Both John Dewey and Pierre Bourdieu attribute a central role to the pre-re¬flec¬tive nature of individual habits and collective customs for explaining the origin of social con¬duct as well as the process of stabilization and reproduction of social reality. The thesis that I will try to support in this paper is that the reading of Dewey’s Lectures in China can shed light on a wider set of analogies between the perspective of the American thinker and Bour¬dieu’s ideas. Specifically, I will try to show that Dewey and Bourdieu share a similar point of view on the nature of social conflict; the role of social recognition for the analysis of social struggles; the characterization of the notion of «domination», which they both dis¬cuss in relation to the pre-reflective conditions of social actions.
Keywords: Social action, social conflict, habitus, custom, recognition, domination.