Bourdieu and social movements theories:Some preliminary remarks on a possible conceptual cross-fertilization in the context of (post-)yugoslav anti-war and peace activism

Abstract

This paper puts forth and calls for further unpacking of a potentially fruitful conceptual cross-fertilization between various social movements theories and Bourdieu's sociology of practice. Following some of my most important predecessors, I argue that this theoretical hybridization could accommodate many threads of social movements research that otherwise would not cohere into a rounded theory. Bourdieu's powerful conceptual armoury is both parsimonious and flexible and seems particularly well-suited to address the problematic issues pertaining to agency and structure in the field of social movements. In the second section of the paper, I call for an exploration of Yugoslav anti-war and pacifist activism immediately before and during the wars of Yugoslav succession. I perceive a number of politically and organizationally heterogeneous initiatives, taking place throughout the demised country, as a case that can be used to empirically test the proposed theoretical considerations. Yugoslav anti-war and pacifist activism has yet to receive the sociological attention that it deserves. It is a complex social phenomenon calling for a sophisticated and systematic examination which should position it between its antecedents - the embryonic forms of extra-institutional engagement during Yugoslav communism - and its divergent posterity, mostly circumscribed within the national fields of non-governmental organizations.