Description
This paper presents a Bourdieusian view of hierarchy and contestation in the Liberal International Order (LIO). It first introduces Bourdieu’s own multidimensional view of ‘class’ as epiphenomenal to the complex interactions between inherited capital and habitus in a variety of fields, and of social orders as geared towards their own reproduction through misrecognitions of their hierarchical nature. With those at the bottom of such hierarchies lacking the capital required to effectively resist, effective questionings of the prevalent order and its symbolic boundaries usually emerge from the upwardly mobile, who, while accumulating certain forms of capital, still lack the symbolic variant required for elite recognition. The paper postulates that similar processes can be found in International Society, where the hegemonic West’s central role in shaping the global modern, and, subsequently, liberal social space elevated its own, largely inherited forms of capital and habitus to misrecognised symbolic markers of privilege and status. As in the case of upwardly mobile individuals and groups in first-order societies, the more effective challenges by middle and rising powers against the LIO’s symbolic order are said to emerge from their partial accumulation of various forms of capital without the commensurate elite recognition associated with its symbolic variant. The range of responses by smaller powers in the global South - from resignation to active but ineffective resistance - is finally linked to similar patterns seen among individuals and groups in the lower strata of first-order hierarchies.
