Global Fields and Imperial Forms: Field Theory and the Britishand American Empires*
This article develops a global fields approach for conceptualizing the global arena.The approach builds upon existing approaches to the world system and world societywhile articulating them with the field theory of Bourdieu and organizational sociology.It highlights particular structural configurations (“spaces of relations”) and thespecific cultural content (“rules of the game” and “symbolic capital”) of global systems. The utility of the approach is demonstrated through an analysis of thedifferent forms of the two hegemonic empires of the past centuries, Great Britainand the United States. The British state tended toward formal imperialism in the19th century, characterized by direct territorial rule, while the United States sinceWWII has tended toward informal imperialism. The essay shows that the differencecan be best explained by considering the different historical global fields in whichthe two empires operated.
Much ink has been spilled recently on the complexities of the concepts “empire”and “imperialism.” But decades of scholarship converge on at least two points rel-evant for thinking about modern imperial formations (Howe 2003a). First,
,in the most basic sense, is a transnational political formation by which one stateexerts political power and control over subordinate territory and peoples, and so
is the process of extending or maintaining that control (Abernathy 2000;Daalder 1968; Doyle 1986:11–9; Howe 2003a; Maier 2006:25–76). Second, empirecan take different forms or modes, each entailing respectively different practices andpolicies. One typical difference is between “formal” or “informal” modes of exer-cise (Doyle 1986; Robinson and Gallagher 1953).
involves acquiringand directly ruling new territory. This form of empire is colonial: the metropoli-tan state claims full sovereignty over subordinated territory and people (Abernathy2000:19; also Fieldhouse 1982; Fieldhouse and Emerson 1968).
in-volves a variety of methods besides direct territorial rule to construct a networkof power encompassing nominally independent nation-states. This involves finan-cial and military aid to cultivate client states, large-scale networks of military bases,sporadic military interventions (“gunboat diplomacy”), temporary military occupa-tions, or covert operations to manipulate political outcomes in foreign countries(Daalder 1968; Doyle 1986; Fieldhouse and Emerson 1968; Osterhammel 1999:18–21;Robinson and Gallagher 1953; Steinmetz 2005). Informal imperialism has thus been
Address correspondence to: Julian Go, Department of Sociology, Boston University, 96 CummingtonSt., Boston MA 02214. Tel.: (617) 358-0638; Fax: (617) 353-4837; E-mail: email@example.com. For commentsand suggestions, thanks to Emily Barman, Laurel Smith-Doerr, Neil Gross, Alya Guseva, David Swartz,Kathleen Swartzman, the editors and three anonymous readers for
. An earlier version of this articlewas presented at the 2007 Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, New York. Researchfor this project has been funded in part by the ASA-NSF Funds for the Advancement of the Disciplineand the College of Arts and Sciences of Boston University.
Sociological Theory 26:3 September 2008
American Sociological Association. 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005