Afterword: Concluding Reflections on the Legacy of Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract

Approaching Pierre Bourdieu Those who are unfamiliar, or barely familiar, with the writings of Pierre Bourdieu will find a useful and comprehensive introduction to his work in the opening chapter, entitled ‘Between Structuralism and Theory of Practice: The Cultural Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu’. In it, Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knobl provide us with a clear and accessible overview of some of the main philosophical and sociological themes that run through Bourdieu's writings. Joas and Knobl centre their analysis on five interrelated concepts that play a pivotal role in Bourdieu's work: the concepts of (1) practice , (2) action , (3) the social , (4) cultural sociology , and (5) social science . (1) The authors examine Bourdieu's concept of practice by focusing on one of his most influential early works, namely his Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977 [1972]). As explained by Joas and Knobl, Bourdieu's theory of practice is based on a sympathetic but critical revision of Levi-Strauss's anthropological structuralism through the proposal of an alternative, somewhat refined, form of structuralism, commonly described as ‘genetic’ or ‘constructivist’ structuralism. According to Joas and Knobl, the paradigmatic transition from Levi-Strauss's ‘anthropological structuralism’ to Bourdieu's ‘genetic structuralism’ contains a number of significant presuppositional shifts. (i) The shift from ‘rule following’ to ‘rule breaking’ is motivated by the insight that social actors do not always follow the rules imposed upon them by their social environment: the relative unpredictability of society is due to the ineluctable power of human agency.