Ahearne, Jeremy and Speller, J. (John). (2012) Introduction : Bourdieu and the literary field. Paragraph, Vol.35 (No.1). pp. 1-9. ISSN 0264-8334

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Abstract

Pierre Bourdieu’s range as a thinker was extremely wide, and it would be misleading to present him primarily as a literary theorist. Trained as a philosopher, he became the leading French sociologist of his generation, and brought under the spotlight of his ‘critical sociology’ a whole series of institutional and discursive universes (education, art, linguistics, public administration, politics, philosophy, journalism, economics and others). Far from representing an intellectual dispersal, these manifold objects of enquiry allowed him to develop and refine a comprehensive theory of social process and power-relations based on distinctive concepts such as ‘field’, ‘habitus’, variously conceived notions of ‘capital’, and ‘illusio’ (all these concepts and others will be explicated and assessed in this issue). Yet Bourdieu’s analyses were scarcely ever received as neutral descriptions within the fields which he analysed. Bourdieu’s abiding agenda was to show how the discursive presuppositions and institutional logics at work in such fields carried but also masked certain social logics that a ‘critical sociology’ could disclose. Coupled with the inveterately combative drive seldom absent from Bourdieu’s objectifying analyses—and even setting aside the misprisions to which an external analyst is inevitably subject—this helps explain the resistance which his work recurrently provoked. In this respect, Bourdieu’s forays into the world of literary studies and his reception therein can be seen as part of a wider pattern.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies > Centre for Cultural Policy Studies Faculty of Arts > French Studies
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Bourdieu, Pierre, 1930-2002 -- Criticism and interpretation
Journal or Publication Title:	Paragraph
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
ISSN:	0264-8334
Date:	2012
Volume:	Vol.35
Number:	No.1
Page Range:	pp. 1-9
Identification Number:	10.3366/para.2012.0038
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/48867

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