bourdieu – Altered States of Academia

4th Jul 2026

Constructing the Great and Terrible Wizard: Four Sociological Perspectives on Power in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Claire Birkenshaw “I have fooled everyone for so long that I thought I should never be found out.” (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) One of the most memorable plot twists in children’s literature occurs in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum, 1900) when the collapse of a carefully constructed façade reveals that the seemingly omnipotent Wizard of…

Thinking with Bourdieu: Illusio

Claire Birkenshaw “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game.” (Leonard Cohen, 2016) Happy New Year! Set any New Year resolutions? I have. At the heart of my New Year resolutions for 2024 is the improvement of my ‘cultural capital’ portfolio in terms of “volume” and “composition” (Threadgold, 2018, p.45). I am motivated…

Thinking with Bourdieu: Doxa

Claire Birkenshaw “In every cry of every Man,In every Infants cry of fear,In every voice: in every ban,The mind-forg’d manacles I hear” (William Blake, 1794). Sociology’s purpose, Bourdieu (2013, p.10) argued, is to “uncover the social unconscious” in order to examine and explain “the social relations of domination”, which “deny others the full expression…