Key Thinkers in Social Theory
Class 1: Introduction
Social theory tends to be an “all you can eat buffet”, meaning that it tends to be very encyclopedic
You talk about but not in a good way
In this course: going deep rather than broad, by focusing on Bourdieu – reading it in a sociologically way
Bourdieu bootcamp
• Most cited author in the humanities and social sciences today
• Third most cited author in the humanities of the 20th century
• 21st century social theory- where Marx and Weber: 20th
• Capital, Field, Habitus
Exam
3 open-ended questions → designed to be answered in 2h but you get 3h
70% exam and 30% paper or presentation
He works with and against people- show this in the presentation
Episode 1: A socioanalysis of Pierre Bourdieu
The importance of biography
Bourdieu himself, uses his biography as basis for his ideas, because his experiences exposed him to certain matters.
For him sociology is the means to understanding his own life.
Biography is central to Bourdieu’s thinking →biography should always be the starting point
2 main use of sociology:
• Cynical – dominant (most commonly used type of sociology)
Using soc to aim those in power- mean of rationalizing power relation in society
Helping to reinforce the status quo → in this case: sociology is used by third parties: who dominates
Eg: The culture ministry will contract sociologists in order to gather data about the most and least successful cultural
centres. The findings contribute to the minister’s decision to cut or allocate subsidies → reinforcing the dominant
culture – most mainstream or popular places
→sociology should be like this
• Clinical
to understand yourself better
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, Linked to Freud’s pshychoanalysis = believes in the necessity of understand one’s relationships in order to
understand themselves
→ Bourdieu begins his studies from the small unit of the family, focusing on how someone’s social positions in
society will influence their life → sociology is used to better understand one’s self.
Sociology must be a reflective science
= what you believe to be personal is actually the product of social conditions
→social science must be a reflective science (can also be clinical) for Bourdieu →people should come to
grips with their background. The way they do so, is what he referred to as syllogism:
A sociological syllogism
The question in this case is how can sociologists objectively study the outside world? Bourdieu argues that it is done
by considering one’s self in the 3rd person view whilst analysing one’s social background and position.
P1: human beings thoughts and actions are profoundly shaped by their position in society
P2: sociologists are human beings
Hence
C: sociologists thought and action are profoundly shaped by their position in society
Q: How can we produce an account of the social world that is MORE than just our perspective?
→Bourdieu: by turning the tools of sociological analysis upon ourselves
Knowing how you are determined gives you the choice to avoid determinism
Two biographies of Bourdieu (R.Nice)
Mythical- romantic story:
Peasant son from Southern France becomes most important public intellectual of France at the end of 20th c
→story based on meritocracy – often used against him
Story of the “petit-bourgeous and the social success”
Petit bourgeois: somebody that climes up the social latter
→best description is a “slipt habitus” : had to unite in one biography with diff social words – bcs I was forces to diff
experiences it led me to find the middle ground
Conflictual position: he struggled with success, never thought that he was an intellectual,..
“… the product of a “conciliation of contraries” which inclines one to the “conciliation of contraries”…”
Youth in the Béarn
1august 1930: born in Denguin →Béarn-region of southern France
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, →Region where he is born: handicap France is constructed as it is all focused on Paris and around the bigger
cities (such as Lyon, Marseille, Bourdeax) that want to be like Paris. Behind that it’s just the poor French (paris is
culture, the more far away then it is nature)
France: high degree of centralization →major institutions (arts, culture,..) all situated in Paris
Father is a sharecropper turned postal clerk, mother is a farmer
→His father ruins the post office and wasn’t born in Dearn so he was never really integrated in the local
community
He is a normal kid but veeery smart →eligible to participate in education nationale: scholarship system →moved to
Pau and then to Paris: here he feels like an outsider, which made him aware of his “otherness”
“There are subtle (and not so subtle) forms of social racism that cannot but make you perceptive; being constantly
reminded of your otherness stimulates a sort of permanent sociological vigilance. It helps you perceive things that
others cannot see of feel.” –Bourdieu et Wacquant
→Element of racism bcs ppl of his hometown have a darker skin, talk diff bcs they live closer to the Spanish
boarder and he noticed this social racism in Pau
➔ Centralization enhances also physical differences
Cultural capital →kids that don’t own the knowledge from home are called by the teachers as “brilliant” but bring
the cultural wealth from their families
First called cultural capital but then after it’s called “inheritors”
• Inheritors/ Heritiers:
Students stemming from upper- and middle-class families, often still living at home.
Their success in academia came not from their personal educational capabilities, but from their background.
Elements acquired form family and not part of course material: appreciated and rewarded by the professors, yet
were nearly impossible to be collected by:
• Scholarship students
Present in institutions due to their personal academic success and intellectual
1948-1954: Paris and the E.N.S
One teacher likes Bourdieu a lot and send him to study in
Paris – Khagne
French educational system: affordable but above it
there are les grandes ecoles →products of the French
revolution where the noble French rep needed the best
minds (best ingeneers, politicians,..)
Idea that only the best minds should be leading those specialised institutions, e.g. Ecole Normale d’Administration
for politicians, or the ENS for professors.
ENS: where also Durkheim, Foucault, Canguilhem … all went there
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, To enroll you need to pass the hard exam (take lot to pass it, prepare it) – constantly working
The most prestige discipline: philosophy – Bourdieu got in, get paid to study,…
Since very competitive: not good for mental health (suicide- Durkheim), lot of stress,…
Philosophy of the 50s: famous Sarte → dominated the scene
Bourdieu did not get along very well →idea of the philosopher (poetry, love, sex, pipe,..) but he would turn
away from existentialism and communist party (Marxism and Stalinism was present during these years)
He studies phenomenology, logic and epistemology (history of idea) →Canguilhem is very important for him,
it was Foucault’s mentor (medical science)
1955-1960: Algeria, the conversion to the social sciences
Bourdieu decides to stop after 3 years – doesn’t like it and will go to Moulin and become a high school
teacher and then he had to his military service and becomes a typist but gets caught with illegal
literature about a struggle in Algeria (independence)
Bourdieu: anti-colonialist and the military is not happy about it →send him to Algeria:
“pacification of algeria”
Research in Kabylia in wartime conditions
Without Algeria: Bourdieu wouldn’t been the Bourdieu we know now →he switches from philosophy to social
sciences : Love at first sight, its people, culture,…
First book : Algeria for dummies
Job at university of Algiers: introduction to social sciences and statistics
→ uses the job to start field work- Kabylia tribes reminded him of his own youth
Conversion in an anthropologist : field works, ethnographic observation,…
Origins of Bourdieu’s theory of practice (habitus, practical logic)
Origins
“I can say that all my thinking started from this point: how can behaviour be regulated without being the product of
obedience to rules?”-In Other Words, (1990: 65)
communities have one property: 100% oral cultures →entity will become habitus – philosophy of action
For Bourdieu, Algeria is the scene of cruel social experiments →French colonial system
introduces capitalists ways that were very detrimental
→” Deracinement” talks about how traditional life was destroyed + algerie 60
1960-1964: Back to France and the discovery of sociology
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