Production and Receptions of a Classic

Abstract

While the sociology of culture has helped fuel more general theoretical debate that has enlivened French social science since the 1960s, this has largely been via the mediation of a handful of texts that are considered to be classics today. Le Savant et le Populaire, Miserablisme et populisme en sociologie et en litterature by Claude Grignon and Jean-Claude Passeron is one of these few key volumes, together with The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life (Hoggart 1957) and Distinction (Bourdieu 1984). However, unlike the latter two, this title has not enjoyed wide international distribution. By inviting contributions from various researchers, the roundtable proposed in this first issue of Symbolic Goods1 seeks to illuminate this paradoxical situation, as well as this work’s legacies. From this perspective, the first section of the introduction will retrace the genesis of the book, present some of its strong points, and reference some of its limitations, to better reflect upon the characteristics of its reception in the second section. Le Savant et le Populaire, 1989 edition © Gallimard/Seuil, “Hautes etudes”. Le Savant et le Populaire, 2015 edition © Editions du Seuil, “Points”. From seminar to paperback Published in 1989 in the prestigious “Hautes etudes” collection, co-edited by Gallimard and Le Seuil, the text of Le Savant et le Populaire re-transcribes, in a barely modified form, the oral debates that took place over the course of three seminar meetings led by