Difference between revisions of "Pierre Bourdieu"

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'''Pierre Bourdieu''' (1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist, anthropologist, philosopher and champion of the anti-globalisation movement, whose work spanned a broad range of subjects from ethnography to art, literature, education, language, cultural tastes, and television [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bourd.htm]. Bourdieu’s most significant work on cultural production is available in two books: ''The Field of Cultural Production'' (1993) and ''The Rules of Art'' (1996).
 
'''Pierre Bourdieu''' (1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist, anthropologist, philosopher and champion of the anti-globalisation movement, whose work spanned a broad range of subjects from ethnography to art, literature, education, language, cultural tastes, and television [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bourd.htm]. Bourdieu’s most significant work on cultural production is available in two books: ''The Field of Cultural Production'' (1993) and ''The Rules of Art'' (1996).
 
Bourdieu builds his theory of cultural production using his own characteristic theoretical vocabulary of habitus, capital and field.
 
Bourdieu builds his theory of cultural production using his own characteristic theoretical vocabulary of habitus, capital and field.
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==Life and works==
 
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Pierre Bourdieu was born in the village of Denguin, in the Pyrénees' district of southwestern France. His father was the village postmaster. At school Bourdieu was a bright student but also gained fame as a star rugby player. He moved to Paris, where he studied at the École normale superiéure – his classmate was the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Bourdieu became interested in Merleau-Ponty, Husserl – Heidegger's Being and Time he had read earlier – and also in the writings of the young Marx for academic reasons. His thesis from 1953 was a translation and commentary of the Animadversiones of Leibniz.
 
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After attaining agrégé in philosophy, Bourdieu worked as a teacher for a year and was then drafted into the army. He served for two years in Algeria, where French troops tried to crush the Algerian rebels. Bourdieu was first assigned to guard duty at an ammunitions deport, and then he was reassigned to a desk job. In 1959-60 he lectured at the University of Algiers, and studied traditional farming and ethnic Berber culture. "I thought of myself as a philosopher and it took me a very long time to admit to myself that I had become an ethnologist," Bourdieu once said. In 1960 he returned to France as a self-taught anthropologist. His experiences Bourdieu recorded in the posthumously published books Esquisse pour une auto-analyse (2004) and Images de l'Algerie: Une affinité élective.
 
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Bourdieu married in 1962 the former Marie-Claire Brisard; they had three children. He studied anthropology and sociology, and taught at the University of Paris (1960-62) and at the University of Lille (1962-64). In 1964 he joined the faculty of the École pratique des Hautes Etudes. In 1968 he became director of the Centre de Sociologie Européenne, where with a group of colleagues he embarked on pioneering extensive collective research on problems concerned with the maintenance of a system of power by means of the transmission of a dominant culture.
 
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One of the central themes in Bourdieu's work is that culture and education are central in the affirmation of differences between social classes and in the reproduction of those differences. In La Reproduction (1970) Bourdieu argued, that the French educational system reproduces the cultural division of society. Because power structures have a tendency to reproduce themselves in order to ensure their own survival, the education system is designated to help the children of those in power to fill up similar positions of influence. He also implied a correspondence between "symbolic violence" of pedagogic actions and the state's monopoly of the legitimate use of physical violence.
 
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In 1975 Bourdieu launched the journal Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, devoted to deconsecrating the mechanism by which cultural production helps sustain the dominant structure of society. With his election in 1981 to the prestigious chair of sociology at the Collčge de France, he joined the ranks of such prominent figures as Raymond Aron and Claude Lévi.Strauss. By the late 1980s Bourdieu had become one of the French social scientists most frequently cited in the United States, surpassing Lévi-Strauss. For his students he became a guru, Bour-dieu (god), or a terrible example of terrorism in the disguise of sociology.
 
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Bourdieu participated in the mid-1990s in a number of activities outside academic circles. He supported striking rail workers, spoke for the homeless, was a guest at television programs, and in 1996 he founded the publishing company Liber/Raisons d'agir. Though  characterized as a theorist of social reproduction, in dealing with these concerns he became an advocate of social transformation.
 
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In 1998 Bourdieu published in the newspaper Le Monde an article, in which he compared the "strong discourse" of neoliberalism with the position of the psychiatric discourse in an asylum. Bourdieu's last publications dealt with such topics as masculine domination, neoliberal newspeak, Edouard Manet's art, and Beethoven. Bourdieu died of cancer in Paris, at the Saint-Antoine hospital, on January 24, 2002.
 
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Key terms in Bourdieu's sociological thought are social field, capital, and habitus. Habitus is adopted through upbringing and education. The concept means on the individual level "a system of acquired dispositions functioning on the practical level as categories of perception and assessment... as well as being the organizing principles of action." Bourdieu argues that the struggle for social distinction is a fundamental dimension of all social life. Thorstein Veblen's (1857-1929) thoughts about conspicuous consumption come near Bourdieu's view, but Bourdieu has corrected that: "la distinction" has another meaning. It refers to social space and is bound up with the system of dispositions (habitus).
 
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Social space has a very concrete meaning when Bourdieu presents graphically the space of social positions and the space of lifestyles. His diagram in Distinction shows that spatial distances are equivalent to social distances. "The very title Distinction serves as a reminder that what is commonly called distinction, that is, a certain quality of bearing and manners, most often considered innate (one speaks of distinction naturelle, "natural refinement"), is nothing other than difference, a gap, a distinctive feature, in short, a relational property existing only in and through its relation with other properties." (from Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, 1994)
 
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All human actions take place within social fields, which are arenas for the struggle of the resources. Individuals, institutions, and other agents try to distinguish themselves from others, and acquire capital which is useful or valuable on the arena. In modern societies, there are two distinct systems of social hierarchization. The first is economic, in which position and power are determined by money and property, the capital one commands. The second system is cultural or symbolic. In this one's status is determined by how much cultural or "symbolic capital" one possesses. Culture is also a source of domination, in which intellectuals are in the key role as specialists of cultural production and creators of symbolic power [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bourd.htm].
 
  
 
==Literature==
 
==Literature==
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;Books by Bourdieu
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; Books by Bourdieu
 
* ''Sociologie de l'Algérie'', 1958 (rev. edition 1961)
 
* ''Sociologie de l'Algérie'', 1958 (rev. edition 1961)
 
** ''The Algerians'', Trans. by Allan Ross, Beacon Press, 1962
 
** ''The Algerians'', Trans. by Allan Ross, Beacon Press, 1962
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* ''Contre-feux'', Editions Liber-Raisons d'Agir, 1998
 
* ''Contre-feux'', Editions Liber-Raisons d'Agir, 1998
 
** [[Media:Pierre_Bourdieu_Acts_of_Resistance-_Against_the_New_Myths_of_Our_Time_1998.pdf|''Acts of Resistance. Against the New Myths of our Time'']], Translated by Richard Nice, Polity Press and The New Press, 1998
 
** [[Media:Pierre_Bourdieu_Acts_of_Resistance-_Against_the_New_Myths_of_Our_Time_1998.pdf|''Acts of Resistance. Against the New Myths of our Time'']], Translated by Richard Nice, Polity Press and The New Press, 1998
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;Books about Bourdieu
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; Books On Bourdieu
 
* Pierre Mounier, [[Media:Pierre_Mounier_Pierre_Bourdieu,_une_introduction_2001.pdf|''Pierre Bourdieu, une introduction'']], Agora, 2001 (French)
 
* Pierre Mounier, [[Media:Pierre_Mounier_Pierre_Bourdieu,_une_introduction_2001.pdf|''Pierre Bourdieu, une introduction'']], Agora, 2001 (French)
 
* Gad Yair, ''Pierre Bourdieu: the Last Musketeer of the French Revolution'', 2009
 
* Gad Yair, ''Pierre Bourdieu: the Last Musketeer of the French Revolution'', 2009
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*''La sociologie est un sport de combat'', documentary film, directed by Pierre Charles, 146 mininutes (2001)
 
*''La sociologie est un sport de combat'', documentary film, directed by Pierre Charles, 146 mininutes (2001)
  
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==Links==
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==External links==
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* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu Bourdieu on Wikipedia]
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* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu Bourdieu at Wikipedia]
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[[Category:Media culture writers|Bourdieu, Pierre]]
 

Revision as of 11:37, 15 January 2014

Pierre Bourdieu (1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist, anthropologist, philosopher and champion of the anti-globalisation movement, whose work spanned a broad range of subjects from ethnography to art, literature, education, language, cultural tastes, and television [1]. Bourdieu’s most significant work on cultural production is available in two books: The Field of Cultural Production (1993) and The Rules of Art (1996). Bourdieu builds his theory of cultural production using his own characteristic theoretical vocabulary of habitus, capital and field.

Literature

Books by Bourdieu
Books On Bourdieu
  • Pierre Mounier, Pierre Bourdieu, une introduction, Agora, 2001 (French)
  • Gad Yair, Pierre Bourdieu: the Last Musketeer of the French Revolution, 2009
  • John F. Myles, Bourdieu, Language and the Media, 2010
  • Philip S. Gorski (ed.), Bourdieu and Historical Analysis, 2013

Film about Bourdieu

  • La sociologie est un sport de combat, documentary film, directed by Pierre Charles, 146 mininutes (2001)

External links

Retrieved from "https://monoskop.org/index.php?title=Pierre_Bourdieu&oldid=38336"