Fields and dialectics in social movement studies

Abstract

In spite of the dialogue with and use of dialectics in Bourdieu’s foundational work on fields, recent work in social movements that employ fields and kindred concepts have generally abjured dialectics and, especially, Marxism. A renewed dialogue with Marxism is important to overcome some of the key limits of these meso-level analytic concepts. Several areas of extension are discussed, including the process of abstraction; the centrality of contradiction in driving change; the question of real potentials for change; and the problem of cohesion, including of consciousness. It is argued that Marxism pushes a sociology of movement fields back toward reflexivity, and from there to critical questions of intellectual practice.