Bourdieu, Latour and Rasha Abbas: The Uses of Actor-Network Theory for Studying the Field(s) of Cultural Production in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Since the events of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011, the field(s) of cultural production of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have attracted considerable scholarly attention. However, the conceptual and methodological tools of cultural sociology, mostly developed for and through research in western societies, often have limited purchase when it comes to the empirical reality of cultural production in the MENA. This article proposes to introduce concepts from actor-network theory (ANT) in order to adapt Bourdieu’s conceptual framework of analysis to the case of globally dominated, transnational and relatively unstable spaces of cultural production. Two main arguments are being pursued: (1) Conceiving the field as network(s) offers a way of opening up the rigid and nation-centred space to include transnational as well as transient relations between actors that may only briefly play a role in cultural production. (2) In a situation where the artwork is the most immediately visible expression of the field’s structure, the role of objects in constituting the field must be reassessed. ANT offers ways of making full use of the heuristic potential of material objects and thus provides a privileged starting point for the analysis of fields in flux.