Which would you say is Bourdieu's main book regarding the "field of
social sciences"? I would really appreciate different opinions.
Thank you for your help.
“The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason.” Social Science Information 14 (December): 19-47.
To do it the best? Start by struggling with his early texts for at least a couple of months and then come back. Not being snarky just good advice.
"If only the health care bill covered spine transplants for congressional Dems "
The Republicans are much smarter than Liberals. They realize they can spout facile, shallow things that pander to ignorance and fear. Stuff that Democrats find facile, shallow and ignorant.
> Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:16:22 -0800
> Subject: BOU Bourdieu books about the field of social sciences?
> From: gacharna.ps@gmail.com
> To: bour...@googlegroups.com
>
> Hi. I'm currently designing a research project regarding the relation
> between language, social research and universities. I want to include
> Bourdieu in my theoretical framework, so I'm looking for books of him
> that refers to social sciences as a "field." I confess I know VERY
> little about Bourdieu's works so you could really help me out...
>
> Which would you say is Bourdieu's main book regarding the "field of
> social sciences"? I would really appreciate different opinions.
>
> Thank you for your help.
>
> --
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" I want to include Bourdieu in my theoretical framework"
" I know VERY little about Bourdieu's works"
If you know little, how do you know you want to use him?
My advice would be spend few months finding out about his work - then see if you want to use him. That way you would not need to ask the question " Which would you say is Bourdieu's main book regarding the "field of social sciences"?" As you would know yourself. But don't assume all the secrets are hidden in one main text as if it was a holy grail.
Not the sort of help you wanted I suspect!
Best wishes,
Peter
**********************************
Dr Peter Gates
Identities, Relationships and Cultures
Centre for Research in Schools and Communities
School of Education
Room B80, Dearing Building
The University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG8 1BB
Tel: +44 115 951 4432
**********************************
-----Original Message-----
From: bour...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bour...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Gerardo
Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2010 2:16 AM
To: Bourdieu
Subject: BOU Bourdieu books about the field of social sciences?
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It would also be helpful to find someone who knows PB's work well and talk to them, having done some reading. Many of the evergrowing number of appalling misuses of PB seem to come from those who have never read any actual PB or chatted to someone who might have done.
Karl
--- On Sun, 31/1/10, Paul Conville <paul.c...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > From: gacha...@gmail.com
> > To: bour...@googlegroups.com
>
>
> >
> > Hi. I'm currently designing a research project
> regarding the relation
> > between language, social research and universities. I
> want to include
> > Bourdieu in my theoretical framework, so I'm
> looking for books of him
>
>
> > that refers to social sciences as a "field."
> I confess I know VERY
> > little about Bourdieu's works so you could really
> help me out...
> >
> > Which would you say is Bourdieu's main book
> regarding the "field of
>
>
> > social sciences"? I would really appreciate
> different opinions.
> >
> > Thank you for your help.
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed
> to the Google Groups "Bourdieu" group.
>
>
> > To post to this group, send email to bour...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to bourdieu+u...@googlegroups.com.
>
>
> > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bourdieu?hl=en.
> >
>
>
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>
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>
>
>
I would echo the responses you have received to your request.
Further, I would observe, that it is to your credit as a student that you
would make such a transparent "confession" about knowing so little about
Bourdieu in the same E-breath that you express your desire to "include" his
thinking in your theoretical framework ...
Do I hear the impact of a higher education pedagogy here that marches to the
dogmatic drum beat that a research project "needs" a theoretical framework?
My sense is that reflection of your line of questioning (the language of
your questioning) about what you propose to do (your social research) in the
context in which you presumably are doing it (the university) contains deep
structural irony when reconsidered in the terms Bourdieu understood social
research may well lead you on to further very suggestive refection in the
direction he suggests.
That being said, while endorsing all that other posts in reply, I would
recommend Pascalian Meditations 2000 Stanford University Press (translation
by Richard Nice of Meditations pascaliennes (1997). because in this book you
may confront the kind of explicit perspective from which PB may well have
critically replied to your request.
Best wishes
Bruce Wearne.
Point Lonsdale AUSTRALIA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerardo" <gacha...@gmail.com>
To: "Bourdieu" <bour...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2010 1:16 PM
Subject: BOU Bourdieu books about the field of social sciences?
Ah, the Pascalian Meditations. The title in itself is fascinating. I cannot read it and not immediately think of Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations. Was it PB's intention to be counter-Husserlian (or anti-cartesian) in any sense? Been years since I read the book, but I remember finding no immediate or obvious support for such an hypothesis. Perhaps I need to dig it out of my archive and read it again. --- On Sun, 1/31/10, Bruce C Wearne <bcwe...@ozemail.com.au> wrote: |
|
|
|
I tried to read Bourdieu but did not understand anything. Can you help me?
Regards.
AZ
Dear All
>> �The Specificity of the
>> Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress
>> of Reason.� Social Science Information 14 (December):
>> 19-47.
>>
>> or �Why the Social Sciences
>> Must Take Themselves as their Object.� Part III of Science of Science
He has an essentialistic interpretation (like Aristotle) a problematic method (like Aristotle and Dewey) and a Comprehensive principle (like Plato, Durkheim and Heidegger). See http://net-prophet.net/mckeon/17/1_images.htm for a discussion of these terms (which are not categories, but topoi). This is not to suggest in any way that PB follows any doctrines of any of these prior thinkiers (although he in fact may, and I personally think he does). It is merely a rough statement of Bourdieu's philosophical semantics. Even that is merely my interpretation of Bourdieu, although I beleive it to be a reasonable one. See John Dewey's *How we Think" for an exhaustive account of the problematic method. (Durkheim, I think, was dialectical).
As to one very interesting and curious substantive doctrine of PB, he holds that those persons most oppresse by the social system are those who least want to change it. (How so? through the educational system and lots of nonsense of the world being a meritocracy). This comes as no shock, really, once you realise that there is a compehensive principle at work (as in Durkheim, society makes the individual, not the other way around as in Max Weber-- no wonder Weber and Durkheim couldn't tolerate each other; Weber had an actional principle, like Rousseau and Marx-- not to forget Gorgias the sophist)
PB's *Homo Acedemicus" established andother Bourdieu doctrine (again, not at all shocking when you know there is a comprehenive principle operating) that during the great student/worker uprising in May 1968, the position taken by each professor in the French university system was exactly predictable by the raking of that professor in the university system. PB goes to extreme lengths to demonstrate this. *Distinction* establishes at even greater length that a person's musical tastes are determined by ones socio economic status. The higher up you are, the more likely you are to appreciate the Beethoven late string Quartets (e.g. OP. 131), for example (my own example, not PB's).
Many people who post here (none of whom I would imagine are familiar which Richard McKeon's sematic matrix-- I am because I was a McKeon student during the two years just before Robert Pirsig's *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," in which McKeon is the "Chairman" character, was published) will disagree with my approach to Bourdieu.
But whether you use McKeon's matrix or not, the key to understanding any thinking is to understand what he or she means when using key terms like "society" or "religion." Perhaps all will agree that Weber and Durkheim used these terms very, very differently, and that the two had radically different notions about both. (This is why Durkheim need to study only one religion to get a more or less complete picture, Weber needed to study them all. For a similar reason, Bourdiue can see France as a microcosim of all advanced Western societies. Again: the comprehensive principle).
PS: I have it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, that Robert Pirsig's "Substantive field of study" was not English composition, not philisophy, but the title of his book. Had he said "the relation between Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance" McKeon would have given him his graduate fellowship. 15 years later, Pirsig might have had a Ph.D. :)
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Dear Patrick,
Yours is a very simplistic version of Bourdieu who would never say something like what you have ascribed to him regarding e.g. the deterministic character of the social space (in Distinction). You haven’t even made the effort to see how Bourdieu in fact distinguishes between different kinds of capital and that he sees the social space as made up of a structured field of fields. One’s musical taste is not determined by one’s socio-economic status... Your reduction of Bourdieu is too crude to take seriously.
Best regards,
Pär Engholm
*******************************************************
Par Engholm
Uppsala University
Department of Sociology
Mobile: +46 709783546
http://www.soc.uu.se/kontaktpers.php?id=62
Journal of Critical Realism
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to bourdieu+u...@googlegroups.com.
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19:35:00
Dear Par,
Please go back and read what I wrote, and what that was written in response to. It was in response to someone who said he read Bourdieu and got absolutely nothing out of it. In responses, I said a good deal more substantively about Weber and Durkheim than I did about Bourdieu.
Actually, I intended to say more about Bourdieu's semantics than I did his substantive positions. Ones semantics do not determine ones substantive positions: Hegel and Henri Bergson had the same semantic profiles (entitative, dialectical, reflexive). Are their philosophies the same? Not hardly. And with one slight "tweak," going from reflexive to actional principles, you get the framework for marxism, or from reflexive to simple pronciples, you get Herbert Spencer and Darwin. Yes, Darwin comes out of Hegel much in the same way Marx does. Call that siplistic if you will, but the notion of thinking of electricity and magnetism in terms of "fields" instead of particles (in a more Newtonian fashion) is simplistic too. But James Clerk Maxwell made quite a name for himself by doing simply that (he took Newton's simple pinciples and substituted reflexive principle. Einstein carried this one step further by switching to comprehensive
principles).
When I say Bourdiue is an essentialist (admittedly without refernece to any Bourdieu texts because I do not have any at my immediate disposal), I am admittedly saying a great deal. Likewise when I say he is using a problematic method. If you disagree (maybe you think PB is an operationalist?) that's great, but please be specific. You can read any writer as having any semantic profile you chose, but you then risk reducing him/her to absurdity if you are too far off. On the contrary, if you get a semantic profile "correct," a lot of difficulties disappear (being a good essentialist myself, I think that's a good thing. We essentialists are a very tidy lot). For example McKeon's interpretation of Aristotle (essentialistic, problematic, reflexive-- a complete functionalist in other words) all the difficulties other scholars find disappear. You don't need to say this was "early" whereas that was "later"
Aristotle to resolve supposed inconstitencies (that aren't really there).
As I said before, to read Bourdieu intelligently, you need to have some idea of what sort of principles he is using. Holoscopic or meroscopic? If holoscopic, reflexive or comprehensive? If merscopic, actional or simple? Prior to that, you need to know what is principle *is.* Ask McKeon once pointed out in a lecture, most people know what their principles are, but few know what a principle "is.* A principle is simply starting point. They are not "facts." They are "true" either because they ae all-encompassing totalities (the holoscopic case) or elementary (simple pronciples, natural elements; actional principles, arbitrary elements). . Am I being simplistic in saying this? If you want evidence that Aristotle was holoscopic, look at the opening line of the Politics, where he says society is prior to the individual. Can you imagine Rousseau or Marx ever saying anything like that?
In conclusion, you may not like what I wrote in answer to the person who read Bourdieu and gleaned nothing from it. But I will submit that it was better than a mere reference to some other book. Indeed, Bourdieu is difficult and complex. But if you understand him at all, you ought to be able to give at least *some* sort of capsule summary of what he is saying. That I beleive was what the person I responded to was asking for. And rather than argue any further with me, I would like to humbly suggest you give that a try. --- On Mon, 2/1/10, Par Engholm <Par.E...@soc.uu.se> wrote: |
I'm amazed with the number of responses in so little time! Are members
always so helpful here? Thank you all... Kent and Peter: It's really
good advice and I had it coming with my "easy way out" question. Paul:
What a list, I gotta check them out. Chris: I hadn't thought about
that, good idea. Karl: I wouldn't like to misuse PB's framework, I'm
gonna start looking around here to see with whom I could chat some
other time. Bruce: Really an interesting answer, thanks for your
invitation; hopefully my project will be as interesting.
With your feedback in mind, I think I ought to reframe... having
explored a bit through works related with the relations between
language, university, and social research, a few ideas related with
Bourdieu's works appeared every so often. That made me curious about
Bourdieu's perspective on social sciences and his concept of field. I
suspect they would enrich my project, but I should explore further to
be certain. That was why I thought best to ask experts first and
decided to ask here. Unfortunately, being this a college project, I
have very little time, so against my judgment (as well as yours) I
won't be able to explore Bourdieu's thoughts to a proper depth.
Again, thank you for being so helpful.
On 1 feb, 13:19, Patrick Crosby <pfcro...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Par,
> Please go back and read what I wrote, and what that was written in response to. It was in response to someone who said he read Bourdieu and got absolutely nothing out of it. In responses, I said a good deal more substantively about Weber and Durkheim than I did about Bourdieu.
> Actually, I intended to say more about Bourdieu's semantics than I did his substantive positions. Ones semantics do not determine ones substantive positions: Hegel and Henri Bergson had the same semantic profiles (entitative, dialectical, reflexive). Are their philosophies the same? Not hardly. And with one slight "tweak," going from reflexive to actional principles, you get the framework for marxism, or from reflexive to simple pronciples, you get Herbert Spencer and Darwin. Yes, Darwin comes out of Hegel much in the same way Marx does. Call that siplistic if you will, but the notion of thinking of electricity and magnetism in terms of "fields" instead of particles (in a more Newtonian fashion) is simplistic too. But James Clerk Maxwell made quite a name for himself by doing simply that (he took Newton's simple pinciples and substituted reflexive principle. Einstein carried this one step further by switching to comprehensive principles).
> When I say Bourdiue is an essentialist (admittedly without refernece to any Bourdieu texts because I do not have any at my immediate disposal), I am admittedly saying a great deal. Likewise when I say he is using a problematic method. If you disagree (maybe you think PB is an operationalist?) that's great, but please be specific. You can read any writer as having any semantic profile you chose, but you then risk reducing him/her to absurdity if you are too far off. On the contrary, if you get a semantic profile "correct," a lot of difficulties disappear (being a good essentialist myself, I think that's a good thing. We essentialists are a very tidy lot). For example McKeon's interpretation of Aristotle (essentialistic, problematic, reflexive-- a complete functionalist in other words) all the difficulties other scholars find disappear. You don't need to say this was "early" whereas that was "later" Aristotle to resolve supposed
> inconstitencies (that aren't really there).
> As I said before, to read Bourdieu intelligently, you need to have some idea of what sort of principles he is using. Holoscopic or meroscopic? If holoscopic, reflexive or comprehensive? If merscopic, actional or simple? Prior to that, you need to know what is principle *is.* Ask McKeon once pointed out in a lecture, most people know what their principles are, but few know what a principle "is.* A principle is simply starting point. They are not "facts." They are "true" either because they ae all-encompassing totalities (the holoscopic case) or elementary (simple pronciples, natural elements; actional principles, arbitrary elements). .
> Am I being simplistic in saying this? If you want evidence that Aristotle was holoscopic, look at the opening line of the Politics, where he says society is prior to the individual. Can you imagine Rousseau or Marx ever saying anything like that?
> In conclusion, you may not like what I wrote in answer to the person who read Bourdieu and gleaned nothing from it. But I will submit that it was better than a mere reference to some other book. Indeed, Bourdieu is difficult and complex. But if you understand him at all, you ought to be able to give at least *some* sort of capsule summary of what he is saying. That I beleive was what the person I responded to was asking for. And rather than argue any further with me, I would like to humbly suggest you give that a try.
> --- On Mon, 2/1/10, Par Engholm <Par.Engh...@soc.uu.se> wrote:
>
> From: Par Engholm <Par.Engh...@soc.uu.se>
> Subject: RE: BOU Bourdieu books about the field of social sciences?
> To: bour...@googlegroups.com
> Date: Monday, February 1, 2010, 9:01 AM
>
> Dear Patrick,
> Yours is a very simplistic version of Bourdieu who would never say something like what you have ascribed to him regarding e.g. the deterministic character of the social space (in Distinction). You haven’t even made the effort to see how Bourdieu in fact distinguishes between different kinds of capital and that he sees the social space as made up of a structured field of fields. One’s musical taste is not determined by one’s socio-economic status... Your reduction of Bourdieu is too crude to take seriously.
> Best regards,
> Pär Engholm
>
>
> *******************************************************
> Par Engholm
> Uppsala University
> Department of Sociology
> Mobile: +46 709783546http://www.soc.uu.se/kontaktpers.php?id=62
>
> Journal of Critical Realismhttp://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/JCR/index
>
>
> From: bour...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bour...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick Crosby
> Sent: den 1 februari 2010 16:24
> To: bour...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: BOU Bourdieu books about the field of social sciences?
>
>
> He has an essentialistic interpretation (like Aristotle) a problematic method (like Aristotle and Dewey) and a Comprehensive principle (like Plato, Durkheim and Heidegger). Seehttp://net-prophet.net/mckeon/17/1_images.htm for a discussion of these terms (which are not categories, but topoi). This is not to suggest in any way that PB follows any doctrines of any of these prior thinkiers (although he in fact may, and I personally think he does). It is merely a rough statement of Bourdieu's philosophical semantics. Even that is merely my interpretation of Bourdieu, although I beleive it to be a reasonable one. See John Dewey's *How we Think" for an exhaustive account of the problematic method. (Durkheim, I think, was dialectical).
>
> As to one very interesting and curious substantive doctrine of PB, he holds that those persons most oppresse by the social system are those who least want to change it. (How so? through the educational system and lots of nonsense of the world being a meritocracy). This comes as no shock, really, once you realise that there is a compehensive principle at work (as in Durkheim, society makes the individual, not the other way around as in Max Weber-- no wonder Weber and Durkheim couldn't tolerate each other; Weber had an actional principle, like Rousseau and Marx-- not to forget Gorgias the sophist)
> PB's *Homo Acedemicus" established andother Bourdieu doctrine (again, not at all shocking when you know there is a comprehenive principle operating) that during the great student/worker uprising in May 1968, the position taken by each professor in the French university system was exactly predictable by the raking of that professor in the university system. PB goes to extreme lengths to demonstrate this.
>
> *Distinction* establishes at even greater length that a person's musical tastes are determined by ones socio economic status. The higher up you are, the more likely you are to appreciate the Beethoven late string Quartets (e.g. OP. 131), for example (my own example, not PB's).
>
> Many people who post here (none of whom I would imagine are familiar which Richard McKeon's sematic matrix-- I am because I was a McKeon student during the two years just before Robert Pirsig's *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," in which McKeon is the "Chairman" character, was published) will disagree with my approach to Bourdieu.
>
> But whether you use McKeon's matrix or not, the key to understanding any thinking is to understand what he or she means when using key terms like "society" or "religion." Perhaps all will agree that Weber and Durkheim used these terms very, very differently, and that the two had radically different notions about both. (This is why Durkheim need to study only one religion to get a more or less complete picture, Weber needed to study them all. For a similar reason, Bourdiue can see France as a microcosim of all advanced Western societies. Again: the comprehensive principle).
>
> PS: I have it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, that Robert Pirsig's "Substantive field of study" was not English composition, not philisophy, but the title of his book. Had he said "the relation between Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance" McKeon would have given him his graduate fellowship. 15 years later, Pirsig might have had a Ph.D. :)
>
>
> --- On Sun, 1/31/10, ma...@brunet.bn <ma...@brunet.bn> wrote:
>
> From: ma...@brunet.bn <ma...@brunet.bn>
> Subject: Re: BOU Bourdieu books about the field of social sciences?
> To: "I tried to" <bour...@googlegroups.com>
> Date: Sunday, January 31, 2010, 11:40 PM
>
> Dear All
>
> I tried to read Bourdieu but did not understand anything. Can you help me?
> Regards.
> AZ
>
> > It's not an either / or. Read the best introductions (Swartz, Grenfell)
> > and read PB himself. (Paul's suggestions below are pretty good).
>
> > It would also be helpful to find someone who knows PB's work well and talk
> > to them, having done some reading. Many of the evergrowing number of
> > appalling misuses of PB seem to come from those who have never read any
> > actual PB or chatted to someone who might have done.
>
> > Karl
>
> > --- On Sun, 31/1/10, Paul Conville <paul.convi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> >> From: Paul Conville <paul.convi...@googlemail.com>
> >> Subject: Re: BOU Bourdieu books about the field of social sciences?
> >> To: bour...@googlegroups.com, gacharna...@gmail.com
> >> Date: Sunday, 31 January, 2010, 17:57
> >> Hi Gerardo,
> >> This research project sounds very interesting
> >> and Bourdieu certainly has a number of works that speak
> >> directly to the issue.
> >> In terms of where to start, I think if your
> >> knowledge of Bourdieu is limited (as you suggest) it may be
> >> worth reading something introductory, particularly, around
> >> the field concept. A good critical introduction is Schwartz
> >> (1997) Culture and power: The Sociology
> >> of Pierre Bourdieu
>
> >> A fairly succinct outline, by Bourdieu, of the
> >> place of language in
>
> ...
>
> leer más »
Still, that's just my penny's worth. Or cent's worth. Or Euro.
--- On Tue, 2/2/10, Patrick Crosby <pfcr...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> bourdieu+u...@googlegroups.com.
> >>
> >>
> >> > For more options, visit this group at
> >> http://groups.google.com/group/bourdieu?hl=en.
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM
> protection.
> >> Sign
> >> up now.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >>
> >> You received this message because you are
> subscribed to the
> >> Google Groups "Bourdieu" group.
> >>
> >>
> >> To post to this group, send email to bour...@googlegroups.com.
> >>
> >>
> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
As for some of the recent posts - theoreticism, anyone?
--- On Tue, 2/2/10, Gerardo <gacha...@gmail.com> wrote: