The constant gardener
Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)
Imre Szeman,
McMaster University
Pierre Bourdieu was author of more than twenty-five books of sociology and philosophy and founder of the review
Liber and the journal Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales.
At his death in 2002, he was chair of sociology at the Collège de France and arguably the most important
intellectual in France — a status that he used over the last decade of his life to draw attention to the
crises in politics and culture produced by neo-liberal globalization. Throughout his career, his work gave rise to
considerable controversy and debate.
Bourdieu's work ranged widely, from studies of the gift economy amongst the Khable tribe in Algeria, to more recent
work on the experience of poverty and social dislocation in France. He is best known for his exploration of the
mechanisms of social reproduction and educational systems, and the role played by "cultural" or "symbolic capital"
in ensuring the maintenance of existing class and social hierarchies. In his most famous work, Distinction (1977), Bourdieu highlights the complex ways in which supposedly individual
expressions of cultural and even culinary "taste" are linked deeply and indelibly to dimensions of power and
privilege. These linkages legitimate certain tastes (for example, of art or music) over others, thereby creating
impediments to class mobility. In his later, more explicitly political and public writings, Bourdieu argued against
the threats posed by neo-liberalism to the achievements of Western modernity and called for an internationale
of intellectuals committed to defending the autonomy of cultural production.