Bourdieu. (Key Sociologists series) Revised Edition

Pierre Bourdieu's sociological writings are, as Richard Jenkins points out, too intimidating and daunting to be as accessible as their insights merit. Indeed, Bourdieu has declared to wage a "permanent struggle against ordinary language." But, as Jenkins insists, beyond the perhaps unnecessarily opaque language games of Bourdieu's sociological circles and interpreters, Bourdieu's contributions to sociology and social anthropology are of such import that he has come to personify the continued value and vigor of the distinctly French intellectual tradition within the social sciences. Bourdieu occupies a political and theoretical space constructed out of the divergent currents of Marx, Weber and Durkheim; structuralism and interactionism; pessimistic dertermination, but also out of a celebratory belief in the creative potential of human practice.

Jenkins has produced a properly critical account of Bourdieu's work which is accessible to students. In doing so, he has examined a broad range of Bourdieu's work placing his epistemological and methodological writings at the center of that account. Written in a clear style, Pierre Bourdieu covers the full range of his work from the early Algerian fieldwork, to the massive surveys of French cultural consumption, to his most recent theoretical essays. Pierre Bourdieu is ideal for both students and scholars.