The Sociologist and the Republic: Pierre Bourdieu and the Virtues of Social History

Abstract

The difficulties and wonders about social history as felt in Britain and France since the 1980s are to a large extent political as social history was often associated with political movements in both countries. This may explain why what is often described in Britain as a revolution in historical fashion is not described in such dramatic terms in France. This article re-assesses recent developments in French historiography in light of debates about republicanism, and makes two claims. Firstly, while the links between republicanism and social history have been problematic since the times of Charles Seignobos and Marc Bloch, a new republican social history has emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Secondly, Pierre Bourdieu’s significant though sometimes overlooked influence on French historians can be explained both by its implicit republicanism and by the fact that his sociology can be read as a response to the collapse of the Annales ideal of a unified social science based on mentalité, longue durée, and historical geography. While Bourdieu’s concept of autonomy can be read as a republican theory of liberty, his concepts of habitus and social reproduction, together with his critique of geographical categories, have helped define a new social history of the French Republic.