300076 Bourdieu reading course (S) (SoSe 2015)

In this course we will read ‘The state nobility’, ‘perhaps the most formidable and the most paradoxical’ of Bourdieu’s manifold works’ according to Loïc Wacquant (1996, Reading Bourdieu’s Capital, International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 151). This book will serve as a ground to delve into the key concepts of one of the leading sociologists of our times. The concepts of field, habitus, cultural capital, symbolic violence and symbolic power are crucial to Bourdieu’s work and have been used and applied by many other scholars in the social sciences across a wide field of subdisciplines, including the sociology of inequalities, of education, cultural sociology and political sociology, among many others. ‘The state nobility’ lays out Bourdieu’s theory of modes of domination and accounts for the reproduction of social structure and social space. It thereby also reveals his perspective on the relationship between agency and structure.
Being renown as a key thinker in sociological theory, Bourdieu also undertook numerous empirical studies which is also reflected in this book. In this vein, he himself sees his (and other’s) theoretical contribution as a ‘temporary construct which takes shape for and by empirical work’ (cited in Wacquant 1996, Towards reflexive sociology: a workshop with Pierre Bourdieu, Sociological Theory, 50). Therefore, we will also have a careful look into the empirical data Bourdieu uses to support and reveal his arguments. Our reading of the book will be accompanied by some other material from and on Bourdieu, academic text, video, film and from the press, that will help us better understand the universe of his thinking as well as his influence across disciplines, themes and in many different countries.

Bibliography

Bourdieu, Pierre, 1996, The state nobility, Standford University Press