Abstract
I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. (Cassio in
On 25 May 2018, Harvey Weinstein, one of the most successful producers in cinema history, a multi-award-winning mogul of major influence in the movie industry, was led from a New York police station in handcuffs, having already been expelled from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts, removed from his production company and assured he would never work in Hollywood again. In 2011, Diederik Stapel, rising star of Dutch psychology, decorated with awards and precocious dean of faculty, was suspended from his position, investigated and charged with fabricating his published research data, admitting to fraud and agreeing to undertake community service. In a similar part of the world, but over a hundred years earlier, Vincent van Gogh was fired from his position at the powerhouse art dealership, Goupil & Co., he had entered a few years earlier as not only a promising apprentice but assumed protégé to his widely esteemed uncle. These stories, and the thousands like them that have attracted greater or lesser attention and notoriety down the ages, have one thing in common: a shocking fall from grace; an abrupt tumble from a revered position, whether long-held by the incumbent or a presumed waystation on a stellar ascent. They personify a sudden loss of power and prestige, and of the ability to accumulate further power and prestige, distinct from the recurrent ‘changing of the guard’ in many social spheres as newcomers question and critique established figures in the twilight of their careers.
My aim in this paper is to unpick the social genesis and navigation of such falls from grace. To do so I will draw on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the value of which lies in its capacity to offer correctives to prevailing conceptualizations and analyses. Most of the latter fix on the construction or mediation of ‘scandals’, typically construing the latter as ritualistic reinforcements of norms – sometimes conflicting norms – in a social order or bound up with (de)legitimation struggles in politics (e.g. Hepworth, 1975; Alexander, 1989; Thompson, 2000; Gamson, 2001; Adut, 2005; Neckel, 2005; Jacobsson and Löfmarck, 2008). Yet falling from grace is more pervasive than the emphasis on public scandal suggests, immiserating countless individuals even where there is little or no media intervention.
Yet the argument will be that a full grasp of the factors feeding into disgrace requires looking at things a little differently from Bourdieu’s usual regard and making some conceptual adjustments. This is not so much a case of emphasizing technological change since Bourdieu was writing, though the internet, smart technology and social media undoubtedly mean that scandals and disgrace are discovered, mediated and consequent in different ways, at different speeds and to different extents today compared to the past (see Atkinson, 2019). Instead the point will be that while there are plenty of instances where a fall from grace is seemingly the product of dynamics and struggles within a single
The paper proceeds as follows. First, it begins by considering what it is that people fall from – that is to say, what ‘grace’ is in Bourdieusian sociology, which involves a short tour through the main concepts and brief consideration of some useful extensions and critiques. It then goes on to consider disgrace as generated largely by intra-field dynamics, including unfavourable exchange and violation of the field’s logic – its ‘nomos’, its ‘doxa’, its rules. After that I consider instances where an agent’s disgrace in one field is more clearly tied to their practice within another field, whether mundane or infamous, with the interplay of work, family and sex being particularly prominent. This leads to a final section acknowledging the importance of this interplay for how people deal with their social fall too.
‘Grace’ in Bourdieusian Sociology
Grace, from Latin
The ‘games’ we play with others snare our libido, generating what Bourdieu termed
Pre-industrial misrecognition struggles, like those Bourdieu documented amongst the Berbers of Kabylia in the mid-20th century, were small scale and required constant interpersonal exchanges – gift-giving or challenges – to maintain the distribution of symbolic capital, understood in terms of ‘honour’ (Bourdieu, 1990b). In large-scale industrial social orders like those that dominate the world today, however, the misrecognition struggle has become differentiated into a multitude of relatively autonomous fields. Each field has its own specific form(s) of capital defining who is esteemed and who is not, or dominant and dominated, though in capitalist societies the power of money, or economic capital, often provides a heteronomous source of worth and power within a field too. Each also has its own attendant illusio and doxa, the latter of which can congeal into what Bourdieu described as a
The various fields of production are contained within a ‘meta-field’, the field of power, in which the agents across the different fields contend against one another to impose their principle of misrecognition, and the definitions and categorizations of the world that go with it, as universal (see Bourdieu, 1996b; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1993). Contrary to notions that the concept of field thus applies only to elites (Lahire, 1998), in later years Bourdieu also expanded the concept to cover specific organizations and enterprises (Bourdieu, 2005) as well as, importantly, familial and domestic relations (Bourdieu, 1998, 2000a; see also McNay, 1999; Atkinson, 2016). Others have added countless more fields to the list, some questionably so, and amongst the more provocative yet potentially illuminating stands the notion of a ‘sexual field’: a field defined by the desire to be ‘attractive’, gauged in all manner of ways (including sexual conquest), in which specific valued corporeal attributes act as a capital, but which is only weakly autonomous, invaded as it is by all sorts of alternative ‘attractive’ forces – money, power, fame, etc. – not related to physicality or sensuality (Green, 2013; Atkinson, 2020).
Broadscale social developments – such as greater access to education and employment for women – cascade through all fields in a social order, often having similar or ‘homologous’ effects on field structures. Moreover, fields are inherently temporal: there is a continuous succession of the generations, with newcomers to the field, often in subordinate positions, pursuing subversive strategies and championing heterodox views as the only way to topple the established figures, who pursue defensive, conservative strategies to uphold the orthodoxy. Sometimes the succession is revolutionary, but at other times it may follow a steadier rise/decline dynamic. Denunciation and denigration of others as a ‘disgrace’ are part and parcel of this struggle, of course, and a rich vein of Bourdieu-inspired work has documented the sense of shame, guilt and failure that surrounds those dominated, or from dominated origins, in the social space (see Sayer, 2005). Separable from this, however, are the sudden falls from grace of specific individuals. True enough, at times these may entwine with the movement of the social generations in some way, but at others they are counter to the tendency, like a shooting star darting contrariwise to the nocturnal motion of the heavens, as when a nascent trajectory is swiftly halted, reversed and perhaps, through field-exit of one form or another, snuffed out altogether.
The Genesis of Disgrace I: Intra-Field Dynamics
There are at least two ways in which disgrace within a field can be heavily tied to the internal logic and struggles of the field in question. First of all, in some fields characterized by low levels of institutionalization, where symbolic capital is less secure and more labour-intensive, disgrace can befall an agent simply through one or more unfavourable exchanges. The obvious example from Bourdieu’s (1990b: 98ff) own research is the dishonour – sometimes redeemable, but sometimes lifelong – that was cast on individuals falling foul of the logic of exchange in Kabylia. Whether in relation to gifts, challenges or insults, a person could ‘cover themselves in shame’ or suffer ‘total humiliation’ (
These kinds of exchanges can, of course, occur in the fields of industrial/capitalist social orders too. To be sure, institutionalized forms of capital – qualifications, prizes, titles, money, etc. – tend to act as buffers against total disgrace and decline in many fields. In the social space, for example, there may be rare instances of rapid financial ruin and destitution, but for the most part (and possibly even in these cases) individuals are cushioned from falls after, for instance, job loss, by their holdings of social, economic and cultural capital (Atkinson, 2013). Even in capitalist social orders, however, there are some fields of low institutionalization where interpersonal exchange is highly consequential. Prime amongst these is surely the familial field, founded as it is on continuous practices and displays of care and affection. Inapt gift-giving may be the root, but it could also be discovery of an infidelity sending the implicated party’s stock plummeting, or a revelation that a favoured child has been lying to their parents about something valued within the field (educational performance, a relationship, etc.). Or it could be outright ‘rejection of inheritance’, as Bourdieu (1999) put it: a railing against parental orthodoxy on desirable futures, political outlooks and so on – a subversive strategy in the familial field, for sure, but one that can end in failure and disgrace.
There are also some larger-scale fields in capitalist social orders where, because of their specific logic, discrete, regulated interpersonal exchanges can have profound consequences for someone’s standing. This is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in fields of sport, where physical capital in its varying species, all so friable and insecure, are prominent (on physical capital, see Shilling, 1993; Atkinson, 2016). Take boxing, for instance – a field alluded to, though never mapped, by Wacquant (2004) in his celebrated ethnography of a Chicago boxing gym. Economic, social and physical capital are all key in building and maintaining a fighter’s position in the field, but the ability to beat specific opponents, with their own portfolios of capital, is only ever a probability of greater or lesser favourability, and a shock defeat can have profound consequences for a fighter’s position. Some may use their resources to ‘bounce back’, but others are so shamed by the defeat that their aura of invincibility, and the symbolic power it can deliver, is irretrievably damaged – and their libido so thwarted or weakened that they opt to retire, i.e. exit the field, sooner or later. Perhaps the most famous example in recent times actually comes from the parallel field of mixed martial arts – a field premised on very similar principles – in the form of Ronda Rousey. A former Olympic judoka turned competitor in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, her undefeated record against high-profile opponents fed into an image of indomitability that was abruptly shattered by her first surprise defeat and irretrievable after a second successive and decisive loss. 1 She shunned the media – which she had previously embraced – contemplated suicide – her sense of self-worth being destroyed – and swiftly retired from the field altogether.
Disgrace can be generated in a second manner: following discovery of a
In the scientific field, where the nomos of the field is oriented around the use of logic and honest evidence to search for truth, and where symbolic capital takes the form of publications, prizes, institutional positions and such like, the major violation of the rules of the game, beyond the pernicious yet common instances of leveraging heteronomous forms of capital – connections, fame, economic resources – to increase the chances of one’s version of ‘truth’ being circulated, recognized and accepted (Bourdieu, 2004), is making up evidence (cf. Martin, 1992; Thérèse and Martin, 2010). Here we find Diederik Stapel and his ilk. Whatever the tensions between the scientific field and the journalistic field, a similar nomos – ‘free and honest’ reporting of ‘truth’ – provides the benchmarks for grace and disgrace within the latter too, at least the investigative section thereof. Hence the journalistic field is characterized not just by a battle with the forces of heteronomy, but by frequent instances of individual journalists with ascendant trajectories being subject to symbolic destruction on discovery of violation of the field’s nomos, specifically, the profane act of fabricating evidence (quotes, interviews, informants) for stories or arguments. The cases of Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair and Sabrina Erdely all provide clear examples – younger reporters on the rise, perceived by most to be on a budding ascendant pathway through the field, who, on discovery of their fabrications, were subjected to degradation rituals marking the stripping of capitals: loss of employment, widespread vilification from field players, rescinding of prizes or awards, retraction of publications, etc. 3
All these cases of discovered nomos violation have several preconditions in common. First, the violators clearly had a strong illusio – they desired the specific prizes of the game, i.e. the particular forms of recognition characterizing the field. However, that illusio did
As a strategy, however, it should be pointed out that nomos violation is not actually heterodox or subversive in the usual sense – part of an active and open pursuit and/or advocacy of a different system of evaluation in the field – but deceitful, aimed at appearing to succeed
Third, discovery of the violation is often unveiled in the course of investigation by others within the field, or the field of power more broadly, and is not exempt from the hierarchies, strategies and struggles therein. Discrediting a rival and being seen to uphold the rules of the game can work to strengthen one’s own standing, though the motivation may be sincere commitment to the nomos and distaste for ‘unfair play’ rather than cynical calculation. Or perhaps discrediting a person or group of people is an instrument of inter-field struggle – right-wing journalists seeking to undermine agents within the academic field as a means to curb criticism of the economic field, for example. Either way, the possibility opens up for instances where individuals can be disgraced within a field following accusation that they violated the nomos
Others in the field with which the denounced agent was connected – employers, supporters, sponsors, collaborators, team members and so on – can also be tainted by association, as if they are thereafter lumbered with a
The Genesis of Disgrace II: Inter-Field Dynamics
Unfavourable exchange and nomos violation are, then, major causes of swift capital loss and symbolic annihilation within a field. This is not all, however, for disgrace within one field can also be determined in whole or in part by the disgraced agent’s participation in a
All these modalities of disgrace implicate a feel for more than a single game. They point to perceptual horizons containing protention of the possibilities of more than one field alone, and they depend on a libido transformed into more than one field-specific illusio. They implicate what Bourdieu (2000b) fleetingly called the ‘social surface’, in other words: the individual’s collection of dispositions and schemes of perception
The inter-field genesis of disgrace is not, however, confined to instances of
Regarding the familial field, first of all, public disgrace within an employment-providing field may shame partners, siblings, parents and children sufficiently for them to not only censure the individual but to engender a serious loss of affective capital – separation or cutting contact, for example. Equally, it may well be that detrimental practice relevant to the familial microcosm – domestic violence or an extramarital affair and its fallout, for instance – rebound on positioning in an employment-related field. Vincent van Gogh provides a particularly unfortunate example insofar as he seemingly suffered
What constitutes a cross-field discreditation depends on the nomos and state of play of the implicated fields and the wider field of power at the time. The US sociologist William Isaac Thomas, for instance, lost his post at the University of Chicago in 1918 because of an affair with the wife of an army officer and, though his reputation within the disciplinary field eventually recovered, never held a tenured post again – the state of orthodoxy on familial and sexual behaviour at the time made his actions a moral outrage, but 50 years later (and 50 years ago) Lewis Coser (1971: 299) could describe it as ‘a minor indiscretion’ by ‘contemporary standards’. Moreover, insofar as lust and love, as modes of evaluation embedded in the perception of another, often blur into one another (synchronically and diachronically), both the familial field and the sexual field can be implicated in the genesis of disgrace in another field. There are, however, some instances where sex is clearly separable from love in generating disgrace across fields, specifically scandals oriented around sexual abuse and harassment of others.
The Harvey Weinstein case, which gave rise to the ‘#MeToo’ movement, is a leading example. In this instance, as in so many others, an individual is claimed to have mobilized
Dealing with the Fall
Rapid decline within a field can have profound emotional consequences for individuals. Their reason for being, their source of worth and self-validation, is not only removed but swiftly transformed into a source of vilification and denigration, and that vilification, and the fall, will never go away – the trajectory is forever etched into the individual’s biography, perhaps with haunting memories, but
There are, however, other tactics for dealing with disgrace and attempting to recover position. One of these is to mobilize what capitals one has left – especially if they are heteronomous, like economic capital or cultural capital, but also social capital in the form of continued support from particular key players – to halt or reverse the trajectory. Paying large sums to legal teams to contest allegations and win exoneration is an obvious example. Another tactic is to make a virtue of necessity and attempt to reinvent oneself as a cautionary tale – to re-establish one’s sense of worth by actively participating in, or attempting to lead, the narrative construction of one’s disgrace in the field and its lessons. Whatever capital that was lost with the fall might be regained in another form by winning recognition as a ‘sinner reborn’: someone who is an authority, worth listening to and estimable
A third tactic for dealing with disgrace is to switch fields. Intuiting the possibilities and impossibilities of regaining capital within the original field, and perhaps with a weakened or nullified illusio, an individual may sense that a feasible way to regain worth is simply to change the form of worth – the species of capital – she seeks. Exiting the original field and entering a new one is as close as one might be able to come to erasing one’s past and being ‘born again’, depending on the degree of infamy of the disgrace and the relation between the two fields. By no longer orienting toward or being influenced by those who had identified the disgrace and denounced it (including through physical avoidance), one can try to ‘kill off’ the being one was, since to be is, as Bourdieu (2000a) had it, to be recognized by others, and annul symbolic violence by not just refusing to recognize those who dispense it but actively evading situations and interactions associated with the field in which that violence would be experienced. Vincent van Gogh, for example, endeavoured (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) to enter the religious field after his fall from grace in the art trade so as to find solace, put distance between himself and his shameful past and prove himself worthy to his family (Naifeh and Smith, 2011).
Yet the past is sticky, and not only because old desires and orientations die hard and prompt imaginings of the narratives still spun about oneself in the exited field – a haunting by social ghosts – but because those in the new field may well be fully aware of the disgrace in the old field. This is all the more likely if the disgrace was widely disseminated via various media, but also if the new fields entered are based on similar masteries and dispositions, and one effect of this is that the disgrace can act as a
A fourth tactic for handling disgrace is seeking comfort or compensation in another field one already participates in, perhaps the most prominent and pervasive one being the familial field. In those cases where the balance of affective capital is enough to prevent double disgrace, and where offering support and comfort to the disgraced party can itself be a considerable ‘gift’ in the familial microcosm generating a sense of indebtedness (the disgrace thus being translated into the possibilities and impossibilities in the family field), it may well be that the self-worth derived from filial or amorous recognition is sufficient to buffer the loss of face in an employment-related field (‘where would I be without you?’). It depends, perhaps, upon the balance of the libido – the mental energy converted into diversion and striving for recognition – between fields: the intensity of the effect of disgrace and symbolic annihilation for the individual is possibly proportional to the degree of investment in the field at the expense of others. To suffer disgrace in a field is not to ‘lose everything’ if that field is not everything to the individual. Conversely, no matter how much a significant other tries to provide comfort, if the set of relations in which that comfort is embedded is of lesser value to the individual – if the significant other is not so significant, that is – then it will be less effective.
On the other hand, it may well be that the agent endeavours to make a virtue of necessity and pursue a
Conclusion
There is no intrinsic reason to be, only diversion and recognition in the myriad games we play with others. Some people become dominant players in these games, others are dominated; some seek to conserve the state of play, others seek to subvert it. But amidst those broad patterns and regularities are the manifold individuals suffering singular moments of disgrace, decline and/or exit from the game altogether. The oral or written histories of specific fields – politics, sports, science and so on – are littered with them, and they are no less explicable with the tools of sociology, and no less a legitimate object of sociological construction, than the core fault lines of power and forces of transformation. If Bourdieu’s concepts are to be fruitfully turned to that task, however, it is necessary to move beyond the typical application of those concepts. For while it may well be that one individual’s downfall within a field is anchored primarily in intra-field relations – unfavourable exchange or violation of the nomos – there are also many instances of
The model of multi-causality presupposes a broadening of the applicability of the notion of field beyond what many typically understand of that term – as pertaining only to bodies of professionals oriented around institutionalized principles – to cover (
Footnotes
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