Pierre Bourdieu

From Geography

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.

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