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Department of Social Science
The green logo of TU Dortmund University is standing on a meadow. A smartphone is leaning against it. © archive​/​TU Dortmund

New sociological theory: Dr. Fatih Kaya develops a third logic of social action with "Mediodoxy"

Front page of an academic article from the journal Sociological Theory published by the American Sociological Association (ASA). The title is “The Mediodoxy: A Bourdieusian Third Logic of Practice between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Lived Experience of Anti-Muslim Racism and Antisemitism.” The author is Dr. Fatih Bahadir Kaya. The page also includes an abstract, DOI information, and keywords related to racism, antisemitism, and Bourdieu’s theoretical approach. © ASA
How do social inequalities stabilize in everyday life, even among people who are themselves affected by discrimination? The sociologist addresses this question in his new article "The Mediodoxy: A Bourdieusian Third Logic of Practice", which has been published in the renowned journal Sociological Theory. Based on Pierre Bourdieu's theory, the article develops the concept of "The Mediodoxy" as a third logic of social action between orthodoxy and heresy (heterodoxy).

The study focuses on the question of how symbolic violence and social power relations are not only reproduced through open consent or resistance, but also through ambivalent, everyday practices. To this end, Dr. Kaya analyzed 23 qualitative interviews with Jewish and Muslim people who have had anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim racist experiences.

The essay shows that social inequalities are often stabilized in an intermediate area: not by explicitly defending discriminatory practices, but also not by radically rejecting them. Dr. Kaya refers to this intermediate form of practice as "mediodoxy". This refers to habitualized forms of silence, silent consent, normalization or the unintentional reproduction of social inequality. Using empirical interview sequences, the study reconstructs how patterns of interpretation, semantics and actions that generate inequality can also be unintentionally reproduced by those affected themselves, for example through everyday language practices, the relativization of discriminatory jokes or situational forms of adaptation.

A portrait photo of Dr. Fatih Kaya with his arms crossed, taken indoors with large windows in the background. He is wearing a plaid shirt. Behind him, a glass wall and a brightly lit hallway are visible. © Hesham Elsherif​/​TU Dortmund University
Dr. Fatih Kaya has been a researcher at Sociology of Migration and Education at the Department of Social Sciences since 2025.

The analysis does not identify these dynamics in terms of individual psychology, but rather as an expression of symbolic power relations and habitualized social orders. With the concept of mediodoxy, Dr. Kaya expands the Bourdieusian field and habitus theory with a previously untheorized intermediate logic. The essay argues that social domination is not only reproduced at the poles of orthodoxy and heresy, but in particular in the ambivalent everyday life of social practice. 
The article is in the tradition of praxeological social theory and reconstructive social research, and at the same time makes a fundamental theoretical contribution to research into anti-Semitism, racism and inequality."

About ASA

Sociological Theory is the theoretical flagship journal of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and is one of the most renowned journals in the field internationally. In the current Journal Citation Reports ranking, the journal is ranked 5th out of 220 journals in the Sociology category.

The journal also has an extremely selective review process: The rejection rate is regularly over 90 percent, while the acceptance rate is around 9 percent. Typically, only around 16 to 20 manuscripts are accepted for publication each year, out of well over 150 submissions.

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