ABSTRACT
The work of Pierre Bourdieu has become so integral to contemporary sociology that it is impossible to imagine the discipline – or its fate – without it. Since his writing began to reach English-speaking audiences in the 1970s, and particularly in recent years, Bourdieu’s influence has grown exponentially. His concepts are canonical in the sociology of education (Grenfell et al. 1998; Reay 2004), in under standing consumption practices and cultural taste (Bennett et al. 2009; Coulangeon and Duval 2014) and in conceptualising the body (Bennett et al. 2013a; Crossley 2001). His work has considerable impact in Australia (Bennett et al. 2013b; Bennett, Emmison and Frow 1999), the US (Lamont 2012; Lizardo 2012; Sallaz and Zavisca 2007) and in particular the UK (Thatcher, Ingram, Burke and Abrahams 2015), where it has been operationalised in the recent resurgence of class analysis (Savage 2015; Atkinson 2015a). Indeed, Bourdieu is currently the most cited sociologist in the world (Chernilo 2014) and, fifteen years after his death, his works are still appearing in English for the first time. Despite his work seemingly taking on a life of its own in the twenty-first
century, Bourdieu was a product of the preceding century. Born in 1930 to a postal worker father in the rural Béarn region of France, Bourdieu experienced the social mobility common in many Western countries during the mid-twentieth century. Access to higher education via scholarships enabled him to attend elite institutions and paved the way for an academic career, culminating in his appointment as Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. This trajectory also informed his thought, and he regularly noted his discomfort in the surrounds of French academia. Many of Bourdieu’s key empirical studies, underpinning the theoretical framework that he would develop throughout his life, were conducted in France and Algeria in the 1960s, that is, during periods of upheaval that ushered in social and cultural change. Given, as Bourdieu himself claimed, social theory is a product of the social
conditions in which it is produced, and given that the social world has undergone significant transformations since the 1960s, one urgent question regarding Bourdieu’s social theory concerns its ongoing relevance to the contemporary world. With this question in mind, this volume enquires into the prospects for Bourdieusian sociology and social theory. It does so not only in a setting of broadscale social change but also one in which new theoretical approaches are in
ascendance across the social sciences. This volume therefore debates the futures of Bourdieusian sociology and social theory in a landscape in which the empirical world and the sociological imagination are on-the-move. In regard to the empirical world, a wide array of changes are at issue: the
massification of education; the emergence of digital technologies and communication; the rise of a global precarious labour market; and the folding of the advances made by progressive feminist, civil rights and environmental move ments into the very logic of capitalist expansion. These changes all raise particular challenges to Bourdieu’s oeuvre. With such changes in mind a number of Bourdieu’s interlocutors have critically engaged with his work. For instance, the collection Feminism after Bourdieu (Adkins and Skeggs 2005) mounted an extensive feminist critique of Bourdieu’s oeuvre and pushed towards new under - standings (see also Susen and Turner 2011). His work has also attracted a wide range of criticism, from conservative critiques of ‘sociological terrorism from the left’ (Verdès-Leroux 2001), through left-critiques that maintain Bourdieu repro - duces the very hierarchies he attacks (Rancière 2004), to internal sociological critiques of ‘failed synthesis’ (Alexander 1995). Indeed, there are many critical sociological engagements with Bourdieu’s theoretical suppositions, especially his conceptual triad of capitals, field and habitus (Goldthorpe 2007; Hilgers and Mangez 2015; Lahire 2011). Recently, a number of broader developments in social theory have raised some more profound challenges to Bourdieu’s social theory, not least in the form of querying a subject centred dispositionalism (Boltanski 2011; Thévenot 2011). Cognisant of these challenges, this volume is, nevertheless, driven by a central
leitmotif in Bourdieu’s oeuvre, namely, that his work not be blindly appropriated, but actively interpreted. Bourdieu wanted fellow travellers, not disciples; his work to be used as a companion, to inspire, transform and to create (Bourdieu 2008: 12). In this spirit, the chapters in this volume ask how and in what ways are Bourdieusian travellers currently transforming and creating, and whether or not changes to and in the world mark a limit point to this work of transformation. This volume therefore seeks to address a series of questions regarding the prospects for Bourdieusian sociology. Does Bourdieusian sociology have a future? If so, what are its contours? Is it meaningful or relevant to discuss a post-Bourdieusian sociology? Does such a sociology entail travelling or breaking with the resources of Bourdieu? This introductory chapter outlines the key issue to be considered in this
volume, namely, the prospects for Bourdieusian sociology and social theory. Firstly, it discusses the potential ramifications for sociology of Bourdieu’s dominance as a social theorist – within and outside sociology itself – and calls for renewed reflexivity among sociologists around the way his work is deployed. Secondly, it highlights, as an example, one emerging area of social theory where Bourdieu’s framework might be drawn on and reworked to yield new insights: research on affect and emotions. While these facets of social life are largely absent in Bourdieu, this burgeoning research area – crosscutting sociology, psychology, geography and cultural studies – generally lacks engagement with
class. This section of the chapter therefore sets out an agenda for a sociology of class, affect and emotions, demonstrating how Bourdieu’s work can be revitalised through engagement with new theoretical and empirical areas – a project continued in the remainder of the volume. In the final section, the chapters that comprise the volume are introduced.
