Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action

by Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Johnson (Translator)

Do social classes really exist? Is disinterested action really possible? What do the family, the church, and the intellectual world have in common? Can morality be founded on hypocrisy? What is the "subject" of action? In this new volume, one of France's foremost social thinkers of our time responds to these major questions and to others, thus tracing the outlines of a work that could be called "Pierre Bourdieu by himself." In these texts, the author tries to go to the essential, that is, the most elementary and fundamental, questions. He thereby explains the philosophical principles that have led to his social science research and the idea of the human that guides his choices there. With the lucidity allowed by retrospect, Bourdieu brings out the fundamental theories of his greatest books, notably Outline of a Theory of Practice and The Logic of Practice (Stanford, 1990), and, with an eye to the future, presents the first results of his most recent work on the state, the anthropological moorings of the economy, and male domination. Bourdieu's theory is both a philosophy of science dedicated to revealing the objective relations that shape and underpin social life, and a philosophy of action that takes account of agents' dispositions as well as the structured situations in which they act. This philosophy of action is condensed in a small number of key concepts―habitus, field, capital―and it is defined by the two-way relationship between the objective structures of social fields and the incorporated structures of the habitus. All in all, this book should be an indispensable introduction to Bourdieu's work, not only to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, political science, and philosophy, but throughout the social sciences and humanities generally.

Genres: Sociology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Psychology, Anthropology, Social Science

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions. He built upon the theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Georges Canguilhem, Karl Marx, Gaston Bachelard, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Erwin Panofsky, and Marcel Mauss. A notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations.

Bourdieu rejected the idea of the intellectual "prophet", or the "total intellectual", as embodied by Sartre. His best known book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position. His argument is put forward by an original combination of social theory and data from surveys, photographs and interviews, in an attempt to reconcile difficulties such as how to understand the subject within objective structures. In the process, he tried to reconcile the influences of both external social structures and subjective experience on the individual (see structure and agency).

Reviews

[Akbar Madan]

لن تجد عقلانية اجتماعية كعقلانية بيير بورديو وهو النحاّت المحترف للمفاهيم الاجتماعية والحرفي البارع في علم الاجتماع ، يمتلك ادواته اللغوية الخاصة التي بها ينحت الكلمات ليشكل من خلالها نمطية تفكير اجتماعي منفرد ، معالجاته للمفردات الاجتماعية " المكان الاجتماعي " مثلا متميزة فمن هذه المفردة يستطيع ان يخلق زوايا ومنحنيات زلقة في الفهم والاستيعاب لكنها صراخة في التركيبات الدلالية بين الفاعلين انفسهم ويبعدها عن التداولية الشعبوية الى الحيز العلمي .
من ممارساته العقلانية العملية فهم ظاهرة الرأسمال الجديد عندما يربط بين الرأسمال الثقافي والسياسي بالمكان الاجتماعي وهو ارتباط فعلي وعملي لتأصيل المكان الاجتماعي نفسه وذلك عبر إعادة بنية توزيع الرأسمال الثقافي وكنموذج له المدارس الخاصة " مدارس النخبة " التي تنتمي للنخبة السياسية والثقافية ذات المكان الاجتماعي نفسه والتي تنتج ما يسميه بيير " النبالة " وتتحول كل فئة في وراثة النبالة " السياسيين / كبار المدراء / الاطباء العظام " وغيرهم ، يغيب معها الكفاءة الاجتماعية ويحل محالها الاصطفاء الاجتماعي ، كما هو في الحقل الديني الذي يؤكد على اصطفاء انبياء واوصياء وخلفاء ومن بعدهم الحكام والملوك ، وهو نوع من إعادة انتاج السلك الديني الدنيوي نفسه بشكل متسلسل مترابط يساهم في تاكيد المكان الاجتماعي المعاكس لما يطرحه ماركس من مفهوم الطبقية الاجتماعية .