Rethinking incumbency: Utilising Bourdieu's field, capital, and habitus to explain energy transitions

Energy transition studies are increasingly interested in power. This article explores Pierre Bourdieu's central concepts of field, capital, and habitus considering their relevance in the context of the energy transition. Bourdieu's work on power has not been used systematically in energy transition studies to date. However, it offers advantages in describing the positions of different actors based on the possession of capital, power imbalances and inequalities, struggle, and the reproduction of power-related positions. Bourdieu's work tends to emphasise stability rather than change in continuous struggles where actors seek to improve or maintain their positions in the field; as the article demonstrates, this emphasis enables us to consider preconditions and restrictions in relation to the energy transition. Bourdieusian theory also attends to the embodied dispositions of actors, including the internalisation of political and cultural practices, values, norms and patterns of interaction into actors' cognitive and emotional schemes. Actors' dispositions orient their actions and perceptions, thereby making power relations appear legitimate, either in society or in a given field. Overall, Bourdieu makes it possible to bring together different power-related elements linked to the energy transition, as he acknowledges hegemonic, incumbent, resource-based, symbolic and embodied aspects of power. His understanding of power enables us to explore the question of wider social inequality.