I chanced on this abstract and it looked like the right kinda stuff:

NEOLIBERALISM AS DOXA: BOURDIEU’S THEORY OF THE STATE AND THE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN DISCOURSE ON GLOBALIZATION AND LIBERALIZATION
Rohit Chopra ^A1

Emory University, Atlanta, USA

Abstract:

This paper assesses, on the basis of key arguments from Pierre Bourdieu's work, how and why a consensus about the positive effects of globalization and liberalization could have established itself as a dominant discourse across Indian social space. Describing the discourse that validates globalization and economic liberalization as a particular worldview, which he terms 'neoliberalism', Bourdieu describes how neoliberalism establishes itself as a doxa - an unquestionable orthodoxy that operates as if it were the objective truth - across social space in its entirety, from the practices and perceptions of individuals to the practices and perceptions of the state and social groups. The full import of Bourdieu's arguments about neoliberalism, however, can only be grasped with reference to Bourdieu's theory of the state, and with reference to key concepts, such as doxa, habitus, field and capital. This paper, accordingly, seeks to fulfil two related objectives: to explicate Bourdieu's theory of the state and his concepts of habitus, doxa, field and capital, and to describe, on the basis of Bourdieu's arguments, how neoliberalism as doxa could have colonized the discussion and perception in Indian social space about the effects of globalization and liberalization.

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[Note by Ron - Here's the entire article:]

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Introduction: globalized India?

MO R E   T H A N   A  decade after India has implemented a series of market- oriented economic reforms that pass under the name liberalization, it is still an open question whether India’s gradually increasing participation in a global economy has improved the condition of its people. At the very least, there are two different stories about the impact of liberalization and globalization in India. An article in India’s largest-circulation English newspaper asserts that business  process  outsourcing  –  the  practice  of  corporations headquartered  in Western countries outsourcing business functions to centres in the Third World to  save  labour  costs  –  can strengthen the Indian economy by creating over a million jobs by 2008 (Dutta, 2002: 1). On the other hand, a recent report of the Planning Commission’s Special Group on Job Creation points out that the number of jobs created in the post-liberalization decade of the 1990s was less than a third of the corresponding number in the decade preceding liberalization (Kang, 2002). The report predicts that, unless corrective measures are taken, the number of unemployed people will double in the next five years, reaching a 
staggering 45 million.

In the contemporary conversation on Indian economy, politics and society, it is usually the pro-globalization and pro-liberalization narrative that is affirmed as more credible than the opposing viewpoint. For instance, a newspaper article last year reported the peculiar phenomenon of one of India’s oldest left state governments, West Bengal, hiring consultants McKinsey & Co. to suggest a plan for  labour  reforms  (The Times  of  India,  2002:  7). The  government  eventually decided to drop the plan, yet apparent in its decision to hire McKinsey & Co. – a multinational consulting firm well-known for its pro-liberalization and pro- globalization agenda – was the belief that state labour policies could not resist the irreversible tide of liberalization for much longer. The view that liberaliza- tion and globalization must be recognized as simple facts prior to ideology is echoed by Sebastian Morris, the co-editor of India Infrastructure Report 2002, a document offering policy analysis and recommendations for the governance of commercial  activity.  Chiding  the  government  for  what  he  perceives  as  the conservatism of its macro-economic policymakers in not allowing the rupee to take a free fall against the dollar, Morris proclaims that ‘this is not the time for ideological histrionics’ (Morris and Shekhar, 2002: 1). In the 2001 budget, then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha proposed labour reforms that would cut back the protection offered to the organized labour workforce.¹

These recommenda-tions have already generated much controversy, with trade
unions claiming theyare   anti-labour.  Yet   policy-makers   and   those   in  
government   argue   to the contrary.

In an interview, Arun Jaitley, then Union Minister for Law, Justice and Company Affairs,  stated,  ‘Labour  reforms  are  not  anti-poor  and  will  create more jobs. And the sooner the unions clamouring for ‘rights’ understand it, the better’ (Barman, 2001). Subir Gokarn, chief economist at the National Council

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of  Applied  Economic  Research  (NCAER),  similarly  backed  the  proposed reforms,  saying, ‘it’s  clear  that  the  government  cannot  hire  anymore,  so  the private  sector  must  be  freed  from  its  shackles’  (Barman,  2001).  As  these examples  indicate,  the  arguments  proffered  by  the  pro-reform  advocates  in government,  journalism  and  policy  call  in  each  case  for  waking-up-and-  smelling-the-coffee, for recognizing hard facts about India in a changing world.

The actions and rhetoric of numerous Indian state and non-state agencies seem to endorse globalization and liberalization as desirable transformative forces that will  ultimately  provide  not  only  economic  rewards,  such  as  increased  global competitiveness of Indian companies and healthier foreign exchange reserves, but also significant social benefits such as more job opportunities, higher sala- ries,  greater  consumer  choice  and  a  better  quality  of  life.  Indeed,  across  the most  visible  sectors  of  Indian  society  and  the  state,  there  appears  to  be emerging  a  consensus  in  limiting  the  terms  of  debate  about  socioeconomic issues  to  largely  those  positions,  which  already  presuppose  globalization  and liberalization as enabling frameworks for positive change in the economy and in society
at large.

In this paper I assess, on the basis of key arguments from Pierre Bourdieu’s work, how and why this consensus about the positive effects of globalization and liberalization could have established itself as a dominant discourse across Indian social space. It is this very question that Bourdieu seeks to answer, albeit in the context of France and Europe, in the essays ‘The myth of “globalization” and the European   welfare   state’   (1998a:   29–45)   and  ‘Neo-liberalism,   the   utopia (becoming  a  reality)  of  unlimited  exploitation’  (1998b:  94–105).  Describing the discourse that validates globalization and economic liberalization as a partic- ular  worldview  which  he  terms  ‘neoliberalism’,  Bourdieu  in  these  essays describes  how  neoliberalism  establishes  itself  as  a  doxa  –  an  unquestionable orthodoxy that operates as if it were the objective truth – across social space in its  entirety,  from  the  practices  and  perceptions  of  individuals  (at  the  level  of habitus) to the practices and perceptions of the state and social groups (at the level of fields).

The full import of the arguments in the essays, however, can only be grasped with reference to Bourdieu’s theory of the state and with reference to key concepts, such as doxa, habitus, field and capital, which Bourdieu expli- cates in greater detail across several works.³

This paper, accordingly, seeks to fulfil two related objectives: to explicate Bourdieu’s theory of the state and his concepts of habitus, doxa, field and capital, and to demonstrate, on the basis of Bourdieu’s arguments, how neoliberalism as  doxa has colonized the discussion and  perception  in  Indian  social  space  about  the  effects  of  globalization  and liberalization. In the first section of the paper, I define neoliberalism and expli- cate Bourdieu’s critique of neoliberalism to show what he means by neoliber- alism as doxa. In the next section, I explain Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, doxa, field and capital. In the third section, I spell out Bourdieu’s theory of the state. Finally, on the basis of the concepts and arguments explained in earlier sections,

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out’, ‘targeting of services’, and individual ‘responsibilization’ for health, welfare, and
education. (2001: 18–19) Peters states that neoliberalism is not only enforced at the
national level to ensure competitiveness in a global economy, but is similarly invested at
the global level and in transnational organizations like the World Bank, IMF and WTO (2001: viii).  Historically,  neoliberalism  has  developed  in  the  economically  advanced countries of the West but is a force that less developed nation-states, such as in the Third World,  have  to  negotiate  in  their  dependence  on  the West  and  on  institutions like the World Bank or the IMF (2001: viii).

Bourdieu’s analysis of neoliberalism concurs with that of Peters, specifically with regard to the economistic bias of neoliberal discourse. Bourdieu states that neoliberalism ascribes to a mathematical model of economic behaviour as syn- onymous with the nature of human sociality. In this model, it is taken for granted ‘that maximum growth, and therefore productivity and competitiveness, are the ultimate  and  sole  goal  of  human  actions;  or  that  economic  forces  cannot  be resisted’ (1998a: 31). The neoliberal redefinition of the social in terms of the economic is primarily in terms of the language of quantifiability, calculability, cost-benefit rationalization and business management techniques. The irreduc- ibly  social  that  does  not  translate  into  mathematical  terms  is  accordingly  dis- carded; ‘a radical separation is made between the economic and the social, which is left to one side, abandoned to sociologists as a kind of reject’ (1998a: 31). The chaff of the social cannot pose any legitimate objections to neoliberalism, since  it cannot be represented as a variable in the equation.

Bourdieu argues further that neoliberal discourse views and presents itself as the ‘scientific description of reality’ (1998b: 94). The assumptions underlying neoliberalism  –  about  the  goal  of  human  actions  and  about  the  possibility  of describing the social in terms of the economic – can be forgotten as assumptions qua  assumptions,  since  neoliberalism  claims  the  status  of  objective,  scientific truth whose truth-value transcends history.⁴ Historically- or socially-constituted logic or rationality are not recognized by the neoliberal worldview as valid. From the  perspective  of  the  neoliberal  vision,  social  reality  can  only  be  grasped  by accepting the premises of neoliberal thought. What the program of neoliberalism does not acknowledge simply does not exist for it, since, by definition, it cannot exist 
in  the  neoliberal  scheme. 

As  Bourdieu  states, ‘neo-classical  economics recognizes only individuals,
whether it is dealing with companies, trade unions or families’ (1998b: 96). This is what
allows neoliberal discourse to ‘embark on a  programme  of  methodical  destruction  of  
collectives’  (1998b:  95–6,  original emphasis). Bourdieu argues that neoliberalism should be viewed as a political program, that is at once ‘dehistoricized and desocialized’ (1998b: 95), and, one may  infer,  depoliticized  as  well.  Neoliberalism  is,  hence,  a  political  agenda predicated on a certain vision of the social world, one that legitimates a certain

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scientistic view of that world and deems as illegitimate opposing views about the world. Neoliberalism is founded on a particular principle of vision, but, if one takes its self-definition seriously, one must believe that it does not privilege any  one point of view but merely presents the truth about things as they are.

This is what Bourdieu terms neoliberalism as doxa (a term that I will shortly clarify),  the  self-definition  and  presentation  of  neoliberalism  as  a  self-evident truth  about  the  human  and  social,  which  is  beyond  question.⁵ The  status  of neoliberalism as  doxa, Bourdieu tells us, is ‘what gives the dominant discourse its strength’ (1998a: 29). According to Bourdieu, the  doxa  of neoliberalism as the self-evident truth about the social has been steadily prepared over decades in France  and  the  UK  by  partisan  groups  of  academics,  mediapersons,  busi- nessmen, and others. Ordinary citizens and the media ‘passively’ (1998a: 30) contribute  to  the  entrenchment  of  neoliberalism  as  doxa,  by  accepting  and repeating the claims of neoliberalism. As a result, in public discourse in these societies, an acceptance of the propositions of neoliberalism is seen as an inevi-  table recognition of the truth about the social world.

The negative effects of the establishment of neoliberalism as a paradigm both for governance and for understanding the social are experienced in a plethora of ways in different societies. In France, Bourdieu tells us, the state has begun to abdicate its role as a guarantor and protector of social benefits in the spheres of education,   health   and   welfare   (1998a:   34).   In   the   name   of   globalization, European workers are told to work longer hours to make European countries competitive with those countries that offer no protection or benefits for labour. In the UK and the USA, economic insecurity affects not just the working class but a middle class as well, with options for permanent jobs with benefits being replaced by temporary and underpaid jobs (1998a: 37). In another sphere, the neoliberal vision is significantly eroding the autonomy of the arts, bringing the pressures  of  the  market  to  bear  upon  the  production  and  consumption  of literature  and  film  (1998s:  38). The  near-monopolistic  encroachment  of  neo- liberalism on the terms of discussion about the social includes the colonization of language as well: corporate decisions to sack workers are described as ‘bold social   plans’   (1998a:   31)   and   the   jargon   of   deregulation,   downsizing   and  slimming masks the actual social consequences of such actions.

According to Bourdieu, what the neoliberal worldview actually achieves is nothing other than the oldest dream of capitalism, the establishment of a frame- work  for  the  accumulation  and  distribution  of  profit  according  to  Darwinian principles. The worldview is similarly nothing other than a reincarnation of the oldest traditions of conservative thought, rejecting the very notion of the social in favour of an atomistic fiction of individuals who are governed by the ‘free’ market  in  the  economic  arena,  and  who  are  free  agents  in  all  their  choices. Hence, according to the tenets of conservative thought, individuals have to bear responsibility   for   the   situations   in   which   they   find   themselves.   Bourdieu enumerates some of those whose interests the system of neoliberalism serves as

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‘shareholders,   financial   operators,   industrialists,   conservative   politicians   or  social  democrats  converted  to  the  cosy  capitulations  of  laissez  faire,  senior
officials  of  the  finance  ministry’  (1998b:  96).
Along  with  national  and  multi-national  corporations,  and  organizations  such  as 
the  IMF  or WTO,  this  is  the powerful  constituency  that  neoliberalism  serves. This 
constituency,  in  turn, serves  neoliberalism  as  its  guardian,  advocate  and  defender. 

I  now  turn  to explicating  some  key  concepts  in  Bourdieu’s  work,  towards  theorizing  how neoliberalism might manage to entrench itself in public discourse, whether in India or France, as the description of reality itself.

Key concepts: habitus, doxa, field and capital

Habitus and doxa

Bourdieu uses the term doxa as early as Outline of a
Theory of Practice (1977), in relation to his theorization of the habitus. The concept of
the habitus may be understood as an explanation of the functioning social space at the
‘micro-level’, a  description  of  the  relationship  between ‘a  particular  type  of 
environment’ (1977: 72) shared by a group of people and the practices of those who
inhabit that  shared  space.  Bourdieu  asserts  that  there  are  structures  that  shape 
the character  of  particular  shared  environments.  For  example,  in  class  societies, ‘material  conditions  of  existence’  (1977:  72)  constitute  the  respective  social 
spaces inhabited by different classes.

"Practice," an important term in Bourdieu, can be defined as those embodied activities and competencies that are ‘learned’ and carried out by individuals in a  social  space.  But  this  learning  is  not  of  the  order  of  something  that  is consciously incorporated by an individual into their repertoire of responses, actions or reactions; neither, for that matter does this learning operate as an unconscious motivational basis for all practices. It would be more appropriate to say that these practices are acquired as a result of being integrated, acclima- tized and shaped in a particular type of environment. These learned practices in turn enable individuals to negotiate interactions with other individuals in that

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apprehension, moral judgment, ethical commitments or aesthetic inclinations  – the habitus becomes the basis for enacting that worldview through practices.

However, what makes a particular habitus distinct from another habitus, and what makes a habitus an ‘objective’ basis for engendering certain dispositions and practices in all those who inhabit that habitus, is the fact that there is a range of practices and dispositions for any particular habitus, which corresponds to what is thinkable within that habitus. There is thus a limit to the possibilities ‘allowed’ by the perceptual framework corresponding to any habitus. What sets this limit and lies beyond it, is what Bourdieu terms doxa. To  question the doxa is an act essentially in the order of heresy, for it is to question the very basis on which not just particular practices or dispositions ultimately rest, but on which the very system  that  is  the  basis  of  all  practices  in  a  habitus  ultimately  rests.  Hence, Bourdieu argues, for those who inhabit any particular habitus, what counts as liberal, radical, conservative or orthodox is all within the realm of the thinkable, that is, within the ambit of what does not challenge the doxa. The doxa may be viewed as akin to a substratum of presuppositions, and the acquired practices and dispositions within a habitus as reflections, albeit unselfconscious, unarticulated  or untheorized, of taken-for-granted deductions about reality itself.

What is vital to note here is that the doxa is habitus-specific, thus, implying that what is doxa for inhabitants of one habitus need not necessarily be doxa for the inhabitants of another. This difference in doxa is what marks off one habitus as distinct from another. However, following from Bourdieu’s description of the relationship between habitus and structures –
‘the structures constitutive of a  particular type of environment (e.g. the material
conditions of class existence) produce habitus’ (1977: 72) – it follows that there must
be some general relationship  between  the  doxa  of  particular  habituses  and  these 
structures  at  large, provided the structures producing various habituses are the same.
Hence, while what  counts  as  doxa  for  one  habitus  may  be  substantially  different 
from  what counts as doxa in another habitus, the order of logic according to which the
doxic is designated, or the type of practice that falls under doxa, will be common to various habituses. By extension, the more variable the structures in their impact across a society, the less likely is the occurrence of structural consistency across the doxa of various habituses. But if it were the  same agency that shaped these habitus-producing  structures  across  the  breadth  of  a  society,  and  if  the  basic paradigm or method for shaping these structures was the same for all inhabitants of that society, then each habitus would be imprinted by the same vision of what counts as doxa. This is Bourdieu’s essential argument regarding neoliberalism: it is an all-pervasive paradigm and method for shaping habitus-producing struc- tures. As I will show later, Bourdieu posits that the state is the agency that grants the  paradigm  its  all-pervasiveness,  through  the  economic,  cultural,  or  social policies that it advocates. Bourdieu argues that what occurs at the level of the habitus (‘practices’) also occurs at the level of the state – given certain conditions of
structural homogeneity.

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Field and capital

Bourdieu employs the notion of the field to explain the functioning and compo- sition of social space across a society, as opposed to his theorization of the habitus, which explains the functioning of social space in particular and homogeneous environments  shared  by  groups  of  people.  Social  space  can  be  understood  as made  up  of  different,  and  distinct  (although  often  overlapping)  fields,  which correspond  to  different  spheres  of  activity  and  practice,  such  as  the  cultural, economic, social, and political.⁶ A particular field in a society can be viewed as an
embodiment of the valuation of, exchange of, and struggle over the resources of the field,
between different groups of inhabitants in the society. But the power relations that structure
a field do not necessarily operate as an unequal distribution of resources, for each group of  inhabitants  can  surely  bring  its ‘own’  resources  into  the  field.  Rather,  the relations that structure a field operate through the legislation of what kinds of resources count as a valid currency of exchange, that is, what kinds of resources translate as valid capital for the field. Hence, in the cultural field, while each group may  bring  its  own  set  of  cultural  practices  into  the  field  and  each  group  may possess equal resources in this basic sense, how much capital each group possesses is decided by what counts as culture within that group’s repertoire of resources. The criteria for what counts as culture is decreed by the dominant class in that field, which is the class that possesses the most cultural capital, and whose interest that particular structure of the field serves. Hence, any group seeking to improve its relative standing in social space, by aspiring to a position of greater power than it has had before, reinforces the definition of culture and hence the very structure  that serves the dominant class’ interests.

Secondly, what is negotiated and contested in the exchange of capital within a field is not just those actions that would allow various classes to increase their capital, but equally importantly, the very stakes by which capital is defined at all, which Bourdieu terms "nomos."

Nomos is defined by Bourdieu in Pascalian Meditations  
as the irreducible, foundational, ‘fundamental law’ (1997: 96) that struc- tures a field. Nomos may also be understood as the regulative principle that orders the functioning of a field. Since it is the constitutive structure of a field, it is not dependent  on  any  forces  within  the  field. Therefore,  it  does  not  have  to  be explained in terms of these internal forces, nor can it be questioned from within the ambit of the field. Yet the nomos is neither a transcendental eternal idea nor a  principle  of  abstract  logic.  It  is  a  historically  shaped  view  that  reflects  the interests of the groups that hold dominant positions in a field. It is, in this sense, arbitrary because there is no necessary or intrinsic reason for one principle as opposed  to  another  to  orient  the  functioning  of  the  field. The  nomos  is  what constitutes the doxa at the level of field, since the nomos demarcates the limit to what is thinkable within the field even as the nomos must itself remain outside the
ken of the thinkable.⁷

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Thus,  in  the  cultural  field,  for  example,  what  different  groups  challenge each other for is not just an increase in the amount of capital they possess, but the criteria by which something is considered genuine cultural capital, and for the  right  to  define  that  nomos. What  this  implies  is  that  all  groups  who  are participants in a field share the assumption that increasing their capital requires participating in the game of exchange, negotiation and contestation that takes place in the field. The participation in this game even by those classes against whom the dice is loaded, amounts to a reaffirmation of the structure of the field, that is, the reaffirmation of those practices that serve a dominant class as the most authentic  incarnation  of  that  sphere  of  social  activity.  In  other  words,  this  amounts to a ‘recognition’ of both the nomos and the doxa of the field.

Bourdieu,  additionally,  argues  that  value  or  capital  in  one  field  does  not necessarily translate into value in another field.
Nor, for that matter, can capital in any field be understood in terms of its economic value, that is in terms of economic capital.
This is a function of two related facts about the nature of fields: first, fields are relatively autonomous from each other and, second, that the nomos – the ‘law’ that structures each field and dictates the principle for the struggle over capital in that field of various fields – cannot be understood or represented in terms of any simple equation. There is no fixed formula that could explain why  one  kind  of  capital  translates  (or  fails  to  translate)  into  another  kind  of capital; there is no fixed relationship between the various types of capital. The nomos of each field is arbitrary, and can be understood appropriately only in terms  of the history of a particular field in a particular society.

Nevertheless, certain kinds of capital are ‘convertible’ into other kinds of capital, for example, economic capital can be converted into educational capital and educational capital into social capital. While there is no general equivalency between forms of capital, there are rates of exchange according to which one  particular form of capital may be converted to another particular form of capital.

The  mode  and  mechanisms  by  which  economic  capital  translates  into  social capital and the factors that determine this translation will vary from society to society. What emerges from this scenario is that, in a particular society, some kinds of capital may be more advantageous than others, in terms of their ability to convert into other kinds of capital. This creates a third form of ‘struggle’ over capital: in addition to (a) volume of a given capital and (b) definition of what will be valued in a given field (nomos), there is an attempt (c) to control the relative advantage  of  forms  of  capital  in  relation  to  one  another,  that  is,  the  ease  of  transfer of capital from one field to another.

Now, any agency or force that can either impact the nomos of a field or the relative advantage of one form of capital with regard to another can influence the relative relations between fields in social space as a whole and the play of capital both within fields and across fields. For example, if a particular kind of educational capital becomes suddenly valuable in a society, but if that educational capital  can  only  be  acquired  on  guarantee  of  possession  of  a  certain  kind  of

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cultural  capital,  then  the  demand  for  that  kind  of  cultural  capital  will  also suddenly increase. For Bourdieu, the state is precisely this kind of an agency, which, through policy, sets the exchange rate between different fields. The state even alters the nomos of specific fields because these fields will tend to adjust the stakes according to the advantages both within fields, and, through exchange, across fields. Late in his work, Bourdieu begins to think of this meta-valuation system as a kind of paradigm and views neoliberalism as just the sort of ‘value system’ between fields, at once altering the fields and, at the same time, natu- ralizing the meta-value as the essential value for every sphere of sociality. As we will see now, the meaning of the state in Bourdieu can neither be reduced to an objective force over and above those that it governs, nor can it be understood simply as the collective embodiment of all those who fall under its purview.

Bourdieu’s theory of the state

Bourdieu understands the state as the ‘culmination of a process of
concentration of different types of capital: capital of physical force or instruments of
coercion (army, police), economic capital, cultural capital or (better) informational
capital, and symbolic capital)’ (1997: 41, original emphasis).

As fields emerge historically, shaped by the play of capital within these fields, the
state’s accumulation of the capital  pertaining  to  that  field  increases  as  well. With  the  state  becoming  the possessor  of  significant  amounts  of  different  kinds  of  capital,  it  becomes  the
holder of a kind of 'metacapital' (1997: 41) which guarantees authority over each of the particular species of capital as well as over the holders of capital in different fields  (1997:  41). According  to  Bourdieu,  the  possession  of  this  metacapital ‘enables  the  state  to  exercise  power  over  the  different  fields  and  over  the different particular species of capital, and especially over the rates of conversion between them’ (1997: 40–1). Hence, the stakes for playing the game within or across  fields,  and  inscribed  within  the  nomos  of  each  field  will  be,  in  part,
structured by the state.

Now, if the state was to invoke the neoliberal paradigm as the grounds for the exercise of power in different fields and different species of capital, and if the state were to apply the neoliberal paradigm to every field through its policies, it follows that the nomos of these fields would accordingly be  shaped  in  the  cast  of  that  paradigm. And  if  the  state  were  to  choose  the neoliberal paradigm as the basis and framework for deciding rates of exchange between  all  possible  combinations  of  fields,  then,  too  the  nomos  of  each  field would be reshaped in a manner that would validate this very paradigm. In effect, in  doing  so,  the  state  would  adopt  the  neoliberal  paradigm  as  the  nomos  for  metacapital itself, as the very basis for its dealings with the subjects of the state.

The  exercise  of  metacapital  or  statist  power  is  effected,  partly  at  least, through what may be termed the ‘objective’ aspects of the state, institutions that enforce and affirm the presence of the state, such as organs of the state (e.g. the

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judiciary),  policy-making  bodies  (e.g.  a  federal/central  government  bank)  or administrative bodies (e.g. a central tax department/revenue service). Yet these ‘objective’ aspects of the state do not merely exist over and above the citizens of  the state as constraints upon the actions and perceptions of citizens.

Bourdieu points out that:
 ‘the state exists in two forms: in objective reality, in a form of a set of institutions such as rules, agencies, offices etc., and also in people’s minds’ (1998a: 33). The heart of Bourdieu’s argument is as simple as it is profound. Any particular state can be described as the outcome of a shared history between state (or structures of government) and people, a shared history of state and people (sometimes perceived as state against people) can, in turn, be understood in terms of struggle over capital in different fields. Quite different than Althusser’s now familiar notion of ‘interpellation’ – because it is dynamic and actually allows for innovation – Bourdieu’s proposition that the state exists in ‘subjective’ form suggests, via the notions of inculcation in the habitus and position-taking in the field, that the categories and structures of cognition and perception of the citizens of a state are historically constituted through a shared relationship between state and people.

As Bourdieu puts it:

"The construction of the state is accompanied by the construction of a sort of common historical transcendental immanent to all its subjects. Through the framing it imposes upon practice, the state establishes and inculcates common  forms  and  categories  of  perception  and  appreciation,  social frameworks of perception or of understanding of memory, in short state forms  of  classification.  It  thereby  creates  the  conditions  for  a  kind  of  im- mediate orchestration of habitus which is the foundation of consensus over this set of shared evidences constitutive of (national) common sense." (1998c: 54,
original emphasis)

This understanding of the subjective form of state has several
practical implications. First, that the people governed by a state are disposed, in
the manner of those  disposed within a habitus, to respond to the state, which is in
reality the position-taking strategies of all of the people objectified. Players within each
field and across fields, engaged in the struggle over different types of capital, ‘recog- nize’ the terms of each game but also ‘recognize’ the fact that they are playing all games on terms that have been orchestrated by the state. In this recognition, they contribute to the affirmation of the nomos proposed by the state within and across fields. Just as the habitus is embodied within the inhabitants of that habitus in the form of dispositions, so is the state incorporated in its citizens. The state, in this manner, shapes structures of perception and cognition across the society that the state governs. This is what Bourdieu means by the phrase ‘Minds of State’ (1998c: 52), suggesting that the state exists as much an entity ‘outside’ of its citizens as it exists ‘of’ the citizens. It is this incorporation within the state, which is shared by all the citizens of the state, and the incorporation of the state within

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the citizens, that would explain why citizens would be disposed to ‘comply’ with the state’s endorsement of the ‘new’ categories of perception proposed by the neoliberal
paradigm. Secondly, the ‘common historical transcendental’ (1998c: 54) that Bourdieu  speaks of may be viewed as a common language that the state and people speak.

While the particularity of such a common transcendental will depend on the particular history of a state, and while the state will define the character of this transcendental to a greater extent than the people, this common transcendental will refer, even if obliquely, to the shared history of a particular state and people. In other words, it is the particularity of the relationship that will be invoked in the struggle between state and the people for the accumulation of capital and for redefining the nomos of any field. For example, in one country, the struggle for accumulation of political capital (the struggle to make certain issues part of the agenda of governance) may historically have been founded on the platform of human  rights.  In  other  countries,  the  struggle  for  accumulation  of  political capital  may  invoke  constitutional  authority,  whether  or  not  that  authority  is  ultimately grounded on the notion of human rights.

In those countries or societies where the state, by virtue of its history, is committed to certain policies (such as welfare of citizens) that might pose as obstacles to the paradigm of neoliberalism, resistance to neoliberalism would be strongest. Bourdieu uses the term ‘state tradition’ (1998a: 33) to describe the role of the state as guarantor of the welfare of its citizens and points out that where state tradition has historically been the strongest, resistance to neoliberal doctrine is correspondingly stronger. In societies where the state tradition has been historically weak, such as in the USA, the state is most manifest and visible as state in its policing function.⁸ Acknowledging that the state usually does not possess complete autonomy, Bourdieu argues, however, that the older the state ‘and the greater the social advances it has incorporated, the more autonomous it  is’  (1998a:  34). The  neoliberal  view  of  the  state  as  described  by  Bourdieu, conforms  closely  to  the  kind  of  state  where  state  tradition  has  been  weak. Neoliberalism envisions a minimal role for the state, with regard to state respon- sibility for providing social benefits for citizens or regulation of the economy, but, ironically, this minimal role sanctions the state to concentrate on its policing function.  Paradoxically,  even  as  the  neoliberal  paradigm  seeks  to  liberate  the state from the burden of guaranteeing the welfare of citizens, it seeks to diminish the autonomy of the state from the market, since, in the neoliberal paradigm, it is the spectre of the market that will dictate policy. What then, one might ask, accounts for the success of the neoliberal paradigm in societies such as France  where state tradition has been strong and robust?

Bourdieu argues that wherever neoliberalism has become the  nomos of the state, an effort has been made to erase the history of the state. Bourdieu terms this desire of neoliberal ideology as 'involution' (1998a: 34), a desire to regress the state to its incarnation at the earliest stages of its development wherein its

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role was characterized largely by its policing function and its economic power (1998a: 32). Neoliberal ideology, however, portrays these involutions as revolu- tions.⁹ This conservative revolution invokes the authority of ‘progress, reason and science (economics in this case)’ (1998a: 35) to legitimize the involution, in the bargain characterizing genuine social achievements as the baggage of misguided and 
regressive thinking.
The  erasure  of  historicity  and  the  denial of historicity in the understanding of reason and progress is a
concomitant of the  scientificity that neoliberal doctrine presents as its strength.
The nomos of neo-liberalism, then, relies fundamentally upon the assumption that social
existence is neither historically constituted nor, for that matter, is it worthwhile to invoke historical  precedent  in  understanding  the  present. The  nomos,  because  it is  a naturalized  rule  for  valuation,  cannot  be  questioned  from  within  the  field governed by that nomos. Neoliberalism reduces all aspects of a historically con- stituted social reality to the mathematical equations of the free market, and the rejection of the residue that will not translate into these equations as the worthless
residue of the social.

The uniqueness and danger of neoliberalism is that its doxa  is enforced by the transnational networks of globalization, albeit through the agency of neoliberal states. Hence, Bourdieu argues that perhaps the most devastating
impact of neoliberalism has been to render ineffective ‘all the collective institutions capable
of standing up to the effects of the infernal machine’ (1998b: 102),
foremost among which is the state itself. Embraced by the state as the paradigm for the generation of metacapital and various species of capital and implemented as the framework for determining rates of exchange between fields, this doxa is enforced, at another level, by the neoliberal state as the nomos
of all fields.

Neoliberalism operates as the doxa of a national habitus, restructuring fields and  relations  between  fields;  neoliberalism  also  reshapes  the ‘structures’  that structure different habituses within social space. At both the ‘micro-level’ and the ‘macro-level’,  neoliberalism  establishes  itself  as  a  set  of  truths  about  the world and as a way of looking at the world. The supreme irony, of course, is that the message of neoliberalism, which demands a forgetting of the history of the relationship between state and people, is successfully adopted by the people of the state only because of the shared history of the state and people. Although dominantly  forged  by  the  state,  the ‘state-thought’  that  once  represented  an amalgam of different visions now chooses to see the world only through the lens of
neoliberalism.

The establishment of neoliberalism as doxa in Indian society

The current discussion on Indian society reveals an engulfment by the terms of neoliberal discourse, akin to the scenario sketched by Bourdieu. As suggested by the  examples  cited  earlier,  the  partisans  of  globalization  and  liberalization

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present it as a recognition of truth itself, as doxa. As I will illustrate in this section, the  Indian  state  through  embracing  a  neoliberal  vision  as  the  nomos  for  its educational and economic policies in the last decade, has altered the nomos of the educational, economic, and cultural fields as well as the exchange rates between them. However, there are important historical reasons, pertaining to the mode in which scientific and technical learning were understood in both colonial and independent India, that explain why the neoliberal worldview can now so readily be  adopted  by  different  segments  of  Indian  society,  most  notably  by  its  elite groups. The history of the reception of science and technology in India, for all its internal discontinuities, has over the better part of two centuries disposed the relatively privileged sectors of Indian society to accept the changes effected by neoliberalism in the nomos of educational, economic and cultural fields and the  correspondingly altered rates of exchange between these fields.

In this reading, I focus primarily on the history of the educational sphere in India. My description here centres on the  doxa, nomos and workings of educa- tional capital in India, and on economic and cultural capital to the extent that educational  capital  translates  into  these  other  types  of  capital.  As  Bourdieu argues, fields do possess relative autonomy from each other. Hence, it needs to be pointed out that cultural capital and economic capital in India will also be determined by other field-specific factors. My objective in this section, however, is to outline, from the perspective of the educational field, the naturalization of neoliberalism as the essential meta-value for every sphere of sociality in India, that is, to delineate the legitimation of neoliberalism as a culturally authoritative  view across Indian social space.

The first use of Western technology in India was in
topographic, statistical, and other surveys, that followed the British annexation of terri-
tories in the mid-eighteenth century (Baber, 1996: 137). Yet, it was only after 1835 that
Indians were  granted  the  opportunity  to  be  scientific  themselves,  when  the 
colonial administration extended its patronage to scientific education in the medium of English (1996: 138).

Gyan Prakash, in his text, Another  Reason  (1999), argues that the decision to extend scientific learning to Indians embodied a paradox with powerful consequences for a manner of thinking national identity. On the one hand, the decision reaffirmed the discourse of civilizational difference between Europeans  and  non-Europeans,  which  defined  the  European West  as  rational, enlightened and civilized and the non-West as primitive and irrational. On the other hand, it was an indirect admission by the British, that Indians were capable of  rational  scientific  thought.  Indians  could  thus  stake  a  claim  to  a  universal humanity  and  rationality  via  the  medium  of  science,  since  science  stood  for universal and rational values.¹⁰ As Prakash argues, the British decision set in place a problem for Indian nationalism – the reconciliation of one’s universalism with the realities of subjugation under the colonial power. As a solution, a predomi- nantly  educated  English-speaking  Hindu  elite,  encompassing  reformers,  his- torians, writers and scientists, constructed a narrative of Indianness through a

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selective  interpretation  of  Hindu  scripture.  In  this  reading,  Hinduism  was described as a universal scientific, religious, and cultural worldview, a ‘Hindu science’ (1999: 9). However, if this science had manifested itself in all its fullness in an ancient time, Indian civilization had been reduced to backwardness because of  the  savagery  inflicted  by  waves  of  invaders  and  the  economic  exploitation caused by British rule. This recuperation of science as Hindu offered a basis to challenge  the  hegemony  of Western  claims  over  reason,  since,  the  argument went, Hindu thought had been scientific since its very inception, predating by  centuries the European Enlightenment (1999: 84).

Scientific knowledge and learning in colonial India thus operated as an arena in which the supremacy of the West could be contested, yet this contestation meant accepting, to a significant extent, the categories of classification proposed by the colonial state with regard to the scientific-technological educational field. For, while the Indian elite, through making a case for a ‘Hindu’ science, did not accept the self-definition of science as inherently Western in its origins or char- acter, they did however accept the self-definition of science as synonymous with rationality and enlightenment.

Translated into the terms of Bourdieu’s frame- work of the social, one can argue that the nomos of the scientific-technological educational field – science as the embodiment and goal of a rational, enlightened and socially progressive humanity – as defined by the colonial British state was accepted by the Indian elite. What also needs to be highlighted here is that the
nomos of the educational field in colonial India was also shaped at the moment of its  inception  by  a  majoritarian  –  Hindu,  specifically  Brahmanical  and
upper-caste, middle class and above, educated, English-speaking – discourse.
The nomos of the nascent, not-yet-independent, Indian scientific-technological educational field in its historical origin clearly represented and privileged the interests of certain social groups, those who formed the vanguard of the nationalist movement.

Yet, inasmuch as science stood for the intrinsic cultural superiority of the British   colonizers   or   European   civilization,   that   proposition   was   expressly rejected  by  the  Indian  nationalist  elite.  Partha  Chatterjee’s  arguments,  in The Nation and its Fragments (1993), can be read as a strong case for the total autonomy of an ‘Indian’ cultural field from the framework of state reason in the colonial era.  Chatterjee  argues  that  anticolonial  nationalism  visualizes  an  autonomous ‘domain of sovereignty within colonial society well before it begins its political 
battle  with  the  imperial  power’  (1993:  6). 
He  describes  this  as  a  separation between  a  realm  of  cultural  or  spiritual  values,  an ‘inner’  (1993:  6)  domain where those colonized hold authority, and the ‘domain of the outside’ (1993: 6), the  sphere  of ‘economy  and  statecraft,  of  science  and  technology’  (1993:  6), where the West has vanquished the natives. Anti-colonial nationalism, accord- ingly, defined its task as one of wresting back control of the outer domain, while it could rest assured that its cultural identity was uncontaminated by the colonial encounter. Indeed, the Indian nationalist elite significantly based their case for

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the right of Indians to govern themselves on economic grounds, arguing that British policies favoured European businessmen over Indians, that British rule had resulted in a systematic drain of wealth from India, and that Britain could not reconcile its interests as an imperial power with the economic well-being of
Indian society. And for the nationalist elite, technology, as belonging to the
outerdomain, could be incorporated seamlessly into an Indian identity – it could, in fact, be adopted as Indian – since it did not threaten to violate the eternal core  of that identity. Culture, of course, was firmly located within the inner domain.

Hence, in the cultural field that was protected from the reach of the colonial state, a nationalist Indian elite reserved the right to define the nomos for them- selves, rejecting the colonial state-thought that would have designated Indians as racially,  and  therefore  culturally,  inferior  to  the  British.  At  the  same  time, however, science, recuperated and redefined as Hindu, would have operated as a marker of both cultural authority and cultural authenticity within this field. In other words, while the cultural field would obviously not have been coextensive with the scientific-technological educational field (since cultural capital would have depended on other markers of traditional privilege such as caste), educa- tional capital of the scientific variant would have easily translated into cultural capital.  Scientific  educational  capital  in  the  pre-independence  era  would  have also translated into economic capital, since the Indian nationalist elite agreed that industrial development would lead to economic progress – the contestation with the colonial power in this regard was for the right for Indians to regulate the  economic field.

In general agreement with Chatterjee’s conceptualization of the opposition between the inner and outer domain in the anticolonial historical phase, Prakash argues,  however,  that  at  the  moment  of  independence,
‘there  was  no  fundamental opposition between the inner sphere of the nation and
its outer life; the latter was the former’s existence at another abstract level’ (1999: 202).
In the Nehruvian vision of independent India, scientific and technological progress was defined as essential to realizing India’s unique modernity and destiny. A scien- tifically developed and socially progressive India was visualized as an embodi- ment of a timeless Indian ethos.¹¹ What is important to note here is that as the independent  Indian  nation-state  crystallized  as  the  agency  that  would  now accumulate  statist  metacapital  in  place  of  the  colonial  state,  it  initiated  and effected transformations and changes but also preserved continuities with the nomos  of the cultural, educational and economic fields shaped in the colonial era.

The key changes as well as continuities in the functioning of educational, cultural and economic capital in independent India can be viewed in terms of the following four factors. First, the fact that Indianness, as a kind of cultural and national capital, was closely linked with the project of national development. Secondly,  the  framing  of  this  Nehruvian  project  in  accordance  with  socialist goals. Third, the emphasis on a higher education in the medium of English as opposed to primary education, and, fourth, the value attached to an overseas

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education.  I  will  now  briefly  describe  the  consequences  of  these  factors  in  shaping various fields in postcolonial Indian society.

The educational policies of the independent Indian state greatly emphasized the role of science and technology in leading India on the path of development and  progress.¹²  Only  by  replicating  and  emulating  the  scientific  and  techno- logical achievements of the West, could India hope to gain parity with developed countries.  Scientific  progress  would  be  the  answer  to  illiteracy,  to  improved agricultural productivity, and to the development of an indigenous industry. The benefits of these advances, it was also hoped and expected, would devolve into social equity. As Ashis Nandy argues, in independent India science was authorized as a ‘reason of state’ (1988:1). ‘Dams and laboratories were literally the temples of  India’  (Visvanathan,  1997:  4),  scientists  w