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understanding of the pragmatic dynamics of political competition and his
action-oriented approach place emphasis on the conduct of individuals. To
understand the conduct of individuals we need to understand what makes
sense in speci
c social and cultural contexts.
While social structures become bodily living or techniques (Mauss 1970),
Bourdieu
s (1977) extended concept of habitus follows Weber in arguing that
people are social agents imbued with dispositions motivated to think and behave
in certain ways, but who potentially are also socially creative agents. I argue
in this topic that this is especially the case when people possess an alternative
vision with which to interpret their own actions and the issues at hand.
Alternative structures of meaning create di
'
erent
interpretations of meaning, and thereby priorities take prominence even as they
continue to exist within other dominant discourses (in the Foucaldian sense).
This potentially provides not only the impetus for living in light of a di
erent habits of living as di
erent
system of meanings, but also the possibility of changing wider social structures.
If we do not understand the meaning structures of di
erent groups of
individuals, it is too easy to place them with the problematic academic posi-
tion where social structures become statuses and roles projected onto abstract
individuals. Turner (2002: 101) pointed out early on that this constituted
'
the
almost total identi
cation of the social with the social structure
'
, but theories
are conceptual constructs rather than a complete re
ection of reality (Asad
2006). Foucault famously argued against treating dominant forms for social
knowledge purely as ideologies that legitimise oppressive forces, and instead
focused on understanding what he called
'
'
. He showed how
power operates through discourse and how discourses are always rooted in
power; how modern political science and theory had tended to misunderstand
the notion of power as centralised in the state, and instead saw it as much
more di
regimes of truth
used and pervasive, vested in
'
intellectual disciplines
'
which seek to
objectify power (Foucault 1991).
For the State to function in the way that it
does, there must be, between male and female or adult and child, quite spe-
ci
'
c relations of domination which have their own con
guration and relative
autonomy
(Foucault 1980: 188).
I would argue that it is change at this
'
level (within and between
individuals) where real change occurs. Power relations are still intertwined in
conditions that produce reality and regimes of truth, but power does not
equal negative oppression. The perceived realities that in
'
grassroots
'
uence choices,
decisions and actions taken in a particular political context are both dis-
cursively and materially produced social contexts. Yet focusing on the mean-
ing of what this
holds for the people involved, how they assess it,
reproduce it, alternative ideas potentially serve as the impetus for change
(Cohen and Arato 2003).
Wolf (2002: 223) outlines this dual aspect of how individuals are con-
stituted within what he refers to as conditions of
'
reality
'
while they
are also movers of social change. While any form for social action always
takes place within a particular cultural setting, the ability to make a di
'
structural power
'
erence
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