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Cultural Studies
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NEOLIBERALISM AS DOXA: BOURDIEU'S THEORY

OF THE STATE AND THE CONTEMPORARY
INDIAN DISCOURSE ON GLOBALIZATION AND
LIBERALIZATION
Rohit Chopra
To cite this article: Rohit Chopra (2003) NEOLIBERALISM AS DOXA: BOURDIEU'S THEORY
OF THE STATE AND THE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN DISCOURSE ON GLOBALIZATION AND
LIBERALIZATION, Cultural Studies, 17:3-4, 419-444, DOI: 10.1080/0950238032000083881
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950238032000083881
Published online: 22 Oct 2010.
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CUL T UR A L S T UDIE S 1 7 ( 3 / 4 ) 2 0 0 3 , 4 1 9 – 4 4 4
Rohit Chopra
NEOLIBERALISM AS DOXA:
BOURDIEU’S THEORY OF
THE STATE AND THE
CONTEMPORARY INDIAN
DISCOURSE ON GLOBALIZATION
AND LIBERALIZATION
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 ‘neolib-
eralism’, 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.
Keywords
Bourdieu; doxa; globalization; India; neoliberalism; state; liberalization
Cultural Studies ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/0950238032000083881
420 CUL T UR A L S T UDIE S
Introduction: globalized India?
M ORE THAN 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 they
are 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
NEOLIBER ALIS M AS D OXA 421
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,
I offer a descriptive sketch of the establishment of neoliberalism as doxa in Indian

society.
Neoliberalism
In Poststructuralism, Marxism, and Neoliberalism, Michael Peters (2001) analyses the
success story of neoliberalism in the latter half of the twentieth century. He
traces its rise from a theory of economic behaviour to its consolidation as a
widely adopted framework of political, social, and economic governance at both
the national and global level. The large-scale adoption of the neoliberal paradigm
as a doctrine of governance has been paralleled by an ever-more strident self-
affirmation of neoliberalism as a ‘global social science able to explain all rational
conduct, or even simply all behavior’ (2001: viii). Indeed, the success of neo-
liberalism as a mode of governance only be understood with reference to the fact
that neoliberalism has managed to establish itself as a credible vision, at once
universal and foundational, for describing social reality itself.
As an economic theory, neoliberalism can be viewed as a selective reworking
of the tenets of classical political economy (2001: 14). Nonetheless, neo-
liberalism preserves the central idea of classical economics that the free market
is an essential prerequisite for the free society. Invoking a definition of freedom
as individual freedom from state interference and freedom for the market, the
commitment to neoliberalism is predicated, by definition, on a marked opposi-
tion to the idea of the welfare or protectionist state (2001: 14–15). Neo-
liberalism assumes that economic behaviour can be understood in terms of the
human attributes of ‘rationality, individuality, and self-interest’ (2001: vii).
However, neoliberalism also posits that all aspects of human social behaviour
are motivated by these very characteristics. A model in which ‘the social is
redescribed in terms of the economic’ (2001: 15), neoliberalism operates as a
theory of the social founded on a narrowly economistic notion of human
behaviour, which it deems identical to human nature itself.
As Peters points out, the doctrine of neoliberalism has been widely influen-
tial in shaping national governmental policies in the West, especially in the last
two decades.2 He details a range of government policies of the Thatcher and
Regan eras, which collectively articulate the mandate of neoliberal government:
economic liberalization or rationalization characterized by the abolition of

subsidies and tariffs, floating the exchange rate, the freeing up on controls
on foreign investment; the restructuring of the state sector, including
corporatization and privatization of state trading departments and other
assets, ‘downsizing’, ‘contracting out’, the attack on unions, and abolition
of wage bargaining in favor of employment contracts; and, finally, the
dismantling of the welfare state through commercialization, ‘contracting
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
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
‘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
social space.
Bourdieu argues that the structures that typify social spaces give rise to
‘dispositions’ in the members of a social space. Dispositions can be understood
as inclinations towards certain responses, as the tendencies to make one choice
over another and to privilege one action over another, that is, the tendencies to
regularly engage in certain practices as compared with other practices.
Bourdieu’s habitus is a system of such dispositions that endure across space and
time. An individual may inhabit more than one habitus, and various habituses
may overlap to some extent. However, any particular habitus is circumscribed
by a group’s homogeneity. Operating as a worldview – a framework of cognitive
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 relation-
ship 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.
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 Medita-
tions 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
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
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
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 implica-
tions. 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
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 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
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 mis-
guided 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 worth-
less 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 collec-
tive 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
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 territories 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
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 move-
ment.
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
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 outer
domain, 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 funda-
mental 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
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 were demigods and there was no
better way to be patriotic than to be scientific. And, as the Report of the Second
National Commission on Labour (2002) details, the Indian state invested heavily in
setting up scientific and technological centres for higher education.13 Hence, a
scientific and technological education, especially from the premier educational
institutions, operated as a marker of talent and capability, ensured job opportu-
nities and security and guaranteed social status in that an individual with such
qualifications was perceived as working in the service of the nation. Such an
education directly guaranteed educational, cultural and economic capital. The
educational capital provided by the acquisition of such qualifications also trans-
lated quite easily into economic capital.
It is almost a truism to state that this designation of the value of scientific or
technological education has been ‘taken up’ by Indian society in the post-
independence era, especially by the economically privileged classes. A number
of current indicators bear testimony to this including: the intense competition
for seats in engineering and medical colleges, especially the Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs); the steady mushrooming of private engineering and medical
colleges with variable facilities and infrastructure; and the willingness of the
lower-middle, middle- and upper-middle socioeconomic segments to spend
large sums of money on private tuitions to prepare their children for entrance
examinations to these institutions, and to admit their children to private engi-
neering or medical colleges at considerable cost.
A second way in which the educational policies of the Indian state have
impacted the nomos of the educational field is through the privileging of higher
education over primary schooling. As Pamela Shurmer-Smith points out, India
spends a minuscule amount on primary education as compared to its heavy
investment in higher education (2000: 37). Also, since English is the medium of
instruction in the premier educational institutes, and since English has been the
language of commerce in independent India, fluency in English is an essential
prerequisite for obtaining a quality higher education in India. The Indian educa-
tion system thus privileges those who can afford a private schooling in English,
the ‘affluent middle classes and above’ (2000: 36) who spend significant sums of
money toward providing such an education for their children. Fluency in English
combined with a private education provides educational capital for further
educational opportunities. Capital obtained from higher education translates
into economic capital. Fluency in English in also translates into cultural capital
and, to an extent, economic capital.
The nomos of these fields has also been shaped by the value traditionally
attached to an overseas education. As Pamela Shurmer-Smith has pointed out,
from the colonial period onwards,
the upper levels of metropolitan Indian society have been conscious of the
importance of operating on an international scale as a means of preserving
their impermeability to the classes below. Education has long been an
important aspect of this and during the British Raj many upper-class
families strove to educate their sons expensively in the most exclusive
British boarding schools and universities.
(2000: 36)
While more recently this trend has shifted towards the United States, large
numbers of students continue to go abroad for higher studies.14 An overseas
education brings with it educational capital and economic capital, since such
qualifications ‘put a candidate in a very strong position when competing for
senior positions in national and international corporations in India’ (2000:
35–6). However, a significant component of the value of an overseas education
seems to be cultural. Historically recognized as a marker of privilege and of
membership of an economic and cultural elite, an overseas education is a guar-
antor of much-sought after ‘prestige’ (2000: 36). Shurmer-Smith remarks on
her conversation with a few hundred youth at education fairs in India: for these
Indians ‘the overseas education was desirable because it was expensive and because
it was overseas’ (2000: 36, original emphasis). An overseas education in inde-
pendent India promises a kind of cultural capital that an education from even a
top-quality Indian institute cannot provide.
These complexities that shape the nomos of the educational field in India may
partially explain the phenomenon of ‘brain drain’, the migration, since the
1970s, of large numbers of qualified Indians from the nation’s premier educa-
tional institutes to the West for the purpose of higher studies and pursuing
careers abroad. As Madhulika Khandelwal (1995) states, ‘in the 1970s, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service [in the US] was recording an astonishing
and almost unprecedented rate of about 80 to 90 percent of working Indians as
professionals’ (1995: 179). Khandelwal points out that since the 1970s, the
Indian immigrant population in the US has considerably diversified. Yet, the
majority of Indian immigrants to America continue to be professionals or
students in professional fields. The migration of such Indians might be propelled
by their desire to add cultural capital to their pool of educational and economic
capital, through using their Indian qualifications to acquire an additional qualifi-

cation overseas. The gain in capital promised by migration to the US also
reaffirms the value of Indian scientific and technological qualifications, since the
high quality of education at Indian institutions places one in an extremely good
position to garner a scholarship or fellowship for higher studies abroad.
A pattern can be distilled from the arguments above, which allows one to
grasp the character of the doxa of the educational field in independent India and,
to some extent, through the matrix of exchange, that of the economic and
cultural fields as well.The educational (and relatedly, the economic, and cultural)
fields have privileged economic elites, specifically those who could afford private
schooling in English, and a scientific or technological education. Yet, this privi-
lege has been sanctioned and endorsed by the state in the name of the nation since
scientific and technological education have been historically understood as
leading to economic prosperity as well as social progress. The Indian elites, who
have most benefited from this state understanding, share this state-thought and,
in fact, have also shaped it in the course of the decades after independence. The
demand for an overseas education may seem to contradict the Nehruvian imper-
ative of national self-sufficiency and progress. Yet, as Bourdieu has so convinc-
ingly shown, it is in the very nature of doxa, which is arbitrary (in the sense of
not necessary), to conceal its possible contradictions by operating as a founda-
tional discourse. Although the character of the educational field has changed
significantly since its origin in the colonial era, the nomos of the field continues
to be characterized by a majoritarian discourse as at its founding moment.
Generally speaking, what is common to both the discourses is the privileged
access of certain already-privileged groups to education itself and the validation
of their privilege in terms of an idea of service to the nation.
The change in nomos or doxa that occurs when the Indian state adopts a
neoliberal framework can be described as follows. On the one hand, it continues
to promote the privilege-as-right of an Indian elite. On the other hand, it
redefines the demands made by the nation on this elite. With globalization and
liberalization, the socialist dimension of Nehru’s investment in science and
technology is abandoned, even as the rhetoric of national progress and develop-
ment is preserved in the equation. The objectives are deemed worthwhile, even
essential to justifying policy changes warranted by India’s participation in a
globalized economy, but socialism as a method for realizing these objectives is
rejected as a flawed and archaic ideology. In the sphere of industry and business,
the Indian state has initiated the process of privatizing state-owned assets and
sectors. In the sphere of education, the emphasis is slowly but surely shifting
towards the acquisition of ‘skills’ needed to be competitive in a global economy.
And, crucially, in the professional sphere, the Indian state now encourages its
subjects to acquire global capital, whether by working in India or overseas.
Thus, one finds that various Indian universities, including in Delhi and
Bombay, are increasingly offering newly created courses in information
technology, to feed a demand and to engender what, in the eyes of the Indian
government and Indian business, is a win-win situation. The logic behind these
decisions seems to be as follows: with more software and IT professionals,
software exports overseas (especially to the US) will increase, strengthening
India’s forex reserves. For students, a qualification in subjects such as IT offers
a chance of a much desired career overseas (especially in the US), with the chance
of earning a dollar income. The money such Indians might send home will
additionally boost India’s forex reserves. The accompanying rhetoric, whether
in business conferences or in the speeches of politicians, is saturated with
references to making the most of the golden opportunities provided by globali-
zation and making India a superpower in the twenty-first century. Even as this
rhetoric of development continues to be paid a token nod, the particular
objectives that undergird the history of the educational field in India are
‘forgotten’. In newly independent India, working in a scientific or technological
capacity in India was enough to mark one’s contribution to the nation and to
social justice. This was the doxa of the educational or professional field in its
incarnation then. In globalized India, contributing to the inflow of foreign
exchange is seen as sufficient for realizing the dreams of national development
and prosperity. This is the doxa of globalized India. Thanks to the neoliberal
vision, certain key historical facts about the role of the state in the field of
education – such as the reason for the state’s subsidizing of higher education to
make it affordable for the largest number of Indians – are erased and negated in
the name of the truth about the global economy. Ironically, but not surprisingly,
the elite sections of Indian society loudly protest any suggestions on the part of
the government to privatize higher education.
The government’s emphasis on IT and computer-oriented education and the
mushrooming of dozens of private educational institutions that offer several
short-term diplomas in specific IT and computing skills, combined with the
global demand for software exports, has meant that the exchange rates between
educational, economic and cultural capital have also changed since liberalization.
While considerably expensive for short-term courses, training at these institutes
guarantees many of the opportunities hitherto available only to engineering
graduates: a technological qualification and a job in the US. In addition to
guaranteeing a dollar salary (significant economic capital), these qualifications,
whether from government institutes or private institutes, also promise the
prestige of an international career and the cultural capital that goes with it. The
success of such institutes – and the significant numbers of diploma graduates who
have managed to find jobs in the US despite lacking the traditional qualifications
earlier required for the same – also point to the struggle over the fields of
educational, economic and cultural capital. A wider cross-section of Indian
society is now staking its claim to both increasing their capital in these respective
fields and to altering the nomos of the educational and economic fields. As Thomas
Friedman states, in an article advocating the virtues of globalization,
hundreds of thousands of young Indians mostly from lower-middle-class

families, suddenly have social mobility, motor scooters and apartments
after going to technical colleges and joining the Indian software and engi-
neering firms providing back-room support and research for the world’s
biggest firms – thanks to globalization.
(Friedman, 2002)
Sunil Khilnani, in The Idea of India (1999), describing this globalized class of
Indian professionals, typified today by the young software programmer or MBA,
argues that this class is ‘not constrained by the territorial frame of the nation
state’ (1999: 148).15 As he puts it, for the members of this class, ‘India is merely
one stopping place in a global employment market’ (1999: 149). Yet, the Indian
state, in justifying its adoption of pro-globalization and pro-liberalization policies
applauds the professional choices of this very class as positive contributions to
the Indian nation! This newly-formed elite group, which no doubt is substantially
comprised of the older elite groups in addition to new entrants, and the Indian
state thus appear to have embarked afresh on a shared history, one founded on a
neoliberal view of the nation and the world. In sharing the categories of neo-
liberal thought, the elites of Indian society, at once, affirm and reinforce the
neoliberal vision and policies of the Indian state. The Indian state, in turn,
continues to sanction and promote the privilege of the newest incarnation of an
Indian elite.
Conclusion
I began writing this piece in the town of Ghaziabad in India, while back home
during my summer break from graduate study at Emory University in the US.
For me, the most obvious indicator in Ghaziabad – as, I am sure, in other towns
in India – of the encroachment of neoliberalism on Indian social space was the
existence of Internet cybercafes in close proximity to clusters of makeshift brick
houses lacking electricity connections, and dime-a-dozen advertisements – plas-
tered all over buildings and lamp-posts, on numerous cable television channels,
and in local news publications – by institutes offering training in assorted
programming and computing skills. A few months later, back in the USA, I read
some articles on Indian websites about the golden jubilee celebrations in the USA
of ‘Nehru’s greatest gift to his nation’ (Guha Ray, 2000), the Indian Institutes of
Technology. As an article about the event pointed out, alumni Victor Menezes,
Senior Vice-Chairman, CitiGroup, ‘reminded IITians of the work that lies ahead
in delivering on the brand that they have built’ (Bhatt, 2003). Professor Sanjay
Dhande, Director, IIT-Kanpur, ‘struck a chord when he said, “We want the Nobel
Prize. This is our only goal”’ (Bhatt, 2003). Judging from the coverage of the
event, what seemed to be conspicuously absent from the celebratory speeches
of the high profile IIT alumni was any reflection on the Nehruvian vision of
independent India, thanks to which the IITs were founded at all. Amidst all the
talk of entrepreneurship, business leadership and global branding, Nehru’s
hope – no matter how naïve it might have been – that technological progress
would lead to social equality, seems to have not even been considered worth
acknowledging.
Notes
1 These contentious reforms would enable sick companies to be sold or dumped
with greater ease; will enable employers with less than 1,000 workers to sack
workers without governmental consent (as opposed to the existing law which
sets this figure at 100 employees); and will allow companies to hire contract
labour without these companies having to make such employees permanent
(Barman, 2001).
2 In Bourdieu’s Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (1998c), Pascalian Medita-
tions (1997), Language and Symbolic Power (1991) and Outline of a Theory of
Practice (1977).
3 Peters states, ‘We might say that neoliberalism, historically, was at its strongest
during the era of the transatlantic partnership between Ronald Regan and
Margaret Thatcher during the decade of the 1980s, and its dominance began
to wane in the 1990s’ (2001: 18). Though Peters describes the 1980s as the
high noon of neoliberalism, it is debatable whether, from a global perspective,
neoliberalism is on the decline. For example, India and China, two of the
world’s largest economies, have implemented programs of economic initia-
tives to integrate with the global economy in the last decade.
4 Adorno and Horkheimer point out that ‘loss of memory is the transcendental
condition of science. All objectification is forgetting’. Quoted in Visvanathan
(1997: 78).
5 It is important to note here that the concept of doxa is significantly different
from the Marxist understanding of hegemony. Although a detailed comparison
of the two notions is beyond the scope of this paper, some of these differences
may be discerned in the context of Bourdieu’s understanding of the state,
which is explicated later in the paper.
6 However, for Bourdieu, this conceptualization of social space is not just a
theoretical grid that explains social space in the ‘present’ moment; the exist-
ence of distinct domains of social life has a real historical basis in the mode of
development of Western societies ‘since the middle ages’ (1991: 25).
7 Bourdieu (1997) states ‘once one has accepted the viewpoint that is constitutive
of a field, one can no longer take an external viewpoint on it. The nomos, a
‘thesis’ that, because it is never put forward as such, cannot be contradicted
since it has no antithesis. As a legitimate principle of division that can be applied
to all fundamental aspects of existence, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the
prescribed and the proscribed, it must remain unthought. Being the matrix of
all the pertinent questions, it cannot produce the questions that could call it
into question’ (1997: 97).
8 Bourdieu points out that, as shown by Wacquant, this vision of a state devoted
exclusively to its policing function is a long-standing ‘dream of the dominant
class’ (1998a: 32), since the policing function of the state is usually carried
out with regard to socially disadvantaged groups and classes.
9 It is a characteristic of all ‘conservative revolutions’, Bourdieu tells us, ‘to
present restorations as revolutions’ (1998a: 35).
10 Michael Adas (1991) has argued that this is what distinguishes the introduction
of Western science and technology in colonial India from colonial Senegal.
French colonialism deemed the Senegalese racially, hence inherently, in-
capable of learning Western science.
11 As Prakash argues, ‘the state materialized the imagination of India as a pre-
political community’ (1999: 202).
12 Shiv Visvanathan (1997) points out that ‘in the fifties it [science] was like a
magic wand. No nation-state felt complete unless it had both a flag and a
science policy document. One still remembers the romanticism of Nehru’s
vision of science. For Nehru, the tryst with destiny was a rezendvous with the
modern industrial world and “the future”, he proclaimed, “belongs to those
who made friends with science”’ (1997: 4).
13 ‘To cater to the growing needs of industries over the last fifty years, the
Government set up a large number of Industrial Training Institutes, all over
the country. It also set up Indian Institutes of Technology, Management Insti-
tutes, and Engineering Colleges to train persons with higher management and
technical skill. . . . The Government of India set up 48 national laboratories
to undertake applied research in chemistry, physics, electronics, botany etc’
(Ministry of Labour, 2002: 144–45).
14 This year, India overtook China for the first time as the leading source of
international students in the USA. In 2002, 66,836 students from India
enrolled in academic institutions in the USA, compared to 63,211 from India
(United States Embassy, 2002).
15 Khilnani argues that that this class has gradually been emerging since the 1970s
in India, but points out that it ‘has been sustained and been given substantial
economic power by the arrival in India, especially after the liberalization began
in 1991, of foreign capital and multinationals’ (1999: 148).
References
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online: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fname=Unions%20Reforms
%20(F)&fodname=20010604&sid=1
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able online: http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/jan/19iit.htm
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29–45.
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Cultural Studies

ISSN: 0950-2386 (Print) 1466-4348 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcus20

NEOLIBERALISM AS DOXA: BOURDIEU'S THEORY

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Introduction: globalized India?

M ORE THAN A decade after India has implemented a series of market-

of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), similarly backed the proposed

I offer a descriptive sketch of the establishment of neoliberalism as doxa in Indian

economic liberalization or rationalization characterized by the abolition of

out’, ‘targeting of services’, and individual ‘responsibilization’ for health,

‘shareholders, financial operators, industrialists, conservative politicians or

Key concepts: habitus, doxa, field and capital

apprehension, moral judgment, ethical commitments or aesthetic inclinations

Field and capital

Bourdieu’s theory of the state

judiciary), policy-making bodies (e.g. a federal/central government bank) or

The construction of the state is accompanied by the construction of a sort

The establishment of neoliberalism as doxa in Indian society

present it as a recognition of truth itself, as doxa. As I will illustrate in this section,

selective interpretation of Hindu scripture. In this reading, Hinduism was

the right of Indians to govern themselves on economic grounds, arguing that

education. I will now briefly describe the consequences of these factors in

capital, through using their Indian qualifications to acquire an additional qualifi-

hundreds of thousands of young Indians mostly from lower-middle-class

Peters, Michael A. (2001) Postructuralism, Marxism and Neoliberalism: Between Theory

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