Biography of Pierre Bourdieu

The study of social oppression

August 10, 1930
January 23, 2002
French sociologist, born in Denguin on August 10, 1930, Pierre Bourdieu was perhaps the most important European social scientist of the second half of the 20th century. Influenced by Marxism than by the structuralism, Bourdieu was interested particularly in the study of cultural processes by making several key ideas for understanding the society, within a structuralist vision according to which in the social world there are independent structures from the consciousness of the individual and his will, which delimit the behavior of social actor. These ideas are found in its analysis on the taste, where cultural preferences of individuals are put in relation to the distinction of class and habitus dominating the class itself. So popular aesthetics or luxury class conflict and become signs are part of the collective unconscious that defines the tastes of a social class (habitus). The habitus, that is, the structure of norms and behaviors, allowing to Bourdieu to explain how a company's culture is internalised docked at the same time. In this way, the dominant cultural pattern is placed between dynamic forces (social perceptions of different habitus by individuals) and static forces (educational processes that lead individuals to reiterate prevailing patterns). In Bourdieu also the concept of rites of institution (i.e. those rites which serve to reiterate and to formalise the social hierarchy) and the original concept of "symbolic violence" (that is, a form of violence associated with the educational processes, such as the acquisition of cultural capital, political etc). Bourdieu has also revamped the French tradition of engagement, taking up position in the most important events of our time: alongside the students in their struggles, with Algerian intellectuals in the war for independence or alongside Lech Walesa with Solidarity in the early 80 's against the Soviet occupation of Poland. And every commitment has always been accompanied by his competence of sociologist. Among his best known works: Sociologie de l ' Algérie (1956), Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, (1972), The distinction. Critique sociale du Jugement (1979), Le Sens pratique (1980), Questions de sociologie (1980), Homo academicus (1984), Les Règles de l'art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (1992), La Misère du monde (1993). Member of the European Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among other career awards include the Gold Medal of the CNRS (1993) and an honorary doctorate of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt (1996). Pierre Bourdieu has disappeared in 71 years the next day January 23, 2002 in Paris.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.