Pierre Bourdieu

Key Concepts

Michael Grenfell, Michael James Grenfell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317547372
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

The French social philosopher Pierre Bourdieu is now recognised as one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. In a career of over fifty years, Bourdieu studied a wide range of topics: education, culture, art, politics, economics, literature, law, and philosophy. Throughout these studies, Bourdieu developed a highly specialised series of concepts that he referred to as his "thinking tools", which were used to uncover the workings of contemporary society. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts highlights his most important concepts and examines them in detail. Each chapter deals with an individual concept and is written to be of immediate use to the student with little or no previous knowledge of Bourdieu. This new edition of the leading text is entirely revised and updated and includes new essays on Methodology, Politics and Social Space.

PART I

Biography, theory and practice

Introduction

Part I of this book is entitled “Biography, theory and practice”. It comprises two chapters, which span these three principal strands in Bourdieu’s work.

Chapter 1 begins with a brief outline of Bourdieu’s life and works. This sets a framework for what follows. It is emphasized how important it is to read Bourdieu’s ideas primarily in terms of the current practical problems and issues of the day before any contemporary use is made of them. A sketch is subsequently offered of the events which surrounded Bourdieu’s life and impacted on his thinking. This account includes the social, cultural, historical, political and economic. Bourdieu was active professionally for almost exactly the fifty years of the second half of the twentieth century. This section details some of the salient trends in this time period; in particular, with respect to France. In the final section of Chapter 1, Bourdieu is located within the intellectual tradition of which he formed a part. This tradition is linked to the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment and the French philosophes who were its key thinkers. As noted earlier, Bourdieu originally trained in philosophy before embracing sociology as the focus for his writing. This section begins to unpick the various strands in his theory of practice, with reference to the founding fathers of sociology – Marx, Durkheim and Weber, French Catholic intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s, the European tradition of phenomenology, and the leading intellectual figures of his formative years, namely Sartre and Lévi-Strauss. The ideas within this background are also contrasted with those of other writers on the history of the philosophy of science, such as Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem. These two philosophers were particularly influential on Bourdieu’s thinking about the relationship between theory and practice in the social sciences. They also can be seen as contributing to the intellectual climate that gave birth to post-modernism. This link is made as the discussion is brought up to date by contrasting this European tradition with twentieth-century American sociology and writers active within so-called rational action theory.

Chapter 2 builds on the first chapter and further develops the connections between Bourdieu’s biography and his theory of practice. It begins with Bourdieu’s own home background and the possible congruities between his domestic experience and the ideas which would influence him. This experience is developed in terms of his early work on education and the kind of approach he was beginning to adopt. The essential elements of Marxist and phenomenological science are stressed. This coverage builds to a discussion of Bourdieu’s founding methodological statement of 1968 – Le métier de sociologue. The centrality of Bachelard’s work to Bourdieu’s own thinking is also emphasized with reference to the “three degrees of monitoring” necessary to a truly “practical theory of social practices”. Chapter 2 therefore offers a philosophical background against which the detail of the introduction to Part II can be read. It can also be read as an epistemological warning to those who might reify the concepts that follow as concrete entities, or metaphorical narratives, rather than approaching them as necessary tools to understanding the logic of fields in practice.

ONE

Biography

Michael Grenfell

Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to offer a sketch of Bourdieu’s biography. There are various issues to consider. For much of his life, Bourdieu was against biography, both in terms of his own personal life details and, in fact, biographical studies in general. In an article published in 1986 in Actes de la recherche en science sociales, he writes of “l’illusion biographique”.¹ Here, he sets out his major objections to conventional biographies. He takes exception to the accounts of people’s lives as constructed by historians and ethnographers, not to mention sociologists. He sets himself against these “lives” for their constructed coherence and the implied objective and subjective intentions behind the action of individuals involved. He sees this tendency revealed in the very language used by biographers: “already”, “from that moment”, “from his youngest age”, “always”. Briefly, Bourdieu objects to tidy chronologies of lives lived in a sort of pre-ordered, if not pre-ordained, manner.

Bourdieu spent most of his life avoiding reference to his personal life and, even now, we only have the most basic information. However, there is a paradox. As we shall see, Bourdieu’s reflexive approach was predicated on the sociologist “objectifying” the process of objectification (see Grenfell 2004b for a fuller account). Central to this method was the need to apply the same epistemological concepts to the “knowing subject” itself as well as the object of research. How to operate such an approach then becomes a crucial question, and biography must feature in this undertaking. Bourdieu claimed he had developed this aspect of his method, but that it did not necessitate the disclosure of his personal life details. Later in this book, we shall see how this might be possible (see also ibid., chapter 7). Nevertheless, at the very end of his career, Bourdieu seemingly became more open to questions about the way his work was shaped by his own life experience. Indeed, at his final lecture at the Collège de France (February 2001), Bourdieu talked about the way his work was a kind of “auto-socio-analysis”, as a way of making sense of the social forces which had shaped his life trajectory. Indeed, his final posthumously published book is entitled Sketch for a Self-Analysis (Esquisse pour une autoanalyse; 2007 [2004]), although even here the first page of it states “this is not an autobiography”. The self-analysis offered is very much in terms of his socio-historical positioning within the academic field.

With these points in mind, this chapter considers Bourdieu’s biography from three directions. First, an account of what is known about Bourdieu’s life events is presented. This includes family background and career trajectory. Second, this “biography” is set within the historical context of contemporary France. Here, the socio-historical background to Bourdieu’s life is considered. Third, Bourdieu’s own work is placed in a history of ideas, both within France and beyond. Bourdieu often made a plea that his readers should keep in mind the “socio-genesis” of his work (1993e). In other words, how his ideas were shaped by the salient social and intellectual trends of the times within which they were produced. By adopting this three-fold approach to Bourdieu’s biography, the intention is to go some way to establish such a framework for reading each of the concepts set out in this book.

Bourdieu – a life

Bourdieu was born on 1 August 1930 in a tiny village, Denguin, in the Béarn region of the French Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Life appears to have been very much that of the traditional rural peasant. Bourdieu’s father never completed his own schooling, although his mother continued her education to the age of sixteen. The language spoken in the home was Gascon, a now dead regional language. The family was evidently of modest economic means: Bourdieu’s father’s background was that of an itinerant sharecropper, although later he was employed by the French Post Office as a petit-fonctionnaire-cum-postman. Bourdieu went to the local elementary school before passing to the lycée in Pau, a town sufficiently far from Denguin to warrant Bourdieu attending as a boarder. Bourdieu obviously showed early academic talent as he passed an entrance examination to attend the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, which was celebrated as one of the principal preparatory schools for students aspiring to attend the elite Parisian training schools – the so-called Grandes Écoles. In due course, Bourdieu passed the concours for the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), which he entered in 1951, graduating from it in 1955 with a degree in philosophy. The ENS has long been reputed as the incubator of the French intelligentsia. Both Sartre and De Beauvoir were former students; Derrida was a fellow student in Bourdieu’s time there.

After graduating, Bourdieu taught for one year in the Lycée de Moulins. However, later in 1955, Bourdieu went to Algeria to complete his military service. At this time, Algerians were engaged in a cruel and bloody war of independence against their French colonialists. After some time away from the capital, Bourdieu was posted to Algiers, where he undertook “administrative” duties in the General Government, which, significantly, also held a well-stocked library (see Grenfell 2006 for further discussion of Bourdieu’s early work and life experiences). Later still, Bourdieu taught in the faculté de lettres at the University of Algiers. These experiences were clearly formative, at one and the same time challenging and inspiring. The first of Bourdieu’s principal publications addressed the Algerian situation and its consequences: Sociologie de l’Algérie (1958), Travail et travailleurs en Algérie (1963), Le déracinement, la crise de l’agriculture traditionelle en Algérie (1964).

Bourdieu returned to Paris in 1960 where he was appointed as an assistant to the leading French intellectual Raymond Aron. He took up teaching in the University of Lille (1961–4) before being nominated as Director of Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (a precursor to the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales – EHESS). Subsequently, he was named as director of the Centre de Sociologie Européenne, which had previously been founded by Aron. His work during these initial years at the Centre focused on three principles areas: education – Les héritiers (1964), La reproduction (1970); art and culture – Un art moyen (1965), L’amour de l’art (1966); and methodology – Le métier de sociologue (1968), Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique (1972).

We know little of Bourdieu’s personal life save that in November 1962 he married Marie-Claire Brizzard, with whom he subsequently had three sons (Jérôme, Emmanuel and Laurent).

In 1964, he took over editorship of Le Sens Common, a series owned by one of the principal publishing houses in France, Les Éditions de Minuit. Under his editorship, the company released translations of key academic texts in the social sciences; for example, those of the art historian Erwin Panowsky and the American sociologist Erving Goffman. The Minuit publishing house later provided an outlet for many of Bourdieu’s own work. In 1975, he founded the Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, a journal, which acted as a vehicle for Bourdieu’s shorter articles, as well as those of his collaborators. In 1981, he was elected as Chair in Sociology at the Collège de France, an august institution that groups just fifty-two elective members from leading French academics. He was awarded the gold medal of the CNRS – the French national research centre – in the same year. These two events established his academic status and standing as successful and prestigious. The 1980s similarly marked a period of prolific output with major book publications on: cultural life – La distinction (1979); academia and state training schools – Homo academicus (1984), La noblesse d’état (1989); further methodological and philosophical statements – Le sens pratique (1980) (itself a reworking of his Algerian studies), Questions de sociologie (1980), Leçon sur une leçon (1982) (his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France), Choses dites (1987), L’ontologie de politique de Martin Heidegger (1975); and language – Ce que parler veut dire (1982).

In 1984 and 1988, Bourdieu joined committees set up by the Socialist government under François Mitterand to review the future direction and curriculum of the French education system (see Bourdieu 1985a and 1992b [1989]). This involvement with state politics lasted the decade. However, in 1993, he published La misère du monde, a series of personal accounts of social suffering in France; suffering brought about, for the most part, by neo-liberal economic policy that the Socialist government was then adopting. This theme was also the subject of Les structures sociales de l’économie (2000); in particular, with respect to the French housing market. In the 1990s, Bourdieu developed a much more prominent public profile. He appeared on television and the radio, something he had eschewed in the past, and was a frequent participant at the meetings of social assemblies, strikers, and other pressure groups. Bourdieu’s prolific output continued with further major statements on: methodology and philosophy – Réponses (1992), Raisons pratiques (1994), Méditations pascaliennes (1997), Science de la science et réflexivité (2001); and the art field – Les règles de l’art (1992). However, he also published a series of shorter polemical texts aimed at a more general public. These included attacks on the modern media – Sur la télévision (1996); as well as collections dealing with neo-liberal economics and their consequences – Contre-feux (1998) – and the European Labour movement – Contre-feux 2 (2001).

Bourdieu retired from the Collège de France in 2001 and died of cancer on 23 January the following year.

Bourdieu and contemporary France

In this section, we take time to consider the background to Bourdieu’s life. It is easy to see Bourdieu as essentially a theorist. This image of the Parisian intellectual does seem to suggest someone detached from the real world. However, the picture is very different from reality, especially for Bourdieu. In fact, Bourdieu claimed never to theorize for the sake of it (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1989d: 50) and almost all of his work can be seen as a response to an actual practical context. What preoccupied Bourdieu was a mission to explain the social, political and cultural practices that surrounded him; in brief, to “restore to people the meaning of their actions” (1962b: 109). These actions need to be placed against a background of social and historical events.

Bourdieu was born in 1930, the last decade of the French Third Republic. If we look back, we see the glory days of the belle époque in the distance; itself a period born out of the trauma and humiliations of nearly a century of war and revolution for France as it struggled to establish a nation state following the great revolution of 1789. The belle époque, with its artistic gaiety and growing self-confidence, had been brought to an end by the trauma of the First World War with all that entailed at the level of politics and economics, not to mention national pride. The 1930s in France were marked by economic crisis, political corruption and a growing sense that Third Republic institutions no longer provided what France required. The eventual outbreak of war and the consequent collaboration of the Vichy government with their Nazi invaders – and its return to traditional values of work, family and country – did little to offer an alternative to a country that seemed exhausted by the events of the previous one hundred and fifty years.

How much all this affected Bourdieu is a moot point. We know next to nothing about his childhood experiences, aside from a few reflections on his time as a boarder at the lycée in Pau. In the 1930s, France remained an essentially traditional, agricultural country. What industry there was could be found in the north and around centres such as Lyon. Other provincial towns (e.g. Toulouse) remained regional in outlook. For those living in the country regions such as the south-west, where Bourdieu grew up, life remained very much that of isolated rural communities. Visits to the nearest towns were comparatively rare and life was inward looking. The Second World War did much to overturn this old world. Besides its dual experience of collaboration and resistance, the aftermath of the war gave France a fresh opportunity to remake and remodel itself in preparation for the new world. War had brought groups of men and women from all walks of life together in resistance movements. Whatever divided them in terms of social and professional background, they were united in opposition to a common enemy. Intellectuals met and planned with factory workers and farmers. The war also banished, once and for all, the reactionary voices of the past with their nostalgia for the ancient regime and its return to God and monarchy. At the time of Liberation, France was ready to begin again, led by many of those who had risked their lives in routing the German invaders.

Two key themes of the immediate post-war period in France were political representation and economic planning. The first of these was enshrined in creating the Fourth Republic with its aim to include all those who had taken part in preparing the way for a new France. However, France did not stand immune from influences in the world at large. With the advent of the Cold War there were tremendous tensions between the right and left of international politics, which were reflected on the home front. Political representation between those on the left and right of French politics – with its two very different worldviews – eventually led to political instability and intransigence. The fall of the Fourth Republic was conditional on the rise of a much more centrist, presidential system of politics, in this case, designed and ruled by the hero of the war years, Charles de Gaulle. His version of politics left him as director of most of the key workings of government. This way of working suited the highly interventionist series of economic Plans that were set up during...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Key Concepts
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface to the second edition
• Introduction
• Part I Biography, theory and practice
• Part II Field theory – beyond subjectivity and objectivity
• Part III Field mechanisms
• Part IV Field conditions
• Part V Applications
• Conclusion
• Chronology of life and work
• Bibliography
• Works by Pierre Bourdieu
• Other works
• Index