlund, 2020; Montuori & Fahim, 2004; Sæther, 2020; Zhou et al., 2008) which may coincide with more or less (dis)comforting processes of intercultural capital realization (Pöllmann, 2016).

Intercultural Capital

Bourdieu (1986) influentially distinguished between embodied cultural capital in terms of people’s incorporated cultural knowledge and know-how; objectified cultural capital as manifested through literary or musical productions, sculptures, paintings, machinery, or tools; and institutionalized cultural capital, such as the official degrees and certificates provided by educational institutions. Not least because of Bourdieu’s characteristic tendency to avoid precise operationalizations of his conceptual tools (Sullivan, 2002), the notion of cultural capital has been adapted and “operationalised in various different ways by subsequent researchers” (Sullivan, 2001, p. 896). Since about 15 years ago, a fairly similar, albeit significantly smaller-scale, range of adaptations and operationalizations has begun to emerge in relation to the notion of intercultural capital (Pöllmann, 2019).

Possible empirical indicators of embodied intercultural capital include experiences of migration, multilingual repertoires (Cummins, 2019) and translanguaging competencies (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Wei, 2018). Products of writing, science, but also of art and architecture, as far as they carry intercultural meanings, associations, or connotations in durable and tangible ways—as is, for instance, the case with the “Mother of Humanity^® sculpture in Los Angeles (USA)” (Pöllmann, 2013, p. 1)—can be regarded as objectifications of intercultural capital. Conceivable empirical indicators “of institutionalized intercultural capital include officially issued and recognized laws, guidelines, commemorative days, exchange programs, curricula, school books, and academic titles with a more or less explicit intercultural outlook” (Pöllmann, 2019, p. 1).

Even if the notion of cultural capital on the one hand, and the notion of intercultural capital, on the other, can be associated with distinct and distinguishable universes of empirical indicators, in ontological terms they always remain intimately interrelated. To quote from an earlier contribution to the conceptualization of intercultural capital:

all forms of intercultural capital are also forms of cultural capital in that they are particular to the cultures in relation to and through which they have emerged. And all forms of cultural capital are also forms of intercultural capital given that the cultures in relation to and through which they have emerged constitute, to a greater or lesser extent, a product of intercultural contact and “mixing.” (Pöllmann, 2013, p. 2)

Notwithstanding their intrinsic ontological interrelatedness, in contrast to cultural capital—which according to Bourdieu (1984) “only exists and only produces its effects in the field in which it is produced and reproduced” (p. 113)—intercultural capital “functions as a potent marker of sociocultural distinction within a wider range of contexts of (re)production and is likely to retain, or indeed enhance, its exchange value when “moved” across more distant fields” (Pöllmann, 2013, p. 2).

The realization of intercultural capital can be analyzed “in terms of (a combination of) awareness, acquisition, and application” (Pöllmann, 2013, p. 2). As is the case with all forms of cultural capital, the realization of intercultural capital is processed through people’s habitus and intimately linked to pertinent fields. In inequitable field conditions:

some individuals and groups will have more opportunities to accumulate intercultural capital than others. And even if they realize only comparatively little intercultural capital in terms of awareness and acquisition, its relative currency value – that is its realizability in terms of application – would still be likely to exceed that of others, whose personal stock of intercultural capital may be nominally larger, but is being greatly devalued by their unfavorable sociocultural positioning. (Pöllmann, 2013, p. 4)

At the level of embodiment, the realization of intercultural capital can be experienced as more or less (dis)comforting. The respective degree of (dis)comfort may not only vary depending on the particular empirical variety of intercultural capital which people are about to acquire or apply—that is, the respective contents of realization—but also subject to the specific modes of realization—which may, for instance, be more or less mediated/unmediated, more or less intuitive/reflexive, and more or less harmonious/conflictive. This said, what kind of and whose embodied intercultural capital eventually counts for how much depends not only, and in many circumstances not primarily, on the respective contents and modes of realization, but on processes of objectification and institutionalization in pertinent contexts of realization—which ultimately establish their field-specific and field-transcendent (exchange) value.

In an age of intensified inter- and transnational communication, travel, and trade, there is good reason to believe that the realization of intercultural capital holds transformational potentials for students at college or university (Jones, 2016; Killick, 2017) as well as for students and pupils in pre-tertiary and basic education (Boivin, 2016; Kamada, 2013; Pham & Tran, 2015). Other educational and non-educational areas in which a beneficiary impact of intercultural capital realizations might plausibly be expected include, but are not limited to, teacher education (Arvanitis, 2018; Pöllmann, 2018), lifelong language learning (Coffey, 2018), collaborative online language learning (Lawrence, 2013), STEM scholar success (Chapman, 2018), tourism (Ferreira Carvalho et al., 2018), social work (Delgado, 2014), transmigrant families (Barea et al., 2010), and neighborhood politics (Filep, 2016). However, just as the realization of intercultural capital might appear obviously beneficial in some constellations or circumstances, it can be complicated and conflictive in others. For instance, the post- and neocolonial marginalization of indigenous populations (Forbis, 2016; Jaimovich et al., 2018; Rico Montoya, 2016; Solano Suárez, 2011; Svampa & Pandolfi, 2004) prevents socially just processes of intercultural capital realization and the inclusive recognition and valuation of cultural pluriformity.

The “intercultural” is frequently, and often controversially, visualized as some kind of bridge between different cultures. Arguably, when construed as a one-dimensional static connector of two essentialized entities (e.g. countries, states, nations, or continents), metaphorical references to the “bridge” risk to sustain anachronistic ideas of cultural relativism along the lines of Herder’s (in)famous conception of culture (Herder, 1966; Spencer, 2012). This said, it is perfectly possible to envisage the forms of intercultural capital as flexible multi-directional bridges which (hold the potential to) amplify and reconfigure cultural pluriformity at the levels of embodiment, objectification, and institutionalization.

Cultural Pluriformity

Cultures can be conceived as field-related inter-individual habitus overlaps that operate as “more or less consciously learned, and more or less closely “shared” frames of perception, thought, and (inter)action” (Pöllmann, 2013, p. 1) which, in turn, emerge from and give emergence to different embodied, objectified, and institutionalized forms of cultural and intercultural capital. This cultural pluriformity can be examined and compared in terms of its scope and configuration. While the scope of cultural pluriformity implies both the quality and quantity of different empirical varieties of cultural and intercultural capital, its configuration refers to the relative salience of the respective (inter)cultural resources. Intercultural transformations in terms of changes in the scope and configuration of cultural pluriformity may result from habitus crises through “culture shock” and they may occur within more or less (dis)comforting contexts of intercultural capital realization.

The concept of cultural pluriformity includes but is not limited to the kind of immigration-related “super-diversity” identified by Vertovec (2007). In contrast to many notions of cultural diversity—“super” or “not-so-super”—it explicitly implies the co-occurrence of different (inter)cultural forms within one and the same individual or field. Accordingly, cultural pluriformity cannot be visualized through images of different national flags or of students with different colors of skin, for example. Not despite but because of their apparent banality and widespread use in discourses on “cultural diversity,” such one-dimensional signifiers obscure individual-level and field-specific complexities and, ultimately, albeit unintentionally, risk to replicate anachronistic or otherwise untenable ideas of cultural uniformity.

With some surface-level resemblance to Bhabha’s idea of hybridity (Bhabha, 2012), the question is not so much whether individuals or fields are or can become culturally pluriform, but in which ways and to what extent. However, when considered more closely, the concept of cultural pluriformity differs from that of hybridity not only in laying a more coherent emphasis on the co-occurrence rather than merging of different (inter)cultural resources within one and the same individual or field, but also, and particularly, in expanding the analytical lens to the socially contested spheres of objectification and institutionalization.

In a similar vein, the notion of cultural pluriformity should not be conflated with García Canclini’s take on “hybrid cultures” (García Canclini, 1995, 2001). In particular, while the latter’s focus on cultural consumptions coincides with a rather conspicuous neglect of persisting participatory inequalities and structural power asymmetries (Kokotovic, 2000; O’Connor, 2003), the former explicitly concerns itself with (often inequitable) processes of objectification and institutionalization in educational institutions and other powerful societal fields. Far from insignificant, the extent to which the respective objectifications and institutionalizations reflect and value culturally pluriform embodiments has direct implications in terms of social justice.

The concept of cultural pluriformity also stands in contrast to Bourdieu and Sayad’s (2004) notion of the cultural sabir. Based on ethnographic research in Algeria about six decades ago, the two sociologists identified cultural sabirs as “a new type of men and women, who may be defined negatively, by what they no longer are and by what they are not yet” (Bourdieu & Sayad, 2004, p. 463). Notwithstanding its historical situatedness in the context of the Algerian War of Independence, in hindsight, Bourdieu’s and Sayad’s portrayal of this new type of women and men who are “condemned to the interferences and incoherences that make a cultural sabir” (Bourdieu & Sayad, 2004, p. 469) seems overly pessimistic. By positing the cultural sabir as an individual with a kind of pathologically split cultural identity (i.e. “neither this nor that”), Bourdieu and Sayad effectively lend support to essentialist ideas of embodied cultural uniformity (i.e. “either this or that”).

In educational institutions and beyond, the study of cultural pluriformity requires a critical stance toward any type of essentialism—a point that can be illustrated with reference to Mecheril’s (2020) critique of essentializing social constructions of “cultural difference” and, more specifically, his objection to official German classifications of residents into “foreigners” and “nonforeigners” or those without and those with a so-called “immigrant background” (Dirim & Mecheril, 2018; Mecheril, 2006). In Germany and many other national contexts, being classified as a “foreigner” or as having an “immigrant background” all too often coincides with associations of some kind of (educational) deficit. It should go without saying that for all those concerned, the consequences of being unfavorably marked as different or deviating from socially constructed norms are far from trivial.

As necessary as it is to refute pejorative ideas of “cultural otherness,” it is also vital to acknowledge that not all notions of cultural difference have negative connotations and that, precisely because they are the result of processes of social construction, even notions of cultural difference with negative connotations can be transformed into ones with positive connotations. The taking of this more differentiated perspective reveals a paradox in Mecheril’s important preoccupation with pejoratively discriminating and essentializing social constructions of the “other,” the “alien” or the “strange.” That is, in tending to suspect any analytical reference to cultural difference or distinction of different cultural forms of some kind of malevolent essentialism, it also tends to underestimate the liberating and empowering potential of appreciative recognitions of cultural pluriformity.

Discussion: Social Justice Implications and Research Perspectives

Not without reason, a positively connotated notion of cultural pluriformity is perfectly compatible with UNESCO’s (2005) “Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.” For those subjected to racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, chauvinistic, or any other kind of violent othering, marginalization, or exclusion, asserting the existence and value of their (inter)cultural resources is vital in sustaining legitimate struggles for social justice—including, and perhaps particularly, within the realm of institutionalized intercultural education (Gorski, 2008; Padilla, 2021).

When considering such struggles for social justice, it is worth recalling Bourdieu’s formative life experiences in Algeria in the 1950s (Calhoun, 2006; Yacine, 2004)—and his corresponding “early work [in which he] confronted, theorized, and critiqued colonialism directly [. . .] as a racialized system of oppression based on violence” (Go, 2013, p. 68). Discomforting such racialized systems of oppression in contemporary schools, colleges, and universities implies challenges to long-established and often taken-for-granted objectifications and institutionalizations, for example, by replacing curricular content that evokes essentialized ideas of “European cultural superiority.”

In culturally pluriform societies around the world, too many educational institutions ignore or underrate the (inter)cultural resources of socially marginalized students, or worse, construe them as deficits and obstacles to individual or collective academic progress (Dudley-Marling, 2015; Keefer, 2017; Sharma, 2018)—considering the situation of many indigenous students, for example (Datta, 2018; Handayani et al., 2018; Kim, 2017; Pöllmann, 2017; Pöllmann & Sánchez Graillet, 2015). However, as much as educational institutions can (unintentionally) create or sustain field conditions which are characterized by the inequitable valuation of different individually embodied (inter)cultural resources, they hold the potential to promote socially just intercultural transformations by:

• ▪ Valuing cultural pluriformity at the levels of embodiment, objectification, and institutionalization;

• ▪ Critically scrutinizing hierarchical constructions of “cultural difference,” while recognizing their harmful impact in terms of marginalization, segregation, and other forms of systematic exclusionism;

• ▪ Challenging (neo)colonialism, racism, xenophobia, classism, chauvinism, sexism, homophobia, or any other form of violent othering, marginalization or exclusion;

• ▪ Considering the transformational potential of habitus crises through “culture shock”;

• ▪ Questioning the taking for granted of established or officially consecrated objectifications and institutionalizations of cultural and intercultural capital (e.g. in curricula and textbooks).

Certainly, the efficacy of the above-listed measures depends not only on the respective institution and institutional actors, but also on the influence of larger fields, including (supra)national jurisdictional, legislative, and executive forces as well as increasingly transnational and global economic interdependencies.

In line with Bourdieu’s theoretical and methodological pragmatism (Wacquant, 1992a, pp. 15–19 and pp. 26–35), the conceptual tools outlined in the course of this article do not allude to unyielding monistic assumptions. Quite to the contrary, depending on the particular research problem, they might be put to work as definitive or as sensitizing concepts—whereby, to quote Blumer’s (1954) timeless definition:

A definitive concept refers precisely to what is common to a class of objects, by the aid of a clear definition in terms of attributes or fixed bench marks. [. . .] A sensitizing concept lacks such specification of attributes or bench marks and consequently it does not enable the user to move directly to the instance and its relevant content. Instead, it gives the user a general sense of reference and guidance in approaching empirical instances. Whereas definitive concepts provide prescriptions of what to see, sensitizing concepts merely suggest directions along which to look. (Blumer, 1954, p. 7)

While quantitatively oriented inquiries are likely to refer to habitus crises through “culture shock,” intercultural capital, and cultural pluriformity as definitive concepts with a range of operational indicators, qualitatively oriented inquiries will tend to use them as sensitizing concepts with a sharpened inductive sensitivity for people’s personal experiences and perspectives.

Despite the contrast between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, they can both offer valuable empirically-grounded answers to the following pertinent questions:

• ▪ Who might have an interest in enabling or constraining the transformational potential of habitus crises through “culture shock”?

• ▪ How can educational institutions create discomforting contexts of intercultural capital realization for the comparatively comfortably positioned, while providing comforting contexts of intercultural capital realization for the comparatively uncomfortably positioned?

• ▪ Whose cultural and intercultural capital acquisitions are recognized and valued—and thus rendered applicable—in educational institutions and in society at large?

• ▪ In which ways might changes in the scope and configuration of individually embodied cultural pluriformity affect changes in the scope and configuration of cultural pluriformity at the levels of objectification and institutionalization—and vice versa?

• ▪ What kinds of comparative research design are suitable to examine changes in the scope and configuration of cultural pluriformity at the levels of embodiment, objectification, and institutionalization?

The pursuit of these and further related questions may play a part in advancing the quest for intercultural transformations beyond the horizon of the kind of models of “sequential mindset development” mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Conclusion

Not despite but because of the need to overcome the pitfalls of essentialist reductionism in the analysis of cultures, there remains a pertinent interest in intercultural forms and transformations. In line with Wacquant’s (1992b) insightful observation that “an invitation to think with Bourdieu is of necessity an invitation to think beyond Bourdieu, and against him whenever required” (Wacquant, 1992b, p. xiv), our quest for intercultural transformations lead us not only to critically revisit the Bourdieusian core concepts of cultural capital, habitus, and field, but also to supplement them by the notions of cultural pluriformity, intercultural capital, and habitus crises through “culture shock.”

Making sense of “the intercultural”—to echo the main title of Holliday’s and Amadasi’s (2019) notable book-length attempt at moving “how we think of the intercultural to another place” (Holliday & Amadasi, 2019, p. 2)—entails acts of resistance to dominant narratives, discourses, and symbolisms, which are, in turn, intimately related to struggles for the inclusive recognition and valuation of different embodied, objectified, and institutionalized (inter)cultural forms. In moving beyond Bourdieu without abandoning him along the way, the approach outlined in the course of this article combines a range of conceptual tools which lend themselves to sustain such struggles for social justice in educational institutions and in society at large.