Pierre Bourdieu

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Pierre Bourdieu (1 August 1930 – 23 januari 2002, France) was a sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher. Bourdieu was a well known member of the anti-globalisation movement.

Life
Bourdieu studied in Paris on the École normale superiéure. One of his classmates was the philosopher Jacques Derrida. In the fifties Bourdieu served in Algeria for the French army. He stayed there until 1960 and teached at the University of Algiers. We he returned to France he was a self-taught anthropologist. In 1975 Bourdieu launched the journal Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales. He worked, did research and taught at several universities, such as the Universities of Paris and Lille, the École pratique des Hautes Etudes, he was director of the Centre de Sociologie Européenne and in the eighties he got appointed the prestigious chair of sociology at the Collège de France. In 2002 Bourdieu died of cancer in Paris.

Work
Key terms in Bourdieu's sociological thought are social field (‘champ’), capital and habitus. His most important work is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984). Bourdieu tries to overcome the classic dichotomy within the social sciences between subjectivism and objectivism. The subjectivists think of society as the result of the actions (and thoughts) of individual agents. The objectivists think of invidual agents and theit actions and thoughts as a result of societal structurs. The concept that Bourdieu uses for this dichotomy is habitus. The habitus is the mental structure of individuals that arises during their life in their own social setting. This mental structure comprehends the way the individual sees the world, appreciates it and acts within the world. People that grow up in the same social setting with form a more or less similar habitus. The habitus is therefor a objective given by society, aswell as a individual subjective given by your own capacity and propensity.

Theory of Class Distinction

Pierre believes that class divisions get taught from parents to children and this affects their own perceptions and is how class distinctions are continued. He believes class divisions to be determined by a number of factors, these are social, economic and capital culture. In society having the best commercial goods is a sign of excellence. What people see as excellent is shaped by their class division. Pierre also points out the importance of capital of culture by saying 'the differences in capital culture mark the differences between the classes' (1984). Each class division generated a series of criteria on which you are judged. Important indicators are things like your tastes in food and culture as these relate to where you fit in society.

Theory of Power and Practice

This theory emphasizes how the importance Pierre puts on the body and practices in the social world. He stresses the importance of mechanisms of social domination and reproduction use to be focused on bodily know how and competent practices in the social world. He was opposed to the Rational Choice Theory and saw social agents as operating to a practical sense, this was the sociology side to his work. The anthropological work focused more on the mechanisms of reproduction of social hierarchies.

Field

A key concept of Pierre's it shares the same view of Weber that society can't be analysed just in terms of economic class. He looks at the role of education and cultural ideologies. He sees a field as a structured social space with its own rules and they are relativley autonomous from wider society. An example of a field might be The Arts or Politics.

Habitus

Can be defined as a system of dispositions. The individual agent develops these dispositions in response to the objective conditions it encounters.

Publications
-Sociologie de l’Algérie (1958)
-La reproduction (1971)
-La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement (1979)
-Le sens pratique (1980)
-Homo academicus (1984)
-Les règles de l’art (1992)
-Réponses: pour une anthropologie réflexive (1992)
-La misère du monde (1993)
-Sur la télévision (1996)

References:

-Flinterman, J. (n.d.) De sociologie van Pierre Bourdieu. Accessed on 21 October 2010, on http://www.xs4all.nl/~flinterm/Pierre-Bourdieu-samengevat.html
-Kirjasto (2008). Pierre Bourdieu. Accessed on 21 October 2010, on http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bourd.htm -Distinction, Bourdieu 1984 p 66

Edited by Laura Brunning