Edited by Michael Grenfeil

Pierre Bourdieu is now regarded as one of the foremost social
philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in a small village in the
French Pyrenees, his extraordinary academic trajectory took him to
the leading academic training schools of Paris. Eventually, he was
nominated as “Chair” at the College de France, that most prestigious
institution which groups together fifty-two leading French academics,
philosophers and scientists.
Bourdieu’s output was voluminous. Beginning with ethnographies
of the Beam and Algeria, he went on to offer extensive studies of education,
culture, art and language. For much of this time, Bourdieu
was regarded as a sociologist, and he had a major influence in this
academic field. However, his was a very particular type of sociology.
His academic training was as a philosopher. It was only after personal
experiences “in the field” in Algeria and the Beam, that he abandoned
the traditional academic route of philosophy for sociology.
This was in the 1950s, a time when sociology had not yet acquired
its contemporary popularity or academic credibility. Certainly, his
early works can be read as anthropologically orientated, a perspective
he never really lost over the subsequent fifty years of his career.