ABSTRACT
The individual’s relationship to the wider space of “society” and “culture” remains problematic. The particular way in which Pierre Bourdieu defines social suffering emphasises two symbolic dimensions of conflict which are often neglected: first, the irreconcilable conflict between individual points of view, that Bourdieu takes from Weber but updates for a world of global economic disruption and population movement; and, second, the specific conflict between those who have the authority to enforce their representations of the social world and those who lack that power. Bourdieu’s arguments, however, are developed, undeniably, from a critical perspective which seeks to use the sociological imagination to challenge neoliberal “common sense”. In the Weight of the World, the tension between Bourdieu’s particular theory of the social world and the irreducible complexity of individual perspectives on that world emerges with particular clarity. Media and popular culture are surely more than a simple pain-killer without cognitive consequences.
