Bourdieu and Literature is a wide-ranging, rigorous and accessible introduction to the relationship between Pierre Bourdieu's work and literary studies. It provides a comprehensive overview and critical assessment of his contributions to literary theory and his thinking about authors and literary works. One of the foremost French intellectuals of the post-war era, Bourdieu has become a standard point of reference in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, art history, cultural studies, politics, and sociology, but his longstanding interest in literature has often been overlooked. This study explores the impact of literature on Bourdieu's intellectual itinerary, and how his literary understanding intersected with his sociological theory and thinking about cultural policy. This is the first full-length study of Bourdieu's work on literature in English, and it provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars of literary studies, cultural theory and sociology.

Preface by Pierre Bourdieu Preface by Loic J.D. Wacquant I Toward a Social Praxeology: The Structure and Logic of Bourdieu's Sociology, Loic J.D. Wacquant 1 Beyond the Antinomy of Social Physics and Social Phenomenology 2 Classification Struggles and the Dialectic of Social and Mental Structures 3 Methodological Relationalism 4 The Fuzzy Logic of Practical Sense 5 Against Theoreticism and Methodologism: Total Social Science 6 Epistemic Reflexivity 7 Reason, Ethics, and Politics II The Purpose of Reflexive Sociology (The Chicago Workshop), Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant 1 Sociology as Socioanalysis 2 The Unique and the Invariant 3 The Logic of Fields 4 Interest, Habitus, Rationality 5 Language, Gender, and Symbolic Violence 6 For a, Realpolitik of Reason 7 The Personal is Social III The Practice of Reflexive Sociology (The Paris Workshop), Pierre Bourdieu 1 Handing Down a Trade 2 Thinking Relationally 3 A Radical Doubt 4 Double Bind and Conversion 5 Participant Objectivation Appendixes, Loic J.D. Wacquant 1 How to Read Bourdieu 2 A Selection of Articles from, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 3 Selected Recent Writings on Pierre Bourdieu.

This is the first comprehensive description of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of culture and habitus. Within the wider intellectual context of Bourdieu's work, this book provides a systematic reading of his assessment of the role of `cultural capital' in the production and consumption of symbolic goods. Bridget Fowler outlines the key critical debates that inform Bourdieu's work. She introduces his recent treatment of the rules of art, explains the importance of his concept of capital - economic and social, symbolic and cultural - and defines such key terms as habitus, practice and strategy, legitimate culture, popular art and distinction. The book focuses particularly on Bourdieu's account of the nature of capit

Bourdieu's work is formidable - the journey is tough. Follow this French foreign legion - take an apple, take a hanky - but take this book' - "Peter Beilharz, La Trobe University "A good range of recent examples from popular culture are used to flesh out the material in accessible terms. These examples are deployed very well indeed - rather than being tacked-on illustrations of an idea, they are instead used at the heart of the explanation of the ideas'" - David Gauntlett, Leeds University " Now considered one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, Pierre Bourdieu has left his mark on most of the 'big' theoretical issues in the world of contemporary theory: gender, subjectivity, the body, culture, citizenship, and globalization. His terms are now commonplace: 'social capital', 'cultural capital', 'field', and 'habitus'. Bourdieu examines how people conduct their lives in relation to one another and to major social institutions. He argues that culture and education aren't simply minor influences, but as important as economics in determining differences between groups of people. Unlike the other grand systematisers Marx and Foucault, Bourdieu has tested these arguments in detailed fieldwork. His range is eclectic, his vision is vast, and his writing is often dense and challenging. Understanding Bourdieu offers a comprehensive introduction to Bourdieu's work. It is essential reading for anyone tackling him for the first time.

Pierre Bourdieu is one of the world's most important social theorists and is also one of the great empirical researchers in contemporary sociology. However, reading Bourdieu can be difficult for those not familiar with the French cultural context, and until now a comprehensive introduction to Bourdieu's oeuvre has not been available. David Swartz focuses on a central theme in Bourdieu's work—the complex relationship between culture and power—and explains that sociology for Bourdieu is a mode of political intervention. Swartz clarifies Bourdieu's difficult concepts, noting where they have been misinterpreted by critics and where they have fallen short in resolving important analytical issues. The book also shows how Bourdieu has synthesized his theory of practices and symbolic power from Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, and how his work was influenced by Sartre, Levi-Strauss, and Althusser. Culture and Power is the first book to offer both a sympathetic and critical examination of Bourdieu's work and it will be invaluable to social scientists as well as to a broader audience in the humanities.

Pierre Bourdieu has been making a distinguished contribution to European sociology for the past 25 years. He is Professor of Sociology at the Collge de France in Paris and author of many influential books including, most recently, Distinction and Homo Academicus, which have both been translated into English. This book serves to introduce this important body of work to the Anglo-American world. In a cross-disciplinary collaboration Richard Harker, Cheleen Mahar and Chris Wilkes provide the reader with the necessary tools to understand this complex and rewarding body of French sociology. Post modernist sociology has already been influenced by the French theorist Foucault; it is likely that the generation to come will be reading Bourdieu.

French sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s relevance for studies of spatiality and mobility has received less attention than other aspects of his work. Here, Deborah Reed-Danahay argues that the concept of social space, central to Bourdieu’s ideas, addresses the structured inequalities that prevail in spatial choices and practices. She provides an ethnographically informed interpretation of social space that demonstrates its potential for new directions in studies of mobility, immobility, and emplacement. This book traces the links between habitus and social space across the span of Bourdieu’s writings, and places his work in dialogue with historical and contemporary approaches to mobility.

The works of Pierre Bourdieu occupy a central place in the current development of world sociology. This volume offers an accessible but challenging introduction to Bourdieu's ideas. In a series of discussions, lectures and interviews, the range of Bourdieu's ideas is laid out and its relation to other disciplines and other sociological schools is explored. The issues developed include the sociology of culture, leisure and taste; the intrinsic reflexivity of social science; and the role of language in society and social sciences.

Through Pierre Bourdieu's work in Kabylia (Algeria), he develops a theory on symbolic power.

In the last decade of his career, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu became involved in a series of high-profile political interventions, defending the cause of striking students and workers, speaking out in the name of illegal immigrants, the homeless and the unemployed, challenging the incursion of the market into the field of artistic and intellectual production. The first sustained analysis of Bourdieu's politics, this study seeks to assess the validity of his claims as to the distinctiveness and superiority of his own field theory as a tool of political analysis.