Bourdieu in movement: toward a field theory of contentious politics

How can we account for the emergence and the dynamics of contentious mobilization? In order to answer this question, this article draws upon Bourdieu’s sociology to reformulate the political process model. Building on the claim that many social spaces organized around different logics coexist within each society, I propose to replace the concept of political opportunity structure, which lies at the core of the political process model, with that of field opportunity structure (FOS). There are thus as many FOS as there are fields and the structure of political opportunities is just one type of opportunity structure among others. After briefly reviewing the political process model and Bourdieu’s field theory, this article explains how shifts in the FOS can contribute to the emergence, growth, and decline of mobilization and contention. It then discusses how Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can account for actors not taking advantage of such shifts in situations of crisis, when fields relax their hold over the practices and goals of actors.