Pierre Bourdieu at the JournalClub

Yesterday, the JournalClub [www.ciuhct.com], an infomal meeting place for PhD students and Post-Doc researchers at the Centro Interuniversitário de História da Ciência e da Tecnologia - CIUHCT, met for the preparation of next year's meetings. The Journal Paper that brought this specific meeting together was

Pierre Bourdieu's «L'Illusion Biographique» and it got me thinking on the development of one of the main arguments of my current project.

I am working on a profile of a nineteenth century scientist José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823-1907), who was a prolific researcher and the «father» of the zoology studies in Portugal. But so it happens that he was also involved in the political landscape of his time. He was incharge in two different times of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and in both situations Portugal was involved in difficult foreign negotiations regarding the African Possessions. And Barbosa du Bocage was by then already a reknown specialist in the african fauna.

Even if he did never go to Africa per say, he was at the centre of the taxonomic discussion of the novelties and of the problematic challenges Africa was proposing to 19th century naturalists.

On my first chapter on Bocage's "profile" I am trying to do two things: firstly to introduce this "19th Century Scientist" to the reader, describing some details of his "histoire de vie", but secondly I am trying to build an argument on the rhetorical ways that a scientific reputation was created and maintained in this particular period of time and place.

I guess the main hypothesis of my project is to figure out how causal (or not) is the relationship between this brilliant zoologist's scientific work and his participation in the political agenda's of his time.

this is why I feel it is very important to begin by establishing some parametres on what 'made' a scientist (or a scientific reputation?) in Lisboa, in the second half of the nineteenth century.

So what is 'scientific reputation'?

in order to address this specific case of Barbosa du Bocage I gathered some biographical notes written by his own friends and contemporaries - most of them eloges made during his life - and now I am trying to make sense of the common descriptions that are being used. there seems to be a big insistence in Bocage's «detachment» with lesser affairs. this depiction of «distance» is associated always with his character of a «serious» person. Moral character being a very important feature in the late 19th century society, there seems to be at play simultaneously a gentlemen's culture of rigour and seriousness and a sense of distanced observer - that plays very well, it seems to me, with the concept of Objectivity.

But let's return to Bourdieu. Last night I re-read some pages of his «Science de la Science et Reflexivité. Cours au Collège de France» (2001) and I confirmed that I was following some of Bourdieu's concepts in my analysis of Barbosa du Bocage's trail between science production and political negotiation.

Bourdieu's notion of "Scientific Capital" and ofcourse, that of "Symbolic Capital" is crucial for the point I am trying to make. If I am looking at how was he first accepted in one field of expertise (zoology) and then accepted as one important agent in the political scene (first as "deputado da Nação", then "Par do Reino" then "Conselheiro") there are some issues of «Translation» [Latour, ] and of «Gift Economy» [Mauss, ] that I am trying to invoque but also issues of transfer of some Scientific Capital into Symbolic Capital that allow for the meeting of different areas, and arenas, to merge.

Bourdieu writes that (paraphrasing from the portuguese translation)

«The simbolic power of the scientific kind is only exerced on those agents that have the necessary categories of perception to know and recognize it.» [p.79]

The result of this power exercise and power recognition is (one way of) Reputation.

When Bocage is first confirmed as Minister of Navy and Overseas for the Government of Fontes Pereira de Melo in 1883, he is at the same time President of the Geographical Society of Lisboa, which is a signifier for the progress of an agenda of colonial administration. The relation is visible in a contemporary newsperiodical that states that as the respected President of the Geographical Society Bocage's involvement in the colonial administration reforms is expected to be of great value. [Occidente 1883]

Although he had already by then made speaches in the Câmara dos Deputados regarding the colonial (african) administration, it is outside of that arena that the perception of the value of his participation in this matter is reinforced. it is because of his recognition in the Geographical Society that he is expected to show a particular interest in the matter.

I am now turning to the «symbolic field» generated by Luciano Cordeiro in the Geographical Society of Lisboa as a piece of utmost importance not only in the context of all the colonial negotiations in the historical and political context but also as another layer of social significance in the analysis of Bocage's Symbolic Capital.