Bourdieu's analysis of power

The chapter puts Bourdieu’s concept and analysis of power into the context both of theories of power in political and social theory, and in international political theory. It argues that Bourdieu’s approach can be used to avoid two classical pitfalls in power analysis. One consists in simply adding up issues that are connected to power into a single concept (perhaps with some qualifiers) which ends up overloading the concept which loses coherence. For this, Bourdieu’s approach offers the possibility to study the relationship of power-related terms, such as: capital, (mis)recognition, and domination. The other pitfall consists in using a diversity of concepts, yet simply adding them up as if their relationship was unproblematic or irresolvable. Also for this, a Bourdieu-inspired power analysis gives some clues how to combine the diverse concepts into a coherent theory (although it will never be able to cover all). The chapter then shows how such analysis has been used in international studies.