How Bourdieu “Quantified” Bourdieu: The Geometric Modelling of Data

There is an essential aspect of Bourdieu's work that has been somewhat neglected by those who have written about Bourdieu's theory, that is his constant concern for quantifying his data material and for putting his thinking in mathematical terms. The first purpose of this chapter is to provide landmarks for this aspect, and to outline the solution that was retained by Bourdieu, at least from La distinction onward: namely the geometric modelling of data. In a first part, this chapter describes Bourdieu's lifelong commitment into statistics (quantification and formalization), which lead him to the choice of geometric modelling of data through the use of correspondence analysis (CA) and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). In a second part, examples of Bourdieu's modelling of the data are successively presented and analysed. Bourdieu's program for quantification and formalization is not an arbitrary result of historical contingencies: it is the logical consequence of a critical experience and reflection about the shortcomings of dominant quantitative approaches in social sciences, which led him to a conscious and systematic move toward a geometric frame-model more adapted to his conception of the social world.