Habitus and Field

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was one of the most influential sociologists and anthropologists of the late twentieth century. He was Professor of Sociology at the Collège de France and Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. His many works include Outline of a Theory of Practice, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, The Rules of Art, The Logic of Practice and Pascalian Meditations.

• ContentsLecture of 5 October 1982The retrospective illusion and the unreality of theory in research -- A work of axiomatisation -- Scientific concepts -- The fundamental questions -- Realist definition and interactionist definition -- Metaphysical requirements for sociology -- Iron FilingsLecture of 12 October 1982The double life of the social -- The process of objectification and incorporation of the social -- Moving beyond the opposition between subjectivism and objectivism. -- Scholarly understanding and practical understanding -- The examples of reading and the work of art -- Programme of future lectures and questions from the audienceLecture of 19 October 1982Sense without consciousness -- The mechanistic error and the intellectualist error -- The temptation of the sociologist as king -- Intellectual obstacles to the knowledge of the gnoseologia inferior -- The habitus as orthe doxaLecture of 2 November 1982Positions and dispositions -- The two states of history -- A feel for the game -- Practical knowledge -- Investment in the game and illusio -- Affective transference of the domestic libido, and conformism -- Critique of the economic discourse -- The economic conditions of economic practicesLecture of 9 November 1982Habituality in Husserl -- Decision theory in economics -- Avoiding mechanism and purposiveness -- The theory of the machine -- The ontological power of language -- Popular culture and popular language -- Marxist teleology -- The reification and personification of the collective. -- The solution of the habitusLecture of 16 November 1982The adaptation of expectation to opportunity -- Avoiding purposiveness-- Interiorising the social -- Incorporating necessity -- Rites of institution -- The call to order: the example of the relation of the family to the school -- Social relations in the enquiry relationship -- Surreptitious persuasion, symbolic violence -- The paradox of continuity -- Critique of the scholarly relationLecture of 23 November 1982A double--voiced discourse -- Looking scholarly -- Where is the sociologist coming from? -- Sociology in the space of disciplines -- The unconscious structures of the hierarchy of disciplines -- Philosophy / sociology / history -- Epistemological struggles, social struggles -- Finding out what sociology doesLecture of 30 November 1982Sociology as taking liberty/ies -- Positions, dispositions and stances -- Sociological bodies and academic styles -- Positions attained and positions to attain -- Mental structures and objective structures -- Transformations of the field: the case of the university system -- The refraction of external constraints -- Strategies of struggle -- The boundaries of the field -- The intellectual fieldLecture of 7 December 1982The structural mode of thinking -- From symbolic systems to social relations -- Parenthesis on the genesis of a corpus of knowledge -- The field of forces and the field of struggles -- Thinking a social position -- How to construct a relational space? -- The distribution of capital and the different structures -- The inter--fields -- Return to the structure of the distribution of capital -- The interdependence of field and capital -- The major kinds of capital -- Conversion of the kinds of capitalLecture of 14 December 1982A manner of thinking -- The field and the statistical aggregate -- The concept of the field (1): theoretical itinerary -- The concept of the field (2): practical itinerary Field and milieu -- Field and interaction -- Field and network -- Field and positions -- Field and representation of the situation -- The space of objective relations and the space of interactions -- Field, group, population, individual -- Representations and practical sense -- Homologies between fieldsLecture of 11 January 1983Physicalism and semiologism -- Structure as crystallised history -- Roulette and poker -- The alternatives of income or trade -- Amor fati. -- The fertile terrain of the literary field -- Art versus method: charismatic ideology and ‘sociology of literature’ -- The field as mediation -- Literary field and intertextuality -- A chiasmatic structure -- Automation, hierarchisation, institutionalisation -- The intellectual in the field of cultural productionLecture of 18 January 1983The world upside--down -- Field of power and field of cultural production -- Conservative intellectual -- The law of symbolic legitimation -- Return to the struggles within the field of cultural production -- The genesis of the invariants -- The adaptation of offer to demand through homology of structure -- The conquest of autonomy -- The hierarchy of productions and the hierarchy of publicsLecture of 25 January 1983The economic logic of cultural enterprises -- The truth of practice -- The deferred profits of disinterestedness -- The ambivalent profits of the market -- The subversion of the rules of the field -- Time--scales and ‘personalities’ -- Clients and rivals: the mediation of the education system -- Generations and revolutions -- Modes of ageing and eternalisation -- Overthrowing for the sake of overthrowing -- Orientating the self in the space of possibilities -- Trajectory / career and habitus -- The impious dismantling of the fictionAppendixSummary of lectures, published in the Annuaire du Collège de FranceNotesIndex