Pierre Bourdieu Key Concepts Key Concepts Published Theodor Adorno: Key Concepts Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts Edited by Deborah Cook Edited by Charles J. Stivale Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts Edited by Michael Grenfell Edited by Rosalyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds Forthcoming Michel Foucault: Key Concepts Wittgenstein: Key Concepts Edited by Dianna Taylor Edited by Kelly Dean Jolley Heidegger: Key Concepts Edited by Bret Davis Pierre Bourdieu Key Concepts Edited by Michael Grenfeil ACUMEN © Editorial matter and selection, 2008 Michael Grenfell. Individual contributions, the contributors. This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. First published in 2008 by Acumen Acumen Publishing Limited Stocksfield Hall Stocksfield NE43 7TN www.acumenpublishing.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-84465-117-7 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-84465-118-4 (paperback) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by Type Study, Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Printed and bound by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge. Contents Contributors vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 Michael Grenfell PART I: BIOGRAPHY, THEORY AND PRACTICE Introduction 9 1 Biography of Bourdieu 11 Michael Grenfell 2 Theory of practice 27 Derek Robbins PART II: FIELD THEORY: BEYOND SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY Introduction \ 43 3 Habitus J 49 Karl Maton 4 Field 67 Patricia Thomson PART III: FIELD MECHANISMS Introduction 85 PIERRE BOURDIEU: KEY CONCEPTS 5 Social class 87 Nick Crossley 6 Capital 101 Robert Moore 7 Doxa 119 Cecile Deer 8 Hysteresis 131 Cheryl Hardy PART IV: FIELD CONDITIONS Introduction 151 9 Interest 153 Michael Grenfell 10 Conatus 171 Steve Fuller 11 Suffering 183 /. Daniel Schubert 12 Reflexivity 199 Cecile Deer Conclusion 213 Michael Grenfell Postscript: methodological principles 219 Michael Grenfell Chronology 229 Bibliography 231 Index 243 Contributors Nick Crossley is Professor of Sociology at the University of Man chester. Cecile Deer is College Lecturer in French at Balliol College, Oxford. Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Michael Grenfell is Professor of Education and Director of Research at the University of Southampton. Cheryl Hardy is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the Uni versity of Winchester. Nicola Johnson teaches in the Faculty of Education at Deakin Uni versity, Australia. Karl Maton is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sydney, Australia. Robert Moore is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. Derek Robbins is Professor of International Social Theory at the Uni versity of East London. J. Daniel Schubert is Associate Professor of Sociology at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, USA. Patricia Thomson is Director of Research in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham and Adjunct Professor at the Uni versity of South Australia. Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the help and support extended to me by Cheryl Hardy whilst I was working on this book. She also read the manuscript and provided valuable feedback on it. Nicola Johnson was rny co-author for the Introduction to Part II. I am also grateful to Gayna Davey and Karl Maton for their comments on draft chapters of this book. As always, thanks to my editor Tristan Palmer for his support, understanding and guidance. Introduction Michael Grenfell Pierre Bourdieu is now regarded as one of the foremost social philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in a small village in the French Pyrenees, his extraordinary academic trajectory took him to the leading academic training schools of Paris. Eventually, he was nominated as "Chair" at the College de France, that most prestigious institution which groups together fifty-two leading French aca demics, philosophers and scientists. Bourdieu's output was voluminous. Beginning with ethnographies of the Beam and Algeria, he went on to offer extensive studies of edu cation, culture, art and language. For much of this time, Bourdieu was regarded as a sociologist, and he had a major influence in this academic field. However, his was a very particular type of sociology. His academic training was as a philosopher. It was only after personal experiences "in the field" in Algeria and the Beam, that he aban doned the traditional academic route of philosophy for sociology. This was in the 1950s, a time when sociology had not yet acquired its contemporary popularity or academic credibility. Certainly, his early works can be read as anthropologically orientated, a perspec tive he never really lost over the subsequent fifty years of his career. During the 1960s and 1970s, Bourdieu seemed very much the private academic, sharing the Parisian intellectual world with other leading French writers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan. Increasingly, however, he became a public figure rivalling the reputations of writers in his immediately proceeding generation - for example, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Later in life, his