Pierre Bourdieu: from 'sociologue de la domination' to 'sociologue des domines'
Title:
Pierre Bourdieu: from 'sociologue de la domination' to 'sociologue des domines'
Author:
Drake, David
Appeared in:
Modern & contemporary France
Paging:
Volume 12 (2004) nr. 3 pages 319-333
Year:
2004-08
Contents:
While Pierre Bourdieu's reputation as a sociologist is internationally recognised, the more explicitly political aspects of his thought and life are less well known. This is in part because he operated primarily as an academic, eschewing polemics and, as can be seen from his early publications on Algeria and on education, employing scientific sociological method to analyse and inform. However, from the 1980s, Bourdieu started to become more obviously involved in things political, starting with his support for Coluche in the 1981 presidential campaign and his denunciation of state repression in Poland. In the 1990s, Bourdieu became still more overtly political. This is evident, for example, in La Misere du monde (1993), in his work highlighting the situation in Algeria, his much publicised opposition to neo-liberalism in general and in his support for the 1995 mouvement social in particular. All these later political prises de position were, Bourdieu insisted, underpinned by his work as a scientific sociologist.
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