Bourdieu and Historical Analysis

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu had a broader theoretical agenda than is generally acknowledged. Introducing this innovative collection of essays, Philip S. Gorski argues that Bourdieu's reputation as a theorist of social reproduction is the misleading result of his work's initial reception among Anglophone readers, who focused primarily on his mid-career thought. Bourdieu's entire body of work reveals him as a theorist of social transformation as well as reproduction. Gorski maintains that Bourdieu was initially engaged with the question of social transformation, that the question of historical change never disappeared from his view, and that it re-emerged with great force at the end of his career. The contributors to Bourdieu and Historical Analysis explore this expanded understanding of Bourdieu's thought and its potential contributions to analyses of large-scale social change and historical crisis. In their essays, they offer a primer on his concepts and methods, and put those into conversation with alternative approaches, including rational choice, Lacanian psychoanalysis, pragmatism, Latour's actor-network theory, and the new sociology of ideas. Several contributors examine Bourdieu's work on subjects such as literature and sports. Others extend his thinking in new directions, applying it to nationalism and to social policy. Taken together, the essays initiate an important conversation about Bourdieu's approach to socio-historical change. Contributors: Craig Calhoun, Charles Camic, Christophe Charle, Jacques Defrance, Mustafa Emirbayer, Ivan Ermakoff, Gil Eyal, Chad Alan Goldberg, Philip S. Gorski, Robert A. Nye, Erik Schneiderhan, Gisele Shapiro, George Steinmetz, David Swartz