Over the last three decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory and research of the post war era. Yet, despite the influence of his work, no single introduction to his wide-ranging oeuvre is available. This book, intended for an English-speaking audience, offers a systematic and accessible overview, providing interpretive keys to the internal logic of Bourdieu's work by explicating thematic and methodological principles underlying his work. The structure of Bourdieu's theory of knowledge, practice, and society is first dissected by Loic Wacquant; he then collaborates with Bourdieu in a dialogue in which they discuss central concepts of Bourdieu's work, confront the main objections and criticisms his work has met, and outline Bourdieu's views of the relation of sociology to philosophy, economics, history, and politics. The final section captures Bourdieu in action in the seminar room as he addresses the topic of how to practice the craft of reflexive sociology. Throughout, they stress Bourdieu's emphasis on reflexivity—his inclusion of a theory of intellectual practice as an integral component of a theory of society—and on method—particularly his manner of posing problems that permits a transfer of knowledge from one area of inquiry into another. Amplified by notes and an extensive bibliography, this synthetic view is essential reading for both students and advanced scholars.

An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology

Politics & Social Sciences

Pierre Bourdieu

Loïc J. D. Wacquant

Social Sciences

University of Chicago Press

During the past two decades sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has emerged as a dominant force in cultural studies through his lucid analysis of every field of cultural activity from tastes in music and art to choices in food and lifestyles. The Field of Cultural Production brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art and literature and provides the first introduction to his writings and theory of a cultural field that situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. Bourdieu addresses many of the issues that have consumed literary, art, and cultural criticism over the past decade: aesthetic value and canonicity, intertextuality, the institutional frameworks of cultural practice, the social role of intellectuals and artists, and structures of literary and artistic authority.

The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Criticism (European Perspectives: a Series in Social Philosophy and Cultural Criticism)

University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Routledge Classics)

No judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction brilliantly illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world, focusing on the tastes and preferences of the French bourgeoisie. First published in 1979, the book is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. In the course of everyday life we constantly choose between what we find aesthetically pleasing, and what we consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu demonstrates that our different aesthetic choices are all distinctions - that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. This fascinating work argues that the social world functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement.

Distinction A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Philosophy

Routledge

The intellectual radicalism of the 1960s spawned a new set of questions about the role and nature of "the political" in social life, questions that have since revolutionized nearly every field of thought, from literary criticism through anthropology to the philosophy of science. Michel Foucault in particular made us aware that whatever our functionally defined "roles" in society, we are constantly negotiating questions of authority and the control of the definitions of reality. Such insights have led theorists to challenge concepts that have long formed the very underpinnings of their disciplines. By exploring some of the most debated of these concepts--"culture," "power," and "history"--this reader offers an enriching perspective on social theory in the contemporary moment.
 Organized around these three concepts, Culture/ Power/History brings together both classic and new essays that address Foucault's "new economy of power relations" in a number of different, contestatory directions. Representing innovative work from various disciplines and sites of study, from taxidermy to Madonna, the book seeks to affirm the creative possibilities available in a time marked by growing uncertainty about established disciplinary forms of knowledge and by the increasing fluidity of the boundaries between them. The book is introduced by a major synthetic essay by the editors, which calls attention to the most significant issues enlivening theoretical discourse today. The editors seek not only to encourage scholars to reflect anew on the course of social theory, but also to orient newcomers to this area of inquiry.
 The essays are contributed by Linda Alcoff ("Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism"), Sally Alexander ("Women, Class, and Sexual Differences in the 1830s and 1840s"), Tony Bennett ("The Exhibitionary Complex"), Pierre Bourdieu ("Structures, Habitus, Power"), Nicholas B. Dirks ("Ritual and Resistance"), Geoff Eley ("Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures"), Michel Foucault (Two Lectures), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ("Authority, [White] Power and the [Black] Critic"), Stephen Greenblatt ("The Circulation of Social Energy"), Ranajit Guha ("The Prose of Counter-Insurgency"), Stuart Hall ("Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms"), Susan Harding ("The Born-Again Telescandals"), Donna Haraway ("Teddy Bear Patriarchy"), Dick Hebdige ("After the Masses"), Susan McClary ("Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshly"), Sherry B. Ortner ("Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties"), Marshall Sahlins ("Cosmologies of Capitalism"), Elizabeth G. Traube ("Secrets of Success in Postmodern Society"), Raymond Williams (selections from Marxism and Literature), and Judith Williamson ("Family, Education, Photography").

Culture / Power / History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Tony Bennett

Dick Hebdige

Stuart, Hall

Linda Alcoff

Sally Alexandeer

Donna Haraway

Ramond Williams

michel-foucault

Princeton University Press

The Love Of Art : European Art Museums And Their Public

Alain Darbel

Dominique Schnapper

Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated

Homo Academicus

Unknown

The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Pierre Bourdieu; edited and introduced by Randal Johnson. Light edge wear and there are several creases on the spine.There are some pencil annotations in the text. The page block is slightly grubby.Binding tight and square, contents clean and unmarked.

Polity Press

This book offers a statement and development of Bourdieu's work in the field of anthropology. Drawing on his own field work as well as a wide range of ethnographic and anthropological texts, Bourdieu unfolds a theoretical perspective which aims to do justice to the practical logic of everyday action as well as the objective structures within which such action takes place. A thorough understanding of practice requires the anthropologist to move beyond objectivism and subjectivism and grasp, by means of the concept of "habitus", the interplay of structures and practices in the ongoing conduct of everyday life. Bourdieu applies his theoretical perspective to the analysis of kinship patterns, the social construction of domestic space, social categories of perception and classification and ritualized actions and exchanges.

The Logic of Practice

Blackwell*publishers

Over the last three decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory and research of the post war era. Yet, despite the influence of his work, no single introduction to his wide-ranging oeuvre is available. This book, intended for an English-speaking audience, offers a systematic and accessible overview, providing interpretive keys to the internal logic of Bourdieu's work by explicating thematic and methodological principles underlying his work.The structure of Bourdieu's theory of knowledge, practice, and society is first dissected by Loic Wacquant; he then collaborates with Bourdieu in a dialogue in which they discuss central concepts of Bourdieu's work, confront the main objections and criticisms his work has met, and outline Bourdieu's views of the relation of sociology to philosophy, economics, history, and politics. The final section captures Bourdieu in action in the seminar room as he addresses the topic of how to practice the craft of reflexive sociology. Throughout, they stress Bourdieu's emphasis on reflexivity—his inclusion of a theory of intellectual practice as an integral component of a theory of society—and on method—particularly his manner of posing problems that permits a transfer of knowledge from one area of inquiry into another.Amplified by notes and an extensive bibliography, this synthetic view is essential reading for both students and advanced scholars.

Loïc Wacquant

This is Bourdieu's long-awaited study of Flaubert and the formation of the modern literary field.It was in the nineteenth century that the literary universe as we know it today took shape, as a space set apart from the approved academies of the state. No one could any longer dictate with authority what ought to be written, or decree the canons of good taste: recognition and consecration were produced in and through the struggle in which writers, critics and publishers confronted one another.The aesthetic project of Gustave Flaubert was formed at the very moment when the literary field became autonomous. Through a careful analysis of the genesis and structure of the literary field, Bourdieu is able to show how the work of Flaubert was shaped by the different currents, movements, schools and authors of the time - how, in other words, Flaubert was the product of the very field that he helped to produce.By uncovering the rules of art, the logic which writers and literary institutions obey and which expressed itself in a sublimated form in their works, Pierre Bourdieu shatters the illusion of the all-powerful creative genius. At the same time, he lays the foundations for a sociological analysis of literary works which would be concerned not only with the material production of the work itself, but also with the production of its value.Widely praised in France, where the book was compared with Sartre's classic work on Flaubert, The Rules of Art will be extensively discussed in the English-speaking world. It will be recognized as one of the most important contributions of the last decade to the study of the social and historical conditions of literary works.

The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

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Books by Pierre Bourdieu