Many prominent scientists contributed to sociology, one of which was Pierre Bourdieu. A citizen of France, born in 1930, a philosopher, culturologist, author of the theoretical concept of social space, field, cultural and social capital. He believed that the subject's place in social space determines economic capital, which can be considered in the aspect of cultural, social and symbolic assets.
short biography
Biography of Pierre Bourdieu is full of various events. He took an active part in political transformations and studied a lot. The future sociologist was born in 1930 in Dangen (France). His father is a peasant, his mother's family are small owners. In 1941-1947 Pierre Bourdieu studied at the Lyceum of Louis Barthes, where one of the teachers noticed him and advised him to enroll in the elite Lyceum of Louis the Great for a course in the humanities and elite sciences.
In 1951, Bourdieu was admitted to the Higher School, and Jacques Derrida and Louis Maren studied with him. At this time, his philosophical and sociological worldview was being formed. He is interested in the works of Sartre, Husserl, Marx, Merlot-Ponti. Together with Derrida and Maren, she establishes the Committee for Freedom at school. In 1953 he defended his Leibniz diploma, in 1954 he passes the exam for the right to teach philosophy and begins to work on a dissertation on the temporal structures of emotional life.
From 1954 to 1955 works as a teacher in high school. After he refused compulsory military service, he was transferred to Versailles, to the Army Psychological Service. At the end of 1955, Pierre was transferred to Algeria, where there was a war, where he spent two years. During this time, he managed to start an ethnological study, which he continued, working as an assistant to the philological faculty of the University of Algeria in 1958-1960.
Back to France
Time spent in Algeria defined Bourdieu's career as a sociologist. He publishes several books on ethnology, in 1958 the work “Sociology of Algeria” was published, where Pierre Bourdieu analyzes the influence of colonialism on the destruction of the traditional way of life. After Algeria declared independence, Bourdieu wrote the work “Labor and Workers in Algeria” and “The Crisis of Traditional Agriculture in Algeria”. Having completed his research, he returns to France.
In 1960, he worked as chief secretary at the Center for European Sociology. In 1961 he received a teaching position at the University of Lille, where he worked until 1964. Pierre Bourdieu married in 1962 to Marie Brizard. In mid-1964, the French sociologist became deputy head of the Center for European Sociology, began to study cultural practices, which he devoted the next 10 years.
In 1968, he founded his own Center for Sociology and Culture, where he studied social hierarchy and reproduction. He died in 1983.
Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
Studying social reality, Bourdieu wanted to move away from the phenomenological and structuralist approaches. He does not use the concepts of subjects and objects, instead of them introduces a new word "agent". Unlike entities that obey certain rules, agents reproduce strategies — some practice systems that have a specific goal, but are not directed by the goal. To explain his concept of agents, Bourdieu introduced the concept of “habitus”.
Habitus is a system of strong dispositions acquired in the process of socialization that help an individual to function in a specific structure. This is a kind of dispositional system that determines the activities and representations of individuals. Habitus is a product of history that produces individual and collective practices. It determines the presence in the actions of individuals of past experience, which is the guarantor of correct behavior. Habitus tends to generate generally accepted behaviors that are adapted to the logic of a particular field of activity - social space.
Social space
Bourdieu believed that society should be considered as a structure in two guises. The first hypostasis is first-order reality, where a person’s position in society is determined by the distribution of material resources, prestige, values and other social benefits. Second-order reality is the behavior and thinking of individuals, which correspond to their position in society. Simply put, Bourdieu regarded social reality as a correlation of the physical and subjective.
You can highlight the social and physical space - the field. Physical space is determined by the interconnection of the external parts that form it, social - appears as a result of the implementation of various positions. A social field can consist of several fields, that is, a person can occupy several social positions.
The main task of sociology according to Bourdieu is to identify hidden structures in the environment of the physical and social fields. But this is only a small part of his research. No less interesting is the sociology of politics of Pierre Bourdieu.
Politics
Bourdieu also considered the state apparatus from the point of view of the field. The main feature of the field is that agents and institutions fight according to the rules formulated in this space. They make efforts, respectively, get different results. Thus, elites and masses are formed. The political field has no components; it is a kind of map on which the game for access to capital is played. And each game has its own rules.
According to Pierre Bourdieu, society is not a structure, it is just the result of the actions of agents who take part in the game of the field.