Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu is a sociologist French, born with Denguin the 1 {{er}} August 1930 and died with Paris the January 23rd 2002. It became, at the end of its life, by its public engagement, one of the main actors of the French intellectual life. Its thought exerted an important influence in the intellectual field, in particular on the French sociology of post-war period.

Its sociological work is dominated by an analysis of the mechanisms of reproduction of the social hierarchies, making a very important place with the cultural factors and symbolic systems. In Marxist opposition to the analyzes S, Bourdieu criticizes the primacy given to the economic factors, and intends to stress that the capacity of the agents in position of domination to impose their cultural productions and symbolic systems plays a crucial role in the reproduction of the social reports/ratios of domination. What Pierre Bourdieu names the Violence symbolic system , which it defines as the capacity to make ignore arbitrary these symbolic systems productions, and thus to make them recognize like legitimate, thus plays a crucial role in its sociological analysis.

The social world, in the modern societies, appears, in addition, in Bourdieu as divided into what it names of the fields . It seems to him, indeed, that the differentiation of the social activities led to the constitution of under social spaces specialized in the achievement of an activity specific and equipped with a relative autonomy towards the company taken as a whole, like the artistic field. For Pierre Bourdieu, these fields are treated on a hierarchical basis and their dynamics comes from the fights of competition that are delivered the social agents to occupy the dominant positions there. Thus, if it shares a vision conflictualist of social with the Marxist analyzes, Pierre Bourdieu thinks that the social struggles are not reduced to the conflicts of primarily economic nature between the fundamental social classes at each company (fight between the working class and the capitalist class in the modern societies, for example). The conflicts which take place in each social field him are largely specific and do not return directly to this fundamental confrontation. They more find their origin in the hierarchy of each field, and are founded on the opposition between dominant agents and dominated agents which seek to be essential.


Pierre Bourdieu also developed a theory of the action, around the concept of Habitus , which exerted a considerable influence in social sciences. This theory seeks to show that the social agents develop strategies, founded on a small number of provisions acquired by socialization (“the Habitus”), which are adapted to the needs for the social world (“direction practices”) although they are unconscious.

Very rich (more than 30 books, of the hundreds of articles), tackling multiple subjects, drawing with very many sources, the work of Bourdieu is thus ordered around some concepts vice-chancellors: habitus like principle of action of the agents, field like spaces competition social fundamental and Violence symbolic system like mechanism first of imposition of the reports/ratios of Domination.

Pierre Bourdieu, particularly at the end of his career, will insist on the need for all Sociologue for practicing a reflexive return on itself, by using the tools of sociology to include/understand the social determinations weighing on him in his analyzes. He will make this reflexive sociology thus the condition even of objectivity for any analysis of the social one.

Based on a to and from between the theory and the analysis of empirical data, the thought of Pierre Bourdieu, than, influenced any other more French sociology as from the years 1960. It was also received in the whole of social sciences, of the history to philosophy. Sociology of the revealing, it was the criticism object many, which reproaches him in particular a vision Déterministe the social one.

Biography

Pierre Bourdieu was born in 1930 with Denguin in the Béarn, Yrénées-Atlantiques (64). His/her father, originating in a country medium, is factor then factor-receiver.

Studies

Excel pupil with the college Louis Barthou with Pau, where it is internal, one of its professors, former student of the National university, advises to him to be registered in preparatory class in khâgne with the Louis-the-Large college of Paris, in 1948.

It is received with the National university (ENS) of the street of Ulm where it prepares the aggregation of philosophy, which it obtains in 1954. Jacques Derrida, Louis Marin, Emmanuel Roy Ladurie belong to its promotion to the ENS. In a philosophical universe dominated by the Existentialisme, it turns, by intellectual reaction, to the study of the logic and the history of sciences, taught then by Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem. It follows, also, the seminar of Eric Weil on the Philosophie of the right of Hegel and makes a report under the direction of Guéroult, on the Animadversiones of Leibniz ( Leibnitii animadversiones in partem generalem principiorum Cartesianorum ), in 1953.

Beginning of career

After a short experiment as a professor with the college of Mills (1954-1955), it is called by the army in 1955, in Versailles with the psychological service of the armies. However, for disciplinary reasons, it is quickly sent in Algérie within the framework of the " pacification" , where it will achieve the essence of its military service, then two years. From 1958 to 1960, wishing to continue its studies on Algeria, it takes a station of assistant to the Faculty of Arts of Algiers. It turns over to France in 1960, fleeing the putsch of the generals in Algiers. It is then attending the Université of Paris, then lecturer at the University of Lille until 1964. It perfect at the school of the Eastern languages, in Paris, its study and its practice of Arabic and the Berber one, whom he had started to learn in Algeria. In Lille, he teaches sociology, student Durkheim, Weber, Schütz and Saussure, as well as American sociology and British anthropology. In 1962, it Marie with Marie-Claire Brizard, with whom he will have three children: Jerome, Emmanuel and Laurent.

Algeria: the passage to sociology

This Algerian moment will be decisive: it is there, indeed, which its career of sociologist decides. Forsaking philosophy, it, thus, will carry out a whole series of work of ethnology in Algérie, which will lead to the writing of several books. Its first investigations carry out it in the areas of Kabylie and Collo, bastions nationalist where the war makes rage. After a Sociologie of Algeria published in 1958, which is a synthesis of the existing knowledge on the country, it publishes, in 1963, Travail and workers in Algeria , study of discovered paid work and formation of the urban proletariat in Algeria, in collaboration with Alain Darbel, Jean-Paul Rivet and Claude Seibel. 1964 see the publication of the Uprooting. The crisis of traditional agriculture in Algeria , collaboration with Abdelmalek Sayad, on the destruction of agriculture and the traditional company and the policy of regrouping of the populations by the French Army. After its return in France, Bourdieu profits, until 1964, of school vacations to collect new data on urban and rural Algeria of the time.

The ethnological ground of Kabylie did not cease, even after it had ceased going there, nourishing the anthropological work of Pierre Bourdieu. Its principal work on the theory of the action Draft of a theory of the practice (1972) and the direction practices (1980) are born thus from an anthropological reflection on the company traditional kabyle. In the same way, its work on the reports/ratios of kind, the male domination (1998), is based, for a share, on an analysis of the mechanisms of reproduction of the male domination in the traditional company kabyle.

The School of the high studies in social sciences

In 1964, Bourdieu joined the École of the high studies in social sciences (EHESS). The same year, its collaboration started earlier with Jean-Claude Passeron, led to the publication of the work the Heirs , who meets a sharp success and contributes to make of him a sociologist “in sight”.

As from 1965, with an Average Art. Tests on the social uses of photography , followed in 1966 by the love of Art , Pierre Bourdieu engages a series of work relating to the cultural practices, which will occupy an essential share of its sociological work in the following decade, and which will lead to the publication, in 1979, of the Distinction. Critical social of the judgment , which is undoubtedly its most important work.

In 1968, it founds the Center of European sociology, with the EHESS, with the support of Raymond Aron, which had received a subsidy of the Fondation Ford with this intention.

The same year, it publishes with Jean-Claude Chamboredon and Jean-Claude Passeron the Trade of sociologist , a treaty in which they expose, starting from a choice of texts of authors, methods of sociology. The work was to comprise three volumes. The second, who relates to symbolism in the company, had already his detailed plan and his materials.

The Collège de France

He becomes full professor of the pulpit of sociology to the Collège de France in 1981 - the most prestigious position within the French university system. He is the first sociologist to receive the Gold medal of CNRS in 1993.

One can thus to underline paradox of man which did not cease being lived as with the margin of the dominant academic institutions, of which he even undertook the critical study (for example in Homo academicus ), while at the same time he carried out one of the university “careers” most exemplary which are.

Engagement

Starting from 1990, Pierre Bourdieu is more strongly implied in the political life, investing the figure of the committed intellectual. During the civil war in Algeria, it supports the Algerian intellectuals. At the time of the movement of November/December 1995, it defends the strikers. In 1996, it will be one of the initiators of the " General states of the movement social". It also supports the movement of unemployed of the winter 1997/98, which seems to him a " miracle social". The central axis of its engagement consists of a critic of the diffusion of the Néolibéralisme and policies of dismantling of the institutions of the État-providence.

“There is there a typical example of this effect of shared belief which puts from the start except discussion of the completely debatable theses. It would be necessary to analyze the collective work of the “new intellectuals” which created a favorable climate with the withdrawal of the State and, more largely, with the tender with the values of the economy. I think so that one called “the return of the individualism”, left prophecy car-realizing which tends to destroy the philosophical bases of the welfare state and in particular the concept of collective responsibility (in the industrial accident, the disease or misery), this fundamental conquest of the social thought (and sociological). The return to the individual, it is also what makes it possible “to blame the victim”, alone person in charge of its misfortune, and to preach to him the coil help , all that under cover of the need inlassablement repeated to decrease the loads of the company. ”
Without it being favorable to an alternative solution with capitalism, its social criticism does of him one of the figures of the movement Altermondialiste, then being born. The majority of its interventions will be gathered in two works entitled Contre-feux .

To this period also misery goes back from the world (1993), work of talks, which seeks to show the destructurateurs effects of the neoliberal policies, and which will gain a very important public success.

The editor

In 1964, he becomes director of the collection the direction common to the Éditions of Midnight, in which the majority of its books are published, until 1992 when he changes editor, with the profit of the Editions of the Threshold. In this collection, Pierre Bourdieu publishes traditional social sciences (Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, etc) or philosophy (Ernst Cassirer, Erwin Panofsky, etc), and makes discover with the French readers of the American sociologists of foreground (translations of Erving Goffman).

In 1975, it founds, in particular with the support of Fernand Braudel, then directs until its death, the review Actes of the Research in Social sciences , which will be a place of exposure of its work and those of its pupils. She dissociates traditional university reviews by the recourse to many illustrations (photography, comic strip, etc), her large size and her page layout.

In 1995, following the social movements and petitions from November-December in France, it founds a Publisher, Raisons to act, at the same time militant and university, publishing work, often of young researchers who are dependant for him, proceeding to a critic of the neoliberalism.

Influence and oppositions

The implication of Bourdieu in public space ensured a fame to him exceeding the university world, doing of him one of the large French intellectuals of second half of the century, following the example Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida. However, with the image of these two philosophers, his thought, although she exerted a considerable influence on the field of social sciences in space French-speaking (and, in a way less, anglophone) did not cease being the subject of critical sharp, showing it for example Réductionnisme.

It will be, in the media, a character discussed, even if it remains, according to the expression of a magazine, more “media of anti-media”. One can see there the effect of his critic of the media world. Its participation in the emission Freeze frames of January 23rd, 1996 constitutes an at the same time outstanding and revealing episode report/ratio that P. Bourdieu could maintain with the media. The emission, which made following the strike of December 1995 November, was to give an account of the media treatment of this one. P. Bourdieu was the principal guest. Rather than to develop its analyzes freely, P. Bourdieu was the subject of violent criticisms on behalf of the other guests, professionals of the media, Guillaume Durand and Jean-Marie Cavada. It saw the confirmation of impossibility there “of criticizing television on television because the devices of television are essential even on the emissions of critic of the small screen”. Little time afterwards, it wrote a small work, which had an immense success, On television , where it sought to show that the devices of the televisual emissions are structured in a manner such as they generate a powerful censure of all the critical words of the order dominating.

He dies on January 23rd, 2002 of a cancer, after having worked during his last months with the theory of the fields, with an unfinished work on Manet and the revolution symbolic system, like with his autobiography, Esquisse for self-analysis . Its tomb is with the cemetery of the Father-Lachaise, in Paris, close to those of Claude Henri de Rouvroy of Saint-Simon and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.

Sociological theory

Presentation

A work with complex filiations

Bourdieu is the heir to the traditional sociology, of which it synthesized, in a deeply personal approach, the majority of the principal contributions. Thus of max Weber, it retained the importance of dimension symbolic system of the legitimacy of any domination in the social life; just as the idea of the social orders which will become, in the theory bourdieusienne, of the fields . Of Karl Marx, it took again the concept of capital, generalized with all the social activities (and either only economic). Emile Durkheim, finally, he inherits a certain deterministic and, in a sense, through Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss, structuralist style.

One should not, however, neglect the philosophical influences at this philosopher of formation: Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, through this one, the Phénoménologie of Husserl played a crucial role in the reflection of Bourdieu on the clean body, the provisions with the action, the direction practices : i.e. in the definition of the central concept of habitus . In addition, Wittgenstein, quoted as of Draft of a theory of the practice in 1971, is a source of important inspiration for Bourdieu, in particular in its reflection on the nature of the rules followed by the social agents. Lastly, Bourdieu will place, at the end of its life, its sociology under the sign of Pascal: “I had taken the practice, for a long time, when me the question was asked, generally badly disposed, of my relationship with Marx, to answer that for all to take, and if it were necessary at all costs to be affiliated, I would say pascalien rather. ”

“ Structuralism constructivist ” or “ structuralist constructivism ”

The work of Pierre Bourdieu is built on the will posted to exceed a series of oppositions which structure social sciences (subjectivism/objectivism, macro microphone/, freedom/determinism), in particular by conceptual innovations. The concepts of habitus , capital or field were conceived, indeed, with the intention to abolish such oppositions.

Thus, in Things known as , Bourdieu proposes to give to its sociological theory the name of “ structuralism constructivist ” or of “ structuralist constructivism ”. In these terms this will of going beyond of the conceptual oppositions founders of sociology post: in particular here that opposing the Structuralism (which affirm the tender of the individual to structural rules) and the Constructivisme (which makes social world the product of the free action of the social actors). Bourdieu wants to thus stress that, for him, the social world consists of structures which are certainly built by the social agents (position constructivist) but which, once constituted, condition in their turn the action of these agents (structuralist position). One joined here, by other terms, which Anglo-Saxon sociology calls the opposition structure / agency (agent determined entirely by structures it exceeding/actor creative free and rational social activities) whose will of going beyond particularly characterizes the conceptual work of Bourdieu.

Study plan

Of a considerable richness, having approached a very significant number of empirical objects, the work of Bourdieu, however, is ordered around some directing concepts:

  • centrality of the habitus like principle of the action of the agents in the social world (the habitus);

  • a social world divided into fields , which constitute places of competition structured around specific stakes (the theory of the fields);
  • a social world where the violence symbolic system , i.e. capacity to perpetuate reports/ratios of domination by making them ignore as such by those which undergo them, plays a central role (violence symbolic system).

  • the work of Bourdieu leads, finally, to a theory of the company and groups social which compose it. This one intends to show: 1-how the hierarchies between the social groups are constituted; 2-how the cultural practices occupy a place important in the fight between these groups 3 - how the school system plays a decisive part to reproduce and legitimate these social hierarchies (a theory of social space).

Habitus

Introduction

By the concept of habitus, Bourdieu aims at thinking the bond between socialization and actions of the individuals. The habitus is indeed made up by the unit of the provisions, designs of action or perception which the individual acquires through his social experiment. By his socialization, then by his social trajectory, any individual slowly incorporates a whole in manners of thinking, of feeling and of acting, which appear durable. Bourdieu thinks that these provisions are at the origin of the future practices of the individuals.

However, the habitus is more than one simple conditioning which would result in reproducing mechanically what one acquired. The habitus is not a practice, which one achieves automatically. Indeed, these provisions resemble of advantage the grammar of its native tongue. Thanks to this grammar acquired by socialization, the individual can, in fact, to manufacture an infinity of sentences to face all the situations. He does not repeat the same sentence inlassablement, as a parrot would do it. The provisions of the habitus are of the same type: it are designs of perception and action which make it possible the individual to produce a whole of new practices adapted to the social world where he is. The habitus is “strongly generating”: it is even at the origin of a direction practices . Bourdieu thus defines the habitus as “structured structures predisposed to function like structuring structures”. The habitus is structured structure since it is produced by socialization; but it is also structuring structure because generating of an infinity of new practices.

Insofar as these provisions make system, the habitus is at the origin of the unit of the thoughts and actions of each individual. But, insofar as the individuals resulting from same the social groups lived similar socializations, he explains also the similarity in the manners of thinking, of feeling and of acting clean with the individuals of the same social class.

That does not mean however that the provisions of the habitus are immutable: the social trajectory of the individuals can lead so that their habitus changes partly. In addition, the individual can partially adapt it and transform it by a sociological return on oneself.

General properties of the habitus

Hysteresis of the habitus

The provisions constitutive of the habitus have for first property to be durable, i.e. to survive at the time of their incorporation.

To think this durability of the provisions, Bourdieu introduces the concept of Hystérésis of the habitus . This concept seeks to indicate the phenomenon by which an agent, which was socialized in a certain social world, out of preserve, on the whole, provisions, even if they became unsuited continuation for example to a historical evolution (revolutions, crises, etc) having made disappear this world.

An example, often taken again, although referring to a character of novel, allows to illustrate this phenomenon: that of Don Quichotte. Knight in a world where there is no more knighthood, and inapt to face the collapse of his universe, it comes from there to drive out the windmills which he takes for immense tyrants.

Bourdieu gives another example in the Ball of the single people : the matrimonial strategies perdurent as habitus at one time when they lost their direction, causing a matrimonial crisis in the country company inhabitant of Béarn.

Transposability of the habitus

The provisions constitutive of the habitus are, in addition, transposable. Bourdieu wants to say by there that provisions acquired in a certain social activity (for example within the family) are transposed in another activity (for example the professional world). The character transposable of the provisions is related to another assumption: the provisions of the agents are unified between them. This assumption is in the center of the work entitled the Distinction (1979) where Bourdieu intends to show that the whole of the behaviors of the agents are connected between them by a common “style”.

In the Distinction - which relates primarily to the social structure - Bourdieu highlights the existence of “lifestyles” based on positions of different classes. It thus reveals the bond which links, in the workmen, the report/ratio with the food (which must be nutritive, therefore useful, effective, and often door and fatty, i.e. without hygienic consideration), the vision of the art (which should not be abstract but realistic, i.e. useful, and a little “fireman”, i.e. heavy, without smoothness), the type of worn clothing (functional and coarse), etc This lifestyle is thus unified by a small number of principles (functionality, absence of research of elegance, i.e., to follow Bourdieu, privilege granted to the substance rather that with the form in the whole of the social practices etc) which correspond to the provisions of the habitus of the workmen, and, in fine , is the product of their position in the social world (lived under the mode of the need, in the absence of economic resources, etc).

Generating character of the habitus

Bourdieu, in very many texts, intends to underline the “generating” character of the habitus. The habitus, this “structured structure predisposed to function like structuring structure”, has, indeed, like property to be at the origin of an infinity of possible practices.

Starting from a restricted number of provisions, the agent is, thus, able to invent a multiplicity of strategies - a little the made-to-order of grammar of a language (for example that of French), together limited rules, which makes it possible its speakers to create nevertheless an infinity of sentences, each time adapted to the situation.

The practical direction

This “generating” character of the habitus is, finally, related to a last property of the habitus: that to be with the principle of what Bourdieu names the “practical direction”.

Bourdieu wants to say by there that the habitus being the reflection of a social world, it is adapted to him and makes it possible the agents, without those not needing to undertake a “tactical” reflection conscious, to answer immediately and without same thinking of it, with the events to which they face.

Thus, made-to-order of Tennis player, which having deeply acquired logic from its play, runs towards where the ball, launched by its adversary, will fall down, without same of it to think (it is said whereas it acquired the automatisms of his play), the agent will act in the same way in the social world where it lives while developing, thanks to its habitus, of true “unconscious strategies” adapted to the requirements of this world.

With its theory of the practical direction, Bourdieu seems to find seemingly the theory of the rational actor, dominant in economy, what he insists on the fact that the habitus is with the principle of strategies by which the agents achieve the search for an interest. The difference is however deep: Bourdieu wants, in a major criticism of the theory of the rational actor, to show that the agents do not calculate permanently, while intentionally seeking to maximize their interest according to explicit rational criteria. For him, the agents act, quite to the contrary, starting from their provisions and of the knowledge to make registered in their body, which makes possible this " direction of the jeu" , and not by a conscious reflection. Like Bourdieu writes it, “the habitus locks up the solution of the paradoxes of the objective direction without subjective intention: it is with the principle of these sequences of blows which are objectively organized like strategies without being the product of a true strategic intention. ”

This “practical direction” is however possible only in so far as the agent is confronted with a social field which is familiar for him, which corresponds to that where it was socialized and where it thus incorporated the structures constitutive of its habitus.

At the origins of the concept of habitus

Worked out at the end of the Sixties, thematized first once in the foreword with a publication of works of ethnology kabyle, Esquisse of a theory of the practice (1972), supplemented in the direction practices (1980), the concept of habitus aimed, originally, at exceeding the two designs of the subject and the action then dominant in French intellectual space.

Were opposed thus the theories inspired of the Phénoménologie, and in particular the Existentialisme of Jean-Paul Sartre, which placed in the middle of the action the absolute freedom of the subject, with the theories resulting from the Structuralisme, in particular the anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, which made action of the subject a behavior entirely governed by objective rules.

Vis-a-vis structuralism, Bourdieu wanted to give again a capacity of autonomous action on the subject, without however granting the freedom to him which the Existentialisme lent to him. The “solution” that Bourdieu proposes is to consider that the agent has, during the various processes of socialization which he knew (in particular primary socialization), incorporated a whole of principles of action, reflections of the objective structures of the social world in which he is, which became in him, at the end of this incorporation, of the “durable and transformable provisions” (according to one of the definitions of the habitus which Bourdieu proposes). Thus, the agent, as a certain direction even acts of him (with the difference in the structuralist subject which brought up to date rules) since its action is the product of the “unconscious strategies” which it develops, but these strategies are made up starting from provisions which the agent incorporated. With the base of the action, one thus finds the whole of these provisions which constitute the habitus. Therefore Bourdieu prefers at the end of actor, generally employed by those which want to underline the capacity that with the individual to act freely, that of agent, which insists, on the contrary, on the determinisms to which the individual is subjected.

The action of the individuals is thus, at the end of the theorization of Bourdieu, basically the product of the objective structures of the world in which they live, and which work in them a whole of provisions which will structure their ways of thinking, to perceive and act.

The theory of the fields

Pierre Bourdieu defines the company as an overlap of fields (economic, cultural, artistic, sporting, religious…) inside of which release a logic clean given by specificity from the stakes and the assets that one can put forward there, taking into account the rules prevailing there. The interactions are structured according to the assets and of the resources that each agent mobilizes, i.e., to take again the categories built by Bourdieu, of its capital, whether it is economic, cultural, authorized or symbolic system.

Violence symbolic system

The concept of violence symbolic system returns to interiorization by the agents of the social domination inherent in the position which they occupy in a given field and more generally with their social position. This violence is infra-conscious and is not based on an intersubjective domination (of an individual on another) but on a structural domination (of a position according to an other). This structure, which is function of the capital had by the agents, fact violence because it is not perceived by the agents. It is thus source of an insignificance or sense of inferiority which only is undergone since not objectified. This violence symbolic system can be close to a sociological conceptualization of what the tradition criticizes German named alienation, even if one can pose only one equivalence between these two concepts and not an identity (theoretical bases being very different). Violence symbolic system finds its base in the legitimacy of the designs of classification inherent in the hierarchisation of the social groups.

See also: the Reproduction

A theory of social space

Pierre Bourdieu built, in particular in the distinction , a complex theory of social space, with the crossing of the traditions Marxist and weberienne. This theory proposes to explain mainly 1) the logic of constitution of the social groups starting from the modes of hierarchisation of the companies, the 2) lifestyles and the fights that these social groups are delivered, the 3) methods of reproduction of the social hierarchies and the social groups.

Hierarchisation and constitution of the social groups

Bourdieu, primarily in the distinction , proposes an original theory of the hierarchisation of social space, starting from a second reading of max Weber. This theory is opposed to the Marxist tradition, for which the companies are structured starting from the production processs economic. Thus, in what the Marxists call the capitalist mode of production, the production is structured around the adverse report/ratio of production direct producers (workmen) and owners of the means of production (capitalists). The Capitalisme thus creates two social classes, the workmen and the capitalist middle-class. These two classes are in fight, the middle-class exploiting, according to the Marxists, the workmen. Economic production structure thus the company by creating antagonistic social classes.

Bourdieu refuses this theory of social space. He thinks, indeed, following max Weber that the companies are not structured only starting from economic logics. Bourdieu thus proposes to add to the economic Capital, which it names, by analogy, the cultural capital. It seems to him, indeed, that in the modern societies, quantity of cultural resources which have the social agents a crucial role in their social position plays. For example, the social position of an individual, for Bourdieu, is determined as much by the diploma which it has than by the economic richness which it could inherit.

Bourdieu thus builds a theory with two dimensions of the social space, which is opposed to the unidimensional theory Marxist . The first dimension is consisted the had economic capital, the second by the cultural capital. An individual is located some share in social space according at the same time to the total volume of the two capital which it has, but also relative importance of each of the two types of capital in this total volume. For example, among the individuals equipped with a great quantity with capital, and which form the dominant class of a company, Bourdieu opposes those which have much economic capital and less cultural capital (industrial middle-class essentially), located in top on the right of the diagram below, with the individuals who have much cultural capital but less economic capital, located in top on the left of the diagram (professors of university, for example).

Bourdieu insists on the fact that its vision of social space is relational: the position of each one does not exist in oneself, but compared to quantity of capital which the other agents have. In addition, if Bourdieu thinks that cultural capital and economic capital are the two types of resources which structure most in-depth the contemporary companies, it leaves the place to any other type of resources, which can, according to each particular company, to occupy a determining place in the constitution of the social hierarchies.

Bourdieu, starting from this theory of the hierarchisation of the company, seeks to include/understand how are built the social groups. In the difference of the Marxist , Bourdieu does not believe that the social classes exist, in oneself, objectively (“realistic” position). On the contrary, if the sociologist can, starting from the differences in social behaviors for example, to build social classes “on paper”, it does not go from oneself that the individuals regard themselves as by forming part. Many studies thus could show that the number of individuals being regarded as belonging to the “middle-class” is quite higher than that which one would have starting from an “objective” definition of this membership. However, Bourdieu does not think either that the social classes do not have any reality, that they are only one arbitrary regrouping individuals (“nominalist” position). Bourdieu thinks that an essential part of political work consists in mobilizing the social agents, of gathering them symbolically, in order to create this feeling of membership, and to constitute “mobilized” social classes thus. But that is likely all the more to succeed that the individuals whom one thus tries to bring together are objectively close in social space.

Space lifestyles and fights symbolic systems

For Bourdieu, the lifestyles of the individuals are the reflection of their social position. Thus, Bourdieu endeavors to reveal a strong correlation between the manners of living, of feeling and of acting of the individuals, their tastes and their dislikes in particular, and the place which they occupy in the social hierarchies. This correlation between social and practical positions social is illustrated by the diagram to the top, which makes correspond to a space social positions, a space of the social, cultural and political practices.

The habitus is one of the fundamental mediations of this correlation. The individuals, by living a certain type of social life, also acquire specific cultural provisions. Thus, the workmen (cf supra ) condemned to a life where the economic need dominates, have a functional vision of the food (which must be before very nutritive) or of the art (which can be only realistic). They design in the same way their body as an instrument as it is necessary to strengthen and await practice of the sport thus more physical force.

However, Bourdieu thinks that in this space of the lifestyles an essential aspect of the legitimation of the social order is played. Indeed, insofar as the social practices are treated on a hierarchical basis and that these hierarchies reflect the subjacent social hierarchies, the lifestyles have powerful effects of distinction and legitimation. For example, the dominant social groups by liking socially more developed musics than the dominated social groups find, in same time, a source of distinction in their tastes. But this distinction is also legitimation: the dominant social groups are distinguished because they like distinguished musics.

Pierre Bourdieu thinks thus that part of the fight between social groups takes the form of a fight symbolic system. The individuals of the dominated social groups endeavor, indeed, to imitate the cultural practices of the dominant social groups to develop itself socially. However, the individuals of the dominant social groups, sensitive to this imitation, then tend to change social practices: they seek some rarer, ready to restore their distinction symbolic system. It is this dialectical disclosure, imitation and research of the distinction which is, for Bourdieu, at the origin of the transformation of the cultural practices.

However, in these fights symbolic systems, the dominated classes can be only losing: by imitating the dominant classes, they recognize the cultural distinction of it; without being able to never reproduce it. “The claim leaves always beaten since, by definition, it is let impose the goal of the race, acceptor, at the same time, the handicap which it endeavors to fill”.

One finds here the fundamental idea of Bourdieu on social space: this one is relational. There are no tastes which are in them-even vulgar: if they are it, it is because one opposes them to others definite as distinguished. The Golf could not be distinguished if there did not exist other sports, like the Football, to which one can oppose it. In fact, the distinction of the social practices change with time, primarily according to their adoption by the lowest social classes.

The diagram with the top thus represents only one moment of the bond between social and cultural positions social and practical. This bond changes with the social struggles of distinction. Thus, tennis is distinguished much less today than at the time from the realization from the investigations (which date from the years 1960) whose is drawn this graph. And, in fact, its practice was largely popularized within the lower middle class.

The lifestyles are thus objectively distinguished: they reflect social conditionings which are expressed through the habitus. But they are also the product of strategies of distinction, by which the individuals aim at restoring the value symbolic system of their practices and cultural tastes with measurement of their imitation by less privileged social groups.

Reproduction of the social hierarchies

The reproduction of the social order passes, for Bourdieu, at the same time by the reproduction of the social hierarchies and a legitimation of this reproduction. Bourdieu thinks that the educational system plays a big role in this reproduction, within the contemporary companies. Bourdieu thus works out a theory of the educational system which aims at showing: 1) that it renews the social order, by leading the children of the members of the dominant class to obtain the best school diplomas allowing them, thus, to occupy in their turn of the dominant social positions 2) which it legitimates this school classification of the individuals, by masking his social origin and while making of him, on the contrary, the result of innate qualities of the individuals (“ideology of the gift”).

In the reproduction , Pierre Bourdieu, with Jean-Claude Passeron, endeavors to show that the educational system exerts a “power of violence symbolic system”, which contributes to give a legitimacy to the power struggle at the origin of the social hierarchies. How that is it possible? Bourdieu believes, first of all, to note that the education system transmits knowledge which is close to those which exist in the dominant class. Thus, the children of the dominant class lay out of a cultural capital which enables them to adapt more easily to the school requirements and, consequently, to better succeed in their studies. That, for Bourdieu, allows the legitimation of the social reproduction. The cause of the academic success of the members of the dominant class remains indeed masked, while their accession, thanks to their diplomas, with dominant social positions is legitimated by these diplomas. Like it notes it, “the verdicts of the school court are also decisive only because they impose the judgment and the lapse of memory of awaited social of the judgment”. In other words, for Bourdieu, while masking the fact that the members of the dominant class succeed with the school because of the proximity between their culture and that of the education system, the school makes possible the legitimation of the reproduction social.

This process of legitimation is, for Bourdieu, maintained by two fundamental beliefs. On the one hand, the school is regarded as neutral and its knowledge like fully independent. The school is thus not perceived as inculcating arbitrary cultural near to that of the middle-class - what makes its classifications legitimate. In addition, the failure or academic success, generally, is regarded as “gifts” returning to the nature of the individuals. School failure, basically social process, will thus be included/understood by that which undergoes it like a personal failure, returning to its insufficiencies (like its lack of intelligence, for example). This “ideology of the gift” plays, for Bourdieu, a determining role in the acceptance by the individuals of their school destiny and the social destiny which results from this.

These theses are included and developed in the nobility of State published in 1989 in collaboration with Monique de Saint Martin. Bourdieu proposes the increasingly large influence of what it names the mode of reproduction to school component, which makes diploma true a import duty in the modern bureaucratic companies, even for the industrial middle-class which occurred a long time from there to transmit its social positions. Today, almost all the social classes are condemned to ensure obtaining by their children of capable school diplomas to reproduce their social position, until and including the owners of company, whose children must have a diploma to direct in their turn the company. That transformed the school system deeply, in particular the field of the universities of the capacity. Thus, Bourdieu endeavors to show that the traditional universities, where traditional school competences dominate, are competed with today by new schools, near of the pole dominating of the field of the capacity. The National university thus lost its place dominant with the profit of ENA. In same time, " schools refuges" (often of the schools of management like the European Business School, to take again the example of Bourdieu), with the weak school requirements, appeared, whose function is to make it possible children resulting from the dominant classes to acquire diplomas that they cannot obtain in the universities.

Specialized sociologies

Pierre Bourdieu has, starting from his apparatus conceptual, approached the study of many under-fields of sociology, like the sociology of the sport, political sociology, religious sociology, etc

The sociology of the media

At the end of his life, Pierre Bourdieu developed, in some articles and a short work ( On television ), a sociology of the media. This sociology, being able to be read like a radical criticism of the media, met a great public success, although it occupies a minor place in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, that it remained succinte and based on a not very important empirical work.

The incorporation of an habitus and unconscious ideology

This habitus, registered in the body and perception, is the fruit of the experiments passed, lived social and the training. Although it is clear that we all are different, one can nevertheless define habitus specific to the field, where the individual habitus is an alternative of the same habitus subjected to similar structural constraints. This concept makes it possible to fall into none of the two opposite theoretical errors, one which informs a strictly structuralist interpretation where the journalist would be a mechanical puppet and the other, strictly individualistic which sees the journalist like completely free and conscious of its practices. These provisions, basically concerting, are acquired under objective conditions of overall identical or similar existence and formation. Like shows it Alain Accardo in “Journalists precarious” , the work conditions are indeed virtually identical. Thus, the journalists and newspapers “are subjected to the same constraints, the same surveys, the same advertisers. (…) Compare the covers of the French weekly magazines with fifteen days of interval: they are about the same titles” . Thus, the editor association of Los Angeles Times declares: “Myself, that astonishes me. Take the first pages of US Today, NewYork Times, Washington Post - often we have the same photographs exactly. How is that done? Do we consult each other? Not. And yet, we make the same choices. It is odd. ” That does not have actually anything “odd” if it is considered that the actors of the same field have a “manner particular, but constant, to enter in relation to the world, which locks up a knowledge making it possible to anticipate the course of the world” and to give him direction. In fact thus structures classify, divide and structure the world of which they are themselves produces it. One cannot however think the journalistic practices like a total convergence on all the subjects. We can nevertheless note a certain homogeneity and even in certain cases, “to unite” as for the war of the Gulf or the European constitution while thus acting in the direct interests of the capacity. It is accordingly that it is necessary to wonder in what these phenomena of convergence or this “community of inspirations” are not the fruit of structured provisions and structuring a such habitus. Thus when does Pierre Bourdieu ask a journalist why “it puts this in first and this as a second? ” the usual answer is “it is obvious! ” This answer which has obviously direction only for that which pronounces it, is the fruit of this habitus, of these provisions which reveal “as more natural than nature” what is actually the fruit of an asset. Thus, each journalist will have “tendency to believe that his manner of apprehending reality is “the natural” manner . These rules go so much from oneself for the actors, that they are not of it any more aware.

The imposition of the categories specific to the field

Since less and less people read daily newspapers or other information sources, television holds “a kind of monopoly in fact on the formation of the brains of a very great part of the population. ” This monopoly in information is a real problem, because television thus tends to impose its systems of grading, of thought, its way of ordering reality and of classifying with an important fringe of the population. This weight of the televisual field is exerted in several fields and several fields. While imposing “glasses” , manners of perceiving, it indirectly will force the other fields to be expressed or with having to adopt the categories of thought specific to the media field. As regards criminality, studies tend to show that the evaluations and the opinions of the public reflect much more the designs and the representations that are made the media that reality itself. This kind of investigation shows the significant impact of the media on the public opinion and not the reverse as good number of journalists take pleasure to believe. As regards semantics, she plays a fundamental role as Eric Hazan shows it. It indicates for example, that the period post September 11th is marked by the rise of new entities the such “arabo-Moslem” , the “islamist” , the “terrorism” … These denominations, independently of their validity, impose a ethnicized interpretation of the attacks and question of the Radical Islam. This vision, largely hegemonic in the journalistic field was constituted with the detriment of a social and economic vision. It has in more one very important weight on the debates being able to take place in other fields and on the topics of debates launched by other groups. The imposition of interpretative grids thus marginalizes in fact the opinions divergent and different from those preached by the media. The weight of the journalistic field and its requirements is for example very visible in the philosophical field, which it largely destabilized. Thus, with the rise of the media, the graduates of philosophy found a means “of making recognize their capital on other markets” and thus “of circumventing the authorities of academic and scientific dedication” . Thus, in order to acquire a position legitimating in the media field, these philosophers saw themselves constrained to have a philosophical production which conforms to the requirements of the great journalistic debates. These “intellectual” productions will strongly disturb the philosophical or intellectual field in this direction, because to hope for a minimum of recognition they will have to play in the rules of the media speech. That will have thus supported a substantial number of small compromisings, resignations or treasons within the intellectual field which thus loses its autonomy and weighs on contradiction.

Differential reception of the categories

It is necessary nevertheless to moderate the impact of the categories of perception imposed by the media, because it should well be understood that the concept of habitus implies a differential reception of the contents. In this direction, the reception of an emission will depend as much on the emission that reception. “is to say that the reception (and without any doubt also the emission) depends for a great part on the objective structure of the relations between the objective positions in the social structure of the agents in interaction…”

In this direction, a European comparative research (young people and the screen) carried out of coordination with the various European governments, shows an essential thing: “that the behaviors of interested with respect to television is function of the membership of a favoured social environment or a underprivileged social environment” this reveals that the “social fracture weighs heavily on the statute and the face attitudes on television. ” This investigation does not certainly approach reception of the contents as such, but testifies however that the attitude and the provisions with respect to television are largely dependant on the objective positions of the actors in a given social structure. This fact is already while oneself particularly speaking and tends to moderate the criticism stated in the preceding point.

Criticisms

The work of Pierre Bourdieu was the object of an attention criticizes very particular, with the measurement of its influence in social sciences. It is difficult to reveal only one tension field in what is reproached a work spread out over nearly 40 years. These criticisms (to limit itself to those of the academic mediums) came from various schools of thought in social sciences - Marxists with the partisans of the theory of the rational actor - and related to very diverse aspects of this work.

A criticism dominates, however: this one relates to the nature of the social determinations in the theory of Pierre Bourdieu, which are described like rigid and simplifying (critical “determinism”). With the concept of habitus , one thus could reproach for again posing the problems which he intended to solve: between the absolute determinism of structuralist (where the subject is subject to rules) and the unbounded freedom of the existentialists, the concept of habitus , thought by Bourdieu to exceed this opposition, undoubtedly reaches that point only incompletely, leaning towards a certain form of determinism. The action of the agents is, indeed, in last analysis, the product of the determinisms which makes weigh on them the social world and which find their reflection in the provisions constitutive of their habitus .

Anecdotes

  • In 1981, Bourdieu with Gilles Deleuze and other intellectuals supported the principle candidature of Coluche for the presidential election, wanting by there recalling that any citizen had in democracy the right to take part in the political competition .
  • Pierre Bourdieu was accustomed to keeping in its office a greetings card imitating those of end of the year but over which it was registered " Merry brothel! " instead of " merry Christmas! ". This chart had been offered to him by its students.

Principal works of Bourdieu

See also: Works and bibliography de/sur Pierre Bourdieu

The titles announced by one * are most accessible.

  • Heirs. Students and the culture , with J. - C. Passeron, Midnight, 1964 (Extracts)

  • Love of Article museums and their public , Midnight, 1966,1969, with Alain Darbel, Dominique Schnapper
  • an average Art. Test on the social uses of photography , Midnight, 1965, with Luc Boltanski, R. Castel, J. - C. Chamboredon
  • the Trade of sociologist , with J. - C. Passeron and J. - C. Chamboredon, Bordered: Sheep, 1968
  • the Reproduction. Elements for a theory of the educational system , Midnight, 1970
  • Draft of a theory of the practice , preceded by Three studies of ethnology kabyle , Droz, 1972
  • the Distinction. Critical social of the judgment , Midnight, 1979
  • the Direction practices , Minuit, 1980
  • Questions of sociology , Minuit, 1981 *
  • what to speak wants to say: economy of the linguistic exchanges , Beech, 1982
  • Homo academicus , Midnight, 1984
  • Things known as , Midnight, 1987 *
  • the Nobility of State. Universities and team spirit, Midnight, 1989
  • Rules of Article Genesis and structure of the literary field , Threshold, 1992
  • Answers. For a reflexive anthropology , Threshold, 1992, with Loïc Wacquant *
  • the misery of the world , Threshold, 1993 *
  • practical Reasons. On the theory of the action , Threshold, 1994 *
  • On television , followed the influence of journalism , Liber, 1996 *
  • Meditations pascaliennes , Threshold, 1997
  • male Domination , Threshold, 1998
  • Science of science and reflexivity , Reasons to act, 2001
  • the Ball of the single people. Crisis of the country company in Béarn , Threshold, 2002
  • Draft for self-analysis , Reasons to act, 2004 *

Catalog of films

  • In Finally taken of Pierre Carles, the documentarist is based on a passage of Pierre Bourdieu in the emission of Daniel Schneidermann: Freeze frame , to clarify the theory of the sociologist on the media field.

  • the journalistic field is a filmed intervention of Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France, it is this intervention which will be at the origin of the book On television
  • Entretien Pierre Bourdieu and Günter Grass, Arte (Franco-German television channel), diffused the 12/5/1999
  • Bourdieu, Grand maintenance of the Circle of midnight with Laure Adler, France television (F2), April 1998
  • Bourdieu, Réflexions made, emission of the SEVEN, 3/31/1991
  • Pierre Bourdieu, Chercheur of our time, video of the CNDP (France), 1991
  • Pierre Bourdieu, Grands talks, Antenne 2 (French television) with Antoine Spire, Miguel Benassayag and Pascale Casanova, 1990
  • Maintenance with Pierre Bourdieu with Didier Eribon, video cassette of CNRS, 1984.

Price and distinctions

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