Table Of Content‘A terrifc book, which sets out a comprehensive overview of
Bourdieu’s oeuvre in a way that no other text I know has done.’ B
TONY SCHIRATO WITH MARY ROBERTS
PROFESSOR JOHN FROW, University of Sydney
o
Throughout his career, French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu sought to
interrogate what he described as the ‘social unconscious’, the means by u Bourdieu
which power is held and transmitted across generations. Bourdieu’s work
has been hugely infuential in disciplines across the social sciences and r
humanities for decades, yet Schirato and Roberts argue that few scholars d
are using Bourdieu’s work to its full potential.
i
His work is so wide-ranging that commentary tends to focus on specifc e
A CRITICAL
theoretical concepts he developed or his books on particular felds of
u
inquiry. However, Bourdieu continued to develop these concepts in his
INTRODUCTION
work across his whole career and much of the richness of his thinking is
lost if this isn’t taken into account.
Drawing on recently released lectures, Schirato and Roberts ofer a
W
systematic account of Bourdieu’s full body of work, from his early research
ITT
in Algiers to his last lectures in Paris. They show how Bourdieu continued O
H
to develop his concepts of habitus, feld, capital, power and socio-cultural M N
Y
reproduction well into his later years. They also ofer a nuanced reading A
S
R
of Bourdieu’s thinking about education, class, language, knowledge and C
Y
culture beyond the individual books Bourdieu published on these topics. H
R
I
OR
This critical introduction to Bourdieu is essential reading for all Bourdieu BA
T
E
scholars, and for researchers and thinkers using Bourdieu’s work in their O
R
own social and cultural analysis. T
S
TONY SCHIRATO is a professor in the Department of Communication at
the University of Macau. He formerly taught at Victoria University in Wellington,
New Zealand, and at Central Queensland University in Australia. He is the
co-author of introductions to Bourdieu, Foucault and Judith Butler, and
the author of Understanding Sports Culture and Sports Discourse.
MARY ROBERTS is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of
Communication at the University of Macau.
an informa business
Cover design: Romina Panetta
Cover photograph: Louis Monier/Bridgeman Images
PHILOSOPHY/SOCIAL THEORY
Bourdieu
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Also by Tony Schirato
Communication and Cultural Literacy
by Tony Schirato and Susan Yell (1996, 2000)
Understanding Foucault
by Tony Schirato, Geoff Danaher and Jen Webb (2000, 2012)
Understanding Bourdieu
by Jen Webb, Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher (2002)
Get Your Message Across
by Jacqui Ewart, Gail Sedorkin and Tony Schirato (1998)
Beginning University
by Andrew Wallace, Tony Schirato and Philippa Bright (1999)
Asia
by David Birch, Tony Schirato and Sanjay Srivastava (2001)
Understanding Globalization
by Tony Schirato and Jen Webb (2003)
Reading the Visual
by Tony Schirato and Jen Webb (2004)
Understanding Sports Culture
by Tony Schirato (2008)
Understanding Judith Butler
by Anita Brady and Tony Schirato (2010)
Sports Discourse
by Tony Schirato (2015)
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Bourdieu
A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
TONY SCHIRATO WITH MARY ROBERTS
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First published 2018 by Allen & Unwin
Published 2020 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Tony Schirato and Mary Roberts 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
A catalogue record for this
book is available from the
National Library of Australia
Internal design by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Set in 11/15 pt Minion LT by Midland Typesetters, Australia
ISBN-13: 9781760111748 (pbk)
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The book is dedicated to the memory of
Kay Roberts and Ron Schirato
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Bourdieu_TXT.indd 6 7/3/18 11:53 am
CONTENTS
1 Antecedents and trajectories 1
2 Scholarly trajectory 44
3 Education, socio-cultural reproduction and class 89
4 Distinction 114
5 The habitus 133
6 Cultural feld 156
7 Cultural capital 174
8 Symbolic power 191
9 The logic of practice 208
Acknowledgements 241
Bibliography 243
Index 251
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1
Antecedents and trajectories
Introduction
In his obituary published on The Guardian website in 2002, Pierre
Bourdieu was described as ‘for many, the leading intellectual of present-
day France’ (Guardian Online 2002). In a postscript to that obituary,
Stuart Jefferies wrote:
Last year a documentary flm about Pierre Bourdieu—
Sociology is a Combat Sport—became an unexpected hit
in Paris. Its very title stressed how much of a politically
engaged intellectual Bourdieu was, taking on the mantle
of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre in French public life,
and slugging it out with politicians because he thought
that was what people like him should do. Bourdieu became
‘the intellectual reference’ for movements opposed to neo-
liberalism and globalisation that developed in France and
1
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