Reading and Teaching Bourdieu

7/22/2019 Reading and Teaching Bourdieu

1/18

W.E.B. Du Bois Institute

Reading and Teaching Pierre BourdieuOutline of a Theory of Practice. by Pierre Bourdieu; The Inheritors: French Students andTheir Relation to Culture. by Pierre Bourdieu; Jean-Claude Passeron; Reproduction inEducation, Society and Culture. by Pierre Bourdieu; Jean-Claude Passeron; Homo Academicus.by Pierre Bourdieu; Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. by PierreBourdieu; The Love of Art. by Pierre Bourdieu; Alain Darbel; The Logic o ...Review by: V. Y. MudimbeTransition, No. 61 (1993), pp. 144-160

Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the W.E.B. Du Bois InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2935228 .

Accessed: 18/04/2013 14:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Indiana University Press and W.E.B. Du Bois Institute are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to Transition.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 189.223.128.146 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:36:48 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iupresshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=webhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2935228?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2935228?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=webhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iupress


2/18

T R A NSITIO0N ( UnderReview

READING A N D TEACHINGPIERRE BOURDIEU

V. Y. MudimbeSixtyish,a philosopherby education,ananthropologistndsociologistby choice,PierreBourdieu-directorof studies atL'EcolePratiquedes HautesEtudesandProfessor f Sociologyat Le College deFrance-is todayone of the most inter-nationally enownedFrenchntellectuals.His achievements comparableo thatofsome of the most esteemednames intwentieth-centuryhought. In intellec-tual France, he fortiesand fifties weredominatedbyJean-PaulSartre,MauriceMerleau-Pontynd SimonedeBeauvoir.Then came he sixtieswith structuralismandClaudeLevi-Strausssademigod, heseventies ndthe eightieswithpoststruc-turalismrepresentedby theorists likeJacquesDerrida and Jean-FrancoisLy-otard.Can it be said hatthe ninetiesareinauguratinghe reignof Bourdieu?It'sa temptingudgment,particularlyfrom an Americanperspective.For theframework y which Americansendtoclassifythe French thinkersof the lastfifty years s builton the haphazardol-itics of translation, happenstancehatleads o rathermisleading iscontinuities.Inasmallbook,Modernrenchhilosophy,VincentDescombesdemonstrateshat a

shared et of questions uns romthepre-Sartrianperiodto the poststructuralists.The supposed uptures etween heseep-ochs can be understood, ather,as ad-umbrations,daptations,edefinitions,ndreformulationsf the significance f thehumancondition.It's a historyof reca-pitulation,and one that Bourdieu's n-terprise eemsto sumup.Bourdieu'satestbook is LesRegles el'Art: Geneseet Structure u ChampLitter-aire(1992). The publicityfor the bookhasfocusedon the claimthat the authorunveils he foundation f a scienceof lit-eraryworkandpresentshis own defini-tive "Flaubert." he implicit challenge,plainlyenough, s to another"Flaubert,"the one offeredby Sartre's lassicstudy,L'Idiot e aFamille.Butthere'smore.LesRegles e 'Art ncludesa veryambiguouschapter-"QuestionsdeMethode"-thatat oncecelebratesndcriticizesSartre.AsBourdieu hesociologistees t,Sartrewasprojectinghis own illusionson Flaubert;helackedascientificmethodwhichcouldaccountorFlaubert'screativity.Happily,Bourdieu s not so ill-equipped. n hisscheme,the basicrulesare clear: com-petitionandcompetitivenessrewhat ex-

144 TRANSITION ISSUE 61

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/18

plain survival and success in the field of structuralism. He is celebratory when Pierre Bourdieucultureandthe arts.The artistor thinkerhas o finda nichefor himself nthefield,affirmhis creativity,andimposehis au-thority. Naturally,one thinks of Bour-dieu himselfin this regard,and it's hardnot to view his contradictoryeferencestoSartre sareflection f animplicitcom-petition between PierreBourdieu,theyoungerphilosopher ndsociologist,andJean-PaulSartre,he masterphilosopherto be surpassed.ndeed,the verytitle-"QuestionseMethode"-repeats artre'sown introduction o TheCritiquefDi-alecticalReason.

From his earliest theoreticalworks(whichdate rom he 1972 OutlineofThe-ory of Practice)through In Other Words(1990)to LesRiglesde 'Art,Bourdieuhasmadesimilarlyambivalent eferences o

commenting on Claude Levi-Strauss's olein promoting the welfare of the socialsciences, but very critical about the trans-fer of the Saussureanmodel of langue andparole to these disciplines. Bourdieu ob-jects to the fetishization of langue, theunderlying ("deep") structure or systemof idealized linguistic practices,at the ex-pense of the diverse and living variety ofparoles, performances which Bourdieubelieves, contrastructuralism, nvolve thecreative activity of the speaker.It is pre-cisely here, I'd like to suggest, that Bour-dieu's ambitions are revealed: a criticalproject that would synthesize the scopeand scientific rigor of the "philosophy"of systems called structuralismwith thehumanist appeal of the "philosophy" ofindividual freedom and creativity made

READING AND TEACHING BOURDIEU 145

Photo by Marie-ClaireBourdieu



4/18

Discussed inthis essayOutline of a Theory ofPractice,PierreBourdieu,Cambridge: ambridgeUniversityPressThe Inheritors:FrenchStudents and Their Re-lation to Culture, PierreBourdieu ndJean-ClaudePasseron,Chicago:Uni-versityof ChicagoPressReproduction in Educa-tion, Society and Cul-ture, PierreBourdieu nd

Jean-ClaudePasseron,SagePublicationsHomo Academicus,PierreBourdieu,Stanford:StanfordUniversityPressDistinction: A SocialCritique of the Judge-ment of Taste, PierreBourdieu,Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPressThe Love of Art, PierreBourdieu ndAlain Dar-bel,Stanford: tanfordUniversityPress

The Logic of Practice,PierreBourdieu,Stanford:StanfordUniversityPressLanguage and SymbolicPower, PierreBourdieu,Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPressIn Other Words: Essaystoward a Reflexive So-ciology, PierreBourdieu,Stanford: tanfordUni-versityPressLes Regles de l'Art:Genese et structure duChamp Litt6raire,PierreBourdieu,Seuil

fam6us by the Jean-Paul Sartreof BeingandNothingness.What we arewitnessingis an attempted reconciliation of the twogreat antagonists of postwar intellectualFrance, the objectivist methodology il-lustratedby Claude Levi-Straussand thesubjectivist methodology of existential-ism.

That Bourdieu's diverse and oftenflamboyantoeuvre respondsto the signalintellectual concerns of the late twentiethcentury does not belittle his originalityand importance. It signifies, on the con-trary,both his intellectual orthodoxy as alector nd his powerfully subversiveintentas an auctor,a complicated achievement Iwill explore in the remainderof this essay.

Bourdieu's Outlineof a Theoryof Practice,reprinted seven times since its first pub-lication in English in 1977, is a master-piece. It is the narrationof an intellectualodyssey and a landmark in the reconcep-tualization of the social sciences. RichardNice, the translator,aptly (if wordily) in-troduces the book's importance, as "a re-flection on scientific practice which willdisconcert both those who reflect on thesocial sciences without practicing themand those who practicethem without re-flecting on them, [which] seeks to definethe prerequisitesfor a truly scientific dis-course about human behavior, that is, anadequate theory of practice which mustinclude a theory of scientific practice."The book contains four chapters.Thefirst, "The Objective Limits of Objectiv-ism," has two sections-a first, entitledAnalyses, and a second, A Case Study:Parallel-Cousin Marriage,which applies

the theory elaboratedin the first section,making use of researchBourdieu under-took between 1960 and 1970 in NorthAfrica (Kabylia,Collo, the Chelif valley,and Ouarsenis). In this chapterBourdieumeditates on the methods of research,convinced that "the practicalprivilege inwhich all scientific activity arises nevermore subtly governs that activity thanwhen, unrecognized as privilege, it leadsto an implicit theory of practicewhich isthe corollaryof neglect of the social con-ditions in which science is possible."Thinking about a theory of practicethusbroaches a series of important issues rel-evant to anthropology and beyond, theproblem of the social production ofknowledge. Bourdieu distinguishes threetypes of theoretical knowledge of the so-cial world, three "moments in a dialecti-

AfricanStudies is litteredwith sweeping formulationslike "Bantu philosophy"that have occluded thevarieties of native

experience for over fiftyyears

cal advance":aphenomenological or eth-nomethodological knowledge whichreads, interprets, makes explicit the pri-maryandordinaryexperienceof everydaylife in the social world; an objectivistknowledge which, breakingfrom the pri-mary knowledge, "constructs the objec-tive relations(e.g. economic or linguistic)which structurepractice and representa-tion of practice,i.e., in particular,primaryknowledge, practicaland tacit, of the fa-miliar world." The final, andcrucial,mo-




5/18

mentwouldbe abreakingwithobjectivistknowledge,a questioningof its condi-tionsof possibilityandthusits limits.This questioningof objectivisms li-able to be understood t firstasa

rehabilitationofsubjectivismnd o bemergedwiththecritiquehatnaivehumanismevelsatscientificbjectificationnthenameof"livedexperience"nd therights f subjectivity.nreality,hetheoryfpracticendoftheprac-ticalmodefknowledgenherentnallpracticewhichsthepreconditionforrigorouscienceofpracticesarries uta new reversalof theproblematichichobjectivismas oconstructin ordero constitutehe socialworldas asystemfobjectiveelationsindependentfin-dividual onsciousnessesndwills.

This finalmoment nvolvesthe simulta-neouspursuitof objectivistknowledge,upto apoint,andthe constant warenessof the situation, he privilegedposition,of the scientist.What is importantshowproperlyto construeobjectivism,as apowerfulandnecessary ut limitedtool.Bourdieu nsistson what Bachelard allsepistemological igilance,on the neces-sity of makingclearthe differencebe-tween"spontaneousemiology"orprac-tical knowledge and the second-orderhermeneuticparadigms. his constitutesa radicalcritiqueof the "implicitphilos-ophyof practicewhichpervadeshe an-thropologicalradition,"heperverse ndunself-consciousrelationshipetween heobserver nd he observed.African tud-ies is litteredwith suspectsecond order"objectivisms," weeping formulationslike "Bantuphilosophy"and "Africanphilosophy" hat haveoccluded he va-rietiesof nativeexperienceor overfifty

years.) Bourdieu reminds us that "nativetheories are dangerous not so much be-cause they lead researchtowards illusoryexplanations as because they bring quitesuperfluousreinforcement to the intellec-tualisttendency inherent in the objectivistapproachto practices." In sum, the ob-jectivist readingsproducecultureasa donedeal, an opusoperatum,nstead of the con-structed and open work of a modus ope-randi, culture as a process in the making.

Bourdieu's own method follows threebasicpropositions. One: "One is entitledto undertake to given an 'account of ac-counts,' so long as one does not put for-ward one's contribution to the science ofpre-scientific representationof the socialworld as if it were a scientific represen-tation of the social world." Two: "Onlyby constructing the objective structures(price curves, chances of access to highereducation, laws of the matrimonial mar-ket, etc.) is one able to pose the questionsof mechanisms through which the rela-tionship is established between the struc-tures and the practices or the represen-tations which accompanythem instead oftreatingthese 'thought objects'as 'reason'or 'motives' and making them the deter-mining cause of the practices." Three:"Official language, particularly the sys-tem of concepts by means of which themembersof a given groupprovide them-selveswith a representationof their socialrelations (e.g. the lineage model or thevocabularyof honor), sanctions and im-poses what it states, tacitly laying downthe dividing line between the thinkableand the unthinkable, thereby contribut-ing towards the maintenance of thesymbolic order from which it draws itsauthority." In other words, the anthro-pologist should be wary of the fact that




6/18

nativeexperience s complexandstrati-fied;to use Saussureanategories, herewould be alwaysin any social world apreeminence f langue(the abstract,n-stitutional,ndsocialnormof expression)overtheparole theconcrete,ndividual,andcreative ctualizationf the former).In chapter wo, "Structures nd theHabitus,"Bourdieu laborates n how tomove from a method and a practice a-voringthe opusoperatumo one resultingin the modusoperandi.A key concepthere is the habitus,a "durablynstalledgenerative rincipleof regulatedmpro-visations,[it] producespracticeswhichtend to reproduce he regularitiesm-manentn theobjective onditions f theproductionf theirgenerative rinciple."Inotherwords, hehabitussanaccretionof internalizedessons hatthe agenthaslearnedover the courseof his socializa-tion:

Eachagent,wittingly r unwittingly, illynilly, s aproducerndreproducerf objectivemeaning. ecause is actions nd works retheproduct f a modusoperandiof whichhe is nottheproducernd hasno consciousmastery,hey ontainn"objectiventention,"astheScholasticsputt,whichalways utrunshis consciousntentions.

Chapterhree,"GenerativechemesandPracticalLogic:Invention within Lim-its,"andchapterour,"Structures, ab-itus,Power:Basisfor a Theoryof Sym-bolic Power,"amplifythe meaningofpostobjectivistnthropology,ouchingonspecific opicssuchas the calendar,con-omy of logic, cosmogonic practice,thresholds, ndritesof passage.He intro-duces compelling theoreticalconcepts,

including ymboliccapital,andproducesoriginal understandingsf doxa,ortho-doxy, heterodoxy,a wide rangeof cul-turalpractices nd beliefs.He concludesthat

thetaskof legitimatingheestablishedrderdoesnotfall exclusivelyo themechanismstraditionallyegardedsbelongingo theorderof ideology,uchas law.Thesystem f sym-bolicgoods roductionnd hesystem roduc-ingtheproducersfulfilnaddition,.e.by hevery ogicof theirnormalfunctioning,deo-logicalunctions,by virtueof thefact thatmechanismsthrough hich hey ontributeothereproductionfthe establishedrder,ndtotheperpetuationfdominationemainid-den.

Bourdieu's rojects notwithoutpar-allelin theAnglophoneworld.The Out-line's bjectives similar o RoyWagner'sin The nventionofCulture(1975),partic-ularlyWagner's deaof cultureas a wayof talkingabout he human ondition, ndof describing foreignculture saprocessof "inventing" languageanda practiceof familiaritywhich arenot those of theobserver.CliffordGeertz, n "ThickDe-scription," he first chapterof his re-nownedTheInterpretationfCulture(1973),makes claims that can be compared oBourdieu's: hat a culture s a symbolicsystemand unctions ike alanguage;hatcoherencedoes not seem to be the majortest of validity or a description;hat inorder o do ethnography,o describes tonarrate,o turnapassing vent ntoa nar-rativeaccount.Metaphorically,Geertz'sturtlestory ust might be the best illus-trationof Bourdieu'scritique f objectiv-ist knowledge.




7/18

There s an Indianstory- at leastI heard tas an Indian story-about an Englishmanwho,havingbeen oldthatthe worldrested na platformwhich restedon the backof anelephantwhich rested n turn on the backofa turtle,asked(perhapshe was an ethnogra-pher; t is theway theybehave),what did theturtle eston?Another urtle.And thatturtle?"Ah, Sahib,after hat it is turtles ll thewaydown."

Yet Bourdieu's work is different in im-portantrespects.It is very much aproductof postwar French philosophy, inflectedwith and responding to the languages ofMarxism and phenomenology, as well asthe structuralismof Claude Levi-Strauss;a work situated in the social sciences al-most by default, because "philosophy astaught in the [French]University was not[then] very inspiring." Even Bourdieu'smost important theoretical contribution,the habitus, is largely a critical revisionof a philosophical concept, the absolutefreedom of the human agent propoundedby the Sartreof BeingandNothingness ndExistentialism s a Humanism.

The central notion of habitus set forthin the Outlinesuggeststhat legitimacy andpower areproduced and reproduced by aculturealmost naturally;culture results inclass differentiations in social space. Letus note here that, contrary to Marxism,which defines class as a relation to theprocessof production, as an economic orinfrastructural unction, Bourdieu's classis largely defined with reference to su-perstructures-to culture, status, and ed-ucation. TheInheritors:renchStudents ndTheirRelationto Cultureby Bourdieu andJean-Claude Passeron is a perfect exam-ple. The authors chose a well-circum-

scribed population: students of humani-ties and social sciences.

Artsstudents xhibit n anexemplarywaytherelation oculturewhich we tookas ourobjectofstudy.We realize hatbyisolating n anal-ysis ofculturalprivilege,rom within a wholesetofcurrent esearchprojectsn educationndculture,wemayappearo bereducinghewholerangeof possiblequestionso onesingle ques-tion.But thiswas therisk hathadto be aken,in orderto grasp thefundamentalproblemwhich the ritualproblematicn this areaal-mostalwaysmanageso conceal.

Refusing to take for granted the mean-ingfulness of the category "student," asthough there were a common studentcondition, the authors take painsto showthat the myths of the "student" and of"student life" disguise the actual oper-ation of the educational system, whichresponds to and reproduces divisive in-equalities. They describethe variouscom-plicated factorswhich sediment the pro-cess of formalizing class differences: theprocessof selection, the scholasticexams,the systemof concours,he universitycam-pus versus the "GrandesEcoles." All ofthese directlyparticipate n the reproduc-tion of a cultureand its inequalities:"Theeducation system is required to produceindividualswho areselected andarrangedin a hierarchy once and for all for theirwhole lifetime." Must educationwork inthis way, must it stigmatize all those whopass through it? Could one not dream ofa "real democratic education [to] allowthe greatest possible number of individ-uals to appropriate he greatestnumber ofabilities which constitute school cul-




8/18

ture?" Bourdieu and Passeron'sresponseto their own question is telling:

In the absenceof a rationalpedagogydoingeverything equiredo neutralize he efect ofthe socialfactorsof culturalinequality,me-thodically ndcontinuously,rom kindergar-ten touniversity,hepoliticalproject fgivingeveryonequaleducationalopportunityannotovercome he real inequalities, ven when itdeploysverynstitutionalndeconomicmeans.Conversely, trulyrationalpedagogy,hatis,onebased n asociology fculturalinequalities,would,nodoubt,helpto reduceinequalitiesneducationndculture,but t wouldnot beableto become realityunlessall theconditionsfora true democratizationof the recruitmentofteachers ndpupilswerefulfilled, thefirst ofwhich would be the setting up of a rationalpedagogy.

The Inheritors ramatizes he vast gulf sep-aratingthe bourgeois ideal of democraticeducation from the actualpractice of theeducational system, often with referenceto statistic surveys. Reproductionn Edu-cation,Society ndCulture,also coauthoredby Bourdieu andPasseron,providesa moretheoretical interpretation of the samephenomenon, elaborating a theory ofsymbolic violence. In this case "symbol-ic" should be understood in its ordinarymeaning, as a sign representing some-thing else. The theory of symbolic vio-lence is definedby Bourdieu from a num-ber of closely related paradigms, modelsof pedagogy.

The first paradigm is the process ofsocialization, the insertion of "individu-als"into groups,into systemsof referenceandvalue like the family, institutions suchas church, school, and vacation camps, aswell as into more informal ensemblessuch

as the neighborhood, the street,andracialor sexual groupings.The pedagogical im-perative is to maintain a monopoly on"legitimate" culture, to cement a culturalarbitrary hat cannot, in principle, be de-duced from any universalprinciple.A second paradigm is that of peda-gogic authority, relations of dependence,as exemplified by relations between par-ents and children, teachersandpupils, el-ders and youths. The parent, teacher, orelder incarnate an auctoritas,"the powerof a founder," and inculcate the "truth"of the culture and its traditions in thechild, pupil, or youth. Pedagogic author-ity is at stake in the legitimate modes ofeducatingandsocialization; t calls to mindDescartes'spronouncement that our ma-jor predicamentis that we have beenchil-dren. We have been "made" accordingto a socially defined and ultimately arbi-trary understandingand definition of cul-ture. Is it possible to challenge this im-position? It is the old paradox ofEpimenides, the liar, that we then face,as articulated n Reproduction:Eitheryoubelieve I'm not lying when I tell you ed-ucation is violence and my teaching isn'tlegitimate, so you can't believe me; oryoubelieve I'm lying and my teaching is le-gitimate, so you still can't believe what Isaywhen I tell you it is violence." Is therean answer to this problem, short of a stockadmissionof cultural relativism?As Bour-dieu observes, it is one thing to introducesomeone who has alreadybeen "educat-ed" to cultural relativism (awareness ofthe arbitrariness f any culture) and quiteanother to conceive of a relativistic edu-cation, one that would "produce a culti-vated man who [is] the native of all cul-tures." The concept of pedagogicauthority assumes another, that of peda-




9/18

gogic work, the third paradigm. This isa process, a long one, whose objective isto produce a habitus, an "internalizationof the principles of a cultural arbitrarycapable of perpetuating itself after thepedagogicaction has ceased."FromBour-dieu'sperspective,educationis to culturalorder what genes are to biological order.Another paradigm is the educationalsystem itself-its demands, rituals, andsymbols. It operatesby producing and re-producing"the conditions which arenec-essaryfor the exercise of its functions ofreproducinga cultural arbitrary," o thatpractices incompatible with that missionbecome theoretically unthinkable. But,one might say, marginalsand revolution-aries exist. The system, asa matterof fact,produces two main types of cultivatedpeople, which could be reduced to twomedievalcategories:the lector ndthe auc-tor.The first is exemplified by the priest-like educatedperson,who seeshis missionas one of maintaining the culture andtransmitting it-a perfect definition ofwhat a good teacher should be; he com-ments on the cultural arbitrary.The sec-ond is a prophetic figure, who exploresnew ways of adapting, rearticulatingtheculturala priori.The two lastparadigmsare the schoolauthorityand the work of schooling; thefirst represents the symbolic violence tobe actualized,while the second representsthe actualization of this violence:

The successof all schooleducation, ndmoregenerallyof all secondaryedagogicwork,de-pends undamentallyon the educationprevi-ouslyaccomplishedn the earliestyearsof life,evenandespeciallywhen theeducationalsys-tem denies this primacyin its ideologyandpracticeby making he schoolcareer history

withnopre-history:eknow hat hroughlltheskill-learningprocessesfeverydayife,andparticularlyhroughhe acquisitionf themothertonguerthemanipulationfkinshipterms ndrelationships,ogical ispositionsremasteredn theirpracticaltate.Thesedispo-sitions,more r esscomplex, ore r ess lab-oratedsymbolically,ependingnthegroup rclass, redisposehildrenunequallyowardssymbolicmasteryftheoperationsmpliedsmuch n a mathematicalemonstrations indecodingworkofart.

The books exploredthus far describeBourdieu'shorizon:an intellectual on-figurationhataims o reduce hetensionbetween heoryandpractice, ubjectivityandobjectivity,he material ndsymbol-ic. More specifically,f we refer to theinterviewspublishedundera significanttitle,In OtherWords-I thinkof Sartre'sTheWords-we could,in termsof theo-reticalconfrontations,otea few points.One is the oppositionbetweenrulesandstrategieshatseparatesourdieurom hestructuralists. tructuralism ocuses onstrictures, n rules; t is mappedout ongridsand assumes he unchangingsys-tematic coherence of the Saussurianlangue.Bourdieus interestedn probingthestrategic eployment f rules, he ex-ecutionof rulesin specific,concrete n-stances, he realmof possibility ignifiedby parole.His hypothesiss simple:Cul-ture s a game."Inthe gameyou cannotdo just anythingand get awaywith it.And the feel for the game,which con-tributeso thisnecessityandthis logic, isa wayof knowingthisnecessityandthislogic." In any case,the orthodoxyandregularityfmodesofpracticenthegameexpresshehabitus, disposition eferringbackto the languageof rulesinculcated




10/18

in the agent. Finally, the field of culturalproduction studied in Outline,but morevisibly in TheInheritors nd Reproduction,is this universe that we call "the republicof letters." Auctorsor lectors,ntellectualsin this field, are producersand "may put[their]power at the service of the domi-nant. They may also, in the logic of theirstruggle within the field of power, puttheir own power at the service of thedominated in the social field taken aswhole."

HomoAcademicusexemplifies these is-sues by exoticizing the familiar and trap-ping the classifier himself, the scholar.The book is simultaneouslya self-analysisof the French academic universe and areflection on Bourdieu's sociologicalpractice. The preface to the English edi-tion describes the French intellectual mi-lieu and the recent transformationsthathave made possible the spread of socialscience discourses.Bourdieu identifiesthegerminal confrontation between Sartreand Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss's accom-plishment was to disinterphilosophy andexpand the scope of the social sciences,reinforcing new hybrid creativities (likeAlthusser, Barthes, Deleuze, Derrida,Foucault) and accompanying new direc-tions in more established disciplines, aswith Emil Benveniste and Andre Marti-net in linguistics, Georges Dumezil andBraudel in history.

The previously dominant disciplines,philology, literary history and

evenphilosophy,whose intellectualfounda-tionsare threatenedby theirnew rivals,dis-ciplines ike linguistics, emiology, nthropol-ogy, or even sociology, ind that the socialfoundations ftheiracademicxistence realsoundersiegefromthe criticismswellingup onall sides, usually in the name of the social

sciences ndon the initiativeof teachersfromthesedisciplines, gainst hearchaicnatureoftheircontents ndtheirpedagogicaltructures.

Homo Academicusdescribes this intellec-tual reconfiguration.Bourdieu begins byreflecting upon his own case, imitatingRousseauat the beginning of the Confes-

Cana native be a goodanthropologist?Can anacademic be a goodsociologist of academe?

sions. Born in North Africa, trained inphilosophy, he converted to anthropol-ogy and chose his own native region asobject of ethnology. Can a native be agood anthropologist? The question re-translates tself aproposHomoAcademicus:Can an academic be a good sociologist ofacademe? It is worthwhile in this con-nection to look at other, nonacademicat-tempts to conceptualize the educationalsystem.

What is the difference between HomoAcademicus,which defines itself as a "so-ciology of tribal secrets" and, say, Ray-mond Aron's TheOpiumoftheIntellectuals(1955), or a recent polemical analysis byBernard Maris, Les Sept PechesCapitauxdes Universitaires(1991). Aron objectifiesthe practices and commitments of hisMarxist enemies but neglects, refusing tohistoricize himself, to locate his critique.Maris self-righteously ridicules the aca-demic. Bourdieu, in Homo Academicus,chooses a more difficult path: to describethe present-day field of intellectual pro-duction without recourse to naive or self-serving objectifications,and with due re-spect for epistemological discontinuities.




11/18

His method, finally, is that of a geneticsociology at once reflexive and autocrit-ical. In his words:

Thus we havebeentemptedo adopt hetitle,A Book for Burning, which Li Zhi, a ren-egademandarin,aveto oneof those elf-con-sumingworksof his which revealedhe rulesofthemandarins'game.We doso,not in orderto challengehosewho, despiteheir readinessto denounce ll in inquisitions,will condemnto the takeanyworkperceivedsasacrilegiousoutrage gainsttheirown beliefs,butsimplyto statethe contradiction hich is inherent ndivulging ribalsecrets nd which is only sopainfulbecause venthepartialpublication fourmostntimate etails s alsoa kindofpublicconfession.

The method integrates two complemen-taryvisions: an objectivism which breakswith purely subjective experience and aperspectivismwhich attempts, by histor-icizing the observer, to overcome or ac-knowledge the limits of that objectivism.Analyzing the academy,in order to makesense of trends, the author must distin-guish between empirical and epistemicn-dividuals;the latter are individuals-like"Levi-Strauss, ather of structuralism"-defined by a number of properties in aconstructedand theoreticalspace.And thebook, analytically, pictures a culture andits rules. It is about what we could, usingMichel Foucault'sterms, call an "art"anda "technique" for the maintenance andregulatedtransformationof traditionalar-rangements. Indeed, the authority of theacademicusonsists of cultural capital.

The most celebrated of Bourdieu'sbooks is probablyDistinction:A SocialCri-tiqueof theJudgement f Taste(1984). Onecould summarize Distinction in five the-

oretical entries: (1) three methodologicalbreaks,(2) sociology understoodas a dis-cipline of social topology, (3) the conceptof "class on paper,"and finally (4) socialposition and (5) distinction. "The scienceof taste and of cultural consumption,"writes Bourdieu, "begins with a trans-gressionthat is in no way aesthetic: it hasto abolishthe sacred rontier which makeslegitimate culture a separateuniverse, inorder to discover the intelligible relationswhich unite apparently ncommensurable'choices,' such aspreferencesin music andfood, painting and sport, literature andhairstyle." He claims that his method isbuilt out of three ruptures:a first withMarxism,whose analytic gridemphasizes"substances"(thatis concrete,realgroups,classes) at the expense of "relations"; asecond rupture with economistic inter-pretations, which tend to privilege thefield of economics in the strict sense andthus reduce the complexity of the socialworld and its multidimensionality tostructuresof economic productionandso-cial relations of production; and a thirdbreakwith objectivism, the usualpracticeof disciplineswhich, in the name of rigorandobjectivity,overlooks symbolic strug-gles.

The second key to a critical under-standing of Distinctionmight be a rede-finition of sociology as a discursiveprac-tice on a social topology-a practiceconcerned, on the one hand, with agentsor groups of agents regrouped accordingto their positions and interrelations in asocial space,and, on the other hand, withcharacteristicspossessedby those agents-propertiesfunctioning in the social spaceas capital,as signs of power. This secondkey immediately suggests a third, that ofclass, or more precisely, that of "classeson paper."Bourdieu suggests that "from




12/18

aknowledgeof thespaceof position,onecancarveoutlogicalclasses, etsof agentswho occupy imilarpositionandwho be-ingsituatednsimilar onditionshaveev-ery chance of having similar disposi-tions." Hence a classwhich, contraryothe Marxianconcept, s not "mobilized"for a causebut is simplythe result of aclassification.n sum,one might saythatTheInheritorsorewitnessto the prefer-encesandvarieties fjust such a classonpaper,and that Reproductionormulatedthe rules hatmakecomprehensibleheseclasses and the symbolicviolence thatunites andopposesthem. Thus, for in-stance,ntermsof education, sBourdieuputs t in The nheritors,thespecific on-tradictionn the scholasticmode of re-productionies in theopposition etweenthe interests f the classwhich the edu-cational ystem ervesstatisticallynd heinterestsof those membersof the classwhomit sacrifices." he fourthkey,thatof socialpositionality,ouldbeexplainedas a sortof classunconsciousness,vague"sense" of one's belonging or not be-longing,anunderstandingfone's"place"in the social.Finally, he lastkey is dis-tinctionor,moreprecisely, ifference,hequalityhatrefersback o asymbolic ap-ital. "Life-styles re thus the systematicproducts f habitus,which, perceivedntheir mutual relations through theschemas f the habitus,becomesign sys-temsthataresociallyqualifiedas distin-guished,' vulgar,' tc.)."Thebook demonstratesbeyonddoubtthat, ndeed, herearemany ypesof cap-ital: economic(which translates s ma-terial,monetarywealth)but also culturalcapital constituted y education-diplo-mas, knowledge, cultural goods) andsymboliccapital(accumulatedecogni-

tions, honors, etc.). Distinctions arise asa result of the complex struggles for sur-vival and success in the fields. Bourdieureliesheavily on quantitativemethods andinstruments.The questionnairesat the endof Distinction revery instructive.The firstone, for the interviewee, is made to pro-duce a "subjective" representation; thesecond one, to be completed by a trainedinterviewer, produces, indeed, a differentsort of knowledge concerning the inter-viewee (home, dress, physical presenta-tion, speech). Let us add that the ques-tionnaires are just one element of thecomplex body of surveys used by Bour-dieu.

Another example of this method(combining subjectivist representation,objectivist analysis, and interpretativetechniques) is given in TheLoveof Art, arecent work by Pierre Bourdieu andAlainDarbel,with Dominique Schnapper.Thebook, after a brief preface, opens with areflection on the questionnaire, the sam-ple, andthe survey;it then proceedswithan analysis of the coding, an analysis ofresults(the method of successivesurveys),the formalization exercise, and a descrip-tion of the problems that arise when re-sults drawn from the French populationare comparedwith those from four otherEuropeancountries:Greece,Holland, Po-land and Spain. Chapter 3, "The SocialConditions of Cultural Practice," andchapter 5, "The Rules of Cultural Dif-fusion," aswell as the appendices(almostone third of the book) are highly math-ematicized. Someone without a solidbackgroundin statisticswould tend to fo-cus on the brief chapter dealing with"Cultural Works and Cultivated Dispo-sition," an essay that brilliantly demon-strateswhat might seem a truism to some




13/18

readers:"Statisticsshow that access to cul-tural works is the privilege of the culti-vatedclass; however, this privilege has allthe outwardappearancesof legitimacy. Infact, only those who exclude themselvesare ever excluded."

In TheLogicofPractice(1990) Bourdieutheorizes his own practices.Book 1 pre-sentsa "Critiqueof Theoretical Reason,"significantly introduced by two quota-tions. The first is from Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical nvestigations:

"How am I able tofollow a rule?"-if thisis nota question boutcauses henit is aboutthejustificationor myfollowinga rule n thewayI do.If I haveexhausted hejustifications havereachededrock,ndmyspades turned.ThenI am inclined osay: "This is simplywhatIdo."

The second quotation comes from Aris-totle's Poetics:"Man ... is the most im-itative ... of all animals and he learnshisfirst lessons through mimicry." Bour-dieu's Logic is a strange book, a highlytheorizedyet very discreetintellectual au-tobiography. In book 1, Bourdieu dwellsalmost obsessively on concepts alreadyamply elaboratedin his preceding books:the limits of objectification, the habitus,symbolic capital, and modes of culturaldomination. The reasoningis clear, solid,sometimes dogmatic. The master statis-tician of Distinction and The Love of Artnow pays careful tribute to philosophyand its teachings. Descartes, Dilthey,Durkheim, Hegel, Husserl, Kant, Levi-Strauss,Marx, Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato,Sartre,Wittgenstein, and others are in-voked often appropriatelyand generallyquite convincingly. The most amazing

reference from my viewpoint, is, indeed,to Pascal'sbet on the existence of God,which Bourdieumakes "work asan a con-trarioheuristic model." It leadshim, first,to the observation that "one cannot ra-tionally pursue the project of foundingbelief on arational decision without beingled to ask reason to collaboratein its ownannihilation in belief, a 'disavowal of rea-son' that is supremely'in accordancewithreason."' Secondly, he faults Pascal for"falling into the usual error of profes-sional exponents of logos and logic, whoalways tend, as Marx put it, to take thethings of logic for the logic of things."Poor Pascal:He should have known notto confuse "the will to think practice interms of the logic of decisionsof the will"!Book 2 of TheLogicofPractice,"Prac-tical Logics," is a very clear and precisediscussion of Bourdieu's ethnological re-searchesin North Africa and his anthro-pological readings. He exploits the no-tions and realities of land, matrimonialstrategies,and kinship in orderto recon-ceptualizestructuralist essons concerninganalogy, homology, indeterminacy, andtransgression.Here lies his methodolog-ical "secret," which one may call "thefundamentaldivision."

To escapefrom heforcedchoicebetween n-tuitionism ndpositivism,withoutfallingntothe nterminableinterpretationo whichstruc-turalism s condemned hen,havingfailed ogo back othegenerativerinciples,t canonlyendlessly eproducehelogical perations hicharemerelyheircontingentctualizations,neneeds oapplya generativemodel hatis bothverypowerfulandverysimple.Knowingthefundamentalprincipleof division(thepara-digm of which is the oppositionbetween hesexes), one can recreate-and thereforeully




14/18

understand-all thepractices nd ritualsym-bolson the basisof two operationalchemeswhich,beingnaturalprocesses ulturally on-stituted n andthrough itualpractice, rein-dissolublyogicaland biological,ike thenat-uralprocessesheyaim to reproducein bothsenses),when theyare conceivedn termsofmagical ogic.On the one hand, there s thereunitingof separated ontraries,of whichmarriage, loughingor thequenching f ironareexemplaryases,and whichengendersife,as the realizedreunionof contraries;nd onthe otherhand, there s the separation f re-unitedcontraries,with,for examplethesac-rificeof the ox and harvesting,nacted s de-nied murders.

To sum up, in The Logic of Practiceonecan readan intellectualautobiography:hedetermining influence of Claude Levi-Strauss aphilosopher anda "model"whochose anthropology as a vocation) andhow, thanks to the new social sciences, itbecamepossibleto contemplate overcom-ing the distinction between truths of rea-son and truthsof facts.This, in fact,bringsus back to the basic questions that Bour-dieu exposed in Outlineofa Theory fPrac-tice:What to think of doxic knowledgevis-a-vis the phenomenological as de-scriptionandreflection of the primaryex-perience?What kind of credibilityshouldwe give to objectivist analysesof the na-tive primary experience? In sum, forBourdieu, as already seen, we shouldquestion the Saussurean paradigm oflangue versusparole-that is, the sociallyconstructed norm vis-a-vis its individualperformances-and move from a her-meneutics concerned with the opusopera-tum to a hermeneutics of a modus ope-randi.Interestinglyenough, the best guideseems to be the Sartreof BeingandNoth-

ingness and his anthropology of humanfreedom) as opposed to the Sartre of TheCritiqueof DialecticalReasonand his am-bition of circumscribing the missions ofa "we-subject." In fact, this leads us backto the CartesianCogitoand,paradoxically,to the power of illusiowhich, to rephraseBourdieu's quotation of Claudel, makesus understand hat to know is "to be bornwith."

Against the freedom of the Cogitosig-nifiedby a subjectivepower, Bourdieuop-poses the habitus as lex insita, that is, asimmanent law. Let'spausea moment andredescribethe illusio of an identity, as de-finedby the firstSartre.My consciousness,to refer to the analysisof BeingandNoth-ingness, s an attempt to assume my ownunity as being. If, thanks to the Cogito,Ican state that I am aware that, indeed, Ithink and thus I do exist, then I shouldbe capableof saying that I have found myown existence. Temporalizing this ex-perience, I understand hat my being-for-itself nihilates my in-itself in the past, thepresent, and the future. In the past, I amjust anobject (the way a table is anobject),and the present seems to be a negation ofmy being, since I apprehendmyself as anevasion toward the future; thus, I expe-rience a failure in this standing out ofmyself. I can then reflect about it, and ina second extasis, discover another failure:how can I, at once, be an identity, sincein my reflection it is obvious that there isa deviation between the I reflecting andthe I reflectedupon?A third extasisopensup, and what I discover is that my for-itself has a self for the other, a self whichis me, and yet I am not capableof know-ing it; I am a being-for-others.I bring this phenomenological readingof my impossible identity (in a mathe-




15/18

matical formula asA = B) asa sign of thecomplexityof my parole.Inprinciple,sucha position should buttressBourdieu's cri-tique of the system represented by thelangueand its ruleson me. But once more,like a pendulum, he moves to the otherside; thus, he says in TheLogicofPractice:"Everything takes places as if the habitusforged coherence and necessity out of ac-cident and contingency; as if it managedto unify the effects of the social necessityundergone from childhood, through thematerial conditions of existence, ... as ifit produced a biological (and especiallysexual) reading of social properties . . .,thus leadingto a social re-use of biologicalpropertiesand abiological re-use of socialproperties."This issue is pervasivein Language ndSymbolicPower.The book is a collectionof essayspublished as articles in the lateseventies and early eighties. It is orga-nized around three main themes: theeconomy of linguistic exchanges, the so-cial institution of symbolic power, and,finally, symbolic power and the politicalfield. The set of chaptersleaves no doubtwhere Bourdieu stands: he believed inCalude Levi-Strauss's tructuralism n the1960s but became disenchanted with itbecause of its blind dependence uponSaussure's linguistic theory. For Bour-dieu, the analysisof the linguist carriesanidealizationorfictiojuris hatpromotestheillusion of a common langue which is,effectively, in political terms, the legiti-mate and victorious language. Thus, asJohn B. Thompson, the editor of theAmerican version of Languageand Sym-bolicPower,puts it, "If linguistic theorieshave tended to neglect the social histor-ical conditions underlying the formationof the language which they take, in an

idealizedorm,as theirobjectdomain, otootheyhave ended o analyzeinguisticexpressionn isolation rom the specificsocialconditionsn whichtheyareused."Bourdieu, swe havealreadyeen,wantsto reversethis perspectiveby insisting onsymbolicpoweror symbolicviolence asit is deployedn the socialworldandonthe activecomplicityof the dominated.Thus the mainthesisof the book:

Sociologyanfree tselffromll theforms fdominationhichlinguisticsnd tsconceptsstillexercisetoday verhe ocialciencesonlyby bringingo lighttheoperationsf objectconstructionthroughwhich his sciencewasestablished,nd the socialconditionsof theproductionndcirculationof itsfundamentalconcepts.helinguisticmodelwastransposedwith uch asento hedomainofanthropologyandsociologyecauseneacceptedhecoren-tentionof linguistics,amely, he intellec-tualistphilosophywhich reatslanguagesanobject f contemplationatherhanas aninstrumentofaction ndpower.ToacceptheSaussurian odel nd tspresuppositionss totreathe ocialworld s a universeofsymbolicexchangesnd to reducection o an actofcommunicationhich,ikeSaussure'sparole,isdestinedobedecipheredymeansofacipherora code,anguager culture.In orderobreakwith thissocialphiloso-phyonemusthowhat,domination-assym-bolicnteractions,hat s,asrelationsofcom-municationimplyingognitionndrecognition,onemustnotforgethat herelationsofcom-municationpar excellence-linguisticex-changes-are lsorelationsofsymbolicowerinwhich hepowerelationsetweenspeakersor theirrespectiveroups re actualized.nshort, nemustmovebeyondheusualqppo-sitionbetweenconomismndculturalism,n




16/18

order o developan economy f symbolicex-changes.

Correct usage of the language refers to alinguistic capital,its transmissionthrougheducation, and,by implication, to the pro-duction and reproductionof a legitimatelanguage. Should we not then add thatlanguage has an impact in the construc-tion of reality? Neo-Kantian theory(Humboldt-Cassirer, Sapir-Whorf) af-firms it and shows that there is a rela-tionship between language and the struc-turing of perception. In so far as thenormative language is that of the domi-nant class, it is clear that it expresses asymbolic power, the power of construct-ing a legitimate reality and, indeed, ofcreating, on this basis of knowledge andmastery of the language, objective andlogical classes.

* * 0

In the fall of 1992 I taught a graduateseminaron PierreBourdieu at Duke Uni-versity. The first day of the seminar, wewere thirty-six (including auditors),my-self excluded. On the last day, we werefifteen, although the registrar'soffice tellsme that nineteen regular students wereparticipating n the seminar. The finalpa-persI received seem to confirmthe figure.In any case, thirty-five American stu-dents in September 1992 wanted to fol-low me in a careful reading of the tenbooks I have summed up in this paper.There were alsocomplementary readings.They included anthropologists such asLeila Abu-Lughod (Veiled Sentiments,1986), Clifford Geertz (TheInterpretationof Cultures,1973), and Peter Rigby (Cat-tle, CapitalismandClass, 1992). A second

set of readingswas supposed to help thestudents understand the French back-ground and included books by VincentDescombes (Modern French Philosophy,1980) and H. Stuart Hughes (The Ob-structedath,1968).Inone semester rec-ommended and expected the students toread some fifteen books or articles byBourdieu or about Bourdieu; and I hadput on reserve for them at the library alisting with English abstracts of all theworks of Bourdieu and about Bourdieuavailablein English.The members of the seminar weremainly drawn from three departments:anthropology, comparative iterature,andromancestudies. Some auditorscame fromthe English department and a few werefrom philosophy. The seminar was heldon Fridays rom 3:00 to 6:00 p.m., a goodchoice for testing the motivation of theparticipants.We had twelve regular ses-sionsplus one directedby an invited guestprofessor, Robert Burch (from the phi-losophy departmentof the University ofAlberta, Canada) on Pierre Bourdieu,readerof Heidegger, which focused on abook that was not included in the readinglist, The Political Ontologyof Martin Hei-degger1991).Now that the seminar is over, I canobserve three facts:First,Bourdieu seemsto constitute an intellectual "event" onAmerican campuses. I was expecting tenor twelve students in this graduatesem-inar on Friday afternoons. I had thirty-five at the beginning and, if only fifteenwere present the last day of the seminar,nineteen were officiallypartof the group,not even including my irregularauditors.The second fact, linked to the first, isthat I went from a group of thirty-five tofifteenphysically presentatthe end. There




17/18

should be anexplanation.Did the readingprogram discourage some of them? Bymidsemester it was evident that even thestudents who had not missed a sessionwere behind in the readings. The mid-semester papers were a test. By then,Bourdieu was no longer the lonely cow-boy who, by the power of his intelligence,seemed to depopulate the French intel-lectual field. The studentshad understoodthe shape of the French intellectual con-figurationand needed to ground their ar-guments in their readings. My studentssurprisedme. Bourdieu was critically ap-plied to Latin American literature,SovietUnion politics, Chinese policies, the po-litical and contradictory narrations ofidentity in the Middle East and in India.And it worked. No, really.A number of students seemed not tolike Bourdieu, even when they were con-vinced by his overtures."He is arrogant";"He thinks that he is Kant or Hegel";"He does not quote all his sources";andso on. This may, I suppose, be a culturalproblem.

Anthropology students loved TheOutline. They could find in it a meth-odology, a rigor and a new spirit of Ein-fiihlungfor their objectof study.The Out-line, in effect, not only centralizesBourdieu'sambition as a postcolonial an-thropologist but sums up the dreamsof adiscipline in crisis. Some of the studentswent back to the late 1950s in order toconfront Bourdieu and read his 1958 so-ciology of Algeria (translatedas The Al-gerians,1962) andcomparedit to his anal-ysis in his 1962 "The AlgerianSubproletariat" 1973). They found in itreasons to believe in and to act upon adiscipline that has been, in an expiatingmasochism, interrogating itself since the

decolonialization period. Distinctionap-peared to them a good illustration of apossible conversion which, in its being,makes comprehensible Jeanne Favret'sstudy on sorcery in a French subculture(DeadlyWords,1980). Some of them arenow exploring research projects on lit-erary and modernization in India, theidentity and "distinction" of Indians inthe United States, and Soviet totalitari-anism and its cultural expressions. Stu-dents from romance studies (French andSpanish) as well as those from Englishliterature and from philosophy preferredBourdieu the theorist. To my surprise,their favorite book was not the TheLogicofPractice or LesReglesdel'Art;it was InOtherWords.The latter is a collection ofinterviews whose entries read like polit-ical proclamationsor bad advertising in-gles: "Fieldwork in philosophy," "Fromrules to strategies," "The interest of thesociologist," "The intellectual field: aworld apart,""The uses of the 'people,"'"Opinion polls: a 'science' without a sci-entist," and so forth. The collection issimply dazzlingly brilliant and reveals aneminently elegant andsophisticatedmind.Is this the reason for the success of thebook?Possibly.Bourdieuhimself with hisusual feel for his own ego put it well inthe preface to the English version:

Thelogicoftheinterviewwhich,in more asesthanone,becomes genuinedialogue,has theeffectof removingone of the mainforms ofcensorshipwhich thefact of belonging o ascientificield canimpose,one thatmay be sodeeplynternalizedhat tspresences not evensuspected:hat whichprevents oufrom an-swering,nwritingtselfquestions hich,fromtheprofessional'soint of view, canonly ap-peartrivialorunacceptable.




18/18

I doknow thatthose of the studentswholefttheseminareforemidtermwentawaywithIn OtherWordsn theirminds,withits statements boutthe logic and aber-rationsof scientificpractices.They werelookingforconceptual adgetsand toolsand did not want to submit o the rigorsof a systematicdecodingof Bourdieu'senterprise.Why shouldone fault them?I havetaughtSartre,Merleau-Ponty,and ClaudeLevi-Straussor the last tenyears n the United States,andenjoyedthesurprise f seeingyoungmindsopen-ing up to their ideasandcritically nte-grating these perspectives. TeachingBourdieu-it wasmy firsttime- was a

new challenge: I saw explosions of loveand hatred, respect and rejection, all re-actions that the elegance andbrilliance ofPierre Bourdieu's work can sustain. Butam I going to organize another seminaron Bourdieu?

Really, the idea frightens me now thatI know his mastery of the game. Well,what to say? If you would believe me,said the good old Simonides, we shouldnot like our own unhappiness. To thismasterful statement, one might add thepronouncementof another ancientGreek,Hesiod: "We shouldn't torture ourselvesby setting our hearts on grievous unhap-piness."


Reading and Teaching Bourdieu

Documents