Bourdieu - Actor Racional

“The ‘rational actor’ theory, which seeks the ‘origin’ of acts,    strictly economic or not, in an ‘intention’ of  ‘consciousness’, is    often associated with a narrow conception of the ‘rationality’ of    practices, an economism which regards as rational (or, which amounts    to the same thing in this logic, as economic) those practices that are    consciously oriented by the pursuit of maximum (economic) profit at    minimum (economic) cost. Finalist economism explains practices by    relating them directly and exclusively to economic interests, treated    as consciously posited ends; mechanistic economism relates them no    less directly and exclusively to economic interests, defined just as    narrowly but treated as causes. Both are unaware that practices can    have other principles than mechanical causes or conscious ends and can    obey an economic logic without obeying narrowly economic interests.    There is an economy of practices, a reason immanent in practices,    whose ‘origin’ lies neither in the ‘decisions’ of reason understood as    rational calculation nor in the determinations of mechanisms external    to and superior to the agents. Being constitutive of the structure of    rational practice, that is, the practice most appropriate to achieve    the objectives inscribed in the logic of a particular field at the    lowest cost, this economy can be defined in relation to all kinds of    functions, one of which, among others, is the maximization of monetary    profit, the only one recognized by economism. In other words, if one    fails to recognize any form of action other than rational action or    mechanical reaction, it is impossible to understand the logic of all    the actions that are reasonable without being the product of a    reasoned design, still less of rational calculation; informed by a    kind of objective finality without being consciously organized in    relation to an explicitly constituted end; intelligible and coherent    without springing from an intention of coherence and a deliberate    decision; adjusted to the future without being the product of a    project or a plan. And, if one fails to see that the economy described    by economic theory is a particular case of a whole universe of    economies, that is, of fields of struggle differing both in the stakes    and scarcities that are generated within them and in the forms of    capital deployed in them, it is impossible to account for the specific    forms, contents and leverage points thus imposed on the pursuit of    maximum specific profits and on the very general optimizing strategies    (of which economic strategies in the narrow sense are one form among    others). (p. 50-51)

Economism is a form of ethnocentrism. Treating pre-capitalist    economies, in Marx’s phrase, ‘as the Fathers of the Church treated the    religions which preceded Christianity’, it applies to them categories,    methods (economic accountancy, for example) or concepts (such as the    notions of interest, investment or capital) which are the historical    product of capitalism and which induce a radical transformation of    their object, similar to the historical transformation from which they    arose. Economism recognizes no other form of interest than that which    capitalism has produced, through a kind of real operation of    abstraction, by setting up a universe of relations between man and man    based, as Marx says, on ‘callous cash payment’ and more generally by    favouring the creation of relatively autonomous fields, capable of    establishing their own axiomatics (through the fundamental tautology    ‘business is business’, on which ‘the economy’ is based). It can    therefore find no place in its analyses, still less in its    calculations, for any form of ‘non-economic’ interest. It is as if    economic calculation had been able to appropriate the territory    objectively assigned to the remorseless logic of what Marx calls    ‘naked self-interest’, only by relinquishing an island of the    ‘sacred’, miraculously spared by the ‘icy waters of egoistic    calculation’, the refuge of what has no price because it has too much    or too little. But, above all, it can make nothing of universes that    have not performed such a dissociation and so have, as it were, an    economy in itself and not for itself. Thus, any partial or total    objectification of the archaic economy that does not include a theory    of the subjective relation of misrecognition which agents adapted to    this economy maintain with its ‘objective’ (that is, objectivist)    truth, succumbs to the most subtle and most irreproachable form of    ethnocentrism. […]    By reducing this economy to its ‘objective’ reality, economism    annihilates the specificity located precisely in the socially    maintained discrepancy between the ‘objective’ reality and the social    representation of production and exchange. It is no accident that the    vocabulary of the archaic economy is entirely made up of double-sided    notions that are condemned to disintegrate in the very history of the    economy, because, owing to their duality, the social relations that    they designate represent unstable structures which inevitably split in    two as soon as the social mechanisms sustaining them are weakened.”    (p. 112-3)"        

Source: https://economicsociology.org/2017/07/19/pierre-bourdieu-economism-is-a-form-of-ethnocentrism/



"Bourdieu evoca um continuum de atividades muito diversas, no qual a atividade de produção simbólica do produto ocupa um lugar mais ou menos importante, tendo cada um sua especificidade. A alta costura, por exemplo, caracteriza-se pela necessidade de inovação permanente. A produção automobilística notabiliza-se entre outras pela preocupação com o design , a criação de marcas e de modelos. Enquanto os autores da economia neoclássica, e mesmo sociólogos que limitam sua atenção à especificidade da economia de certos bens "diferentes de outros", qualificam de "standards " os bens de uso quotidiano, Bourdieu faz referência aos produtos que possuem uma carga simbólica mais ou menos importante: como em A distinção (1979), o sentido atribuído aos produtos ou às práticas não pode ser pensado de modo essencialista, porém relativo. O caráter "standard" ou "simbólico" dos bens não pode ser visto como uma propriedade intrínseca. A distinção entre bens "standard" e bens simbólicos é uma disputa e um instrumento de lutas no espaço em que as trocas econômicas ocorrem. Nada é mais classificador em relação ao indivíduo que seu endereço, a aparência de sua casa, seu modo de se vestir, de comer ou, ainda, a marca de seu carro. Esses são os gostos associados ao quotidiano, que os economistas nomeiam de "preferências reveladas", explicam o sentido da boutade segundo a qual "os classificadores são classificados por sua classificação" (^{Bourdieu, 1979})." 

Marie-France Garcia-Parpet (2013)
http://www.scielo.br/pdf/sant/v3n5/2238-3875-sant-03-05-0091.pdf
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2238-38752013000500091