Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre-F?lix Bourdieu (August 1, 1930-January 23, 2002) was a French sociologist. In his obituary, The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom said he "was, for many, the leading intellectual of present-day France... a thinker in the same rank as Foucault, Barthes and Lacan". His book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, was named as one of the 20th century's 10 most important works of sociology by the International Sociological Association. Although he has a formidable reputation amongst sociologists in the English-speaking world, he is much less well-known among the general Anglophone intelligentsia than Foucault or Jacques Derrida.

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In France, Bourdieu was not seen as an ivory tower academic or cloistered don, but as a passionate activist for those he believed subordinated by society. Again, from The Guardian: " a documentary film about Pierre Bourdieu — Sociology is a Combat Sport — became an unexpected hit in Paris. Its very title stressed how much of a politically engaged intellectual Bourdieu was, taking on the mantle of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre in French public life, and slugging it out with politicians because he thought that was what people like him should do."

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He was born in Denguin (Pyr?n?es-Atlantiques) into a postman's family. From 1962 to 1983 he was married to Marie-Claire Brizard.

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Bourdieu studied philosophy in Paris at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure. He worked as a teacher. During the Algerian War of Independence in 1958-1960, and while serving in the French army, he undertook ethnographic research, laying the groundwork for his sociological reputation. Since 1981, Bourdieu held a chair at the Coll?ge de France. In 1993 he was honored with the "M?daille d'or du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique" (CNRS).

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He routinely sought to connect his theoretical ideas with empirical research, grounded in everyday life, and his work can be seen as cultural sociology or as a theory of practice.

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Bourdieu was both completely empirical and a master theorist, a rare if not unique combination in sociology. His key terms were habitus and field. He extended the idea of capital to categories such as social capital, and cultural capital. For Bourdieu the position an individual is located at in the social space is defined not by class, but by the amount of capital across all kinds of capital, and by the relative amounts social, economic and cultural capital account for.

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He was also known as a politically interested and active leftist intellectual, supporting work against the influences of political elites and neoliberal capitalism. He was the left's enemy of itself: the French Socialist party used to talk of la gauche bourdieusienne, their enemies on the left.

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Some examples of his empirical results include:

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• showing that despite the apparent freedom of choice in the arts in France, people's artistic preferences (e.g. classical music, rock, traditional music) strongly correlate with the position in the social space
• showing that subtleties of language such as accent, grammar, spelling and style — all part of cultural capital — are a major factor in social mobility (e.g. getting a higher paid, higher status job).

Pierre Bourdieu's work emphasized how social classes, especially the ruling and intellectual classes, reproduce themselves even under the pretence that society fosters social mobility.

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Bourdieu was extraordinarily prolific, author of hundreds of articles and many books, only some few dozens of which are available in English. His style is dense in English translation: and even more unexpected for those prepared for the sociological jargon but not for the literary effects that strike the English-speaker as mannered and unnecessary.

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Pierre Bourdieu: Bourdieu's critical conflict theory ►



 

August 1: August 1 is the 213th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (214th in leap years), with 152 days remaining....

1930: 1930 is a common year starting on Wednesday....

January 23: January 23 is the 23rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 342 days remaining, 343 in leap years....




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