An Analysis of Bourdieu’s Habitus and Field Theory in Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist Kelle Taha Language Centre, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan Hala Maani Language Centre, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan Khawla Al Dwakiat Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan Khulood Abu-Tayeh Language Centre, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan Abstract—The purpose of this study is to investigate Mohsin Hamid’s novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by utilizing the theory of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The study, a theoretical construct founded on two key concepts from Bourdieu’s theory, namely habitus and field, aims at offering a new perspective to understand the dilemma of the protagonist Changez from a sociological cultural perspective. It shows how Changez cultivates his habitus to pursue a specific taste in America through multiple forms of cultural capital and manifests how these forms shape his attitudes and relations. It also offers a metaphorical portrayal of Changez as a footballer who struggles within various positions to retain power and eventually fulfill his American dream through both the macrocosmic and microcosmic social fields that he finds himself in. The assumption that this paper is seeking to validate is that there is a common ground between the novel and Bourdieu’s theory of practice in some key concepts and that understanding the habitus and the doxa of Changez’ social fields can help understand his practices, dispositions , and most importantly the reasons behind him leaving America. Index Terms—Bourdieu, habitus, field, 9/11 fiction, The Reluctant Fundamentalist I. INTRODUCTION Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was one of the leading figures in the field of contemporary French cultural sociology. His ideas concerning social practices and classes were highly illuminated by the German sociologist Max Weber (1864- 1920) and Carl Marx (1818-1883) (Navarro, 2006, p.14). Weber raised fundamental questions about social behavior and its drive focusing on whether members behave in response to “external” factors including “culture” along with “social structures” or whether their actions totally have an internal basis (Navarro, 2006, p.14). Both thinkers’ approach to social classes is clustered within their social relational field, which is dispersed from Marx’s theory (Kurtiṣoǧlu, 2013, p.76). Marx’s approach to reality condensates in one field which is mainly economic while Bourdieu’s theory is multifaceted (Thompson, 1991). To be more specific, Bourdieu elaborated a sociological conception of cultural capital, which converges with Marx’s idea of capital as Bourdieu extends the scope of Marxist capital and embraces the symbolic dimension of capital that the latter overlooked. Bourdieu deviates from Marx’s approach in his interpretation of classes. According to Marx, classes exist because of differences in possessions, which splits the social world into the binary opposition of having and not having. In Bourdieu’s social world, individuals are divided into classes as “a set of agents” who have a natural affinity in terms of the amount of capital, opportunities, and tendencies they share (Thompson, 1991, pp. 29-30). Although Bourdieu’s fields of focus are primarily cultural and anthropological, their impact extends to other scopes including “art, philosophy. . . [and] language” (Grenfell, 2008, p.1). However, the challenge of reading a novel from Bourdieu’s eyes mainly stems from the limitedness of literary application of his theory in literature, especially in the English-speaking academic field, and this can be attributed to several factors. Navarro states that Bourdieu’s ideas and concepts introduced him to the English- speaking culture as a specialized sociologist rather than a literary theorist. The complexity of his ideas also intensifies the shortage of his theory in English society as they include aspects that are not common in English (Navarro, 2006, p. 13). An article entitled “Pierre Bourdieu and the Sociology of culture: an Introduction” also draws the attention to the “fragmentary” immersion of Bourdieusian theory in the Anglophone field as his theory incorporates a wide range of fields, which usually raises the risk of “misreading” his ideas (Garnham & William, 1980, p.209). With that said, this paper offers an attempt to encompass two central concepts of Bourdieu’s sociological theory, namely habitus and field, from a literary eye to offer a new perspective to understand the social ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 161-167, January 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1301.18 © 2023 ACADEMY PUBLICATION