Pierre Bourdieu

SOCIAL SPACE AND SYMBOLIC POWER

whose results are presented in my book Distinction (Bourdieu 1984a), and draw out those of its theoretical implications that are most likely to elude its readers, particularly here in the United States, due to the differences between our respective cultural and scholarly traditions. If I had to characterize my work in two words, that is, as is the fashion these days, to label it, I would speak of constructivist structuralism or of structuralist constructiv-

La distinction : critique sociale du jugement

Pierre BOURDIEU est considéré comme un des représentants les plus éminents de la sociologie française contemporaine. Au confluent d’une triple tradition, celle de Marx, de Weber et de Durkheim. Il est considéré comme le représentant d’une «école sociologique », celle du structuralisme génétique ou structuralisme critique. La Distinction, ouvrage de 668 pages paru aux éditions de Minuit en 1979, se scinde en trois parties, successivement intitulées «critique sociale du jugement de goût » (chapitre 1), «l’économie des pratiques » (chapitres 2 à 4), «goûts de classe et style de vie » (chapitres 5 à 8). Les annexes sont consacrées aux aspects méthodologiques. Pierre Bourdieu y propose, comme l’indique le sous-titre de l’ouvrage, une analyse sociologique des dispositions et des jugements éthiques et esthétiques en les considérant comme l’enjeu et le produit de luttes entre groupes sociaux.

The economics of linguistic exchanges

&dquo;Perhaps from force of occupational habit, perhaps by virtue of the calm that is acquired by every important man who is consulted for his advice and who, ) , _ , _ ~ knowing that he will keep control over ~’’~’ ’’ ’. ’ ’ ’ ’’ ’ &dquo;-~’~w’’~’.~. &dquo;&dquo; &dquo;&dquo;~ ~ ~ r the situation, sits back and lets his interlocutor flap and fluster, perhaps also in order to show off to advantage the

The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason

The sociology of science rests on the postulate that the objective truth of the product even in the case of that very particular product, scientific truth lies in a particular type of social conditions of production, or, more precisely, in a determinate state of the structure and functioning of the scientific field. The &dquo;pure&dquo; universe of even the &dquo;purest&dquo; science is a social

Sport and social class

I speak neither as an historian nor as an historian of sport, and so I appear as an amateur among professionals and can only ask you, as the phrase goes, to be ’good sports’... But I think that the innocence which comes from not being a specialist can sometimes lead one to ask questions which specialists tend to forget, because they think they have answered them, because they have taken for granted a certain number of presuppositions which are perhaps fundamental to their discipline. The questions I shall raise come from outside; they are the questions of a sociologist who, among the objects he studies, encounters sporting activities and entertainments (les pratiques et les consommations sportives) in the form, for example, of the statistical distribution of sports activities by educational level, age, sex, and occupation, and who is led to ask himself questions not only about the relationship between the practices and the variables, but also about the meaning which the practices take on in those relationships.

Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital

Die gesellschaftliche Welt ist akkumulierte Geschichte. Sie darf deshalb nicht auf eine Aneinanderreihung von kurzlebigen und mechanischen Gleichgewichtszustanden reduziert werden, in denen die Menschen die Rolle von austauschbaren Teilchen spielen. Um einer derartigen Reduktion zu entgehen, ist es wichtig, den Kapitalbegriff wieder einzufuhren, und mit ihm das Konzept der Kapitalakkumulation mit allen seinen Implikationen.

¬The craft of sociology : epistemological preliminaries

The work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has emerged, over the last two decades, as one of the most substantial and innovative bodies of theory and research in contemporary social science. The Craft of Sociology, both a textbook and an original contribution to epistemology in social science, focuses on a basic problem of sociological research: the necessity of an epistemological break with the preconstructed objects social practice offers to the researcher. Pierre Bourdieu and his co-authors argue in the epistemological tradition of scholars like Bachelard, Canguilhem, Koyre, a tradition that identifies the construction of the object as being the fundamental scientific act. Their way of discussing the issue makes it accessible not only to academics and experts of epistemology, but also to advanced students of social science, using for illustration a wide range of texts from the various social sciences as well as from philosophy of science. The book includes an interview with Pierre Bourdieu and an introduction by the editor to his sociological methodology.

Intellectual field and creative project

In order that the sociology of intellectual and artistic creation be assigned its proper object and at the same time its limits, the principle must be perceived and stated that the relationship between a creative artist and his work, and therefore his work itself is affected by the system of social relations within which creation as an act of communication takes place, or to be more precise, by the position of the creative artist in the structure of the intellectual field (which is itself, in part at any rate, a function of his past work and the reception it has met with). The intellectual field, which cannot be reduced to a simple aggregate of isolated agents or to the sum of elements merely juxtaposed, is, like a magnetic field, made up of a system of power lines. In other words, the constituting agents or systems of agents may be described as so many forces which by their existence, opposition or combination, determine its specific structure at a given moment in time. In return, each of these is defined by its particular position within this field from which it derives positional properties which cannot be assimilated to intrinsic properties and more especially, a specific type of participation in the cultural field taken as a system of relations between themes and problems, and thus a determined type of cultural unconscious, while at the same time it intrinsically possesses what could be called a functional weight, because its own &dquo;mass&dquo;, that is, its power (or better, its authority) in the field cannot be defined independently of its position within it. Obviously this approach can only be justified in so far as the object to which it is applied, that is the intellectual field (and thus the cultural field) possesses the relative autonomy which authorizes the methodological autonomization operated by the structural method when it treats the intellectual field as a system which is governed by its own laws. It is possible to see, from the history of Western intellectual and artistic life, how the intellectual field

The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public.

Translatorsa Note. Preface. 1. Signs of the Times. 2. The Research Process. 3. The Social Conditions of Cultural Practice. 4. Cultural Works and Cultivated Disposition. 5. The Rules of Cultural Diffusion. 6. Conclusion. Appendices. 1. Timetable of Research. 2. The Questionnaires and the Sampling Method. 3. The Public of French Museums. 4. Verificatory Surveys. 5. Analysis of 250 Semi--directed Interviews. 6. The Public of European Museums. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index.

Genèse et structure du champ religieux

Pierre Bourdieu : Entstehung und Struktur des religiosen Gebietes. Die Soziologie der Religion und — allgemein gesehen die Soziologie der Ideologien — wird beherrscht vom Gegensatz einerseits zwischen der Tradition, die die Religion als ein Kommunikations — und Wissensinstrument ansieht — das heisst, als ein strukturiertes und strukturierendes System — und anderseits der Tradition, die die politischen Funktionen der religiosen Ideologie unter- streicht. In Wirklichkeit erfullt die Religion nur insofern eine politische Funktion der Verewigung der Strukturen — das heisst die Absolutisierung des Relativen und die Legitimation des Willkurlichen und dadurch die Zahmung der Beherrschten — als sie eine logische Funktion erfullt, indem sie dem Denken ihre Strukturen auferlegt.