Throughout the past decade Pierre Bourdieu[1] was increasingly portrayed by the media in France as the new intellectual star, taking the mantle from Michel Foucault and having the edge over his contemporary Jacques Derrida. Bourdieu's recent denouncements of neoliberal doctrine projected him, in Niilo Kaupi's (2000 : 7) words, to "a Sartrean intellectual in the full sense of the term". His public denouncement of budget cuts in gerontological welfare and higher education, early retirement schemes, and anti-immigration legislation in the name of free markets and international competition were instant national news, making his name a constant appearance in the French press. Such political practice was supplemented by political writings which minced no words about the threats posed by contemporary ëneoliberalismí. For instance, whilst On Television (1998a) attacked media presenters for delivering what he called 'cultural fast food', Acts of Resistance (1998b) stressed the duty of the intellectual in fighting against the oppressive features of globalisation. In addition, Bourdieu (1992, 2002) joined other intellectuals such as Hans Haacke and Gunther Grass to criticise policy-units for their piecemeal approach to social policy[2].
 
It was thus no surprise that his death triggered many a homage that put supporters of Verdés-Leroux's (1998) denouncement of Bourdieu as a ësociological terroristí in an awkward position. However, unlike preceding French public intellectuals it was not attractions of image or character that gained Bourdieu cult status but his rigorous scholarship. Bourdieu's was also a prolific writer, being the author of some 45 books and 500 articles, many of which have been translated in various foreign languages ranging from Hungarian, Arabic, to Japanese[3] (Wacquant, 2002). Bourdieu's oeuvre simply resists an elementary ordering of the priority of concepts or themes. In fact, Bourdieu has been authoritatively placed in all major theoretical traditions : Marxist, Weberian, Durkheimian, poststructuralist, and even, postmodernist. This difficulty to pigeonhole Bourdieu is largely due to his unconventional career formations. Primarily, Bourdieu's position in the French acedeme has always been marked by an ëoutsiderí status due to his southern geographical location and his peasant background which never enabled him to feel like, using his terminology, 'a fish in water'. Another unconventional factor consists of his amalgamation of philosophical and classical sociological thought[4]. Finally, his confrontation with the Algerian war left a searing personal mark on Bourdieu, shaping his intellectual orientation and commitment to the principle that research must incorporate both a critical and emancipatory edge.
 
Bourdieu's (1977 : 3) oeuvre can be thought of a "steadfast" consistent attempt to side-step the absurd antinomy between objectivism and subjectivism, to construct "a science of dialectical relations between objective structuresÖand the subjective dispositions within which these structures are actualised". In developing his transcendental ontology, Bourdieu made an ideological break with both objectivism and subjectivism, and in turn he focused on practice as the outcome of the dialectical relationship between structure and agency, hereby rejecting rules in favour of ëstrategiesí that are associated with the maximising of material and symbolic profit. To effect this synthesis of objectivism and subjectivism, social physics and social phenomenology, Bourdieu forged an original conceptual arsenal anchored by the notions of habitus, field, and capital. In Bourdieu's meta-theory, the notion of habitus is the main "thinking tool" that makes it possible to surpass the opposition between "ontological individualism" and "constituted practice". Bourdieu sees the social context where the habitus operated as a multidimensional space differentiated into distinct fields : networks of objective positions occupied by agents through their possession of different forms of capital[5]. A field is therefore a structured system of social relations at a micro and macro level were individuals, institutions and groupings exist in a structural relation to each other in some way. Another major concept is capital. In Bourdieu's (1986) theory, "capital" is not granted a solely economic meaning, but signified essentially a resource which yields power. Thus, in addition to economic capital he pointed other immaterial forms of capital - cultural, social and symbolic.
 
However, Bourdieu not only sought to simply develop an abstract theoretical system but also related his ëthinking toolsí to a series of empirical concerns. In his study Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984), Bourdieu applied his notions of habitus, filed and capital to the arena of class analysis. Much of Distinction examines the way in which intellectual middle-class culture is defined in relation to popular culture, and considers how it has articulated an aesthetic of distance and abstraction as a means of distinguishing itself from the sensuous, the immediate and the popular. After indicating how aesthetic judgement is an eminently social faculty, resulting from class upbringing and education, Bourdieu constructed a theory of social space organised by two cross cutting principles of differentiation : economic capital, and cultural capital[6]. Having mapped out the structure of social space, Bourdieu demonstrates how the hierarchy of life styles is the misrecognised retranslation of the hierarchy of classes. To each major social position - bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, and working class ­ corresponds a class habitus undergirding three kinds of tastes. Bourdieu's data revealed that the bourgeoisie was statistically by far the most likely to adopt the attitude of distinction, a disinterested contemplation demanded by legitimate aesthetics. Working-class people, on the other hand, held a class ethos based on the choice of necessity, determined by the collective experience of material necessity and expressed itself in a realistic aesthetic form. Caught between these two visions of the world lay the petty bourgeoisie whose class ethos was determined by ëgoodwillí that signals an "undifferentiated reverence" towards high culture[7].
 
Distinction portrays French as one which is characterised by classes and class fractions continually striving to maintain or improve their position in the social space by pursuing strategies of reconversion whereby they transmute or exchange one species of capital into another[8]. Within such reconversions, Bourdieu (1984 : 479) believed that in modern societies the principal mode of domination has shifted from overt coercion to symbolic manipulation : "what is at stake in the struggles about the meaning of the social world is power over the classificatory schemes and systems which are the basis of the representation of groups and therefore of their mobilisation and demobilisation". In this respect, Bourdieu (1967, and Passeron, 1977, 1979) argued that the field of education, more than the family, church or the business ethic, is the primary institutional setting for the production, transmission and accumulation of the various forms of culture capital.
 
Bourdieu envisaged education as a part of a larger macrocosm of symbolic institutions that reproduce existing power relations subtly through the engendering and distribution of a culture that is consistent with the dominant classesí interests. Bourdieu's sociology of education is largely built upon two notions : ëcultural arbitrariesí and ësymbolic violenceí. Bourdieu maintained that certain aspects of culture cannot be accounted for by logical analysis nor do they develop out of the nature of human beings and, therefore, are ëarbitraryí. The educational system also has its own cultural arbitraries, which are, as Bourdieu suggests, variants of the dominant classes (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). By symbolic violence, Bourdieu meant a soft sort of violence (rather than a more direct form of social control that previous sociologists focused on [e.g. Althusser, 1970, 1971]) "which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity" (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992 : 167). The educators perform symbolic violence by imposing meanings as "legitimate by concealing the power relations which are the basis of its force" and at the same time communicating a logic of disinterest (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977 : 4).
 
Therefore, when education goes about educating, it is essentially trying to impose ëculturally arbitraryí conditions by an arbitrary power under the guise of legitimate order (ibid.). The consequences, which are beneficial to the middle classes, are threefold. First, learners coming form the dominant classes find education intelligible and show flair and excellence. Secondly, the culture of the dominant classes is shown to be the most superior. And finally, an act of ësymbolic violenceí is perpetuated on learners coming form non-dominant classes by forcing them to support an alien culture. Mainstream education is beneficial for the dominant classes in two major ways. First, the dominant classes are able to exercise power and influence by transforming ëculture arbitrarinessí into universal forms of meaning. Secondly, without any direct forms of control and surveillance, the oppressed partake in their own subjugation (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Bourdieu, 1984).
 
Another central feature of Bourdieu's sociology is his emphasis on reflexivity which he saw as absolutely necessary for valid and reliable social science. By reflexivity, Bourdieu meant the continual need to turn the instrument of social science back upon the sociologists in an effort to better control the distortions introduced in the construction of the object. Bourdieu (1990) argued that the most insidious bias that a sociologists can make is to assume a scholastic stance that causes him/her to misconstrue the social world as an interpretative puzzle to be resolved, rather than a mesh of practical tasks to be accomplished in real time and space. This 'scholastic fallacy' leads to disfiguring the situational, adaptive, 'fuzzy logic' of practice by confounding it with the abstract logic of intellectual ratiocination (Bourdieu, 1998). One must here note that in contrast to radical constructionism, Bourdieu did not see reflexivity as an attack upon science as such but as a genuine means to improve its practice. Hence, the sociology of sociology was seen as indispensable because it increases "our awareness of the socially based effects of domination...by promoting struggles aimed at controlling these effects and mechanisms that produce them" (Bourdieu, 1989b : 385). Bourdieu (1988) saw the sociology of sociology, as a critical reflexive analysis of the universalisation of the privileged conditions of existence which render the pursuit of the universal possible.
 
Of course, Bourdieu was not immune to criticisms. However, despite such academic nuances, there is no doubt that Bourdieu's life was staunchly committed to the development of a critical yet appreciative sociology which enabled us to analyse cultural relations in society without the "anti-humanist melancholy" so prevalent in postmodern academics (Fowler, 1997). Whilst Bourdieu described his political position as "to the left of the left", meaning that he considered the Socialist Party to have sold out, he still stood at the heart of France's intellectual establishment. For Bourdieu, genuine scientific research, by its very nature, poses threat to the status qou. Since the power relations that sociology reveals owe part of their strength that they do not appear in to be power relations, all sociological discourse has a political discourse, even by default. In doing genuine research, one is revealing the hidden mechanisms of power, science may be of service to dominant groups in that it may lead to better and alternative modes of manipulation and social control. However, Bourdieu banked on the other possibility, that when prevailing power mechanisms are exposed, they will lose their efficacy to the benefit of those subordinate individuals and groups who have access to and are able to use this knowledge. For Bourdieu, science is on the side of the subordinated individuals and groups.
 
For many, Bourdieu's work criticised for its French context and not applying to outside social realms (e.g. Lamont 1992; Halle 1993). However, this charge may not be either totally correct or fair. Recent anthropological work in industrial countries and in Mediterranean countries, shows, even if inadvertently, that the values of France are not so French after all. For example, Bourdieu's work suggest that physical strengths is the primary trait by which French working-class men define and differentiate themselves from both women and middle-class men. French working class men, according to Bourdieu, find fish unsuitable food for males, not only because it is light and associated with sick people, but because to eat it requires one to handle it in ways that a man's hand cannot manage, that is gently. Moreover, eating fish contradicts the ëmasculine way of eatingí since, on account of the bones, one has to eat with restraint, in small mouthfuls, and chew gently. Indeed, this practical philosophy is not unlike the masculine ethic of Mediterranean villagers that fascinated anthropologists for so long, and even perhaps, offended their sensibilities.
 
Despite his terminal illness Bourdieu remained prolific to the very end. Recently, The Science of Science and Reflexivity (2002) - a sociological analysis of the world of science, including a very rigorous critique of the whole field of "science studies" - was published in France. In June, three more books are expected to be published. These include Interventions 1961-2001 a compendium of his political writings, a bibliography of his work that to more than 45 books and 500 articles, and the work that Bourdieu just finished before falling ill, The Ball of the Bachelors. The latter is a set of ethnological essays about his home village. At the same time, there lies an unfinished manuscript on Manet in which Bourdieu shows that the revolution Manet's painting brought to the artistic world is the same as that which Flaubert represents in literature.
 

Acknowledgement

This introduction draws on a number of long discussions with Peter Mayo. Nevertheless, the judgements expressed here are entirely my own.
 

References

Barnard, H., 2002.

Bourdieu, P., The Algerians, Boston : Beacon Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1967. ëSystems of education and systems of thoughtí, Social Science Information, 14 (3) : 338-358.

Bourdieu, P., 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, UK : University of Cambridge Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London: Routledge.

Bourdieu, P., 1986. ëThe three forms of capitalí, in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by
Richardson, J.G., New York : Greenwood Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1987. ëThe biographical illusioní, Working Papers and Proceedings of the Centre for Social Studies, no. 14, Chicago : Center for Psychosocial studies.

Bourdieu, P., 1987. ëThe revolt of the spirití, New Socialist, 46 (February) : 9-11.

Bourdieu, P., 1988. Homo Academicus, Stanford : Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1989a. ëThe Corporatism of the universal : the role of the intellectual in the modern worldí, Telos, 81 (Fall) : 99-110.

Bourdieu, P., 1989b. ëEpilogue : on the possibility of a field of world sociologyí, in Social Theory in a Changing Society, edited by Bourdieu, P., and Coleman, J., (pp. 373-87).

Bourdieu, P., 1990a. In Other Words : Essays towards a Reflexive Sociology, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1990b. The Logic of Practice, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1991a. ëThe peculiar history of scientific reasoní, Sociological Forum, 5 (2) : 3-26.

Bourdieu, P., 1991b. The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1996. The Rules of Art, The Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1996. The State Nobility, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1998a. On Television and Journalism, London : Pluto Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1998b. Acts of Resistance : Against New Myths of Our Time, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1998c. Practical Reason : On the Theory of Social Action, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P., and Haache, 1994. Free Exchange, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J-C. 1967. ëSociology and philosophy in France since 1945 : death and resurrection of a philosophy without subjectí, Social Research, 34 (1) : 162-212.

Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J-C. 1977. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, London : Sage.

Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J-C. 1979. The Inheritors : French Students and their Relation to Culture, Chicago : Chicago University Press.

Bourdieu, P., and Wacquant, L., 1992. ëThe purpose of reflexive sociology (the Chicago workshop)í, in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, edited by Bourdieu, P., and Wacquant, L., (pp. 61-216), Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P., Chamboredon, J-C., and Passeron, J-C., 1991. The Craft of Sociology : Epistemological Preliminaries, Berlin, Germany : Walter de Gruyter.

Honneth, A., Kocyba, and Shwibs, B., 1986. ëThe struggle for symbolic order : an interview with Pierre Bourdieuí, Theory, Culture, and Society, 3 (3) : 55-66.

Fowler, B., 1997. Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory : Critical Investigations, London : Sage.

Kauppi, N., 2000. ëThe sociologists as moraliste : Pierre Bourdieu's practice of theory and the French intellectual traditioní, Substance, 93 (3) : 7-21.

Lane, J.F., 2000. Pierre Bourdieu : A Critical Introduction. London : Pluto Press.

Swartz, D., 1997. Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Chicago : The University of Chicago.

Wacquaint, L., 2000. ëDurkehim and Bourdieu : the common plinth and its cracksí, in Reading Bourdieu on Society and Culture, edited by Fowler, B., Oxford, UK : Blackwell Press.

[2] Recently, Bourdieu's intellectual persona featured as the focus of a documentary film titled Sociology is a Combat Sport (2001). The film premiered in French cinemas and became an instant hit in both downtown Paris and university campuses. Here I would like to take the opportunity to share with you a an episode in the film which struck me immensely. The episode which I am referring to is when a fiery critic denounces the "psychiatrists of the suburbs" who diagnose society's ailments and emphasise, and states in a cynical tone that "It's not God, it's Bourdieu. You must not confuse them". Immediately he rushes out of the University's amphitheatre to the rather long enthusiastic applause of his fellow students-cum-supporters. However, Bourdieu remained unperturbed, and once order has been resumed replies that "Truth is not measured by hand-clapping".

[3] To-date the most comprehensive bibliography of Bourdieu's writing is HyperBourdieu (Barnard, 2002).

[4] Bourdieu has drawn from an unusually wide range of philosophical sources and it is somewhat difficult to pigeon-hole his pivotal intellectual sources. However, a critical perusal of The Craft of Sociology (Bourdieu, Chamboredon, and Passeron, 1991) finds that Bourdieu's thoughts owed much to Bachelard's (1957, 1971) vision of scientific knowledge as being an open-ended process in which prior errors were to be worked through and dialectically overcome. Moreover, Bourdieu's concepts of public intellectual (1987, 1989a, 1991a), theory of symbolic power (1977, 1984, 1990a, 1990b), and rationalist perspective of knowledge (1987, 1991b, 1998) are all highly indebted to Marx's, Weber and Durkheim respectively.

[5] The conception of field is often erroneously compared to Goffman's frame analysis'. Bourdieu account of field is distinct from that of Goffman in that social and economic conditions are embedded in the heart of his argument, rather than being merely implied at the periphery of his theory. Thus while it is correct to state that both Goffman and Bourdieu share a fascination with the exotic minutiae of everyday life, For Bourdieu, structural properties are always embedded in everyday events, while for Goffman, structures are distant echoes.

[6] Bourdieu's social space is three dimensional. The first vertical division pits agents holding large volumes of either economic or cultural capital against those deprived of both. The second, horizontal, pits those who possess much economic capital but few cultural assets, and those whose capital is pre-eminently cultural. The third and transverse dimension refers to how the volume and composition of capital for groups and individuals change over time.

[7] Amongst the more traditional fractions of the petty bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, artisans and the like, this would manifest itself in a rigorous work ethic and a rejection of the ëfrivolityí of the bourgeois culture and the ëvulgarityí of the working class. Less conventionally moralistic, Bourdieu argued, were the newer petty bourgeoisie fractions, the upwardly mobile who had befitted from the expansion in higher education and were taking white-collar post in the growing tertiary sector. Their aspirations manifested themselves in their cultural goodwill, that enthusiasm for a culture too recently acquired, a culture which still bore the visible marks of the efforts in its acquisition and could not, therefore, compete with the casual self-assurance of the ënaturalí aesthetic. Thus, insofar as they enter into the very constitution of class, social classifications are instruments of symbolic domination and constitute a central stake in the struggle between classes (and class factions), as each tries to gain control over the classificatory schemata that command the power to conserve or change reality by preserving or altering the representation of reality.

[8]  This theme was explored further in The State Nobility which investigated how the conversion rate between the various species of capital turns out to be on the central stake of social struggles, as each class or class faction seeks to impose the hierarchy of capital most favourable to its own endowment.