Lietuvos politikos mokslų lauko analizė ; Analysis of Lithuanian political science field: explaining different perceptions of political science

Abstract

On purpose to analyse a certain part of social world it is useful to apply a concept of field introduced in the field theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Field is a structure of relations between the objective positions occupied by its agents. Lithuanian political science field was chosen as the object of the research. The main problem analysed in the article is the "origin" of different perceptions of political science If only individual experience affects these perceptions, how could we explain the fact that some beliefs are more typical to certain groups of scientists and are not inherent to other groups? The investigation using semi-structuralized survey method was executed. Eighty-eight Lithuanian political scientists took part in the research. Received data was analysed by multiple correspondence analysis technique and other methods of statistical analysis. It was identified that those political scientists who own the highest academic and scientific capital tend to support a vision of political science not oriented towards practical politics. These results might be interpreted as demonstrating the above mentioned interests to impose such perceptions of political science which could be the most useful to the scientists and as confirming the hypothesis of the research.