This is the second of five volumes based on the lectures given by Pierre Bourdieu at the Collčge de France in the early 1980s under the title 'General Sociology'. In these lectures, Bourdieu sets out to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline, and in doing so he introduces and clarifies all the key concepts which have come to define his distinctive intellectual approach.
In this volume, Bourdieu focuses on two of his most important and influential concepts: habitus and field. For the social scientist, the object of study is neither the individual nor the group but the relation between these two manifestations of the social in bodies and in things: that is, the obscure, dual relation between the habitus as a system of schemas of perception, appreciation and action and the field as a system of objective relations and a space of possible actions and struggles aimed at preserving or transforming the field. The relation between the habitus and the field is a two-way process: it is a relation of conditioning, where the field structures the habitus, and it is also a relation of knowledge, with the habitus helping to constitute the field as a world that is endowed with meaning and value. The specificity of social science lies in the fact that it takes as its object of knowledge a reality that encompasses agents who take this same reality as the object of their own knowledge.
An ideal introduction to some of Bourdieu's most important concepts and ideas, this volume will be of great interest to the many students and scholars who study and use Bourdieu's work across the social sciences and humanities, and to general readers who want to know more about the work of one of the most important sociologists and social thinkers of the 20th century.
Contents
Lecture of 5 October 1982
The retrospective illusion and the unreality of theory in research -- A work
of axiomatisation -- Scientific concepts -- The fundamental questions --
Realist definition and interactionist definition -- Metaphysical requirements
for sociology -- Iron Filings
Lecture of 12 October 1982
The double life of the social -- The process of objectification and
incorporation of the social -- Moving beyond the opposition between
subjectivism and objectivism. -- Scholarly understanding and practical
understanding -- The examples of reading and the work of art -- Programme of
future lectures and questions from the audience
Lecture of 19 October 1982
Sense without consciousness -- The mechanistic error and the intellectualist
error -- The temptation of the sociologist as king -- Intellectual obstacles
to the knowledge of the gnoseologia inferior -- The habitus as orthe doxa
Lecture of 2 November 1982
Positions and dispositions -- The two states of history -- A feel for the
game -- Practical knowledge -- Investment in the game and illusio --
Affective transference of the domestic libido, and conformism -- Critique of
the economic discourse -- The economic conditions of economic practices
Lecture of 9 November 1982
Habituality in Husserl -- Decision theory in economics -- Avoiding mechanism
and purposiveness -- The theory of the machine -- The ontological power of
language -- Popular culture and popular language -- Marxist teleology -- The
reification and personification of the collective. -- The solution of the
habitus
Lecture of 16 November 1982
The adaptation of expectation to opportunity -- Avoiding purposiveness--
Interiorising the social -- Incorporating necessity -- Rites of institution
-- The call to order: the example of the relation of the family to the school
-- Social relations in the enquiry relationship -- Surreptitious persuasion,
symbolic violence -- The paradox of continuity -- Critique of the scholarly
relation
Lecture of 23 November 1982
A double--voiced discourse -- Looking scholarly -- Where is the sociologist
coming from? -- Sociology in the space of disciplines -- The unconscious
structures of the hierarchy of disciplines -- Philosophy / sociology /
history -- Epistemological struggles, social struggles -- Finding out what
sociology does
Lecture of 30 November 1982
Sociology as taking liberty/ies -- Positions, dispositions and stances --
Sociological bodies and academic styles -- Positions attained and positions
to attain -- Mental structures and objective structures -- Transformations of
the field: the case of the university system -- The refraction of external
constraints -- Strategies of struggle -- The boundaries of the field -- The
intellectual field
Lecture of 7 December 1982
The structural mode of thinking -- From symbolic systems to social relations
-- Parenthesis on the genesis of a corpus of knowledge -- The field of forces
and the field of struggles -- Thinking a social position -- How to construct
a relational space? -- The distribution of capital and the different
structures -- The inter--fields -- Return to the structure of the
distribution of capital -- The interdependence of field and capital -- The
major kinds of capital -- Conversion of the kinds of capital
Lecture of 14 December 1982
A manner of thinking -- The field and the statistical aggregate -- The
concept of the field (1): theoretical itinerary -- The concept of the field
(2): practical itinerary Field and milieu -- Field and interaction -- Field
and network -- Field and positions -- Field and representation of the
situation -- The space of objective relations and the space of interactions
-- Field, group, population, individual -- Representations and practical
sense -- Homologies between fields
Lecture of 11 January 1983
Physicalism and semiologism -- Structure as crystallised history -- Roulette
and poker -- The alternatives of income or trade -- Amor fati. -- The fertile
terrain of the literary field -- Art versus method: charismatic ideology and
sociology of literature -- The field as mediation -- Literary field and
intertextuality -- A chiasmatic structure -- Automation, hierarchisation,
institutionalisation -- The intellectual in the field of cultural production
Lecture of 18 January 1983
The world upside--down -- Field of power and field of cultural production --
Conservative intellectual -- The law of symbolic legitimation -- Return to
the struggles within the field of cultural production -- The genesis of the
invariants -- The adaptation of offer to demand through homology of structure
-- The conquest of autonomy -- The hierarchy of productions and the hierarchy
of publics
Lecture of 25 January 1983
The economic logic of cultural enterprises -- The truth of practice -- The
deferred profits of disinterestedness -- The ambivalent profits of the market
-- The subversion of the rules of the field -- Time--scales and
personalities -- Clients and rivals: the mediation of the education system
-- Generations and revolutions -- Modes of ageing and eternalisation --
Overthrowing for the sake of overthrowing -- Orientating the self in the
space of possibilities -- Trajectory / career and habitus -- The impious
dismantling of the fiction
Appendix
Summary of lectures, published in the Annuaire du Collčge de France
Notes
Index
Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was one of the most influential sociologists and anthropologists of the late twentieth century. He was Professor of Sociology at the Collčge de France and Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. His many works include Outline of a Theory of Practice, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, The Rules of Art, The Logic of Practice and Pascalian Meditations.
