In the ’Field’ of Transnational Professionals: a post-Bourdieusian approach to transnational legal entrepreneurs

TY - CHAP

T1 - In the ’Field’ of Transnational Professionals

T2 - a post-Bourdieusian approach to transnational legal entrepreneurs

AU - Dezalay, Yves Maurice Pierre

AU - Madsen, Mikael Rask

PY - 2017/1/1

Y1 - 2017/1/1

N2 - Taking a strict Bourdieusian position inevitably poses a challenge to the underlying conceptual framework of this book. In the transnational fields we have studied using Bourdieusian-inspired approaches, for example, international commercial arbitration (Dezalay and Garth 1996), international human rights (Dezalay and Garth 2006; Madsen 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2016) or the emergence of environmental law (Dezalay and Madsen 2006; Dezalay 2007), we have continuously observed that one of the central characteristics of professional ‘strategies of internationalization’is that they combine professional and organizational resources. In other words, in the actual games of internationalization and transnational domination –what Seabrooke and Henriksen refer to as ‘issue-control’ –the boundaries between professional and institutional logics often are blurred, and tacitly so. While it is, therefore, in itself difficult to distinguish very clearly between professional and organizational logics, it is also potentially counter-productive to the final analysis as the transnational professionals themselves, through this double game, are continuously producing both new professional and organizational categories and always with the goal of defining and controlling specific transnational issues (Kauppi and Madsen 2013; Dezalay and Garth 2016). Seabrooke and Henriksen, the editors of this volume, are, of course, fully aware of this. But it is probably worth repeating the need to be somewhat reluctant towards –and even suspicious of –sociological analysis which endorses and thereby effectively hides the professional strategies on which it builds its analysis. This risk it entails is precisely the kind of analytical blindness which Pierre Bourdieu criticized when discussing the sociology of professions (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 242–244; Madsen 2011) and called for a reflexive sociology. And since the aim of this chapter is to provide a (post-)Bourdieusian approach to understanding transnational professionalization, it is obviously fitting to start our analysis by inquiring into the construction of the problematique of this book: issue-control in transnational professional networks and organizations. If we are to take the idea of reflexive sociology seriously –in our view the best way of engaging with the work of Bourdieu (Bigo and Madsen 2011; Madsen 2011) –it consists above all of a critical interrogation of the construction of the object of inquiry and the methods devised for explaining it, what Bourdieu termed the ‘double rupture’ (Bourdieu et al. 1991). We will return to the notion of reflexive sociology below when discussing field studies.

AB - Taking a strict Bourdieusian position inevitably poses a challenge to the underlying conceptual framework of this book. In the transnational fields we have studied using Bourdieusian-inspired approaches, for example, international commercial arbitration (Dezalay and Garth 1996), international human rights (Dezalay and Garth 2006; Madsen 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2016) or the emergence of environmental law (Dezalay and Madsen 2006; Dezalay 2007), we have continuously observed that one of the central characteristics of professional ‘strategies of internationalization’is that they combine professional and organizational resources. In other words, in the actual games of internationalization and transnational domination –what Seabrooke and Henriksen refer to as ‘issue-control’ –the boundaries between professional and institutional logics often are blurred, and tacitly so. While it is, therefore, in itself difficult to distinguish very clearly between professional and organizational logics, it is also potentially counter-productive to the final analysis as the transnational professionals themselves, through this double game, are continuously producing both new professional and organizational categories and always with the goal of defining and controlling specific transnational issues (Kauppi and Madsen 2013; Dezalay and Garth 2016). Seabrooke and Henriksen, the editors of this volume, are, of course, fully aware of this. But it is probably worth repeating the need to be somewhat reluctant towards –and even suspicious of –sociological analysis which endorses and thereby effectively hides the professional strategies on which it builds its analysis. This risk it entails is precisely the kind of analytical blindness which Pierre Bourdieu criticized when discussing the sociology of professions (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 242–244; Madsen 2011) and called for a reflexive sociology. And since the aim of this chapter is to provide a (post-)Bourdieusian approach to understanding transnational professionalization, it is obviously fitting to start our analysis by inquiring into the construction of the problematique of this book: issue-control in transnational professional networks and organizations. If we are to take the idea of reflexive sociology seriously –in our view the best way of engaging with the work of Bourdieu (Bigo and Madsen 2011; Madsen 2011) –it consists above all of a critical interrogation of the construction of the object of inquiry and the methods devised for explaining it, what Bourdieu termed the ‘double rupture’ (Bourdieu et al. 1991). We will return to the notion of reflexive sociology below when discussing field studies.

U2 - 10.1017/9781316855508.002

DO - 10.1017/9781316855508.002

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781107181878

SP - 25

EP - 38

BT - Professional Networks in Transnational Governance

A2 - Seabrooke, Leonard

A2 - Henriksen, Lasse Folke

PB - Cambridge University Press

CY - Cambridge

ER -