Understanding Bourdieu

Description

Pierre Bourdieu's work on the sociology of culture and language, on practical reason, on education, on citizenship and the cultures of poverty, and on a range of other topics is now coming to be seen as one of the 20th century's most important contributions to our thinking about the world. This is a comprehensive and lucid introduction to his work. Bourdieu has left his mark on most of the "big" theoretical issues in the world of contemporary theory - gender, subjectivity, the body, culture, citizenship, and globalisation - and his terms are now commonplace: "social capital", "cultural capital", "field", and "habitus". Bourdieu examines how people conduct their lives in relation to one another and to major social institutions. He argues that culture and education aren't simply minor influences, but as important as economics in determining differences between groups of people. Unlike the other grand systematisers Marx and Foucault, Bourdieu has tested these arguments in detailed fieldwork. His range is eclectic, his vision is vast, and his writing is often dense and challenging. This text aims to make his work accessible for those tackling him for the first time.

Jen Webb is Program Director of Writing in the School of Creative Communication and Culture Studies at the University of Canberra. Tony Schirato is co-author of Communication and Cultural Literacy and Asia: Cultural politics in the global age. Geoff Danaher teaches in the School of Contemporary Communication at Central Queensland University. They are authors of Understanding Foucault.