ABSTRACT
Bourdieu is not often cited in postcolonial studies as a theorist of colonial experience, racial difference and social change (Go, 2013). In fact Bourdieu has been critiqued for apparently characterising non-Western societies as ‘static and homogenous’ (Go, 2013, p. 50; see also Said, 1989). Go (2013) argues, however, on re-examination of Bourdieu’s early ethnographic work in Algeria, the case could be made that he did in fact offer a reading of the dynamics of colonialism and the kind of social dynamics that might characterise postcolonial societies, including insights that predate much postcolonial scholarship.
