The World Trade Organisation as a place of fighting of liberalism from the perspective of the notion of field by Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract

In the 19th (nineteenth) century, in Europe, liberalism found a favourable environment to spread along with democracy and capitalism. In the 20th (twentieth) century, the United States became the landmark of the liberal-democratic model and began a process of worldwide institutionalization. The World Trade Organisation, as a liberal economic proposal, exposes the power dispute between the United States, the European Union and China. The practice of the philosophical-economic-political axis in which the United States, China and the European Union orbit in this organisation is analysed based on the notion of the field of the thinker Pierre Bourdieu. It is intended to evaluate how social place constituted by social agents - member countries - in which occupied positions signal the interactional network that maintains and conserves the interests of its main agents. The article privileges the theoretical-conceptual analysis through bibliography and the analytical-philosophical method with a view to offering reflections about the relations of social agents within international institutions.

Keywords: Field; WTO; Liberalism; Bourdieu’s theory.