Pierre Bourdieu: biography of this French sociologist.

A summary of the life of Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.

Pierre Bourdieu is one of France's best known intellectuals, in fact, he is considered one of the most quoted, especially during the 1960s.

His way of looking at society, being critical of neoliberalism and the mass media has earned him the fame of being a sociologist in favor of change, against injustices and inspiring transformations in his country.

We will now look at the life of this particular French sociologist, as well as highlighting his thought and work, by means of a biography of Pierre Bourdieu.

Pierre Bourdieu biography: a summary

Pierre-Félix Bourdieu was born in Denguin, France on August 1, 1930.. Not much is known about his childhood, but it is known that in his youth he studied philosophy in Paris, specifically at the École Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne. At the Parisian university he would read his thesis "Structures temporelles de la vie affective" (Temporal structures of the affective life).

Since 1955 he worked as a professor in various parts of the then French Empire.. He first taught at the Institut de Moulins and then in Algeria from 1958 to 1960. He would later exercise this profession in Paris and Lille.

Algeria, and its impact on sociology

His stay in Algeria was the beginning of his research work, which would give him a great impact on sociology.which would give him a great reputation that would earn him an important place in French sociology in the last century, since it was in that country and specifically in 1958 that he would publish his book Sociology of Algeria.

Several years later, in 1964, he would publish, together with Jean-Claude Passeron, two of his first texts related to education: Les étudiants et leurs études y Les héritiers. Les étudiants et la culture. A little later but in the same year he would publish "Les fonctions de la photographie" and in 1965 Un art moyen. Essais sur les usages sociaux de la photographie y Rapport pédagogique et communication.

Professional impact and final years

The post-Algerian years were characterized by a prolific literary creation.. In 1970 he published Fondements d'une théorie de la violence symbolique. Reproduction culturelle et reproduction socialealso published with Passeron. In 1976 he published Le système des grandes écoles et la reproduction de la classe dominante..

Among his many other works are also La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement (1979), Ce que parler veut dire. The economy of language exchanges (1982), Homo academicus (1984), The Nobility of State. Grandes écoles et esprit de corps (1989), Les règles de l'art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire. (1992).

However, he achieved his greatest success with La misère du monde (1993). In this book denounces social suffering with a strong inspiration from Marxism and Michel Foucault.. He shows in this book a combination of sociology and social anthropology, analyzing social exclusion, technological progress and globalization.

It should be noted that within his current of thought, Bourdieu's discourse has always been critical of society. However, after May '68, a social phenomenon the May '68, a social phenomenon in France that would mark a before and after in French society after the Second World War, Bourdieu was even more critical of society.Bourdieu became even more critical of his time.

At that time he already argued critically against neoliberalism and was in favor of civil society, in which equal rights were offered to all citizens without exception. He is interested in trade unions, NGOs, migrants and civic associations that oppose neoliberal positions.. Bourdieu was one of the founders of "Liber-Raisons d'agir", the publishing house behind the "Attac" movement.

After gaining considerable fame in the world of sociology, he would enjoy important academic positions. He was professor at the École Normale Supérieure from 1964 to 1984 and, from 1981, director of L'École Pratique de Hauts Études and professor of sociology at the College de France. He became the director of the journal "Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales" from 1975 until his death in Paris, January 23, 2002 from lung cancer.

Political and economic thought

Bourdieu was one of the most relevant sociologists of the second half of the 20th century. In fact, according to the Parisian newspaper "Le Monde", he was to become the most quoted French intellectual in the world press in 1969.. His ideas have been of great importance both in social theory and in their more empirical application, especially in the sociology of culture, education and lifestyles.

His theory stands out as an attempt to overcome the traditional sociological duality between, on the one hand, social structures and objectivism, the source of social action, and, on the other, subjectivism. Bourdieu endows himself with two new concepts, "habitus" and the "field", as well as reinventing one that already existed. as well as reinventing one that was already well known, capital.

From Bourdieu's point of view, "habitus" is understood as the ways of thinking, feeling and acting that originate from a person's position within the social structure, that is, his or her social status. Bourdieu speaks of "field" referring to the social space that is created around the valuation of facts such as science, art, politics or religion. These spaces are occupied by people from different "habitus" and with different capitals, who compete for both material and symbolic resources in the "field".

He understands the term capital not only in its economic sense, but also in the sense of the capital of the "field".He also refers to cultural capital, social capital and any other type of capital perceived as "natural" in that society, which he calls symbolic capital People have a habitus specific to their social position and resources or capitals "play" in the different social fields. It is through this "game" that they contribute either to reproduce how society was up to that moment or to transform its social structure.

He extrapolates this idea of "habitus" and "field" to the world of journalism. For Bourdieu, journalism serves as a place where people with different social statuses, journalists, can promote changes in society by means of the transmission of a certain information.. This information can be objective or biased depending on the interests behind it.

Thus, based on the evil that Bourdieu thought the media were doing, he prefers to speak of the "society of information" rather than the "society of spectacle". The media, far from communicating truthfully what was happening, seemed to want to compete to see which would get the highest audience.

On this basis, at the end of the 1990's he made controversial statements about how the media were influencing politics in general and, to some extent, censoring critics, especially writers. and, to some extent, censored critics, especially writers. In fact, he proposed and was the founder of the "parliament of writers", an organization designed to give intellectuals greater autonomy over their work, and thus be able to freely criticize society and its drifts outside the media of official culture.

As for his empirical work, his critical work on culture stands out, showing that cultural distinctions are nothing more than covert forms of domination. He called this ontological complicity between the field and the habitus. It is not that he is a cynic towards the manifestations of high culture, but that he considers that everyone should have the same right to access this culture.

Bibliographical references:

• Bourdieu, Pierre (2004) Esquisse pour une auto-analyse: 109. Raisons d'agir.
• Alonso, L. E. (2002a) "Pierre Bourdieu in memoriam (1930-2002). Entre la bourdieumanía y la reconstrucción de la sociología europea" in Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, nº 97, January-March, pp 9-28.