Pierre Bourdieu died on January 23, 2002. Nearly 20 years have passed since the death of the French sociologist, philosopher, academic, and anthropologist. Bourdieu is considered one of the most important sociologists of the second half of the twentieth century. Bourdieu criticized the primacy attributed to economic factors by Marxist analysis. His work was characterized by an analysis of the mechanisms of reproduction of social hierarchies and emphasized the importance of symbolic and cultural factors within this reproduction itself. According to the academic, a fundamental role in social relations of domination is the ability of social agents in positions of supremacy to impose their own cultural and symbolic productions. One of his key concepts concerns symbolic violence , which he defined as the ability to conceal the arbitrariness of these symbolic productions and, consequently, to admit them as legitimate to the dominated social actors.
Biography of Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was born in Denguin on August 1, 1930. After studying at the Lycée de Pau and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, he entered the École Normale Supérieure in the French capital in 1951. In 1955, he taught at the Lycée de Moulins. Between 1955 and 1958, he completed his military service in Algeria, which was then at war. He became an assistant professor at the University of Algiers. He returned to his native France in 1960, as an assistant professor at the Sorbonne. The following year, he was appointed professor at the University of Lille. In 1964, he was appointed director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études, and in 1981, he was appointed to the chair of sociology at the Collège de France. He directed the Centre for European Sociology and the journals “ Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales ” and “Liber.” In 1989, Bourdieu received an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin; in 1993, he was a member of the European Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a gold medal from the CNRS, and three years later, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt. At the age of 69, he was awarded the title of "Duke of Desarraigo" by the Sovereign of the Kingdom of Redonda. He died in Paris on January 23, 2002.
Pierre Bourdieu and the camps
Pierre Bourdieu used the term " fields" to define the various divisions of the social world. The differentiation of social activities has created a series of social spaces, such as the "artistic field" or the "political field," each specialized in the implementation of a specific social activity. Each field is relatively autonomous from the social system as a whole, and within each field, hierarchies and dynamics of domination arise, resulting from the struggle for dominance. Consistent with Marxist analysis, Pierre Bourdieu recognized the important role of struggle and social conflict in the functioning of society. However, for the Frenchman, conflict occurs primarily within each social field, where the dominant and dominated social agents of that specific field clash. This struggle aims to gain dominance over the field.
Bourdieu's concept of habitus
Pierre Bourdieu also developed, within his theory of social action, another important concept, that of habitus , which has had a great influence on the social sciences. Bourdieu placed great emphasis on the cultural element: those who belong to a class have a certain worldview, certain customs. This is what the French sociologist defined as habitus, a category that ultimately includes everything shared within a given class (behaviors, tastes, ideas, judgments). Habitus is not destiny, but rather the collective unconscious of a social class, which is unaware of its habitus. Compared to Marx , the real innovation lies in the fact that social class depends not only on the economy, but also on culture, aesthetics, and morality: so much so that conflicts of taste themselves are class conflicts.
The four types of capital
Bourdieu focused on the "generative principles" with which individuals construct social and cultural phenomena. He believed, following Karl Marx, that each of us moves within a certain ideology depending on our class membership. Bourdieu went beyond Marx and distinguished four different types of capital: economic capital (money, means of production); social capital (social networks); cultural capital (languages, taste, way of life, etc.); and, finally, symbolic capital (symbols of legitimacy). The four types of capital are convertible into one another. For example, those who possess culture (cultural capital) have the ability to translate it into money (economic capital). Based on this distinction between capital, Bourdieu was able to distinguish different social classes. According to the Frenchman, the highest class is the one that possesses all four types of capital in greater measure.
This, however, does not mean that classes are hierarchical and fixed as in Marx. The three main classes (upper class, middle class, lower class) are further divided into three internal levels: upper, middle, and lower. Specifically, regarding the upper social class, the upper group is the bourgeoisie with large economic capital; the middle group is professionals; and finally, the lower group is intellectuals and artists. Classes tend to blend into one another, losing the rigidity with which they were configured in traditional Marxism.
Born in Catanzaro on July 5, 1989, he has been a member of the Order of Journalists (Freelance Journalists) since 2017. He earned a bachelor's degree in Social Work in 2013, a bachelor's degree in Sociology in 2016, and a master's degree in Organizations and Social Change in 2018. In 2020, he earned his fourth degree in Economics. He has also published three volumes of a science fiction trilogy.
