Pierre Bourdieu, a researcher and intellectual, died in Paris on the 23rd of
January 2002, after losing a battle with cancer. He is mentioned among the
principal sociologists of his generation.
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Biography
Pierre Bourdieu was born on August 1930 in Béarn. He was educated at the lycée
in Pau, and later at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, after receiving a state
scholarship. He then entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure, where he studied
philosophy. After being received at the agrégation, he became a lycée teacher at
Moulins from 1955 to 1958. In 1958 he became a lecturer in the faculty of
Algiers. In 1960 he came back to Paris and taught at the University of Paris
until 1964, when he took up a post at the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales. In 1968, after having belonged to the unit of research directed by
Raymond Aron, he created the Center of sociology of education and the culture,
laboratory associated with the CNRS that he directed until 1988. In 1975 he
became the director of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales. In 1981 he
became the holder of the pulpit of sociology at the College of France. Adding to
his achievements, in 1993 he was awarded a gold medal of CNRS.
His Contributions
Although he had started out to become a philosopher, Bourdieu turned to
sociology specifically so that he could make experimental research an instrument
for challenging the prevalent ideas about the social world that was neglected by
philosophers. Bourdieu viewed sociology as practical pursuit revolving around
research and not just a collection of scholastic ideology. He shared this in
teaching and in The Craft of Sociology (1968). He was a firm believer in group
work and socially planned innovation and not individual achievements.
His quest for a spontaneous foundation for social science was the key motivation
for his sociology of intellectuals, notably in The Scientific Field (1975) and
the books Homo Academicus(1984) and The State Nobility (1989). Apart from this
Bourdieu's keen interest in social inequality and how it is shrouded and
continued in the social circles was also a motivating factor.
He wanted to bring academics, trade unions and social activists together as one
form of social involvement. In his last few years, Bourdieu worked towards
protecting the achievements of the social efforts of the twentieth century --
pensions, job security, open access to higher education and other provisions of
the social state – from budget cuts and other attacks in the for the cause of
free markets and international competition. Due to this, he evolved into one of
the world’s most famous critics of neoliberal globalization.
Amongst his unfinished work the greatest is debatably the sociogenetic
dissection of Manet and the transformation of the field of painting in which he
played a significant role.
Works Cited
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Craft of Sociology.
Walter de Gruyter, Inc.; ISBN: 3110119404; (May 1991)
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Scientific Field.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Homo Academicus.
Stanford Univ Pr; ISBN: 0804717982; (December 1988)
Bourdieu, Pierre. The State Nobility.
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