Global university rankings have gained immense popularity over the past two decades. Today, most actors in higher education seem to believe or at least acquiesce in the evaluations published by these benchmarking devices. At the same time, global rankings have become target of numerous critiques ranging from their underlying logic and methods to the material and symbolic reconfigurations of institutions they can be related to. My purpose in this chapter is twofold. First, by conducting an overview of the main critical literature on the topic, I will show how existing critiques of global university rankings, despite bearing relevant similarities, are characterised by a lack of a unifying theoretical framework. Then, drawing on the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, I will argue for and develop an implementation of a field theory approach to connect and expand on those critiques. The adoption of this perspective will enable the uncovering of the true function served by global university rankings beyond the mere provision of performance metrics in higher education.