The challenge of Bourdieu’s relational ontology for international comparative research in academic governance practice

This chapter draws on Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the outcomes of a study conducted in the USA and Australia to consider the current dearth of cross-national empirical research into academic governance practice. In the context of Bourdieu’s relational ontology, within which meaning is generated through social and structural relations (and the relationship between the two), this lack of cross-national research into academic governance practice presents a methodological as well as an empirical problem. It significantly limits broader understandings of higher education fields at local, national and global levels. Thinking with and through Bourdieu, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that Bourdieu’s conceptual tools, emphasising his theory of fields but also including habitus, capital and practice, can assist in identifying not only some possible reasons why this research is not being done but also why such research is so important